Richard MacCormac

Sir Richard Cornelius MacCormac CBE, PPRIBA, FRSA, RA (3 September 1938 – 26 July 2014),

Through his paternal lineage, MacCormac was the great-grandson of Dr. Henry MacCormac, a prominent nineteenth-century physician in Northern Ireland who was the father of Sir William MacCormac, 1st Bt, KCB, KCVO, who served as a house physician and surgeon to Queen Victoria before proceeding to the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London.

After winning an open competition for the design of the University of Bristol Arts Faculty building, he made his name in the 1980s through the use of modernist design, particularly in university architecture. These included: the Sainsbury Building for Worcester College, Oxford (won the 1984 Civic Trust Award); The Ruskin - Library, Museum and Research Centre at the University of Lancaster (Independent on Sunday Building of the Year Award 1996, Royal Fine Art Commission/BSkyB Building of the Year University Winner 1998, Millennium Products status awarded by the Design Council 1999); In 1999, MacCormac designed a new home in Hampstead for Arsenal F.C. striker Thierry Henry, described as "one of the finest examples of modern architecture in the UK".

MacCormac was a co-founder of the Phoenix Initiative, working on merging art and architecture for the future concept of central Coventry. He was made an honorary fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2006, and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) in 2008. and he owned and sailed a 1908 oyster fishing smack in the Thames Estuary.

Personal life MacCormac married Susan Karin Landen in Surrey in 1964 and had two children, William Paul Lars MacCormac (born 1969) and Luke Henry Landen MacCormac (5 October 1971 – 30 June 1982), who died at age 10.

In 1981, MacCormac met his long-term partner, Jocasta Innes, a well-known author who wrote over 60 books. The couple resided in Spitalfields. With Jocasta Innes' death on 20 April 2013 and fighting his own cancer battle, her house was put up for sale.

In June 2014, Sir Richard published Two Houses in Spitalfields. Photographed by the interiors photographer Jan Baldwin and with a foreword by the historian Dan Cruickshank, it is a personal description of the joined houses just off Brick Lane that he and Jocasta Innes shared for thirty years. Proceeds from the book are being donated to the Maggie's centres cancer charity.

Death MacCormac died on 26 July 2014 at the age of 75 from cancer. He was buried next to Jocasta Innes in St. Mary’s' churchyard in the village of Laverton in Somerset.

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