CBE MA(Cantab) PPRIBA RA
The architect Sir Richard MacCormac, has died aged 75 following a long illness on 28 July 2014. Working for over 50 years & founder of MJP Architects, he was described by the practise's current managing director Jeremy Estop as 'an architect's architect' - he also served as President of RIBA 1991-93, chair of the Royal Academy RA’s Architecture Committee and the RA Forum, and was a Member of the AA from 1996 to 2007.
Before forming MJP in 1972, MacCormac had attended Westminster School, Trinity College, Cambridge and The Bartlett where he would go on to teach. He also designed social housing for the influential practise Lyons, Israel, Ellis, and Gray in the 1960s.
Architecturally he will be remembered for his numerous & memorable collegiate buildings at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Phoenix regeneration in Coventry, Southwark Tube Station, the Dana Centre at the Science Museum and for a prolonged controversy with the BBC over his designs for the renovation of Broadcasting House that ended acrimoniously in 2005.
MacCormac was famous for his great character and spoke often at the AA as a Visiting Lecturer, most recently in 2003 with painter Antoni Malinowski and composer Michael Nyman. Knighted in 2001, he was the long time partner of the late writer Jocasta Innes and is survived by a son from his first marriage.