British architect Dennis Crompton, best known as one of the founders of the experimental collective Archigram, has died at the age of 89.
His collaborator Peter Cook announced the news of his death on 21 January in an Instagram post, in which he described Crompton as “Archigram keeper of the flame”.
Crompton was born in Blackpool in June 1935 and decided he wanted to be an architect at 12 years old.
He went on to study architecture at Manchester University, becoming a founding partner of Archigram in 1961 with Cook, Warren Chalk, Ron Herron, David Greene and Michael Webb.
Archigram was originally founded as a magazine, but it later evolved into a collective known for its radical architectural concepts informed by emerging technologies.
Though Archigram never completed a building as a group, the collective rose to prominence throughout the 1960s and informed the work of architects including Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Norman Foster.
Influential Archigram didn’t complete a building
In an exclusive Dezeen video series with Archigram in 2020, Crompton said he believed that many of Archigram’s ideas could have been physically realised.
“There is a practical side to what Archigram members do, it’s not just highfalutin, funny, pretty colourful drawings and so on,” he said in the video.
“Had all been well, we would have built a building in Monte Carlo in the 1970s. As it happens, in 1974, there was a tremendous international financial crisis and our clients suddenly weren’t able to continue with the project, so it was cancelled.”
Archigram was eventually disbanded in 1975, prompting Crompton to establish Archigram Archives, which he continued to curate for the rest of his life.
In 1994, he and Herron used the archive to assemble the landmark exhibition called Archigram: Experimental Architecture 1961-74, held in Vienna.
Archive now located in M+ museum
Today, the archive, which comprises tens of thousands of drawings and models produced by the group, is owned by the Herzog & de Meuron-designed M+ museum in Hong Kong, which acquired it in 2019.
At the time, Crompton welcomed the move, after he had been keeping the group’s work under beds and in “various cupboards”.
“Now it will be all together in a place which is young and enthusiastic,” he said.
Aside from his work for Archigram, Crompton was a teacher at the Architectural Association (AA) and Bartlett School of Architecture in London.
Crompton’s passing follows the recent death of Colin Fournier, associate member of Archigram, in 2024 and his co-founders Chalk in 1988 and Herron in 1994.
Earlier this year, the industry also lost the Japanese architect Hiroshi Hara, who died aged 88. The architect was best known for designing Osaka’s Umeda Sky Building and the Kyoto Station.
