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“I asked for the eighth wonder of the world and achieved it,” proclaimed Tim Smit, founder of the groundbreaking biomes crafted by Nicholas Grimshaw, who has died at eighty-five. Located in a Cornish pit, a collection of geodesic domes evoking massive soap bubbles house conservatories housing vibrant plant habitats. Finished in 2000, it was one of Grimshaw’s boldest and innovative projects, seemingly springing from the vision of a science fiction novelist rather than an architect.

Engineering Mastery and Traditional Influence

Yet despite how thrillingly futuristic Grimshaw’s designs looked, they were anchored by an keen interest in engineering and workmanship, and how traditional forms could be transformed and adapted for the present day. Rather than using glass for the Eden Project’s domes, Grimshaw utilized ultra-lightweight foil cushions.

Reimagining Transport Hubs

When passenger rail services through the Eurotunnel first began functioning in 1994, the British end was signaled by a new international terminus at London’s Waterloo Station. Grimshaw created a radical reimagining of the Victorian iron and glass train shed that his historical figures would readily recognise. The concept for the roof’s irregular arched form, a design accomplishment made all the more complex by being arched in design, was the structure of a human hand. Intricately linked to accommodate the movement created by trains, a glazed roof vault encased platforms in a gracefully transparent enclosure. Below, a streamlined, contemporary concourse whisked passengers up to the platform.

Even though it endured a neglected period after Eurostar moved its operations to St Pancras in 2007, it has since been incorporated back into the main station as part of a extensive renovation, so that travelers heading for the outlying regions can experience the same thrill as those original Paris-bound explorers.

Enhancing Everyday Environments

Modern architecture was often intended to appear at its best in a utilitarian, empty state, but Grimshaw’s work of stations, airports, trade fair halls, sports complexes and even the unusual supermarket, refined and enhanced the everyday experience of commuting or buying groceries.

Part aircraft carrier, partly aircraft hangar, Sainsbury’s Camden large store (1988) was a muscular, steel armature that brought a touch of dystopian to the grocery run. Grimshaw even designed a new kind of sloped moving walkway that secured shopping trolleys to convey customers down to the underground car park. It was characteristic of his attention to detail and confidence in technology to tackle the most everyday of problems.

Standout Projects

Initial remarkable projects included Oxford Ice Rink (1984), a daring, unobstructed structure suspended by a web of cables from two towering masts and wrapped in silver panels more typically used in cold stores. The Financial Times print works (1988) energized a dreary part of London’s evolving Docklands by putting the ballet mécanique of newspaper production on show inside an immaculately engineered glass box. Onlookers could watch the FT emerge each day in a Rube Goldberg-esque scene of spinning machinery and distinctive newsprint.

Global and Flexible Vision

Hired to design the British Pavilion for the 1992 Seville Expo, Grimshaw created an graceful, scalable structure topped by a rippling cockscomb of solar panels. These supplied the energy to power a wall of water which cooled the pavilion and its visitors in Seville’s searing summer heat. The headquarters for the Western Morning News (1993) was conceived as a modern ship in full sail on a elevation 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, hoisted into position as theatrically as the timber frames of a medieval barn.

Legacy in Transport Development

Railway stations were a common theme. After the success of Waterloo, Grimshaw went on to revitalise London’s Paddington (1999), stripping away layered additions to expose the engineering power of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Later, towards the end of his career, his firm was given the massive task of sorting out London Bridge, once described by John Betjeman as “the most complicated, disordered and daunting of all London termini”. In places there was dullness and confusion there is now order and connection, shown in a spacious new concourse and a orchestration of escalators and lifts. Even Betjeman might be able to navigate.

Flexible Construction for Shifting Needs

Another much larger London infrastructure project, the Elizabeth Line, won last year’s RIBA Stirling prize, shared with design team collaborators Maynard, Equation and AtkinsRéalis. “Entering into the enormous network of tunnels feels like stepping into a gateway to the future, where the typical commuter confusion 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 trick is to produce architecture that is adaptable and adaptable. This was perhaps most convincingly demonstrated by the successful 2019 remodelling of the Herman Miller furniture factory to accommodate the Bath Schools of Art and Design. First completed in 1976, when Grimshaw was in association with Terry Farrell, the quintessential polished industrial shed is now another kind of factory, an incubator for the practices of creation, making, experimentation and learning, showing that buildings could – and should – have second lives.