Robert Maguire (architect)

Maguire died 8 February 2019 from a combination of metastatic prostate cancer, ischaemic heart disease, and congestive cardiac failure.

By this time much of the architectural practice’s work lay in conservation, reordering churches and making alterations to Oxford colleges. In 1988, he decided to establish an independent practice – separate to Murray - in Thame, Oxfordshire.

Highlights from this phase of his career are Worcester College, Oxford (1988-90), Radley College, Abingdon (1995-96 and 97-98) and the theatre, art gallery and sports hall at Dormston Comprehensive School, Sedgley (1997-2000).

Between 1976 and 1985, Maguire was head of the school of architecture at Oxford Polytechnic (later Oxford Brookes University). One of the areas that Maguire’s department focused on was environmentally responsive architecture that developed modern design that was enriched by local traditions.

At the age of 25 he designed one of his most celebrated buildings - St Paul's, Bow Common – which was completed in 1960 in conjunction with the designer Keith Murray. This was based on a student project that his tutors nearly failed because of its brutalist, concrete nature. It was an initial example of the type of liturgically reformed church championed by the Anglican architectural thinker Peter Hammond. In contrast to the brutalist architecture, Murray designed mosaics that were executed by Charles Lutyens.

Hammond was an Anglican priest and writer on ecclesiastical architecture. He included Maguire’s church in his influential 1960 book Liturgy and Architecture. This led to Hammond, Maguire and Murray founding the New Churches Research Group (NCRG) of church architects and craftspeople which promoted liturgical reform of churches through publications such as The Tablet and Architects' Journal. The group also included architects Peter Gilbey, John Newton (Burles, Newton & Partners), Patrick Nuttgens, George Pace, Patrick Reyntiens (stained glass artist), Austin Winkley, Lance Wright, as well as Catholic priest and theologian Charles Davis.

Maguire and Murray formed an architectural practice in 1959 (Maguire & Murray). Their practice designed a number of important modernist churches including:

In 1955 Maguire married Robina Lake with whom he had four daughters (Susan, Rebecca, Joanna and Martha). They divorced in 1978. In 1982 he married Alison Williams with whom he shared two stepsons (Edward and Matthew).

Robert Maguire (1931-2019) was an influential British modernist architect and leading thinker in the British liturgical architectural movement of the Church of England. Maguire’s St Paul’s Church at Bow Common was voted the best church of the twentieth century in the UK.

Robert (Bob) Alfred Maguire was born in Paddington, London on 6 June 1931. He was the son of Arthur Maguire, a furniture maker and his wife Rose (nee Fountain), a shop worker.