Remembering the ever-youthful Rick Mather

It was sad to see on the AJ website today that the architect Rick Mather had died. Sad because one never likes anybody to die, sadder because he had done and was still doing some excellent work. And somehow even sadder because, although he was in fact 75, he seemed so young. I remember that when Mather was elected to RIBA council in 1998, we ran a news story in the AJ saying how nice it was to see some new younger faces. Simple arithmetic tells one that Mather must have been 60 at the time. A fact that was pointed out to us by Sam Webb, the campaigning architect who was the most fierce critic of the large panel systems that led to the Ronan Point collapse in 1968. Webb was already a veteran of RIBA council and, by implication, a member of the old guard. Yet he was in fact, he said, a year younger than Mather. What a shame that Mather's youthful countenance couldn't guarantee him a longer life.