Michael Anthony Robelou Powers [commonly known as Michael Powers] was born in New Rochelle, Westchester, New York on 19 May 1915 and moved to England as a child. In the late 1930s he studied at the Architectural Association School. After graduating from the AA he worked briefly in the London office of Godfrey Samuel (1904-1982) and Valentine Harding (1905-1940), former associates of Berthold Lubetkin (1901-1990).
In 1939 Powers was one of the eleven founding partners of the Architects' Cooperative Partnership [in 1951 renamed the Architects’ Co-Partnership (ACP)], an architectural co-operative established by former graduates the AA School. Following the outbreak of World War Two in September 1939, ACP was dissolved but was re-formed in 1946 with seven of the original partners, including Powers.
Following his retirement Powers was for a period chairman of the Victorian Society's Buildings Subcommittee. He died London 24 August 1994.
Works by Powers as a partner of ACP included the Brynmawr Rubber Factory in Brynmawr, Monmouthshire, Wales (1945-51); The Beehive Building at St- John's College, Oxford (1958-60); The Presidents House at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1959); 3 Heath Side, Hampstead, London (1959); staff houses for the Spastics Society (1962-66); and 15, 16 and 17, Blackhall Road, Oxford for St. John's College, Oxford (1963-64). He also worked on the Wolfson Building at Trinity College, Cambridge, and designed several state and private schools, including schools for the Spastics Society [now Scope] in Meldreth, Cambridgeshire (1962-66) and in Dene Park, Tonbridge Kent. He completed St. Paul's Cathedral Choir School in London (1967) following the death of Leo de Syllas in 1964, and designed additions to Bryanston School in Dorset.
‘Architects’ Co-Partnership’. Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects vol. 74, 1967 pp. 229-238
Cox, Anthony. Architects Co-Partnership: the first 50 years. Potters Bar:, Hertfordshire Architects Co-Partnership, 1989
Powers, Alan. ‘Chapter 8. Architects’ Co-Partnersip’ in in British Design: Tradition and Modernity after 1948, edited by Ghislaine Wood. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 113-126‘Architects’ Co-Partnership’.