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St Paul’s, Bow Common, east London, designed by Robert Maguire and Keith Murray.
St Paul’s, Bow Common, east London, designed by Robert Maguire and Keith Murray. Photograph: Elain Harwood
St Paul’s, Bow Common, east London, designed by Robert Maguire and Keith Murray. Photograph: Elain Harwood

Robert Maguire obituary

This article is more than 5 years old

Architect whose St Paul’s, Bow Common, represented a modern aesthetic founded on a sophisticated reading of classicism

Particularly influential among the buildings produced by the architect Robert Maguire, who has died aged 87, was a church in the East End of London, which was rebuilt after being destroyed during the second world war.

Maguire came up with the designs for St Paul’s, Bow Common, at the age of 25, based on a student project that his tutors had nearly failed because its brutalist, concrete nature challenged long-held perceptions of what a church should look like. St Paul’s is square, and its altar is placed under a clear-glazed central cupola, from which the walls step down in two stages. The lower part, separated by columns, forms a processional route beginning by the door, where the font is a stoneware vat produced by Royal Doulton for the brewing industry.

Over the door the German-Jewish refugee Ralph Beyer carved an inscription, demonstrating the ecumenicism of the liturgical movement at the time. The only windows in the walls of concrete blockwork are high up, at clerestory level. Maguire explained that he wanted to capture the way a shaft of sunlight catches a single rose in a vase.

Completed in 1960 in conjunction with the designer Keith Murray, the church represented a modern aesthetic founded on a sophisticated reading of classicism, delivering to its radical priest, Gresham Kirkby, the centralised building that he had hoped for. He had previously noted the forward altar that they had fitted in the tiny chapel at the Royal Foundation of St Katharine in nearby Limehouse.

St Paul’s became a symbol of change, so much so that when the new cathedral in Coventry was opened in 1962 many felt it already to be architecturally and ecclesiastically out of date, with progressive clergy preferring to have their congregations gathered, as at Bow Common, around a centrally placed altar.

The exterior of St Paul’s, Bow Common, designed by Robert Maguire and Keith Murray. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images

The influential writer and artist Peter Hammond included St Paul’s in his book Liturgy and Architecture (1960) as a leading example of the new way of planning churches. With Hammond, Maguire and Murray had founded the ecumenical New Churches Research Group and edited a related magazine, Churchbuilding, dedicated to putting forward their views on the modern design of churches.

Maguire had met Murray through a mutual girlfriend, initial embarrassment forgotten when they discovered their shared Christian beliefs and tastes in design. They formed a formal partnership in 1959, when they were invited to design St Matthew’s church in Perry Beeches, Birmingham, which they conceived as a series of stepped hexagons. All Saints’, Crewe, and a church for Anglican Benedictine nuns at Malling Abbey, West Malling in Kent, followed, distinctive for their solid geometric forms and use of concentrated top lighting. Although Murray never trained as an architect, Maguire carefully conceived the designs with him before drawing up the final versions.

Maguire & Murray also excelled at designing student accommodation. This included the Cumberbatch buildings at Trinity College, Oxford, a clever way of combining college accommodation – now regrettably set for demolition – with additions to Blackwell’s bookshop. A block for Lutheran students at King’s Cross, London, shared the calm found in Scandinavian architecture, but most influential was a village of student houses, each planned for 10 people around a shared kitchen, in Guildford.

The buildings answered problems of isolation found at the University of Surrey, which had suffered a high suicide rate in the late 1960s, and the solution reflected Maguire and Murray’s own living arrangements in a block designed by Maguire in 1963 for the Fabyc (Families by Choice) community. Maguire had joined this movement following a nervous breakdown after graduation. Families had their own flats but shared a kitchen with one or two others, the number determined by the size of a dining table.

Robert Maguire was especially proud of a theatre, art gallery and sports hall he added to Dormston comprehensive school at Sedgley in the West Midlands (1997-2000)

Born in Paddington, west London, Robert was the son of Arthur, a furniture maker who taught him carpentry, and his wife, Rose (nee Fountain), a shop worker. His design interests were furthered by progressive art teachers at Droop Street board school and Bancroft’s school, Woodford Green, to which he won a scholarship.

At the age of 16 he began to work for the church architect Laurence King, who recommended that he should attend the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. The fees were far out of reach for someone from a working- class family, but fortunately Maguire was able to win the one scholarship on offer.

After that he combined architectural practice with journalism, and, from 1976 to 1985, also with the headship of the school of architecture at Oxford Brookes University. By that time the balance of the practice with Murray was causing strain, leading their friendship to falter for a time, and in 1988 Maguire established an independent practice in Thame, Oxfordshire.

Much of Maguire & Co’s work lay in conservation, reordering churches and making alterations and additions to Oxford colleges. Maguire was especially proud of a theatre, art gallery and sports hall he added to Dormston comprehensive school at Sedgley in the West Midlands (1997-2000). His last work, realised in semi-retirement in 2004-06, was a courtyard house on a spectacular site at Ettrickbridge in the Borders, one half for himself and his second wife, Alison, and the other for Alison’s son, Matthew, and his family.

The Oxford University Club building, designed by Robert Maguire. Photograph: JBKS Architects

Maguire’s first marriage, to Robina Lake in 1955, ended in divorce in 1978. Four years later he married Alison (nee Williams).

She survives him, along with four daughters, Susan, Rebecca, Joanna and Martha, from his first marriage, and by two stepsons, Edward and Matthew.

Robert Alfred Maguire, architect, born 6 June 1931; died 8 February 2019

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