OBITUARY 35


replicated by others in countless subsequent projects. An office in Melbourne followed, leading to the city’s remarkable, undulating Southern Cross railway terminus, which Sir Norman praises in that aforementioned legacy film: ‘I’ve been in Melbourne. I’ve walked through that extraordinary railway terminal building with its fantastic billowing roof that is literally like the dunes of the Sahara.’ It won the Lubetkin Prize for overseas work. Te practice has been garlanded with over


250 prizes of significance, including the Mies van der Rohe Award for the Eurostar Terminus. It received the RIBA Stirling Prize last year for its work on designing the generous and streamlined underground elements of the Elizabeth Line – providing a civic, seamless public transport experience that even Brunel would have admired. Where train stations have remained an enduring passion (Grimshaw’s reinvention of London Bridge is another example, as Foster has said,


of the firm’s ability to ‘turn engineering into poetry’) the practice has also contributed a number of elegant and uplifting airports to the world. However busy the practice got, Grimshaw stepped up to make a difference behind the scenes too. Elected as president of the Royal Academy (RA) at the age of 65, he won widespread praise for his management and overhaul of that notoriously prickly community, and was described as ‘the nicest


Knighted in 2002, he was awarded the ultimate RIBA gold medal in 2019, the year he retired as chairman of the practice, which now boasts 650 staff


and most scrupulous chairman’, by Charles Saumarez Smith. During his seven years in post, he saw off an inflated £50m expansion project that would have joined the RA with the Museum of Mankind, to steer the board towards David Chipperfield’s thoughtful remodelling and refurbishment of the existing RA buildings. Knighted in 2002, he was awarded the


ultimate RIBA gold medal in 2019, the year he retired as chairman of the practice, which now boasts 650 staff and offices in eight locations: London, New York, Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Los Angeles, Paris and Dubai. In the legacy film, he praises the utopian


spirit of the 1960s, and the idealism that fuelled young AA students: ‘Te feeling of people working towards a better world… but not such a commercial world.’ A rare spirit, in these times, and a sad loss to the industry.


Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, born 9 October 1939, died 15 September 2025


PHOTO: PAUL RAFTERY


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