Robert Maguire (architect)

After graduating from the AA, Maguire worked as buildings editor for Architects' Journal for four years, as well as contributing to Architectural Review. During this time, the editor of the Architects' Journal - Colin Boyne – commissioned him to build a house for his family.[7]

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.[8] 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.[9]

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.[10]

St Paul's, Bow Common, exterior

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

• St Paul's, Bow Common (1960) – a Grade II* listed building[11] This church was also voted best twentieth century church in the UK by the judges of the UK’s Best Modern Churches competition (2013).[12]
• St Matthew’s Perry Beeches, Birmingham (1963) – a Grade II listed building[13]
• The church at Malling Abbey, West Malling, Kent (1966) – a Grade II* listed building[14][15]
• All Saint’s, Crewe (1967)[16]
• St Joseph the Worker, Northolt (1970).[17]

St Paul's, Bow Common, The interior

Maguire had been introduced to a charismatic teacher of existential psychotherapy, Catherine Ginsberg, through his friend Joseph Rykwert. Ginsberg founded a community in West London which Murray and Maguire (and their then wives and families) joined. Later the community moved to four Victorian villas in Kew. The living arrangements comprised flats that shared a kitchen with one or two others.

This experience influenced how Maguire & Murray approached the design of student accommodation, which emphasised the concept of a large house sharing communal living and dining rooms.[18] Student accommodation designed by Maguire & Murray includes Trinity College, Oxford (now demolished),[19] housing for Lutheran students at King’s Cross, and award-winning student accommodation for the University of Surrey.[20]