In the 1990s he encouraged our then president Harley Sherlock (who has also died, in May this year) in the publishing of his book Cities are Good for You (1996).  He gave our branch guidance for the series of "Compact Communities" booklets at the turn of the century.  In 2004 he wrote an authoritative introduction, and provided technical calculations, for CPRE’s Family Housing - the power of concentration.

More recently in 2012 he attended the presentation done for the Urban Design Group by our trustees Abigail Bachelor and Steve Butters.  He made a thoughtful contribution to the discussion and gave encouragement to the "Liveable Cities" project. We received some further helpful messages and had hoped to bring him to the meeting which launched our campaign, Towards a Liveable London.  However he was getting very poorly then.  His partner Jocasta Innes had died in April 2013.  Richard died on Friday 26 July 2014, aged 75.  He will be much missed by campaigners and educators as well as many members of the architectural community, of whose professional body RIBA he was a past president.

Some of our members are pretty sceptical about modernist architecture in London but most have warmed to Richard MacCormac’s “pragmatic modernism” with its historical allusions and unobtrusive style.  Near to CPRE’s national headquarters is his Southwark Underground Station.  Around Brick Lane in Spitalfields are conversions of former industrial buildings credited to his firm, and his own practice base was in Heneage Street for several decades.  Last year he converted his practice into an employee-owned trust on a similar model to the John Lewis Partnership.

There is an appreciative obituary in The Guardian, to be found here.