We were saddened to hear of the passing of Richard Burton this week, one of the founding partners of the acclaimed Modernist practice ABK Architects.

Along with German-born architect Peter Ahrends, and Austrian Paul Koralek, Burton founded the practice in London in 1961, having previously trained at the Architectural Association. The success of their first project – the iconic Berkeley Library at Dublin’s Trinity College – served to secure them further academic work, including the Portsmouth Polytechnic Library, and additions to Keble College, Oxford.

Amongst the practices other notable projects were the John Lewis department store in Kingston-upon-Thames and the design of Docklands Light Railway stations for the Beckton extension in east London.

Speaking of the studio, Richard Rogers said, ‘ABK’s roots were in the birth of a new socially engaged and optimistic architecture in the years after the second world war’, and he referred to Burton as ‘amongst the best architects of [his] generation’.