Herron, Ron(ald James) (1930-1994)

English architect and founder member of Archigram, a radical architectural group of the 1960s. He designed Walking City, a proposed city on wheels with full environmental controls, inspired by space exploration. Walking City became a seminal icon of technology and mobility. The Pompidou Centre in Paris was inspired by Herron's drawing Oasis (1968).

Archigram was derided by the profession for never building anything, but its aim was to explore the idea of almost possible architecture. Herron continued to collaborate with the group while working for mainstream architectural practices. His buildings include the award-winning headquarters for the design firm Imagination and fabric structures in Japan.

Herron was born in London and trained in technical drawing at the Brixton School of Building. After national service in Germany, he enrolled for evening classes in architecture at Brixton, where a lecturer found him a post with the London County Council (LCC, then the overall governing body of London) in 1954. Here Herron met Warren Chalk, with whom he explored US popular culture and technology, and entered architectural competitions.

In 1961 Theo Crosby offered Herron the post of deputy architect for the immense Euston Square redevelopment project. Herron brought Chalk and Dennis Crompton from the LCC and Peter Cook, Mike Webb, and David Greene, who had published his work in the small magazine Archigram, to work with him. These six produced the Living City exhibition in 1963 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and adopted the name Archigram.

When Archigram won a competition for an entertainment complex in Monte Carlo, Monaco, Herron set up Archigram Architects with Cook and Crompton in 1970. The practice dwindled, but Herron went on to work as a partner with Pentagram, and in his own practice, which merged with Imagination.

From 1965 onwards, he also taught a unit at the Architectural Association School in London and for a year in 1968 at the University of California in Los Angeles. He became professor of architecture at the University of East London in 1993. Other achievements included a review of Chinese schools of architecture for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). His work has appeared in hundreds of architectural publications, in many exhibitions, including a major retrospective at the RIBA in 1989, and as part of the Archigram exhibition of 1994 at the Kunsthalle in Vienna.