“I sought the next wonder of the world and achieved it,” stated Tim Smit, co-founder of the iconic conservatories designed by Nicholas Grimshaw, who has died at 85. In a Cornish china clay quarry, a collection of spherical structures looking like imposing soap bubbles house biospheres hosting luxuriant plant eco-systems. Completed in 2000, it was part of Grimshaw’s grandest and audacious projects, appearing emerging from the mind of a futurist writer rather than an architect.
Technical Mastery and Historical Roots
Yet however dramatically futuristic Grimshaw’s designs appeared, they were anchored by an passionate interest in mechanics and artisanship, and how historic precedents could be reimagined and adapted for the present day. Rather than using glass for the Eden Project’s domes, Grimshaw utilized featherlight foil cushions.
Revolutionizing Transport Hubs
When passenger rail services through the subsea passage first began operating in 1994, the British end was marked by a new cross-border station at London’s Waterloo Station. Grimshaw conjured a innovative reinvention of the 19th-century iron and glass train shed that his historical figures would readily recognise. The inspiration for the roof’s uneven arched form, a design achievement made all the more intricate by being curved on plan, was the skeleton of a human hand. Precisely connected to handle the movement caused by trains, a glass roof vault enveloped platforms in a elegantly transparent enclosure. Underneath, a sleek, airport-style concourse whisked passengers up to the platform.
Although it endured a neglected period after Eurostar switched its operations to St Pancras in 2007, it has since been integrated back into the main station as part of a extensive upgrade, so that commuters heading for the suburban areas can enjoy the same frisson as those original Paris-bound adventurers.
Enhancing Everyday Environments
Modern architecture was often intended to appear at its best in a utilitarian, empty state, but Grimshaw’s portfolio of stations, airports, trade fair halls, sports complexes and even the unusual supermarket, improved and elevated the everyday experience of commuting or buying groceries.
Partly aircraft carrier, part aircraft hangar, Sainsbury’s Camden retail outlet (1988) was a robust, metal framework that brought a touch of Mad Max to the grocery run. Grimshaw even designed a new kind of inclined moving walkway that attached to shopping trolleys to move customers down to the underground car park. It was characteristic of his attention to detail and confidence in technology to solve the most mundane of problems.
Notable Works
Initial remarkable projects included Oxford Ice Rink (1984), a bold, unobstructed structure hung by a cat’s cradle of cables from two looming masts and clad in silver panels more commonly used in cold stores. The Financial Times print works (1988) energized a dreary part of London’s terraforming Docklands by putting the ballet mécanique of newspaper production on public view inside an immaculately engineered glass box. Onlookers could watch the FT be produced each day in a elaborately mechanical scene of spinning machinery and pink newsprint.
International and Versatile Vision
Hired to design the British Pavilion for the 1992 Seville Expo, Grimshaw created an elegant, interchangeable structure topped by a wavy peak of solar panels. These supplied the energy to power a wall of water which cooled the pavilion and its visitors in Seville’s blistering summer heat. The headquarters for the Western Morning News (1993) was planned as a futuristic vessel in full sail on a hillside outside Plymouth, while in Berlin, the Ludwig Erhard Haus (1998), designed to host the integrated city’s Chamber of Commerce, was suspended from a ribcage of parabolic steel arches, lifted into position as theatrically as the timber frames of a ancient barn.
Legacy in Urban Development
Railway stations were a common theme. After the success of Waterloo, Grimshaw went on to renew London’s Paddington (1999), clearing accumulated modifications to reveal the engineering puissance of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Latterly, towards the end of his career, his firm was given the herculean task of sorting out London Bridge, once described by John Betjeman as “the most convoluted, muddled and unwelcoming of all London termini”. In places there was dinginess and disorder there is now simplicity and integration, shown in a spacious new concourse and a orchestration of escalators and lifts. Even Betjeman might be able to orient himself.
Flexible Architecture for Evolving Needs
Another much larger London infrastructure project, the Elizabeth Line, won last year’s RIBA Stirling prize, jointly awarded with design team collaborators Maynard, Equation and AtkinsRéalis. “Going down into the massive network of tunnels feels like accessing a portal to the future, where the typical commuter confusion is converted into an smooth experience,” said RIBA president Muyiwa Oki.
Grimshaw was always eager to point out that technology progresses and circumstances change, but the art is to produce architecture that is agile and adaptable. This was perhaps most persuasively demonstrated by the successful 2019 renovation of the Herman Miller furniture factory to host the Bath Schools of Art and Design. Originally completed in 1976, when Grimshaw was in partnership with Terry Farrell, the quintessential slick industrial shed is now another kind of factory, an nursery for the processes of creation, making, experimentation and learning, showing that buildings could – and should – have second lives.
