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One sought the next wonder of the world and received it,” proclaimed Tim Smit, creator of the groundbreaking biomes conceived by Nicholas Grimshaw, who left us at 85 years old. In a Cornish pit, a group of geodesic domes resembling massive soap bubbles contain greenhouses sheltering luxuriant plant environments. Finished in 2000, it was one of Grimshaw’s grandest and innovative projects, appearing originating from the vision of a futurist writer rather than an architect.

Technical Excellence and Classic Influence

But however excitingly modern Grimshaw’s buildings looked, they were based by an avid interest in mechanics and craft, and how traditional forms could be transformed and adapted for the present day. In place of using glass for the Eden Project’s domes, Grimshaw utilized featherlight foil cushions.

Reimagining Rail Travel

At the time passenger rail services through the Channel tunnel first began functioning in 1994, the British end was defined by a new cross-border station at London’s Waterloo Station. Grimshaw conjured a bold reinvention of the Victorian iron and glass train shed that his earlier architects would immediately recognise. The idea for the roof’s asymmetrical arched form, a design accomplishment made all the more challenging by being bent in layout, was the framework of a human hand. Expertly connected to handle the bending caused by trains, a transparent roof vault wrapped platforms in a gracefully transparent shell. Beneath, a streamlined, airport-style concourse guided passengers up to the platform.

Though it experienced a abandoned period after Eurostar transferred its operations to St Pancras in 2007, it has since been merged back into the main station as part of a major upgrade, so that passengers heading for the home counties can enjoy the same excitement as those first Paris-bound explorers.

Elevating Ordinary Environments

High-technology architecture was often calculated to appear at its best in a utilitarian, depopulated state, but Grimshaw’s work of stations, airports, trade fair halls, sports complexes and even the occasional supermarket, improved and uplifted the everyday experience of traveling or buying groceries.

Partly aircraft carrier, somewhat aircraft hangar, Sainsbury’s Camden large store (1988) was a muscular, metal framework that brought a touch of dystopian to the grocery run. Grimshaw even designed a new kind of inclined travelator that locked on to shopping trolleys to transport customers down to the basement car park. It was typical of his precision and confidence in technology to address the most quotidian of problems.

Notable Designs

Initial standout projects included Oxford Ice Rink (1984), a daring, unobstructed structure supported by a web of cables from two looming masts and clad in silver panels more typically used in cold stores. The Financial Times print works (1988) energized a bleak part of London’s terraforming Docklands by putting the ballet mécanique of newspaper production on show inside an flawlessly engineered glass box. Pedestrians could watch the FT appear each day in a Heath Robinson-style scene of rotating machinery and salmon-colored newsprint.

Worldwide and Flexible Vision

Commissioned to design the British Pavilion for the 1992 Seville Expo, Grimshaw developed an elegant, interchangeable structure surmounted by a rippling peak of solar panels. These supplied the energy to power a wall of water which provided relief for the pavilion and its visitors in Seville’s searing summer heat. The headquarters for the Western Morning News (1993) was envisioned as a modern ship in full sail on a slope outside Plymouth, while in Berlin, the Ludwig Erhard Haus (1998), designed to accommodate the reunified city’s Chamber of Commerce, was suspended from a ribcage of parabolic steel arches, raised into position as theatrically as the timber frames of a ancient barn.

Legacy in Transport Design

Railway stations were a common theme. After the success of Waterloo, Grimshaw went on to refresh London’s Paddington (1999), stripping away built-up additions to reveal the engineering puissance of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In later years, towards the end of his career, his firm was given the monumental task of sorting out London Bridge, once described by John Betjeman as “the most complicated, disordered and inhospitable of all London termini”. In places there was gloom and confusion there is now order and connection, shown in a spacious new concourse and a concerto of escalators and lifts. Even Betjeman might be able to navigate.

Adaptable Architecture for Shifting Requirements

Another much larger London infrastructure project, the Elizabeth Line, won last year’s RIBA Stirling prize, shared with design team partners Maynard, Equation and AtkinsRéalis. “Descending into the enormous network of tunnels feels like accessing a entry point to the future, where the usual commuter disorder is changed into an seamless experience,” said RIBA president Muyiwa Oki.

Grimshaw was always eager to point out that technology advances and circumstances change, but the art is to produce architecture that is flexible and adaptable. This was perhaps most effectively demonstrated by the successful 2019 renovation of the Herman Miller furniture factory to accommodate the Bath Schools of Art and Design. First completed in 1976, when Grimshaw was in collaboration with Terry Farrell, the quintessential slick industrial shed is now another kind of factory, an hub for the processes of creation, making, experimentation and learning, showing that buildings could – and should – have new purposes.