Dennis Crompton, born in Blackpool on 29 June 1935, was a visionary and quietly central figure in British architecture who passed away on 20 January 2025 at the age of 89. As a founding member of Archigram, the experimental architecture group formed in London in 1961, he distinguished himself less by built work than by his mastery of ideas, technical exploration, and vision. Crompton was known among his peers as the “tech chap” of Archigram — the one who delighted in mechanisms, systems, gadgets, “things that go bang in the night” — and who also looked after the group’s archives and exhibitions.
From 1965, Crompton made a lasting contribution to architectural education through his long tenure at the Architectural Association (AA) School in London, where his responsibilities spanned communications, publications, teaching, and curating exhibitions. After Archigram’s dissolution in 1975, he preserved and expanded its legacy through the Archigram Archives; his editorial work and exhibitions—especially the 1994 Vienna retrospective—helped ensure that Archigram’s radical ideas continued to provoke and inspire long after they ceased being purely speculative. His influence remains in the generations of architects who were taught or inspired by him, and in an architectural imagination that values speculation, technology, play, and the transformative power of unfinished ideas.