Sir Nicholas Grimshaw obituary

Architect known for the exposed structures of his buildings and the geodesic domes of the Eden Project

Of all the so-called “high tech” architects who began their careers in the London of the 1960s, Nicholas Grimshaw, who has died aged 85, was perhaps the most interested in skill. He never built a swaggering, colourful masterpiece like Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’s Pompidou Centre. He did not shape the international architectural language of global modernism in the way that Norman Foster has done. But Grimshaw did have the ability to temper his excitement for the potential of shiny, machine-made precision with a passion for skilful craftsmanship at a highly detailed level.

He put the two together to build the remarkable international terminal at Waterloo Station, London, in 1993. Its skeletal, serpentine roof demonstrates Grimshaw’s fascination for the exposed structures of gothic cathedrals and the Victorian daring of Joseph Paxton and Brunel that he always loved. Structurally, Waterloo’s roof was the product of the engineering brilliance of Grimshaw’s long-term collaborator Tony Hunt. But it was Grimshaw and his team who lovingly oversaw the fabrication of every component and left them almost unnervingly exposed, like the giant bones of the dinosaur fossils in the Natural History Museum. Grimshaw himself said that his architecture “glorifies construction, and the beauty of the way things go together”.