88 LIGHT + TECH
THE TRIBUTES to Sir Nicholas Grimshaw following his death in September at the age of 85 were, as obituaries necessarily are, broad-brushstroke summaries and assessments of his achievements (see FX’s on page 32 of this issue): the key projects (the Eden Project, the International Terminal at Waterloo), the milestones (the partnership with Terry Farrell, the foundation of Grimshaw Architects in 1980) and the medals (RIBA Gold Medal in 2019). So not surprisingly, no one touched on his particular contribution to lighting: his understanding of its fundamental importance in architecture and the recognition of, and respect for, lighting design that his practice demonstrated from its early days.
There has always been a group of architects who grasped that light and shadow were as intrinsic a part of a building as bricks and mortar or concrete and steel. As Louis Kahn, famously a member of the architectural illuminati, once put it in a lecture: ‘Light, the giver of all presences, is the maker of a material, and the material was made to cast a shadow, and the shadow belongs to the light.’
In the 1980s and early 1990s, when the lighting design profession was establishing itself in the UK, its practioners spent a deal of time and energy explaining to architects and designers what they did
and why it was an essential component of the design process.
The Grimshaw practice needed no such convincing, engaging Jonathan Speirs of Lighting Design Partnership – before he went on to form what is now Speirs Major Lighting Architecture with Mark Major – to undertake the lighting scheme for the Waterloo International Terminal, which opened in 1994. Waterloo won the RIBA Building of the Year and the Mies van der Rohe Prize.
Andrew Whalley, who succeeded Sir Nicholas as chairman of the practice in 2019, acknowledged in an interview with Arc magazine, that attitudes then were very different: ‘I think it has changed a lot… because when we did Waterloo, bringing in a lighting designer was fairly exotic – lighting designers were for theatre, and seldom used on public buildings, and the array of lighting fixtures available was much more limited.’ In the same way that the practice approaches each project as a unique proposition, with sustainability at the core and ‘driven predominantly by function and performance’, it has always collaborated with different companies, including lighting designers, according to the needs of the project. Speirs Major, WSP, Cundall Light4 and GIA Equation are among the consultancies that have worked with Grimshaw.
‘We work with a whole range of firms, in the same way that we work with different engineers, different structural engineers, different mechanical engineers,’ Whalley told Arc. ‘And the nice thing about working with different consultants is it’s the same as when you work with a different client on a different project, you come up with a concept that’s appropriate to that, with a team that’s appropriate to the demands of the project, that’s tailor-made to that project’s particular needs.
‘So we’ve always worked very closely with lighting designers in our projects, and recognise their importance. It’s not something we do, it’s something that we collaborate on.’
Crucially, because Grimshaw believed that lighting designers were integral to the design and build process, he also understood the importance of their early involvement. ‘It’s important that you have an empathy with them and you work in partnership with them,’ he told Amanda Birch in an interview for Lighting (Illumination in Architecture). ‘Rather than design a building and ask them to light it, you have to work with them from the beginning of the concept, especially if lighting is a key issue.’
He also believed that architects should have a better grasp of lighting. ‘There should be courses in light incorporated into architecture degrees,’ he told Birch.
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