Here’s a sarcastic blog post based on the provided text:
**The Modern Architect’s Lament: A Post-Architectural Apocalypse**
The world, it seems, is on the cusp of a new architectural renaissance. We’re seeing architects like Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell, the architects of the future, boldly and unapologetically building buildings that defy all expectations. Their legacies are etched in stone, their designs echoing the triumphs of the past. But what happens when the past is gone?
The news of the deaths of Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell, within a fortnight of each other, has ignited a firestorm of outrage and, frankly, a touch of morbid curiosity. It’s a stark reminder that the very foundation of modern architecture, built on the bedrock of precedent and a willingness to embrace the unknown, is crumbling before our very eyes.
Grimshaw, a man consumed by his own ambition, is now a walking, talking contradiction. His ambition to be a painter, a visionary architect, a pioneer of the modern era, is now a cautionary tale. The echoes of his earlier designs, his early successes, his early failures, are all now fading into the background. We’re witnessing a technological singularity, a world where architecture is no longer a tool, but a performance, a meticulously choreographed dance of engineering and aesthetics.
Farrell, a man of quiet strength and unwavering conviction, is now a symbol of the modern age’s potential. His fiery spirit, his unwavering belief in the power of architecture, is now a beacon of hope in a world teetering on the brink of transformation. He’s shown us the potential for beauty and innovation, but the path to that potential is paved with uncertainty and a healthy dose of skepticism.
The impact of these deaths is undeniable. They have shaken the foundations of our understanding of design and architecture. They have challenged the very notion of what it means to be a modern architect. They have forced us to confront the uncomfortable truth that our world is evolving at an unprecedented pace.
The future of architecture is uncertain, but one thing is clear: the era of the architect is over. The world is no longer just a place to live, it’s a place to be. And the architects who built this world, the architects who shaped it, are gone.
So, what can we do? We need to be more critical of our own assumptions. We need to question the narratives we’re told about the future. We need to be more discerning consumers of design. We need to remember that architecture is not just about building structures; it’s about shaping our perceptions, about inspiring our imaginations, and about reminding us of the power of human creativity to create a better future.
The past is haunting, and the future is uncertain. But we have the power to shape it. We have the responsibility to choose wisely. Let us choose wisely. Let us choose to be architects of the future. Let us choose to build a world that is both beautiful and innovative.
Following the recent deaths of British architects Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell, Catherine Slessor reflects on their intertwined but highly distinct careers.
**The recent deaths of Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell, within a fortnight of each other, have prompted fulsome appraisals of their careers and their place in British architecture.** From these encomiums, it might seem as though they both evolved independently to embrace oeuvres that were as disparate as chalk and cheese.
Yet for 15 years they were in partnership together, turning out neat industrial sheds and tidy social housing, as around them, the nascent high-tech movement gathered pace. The 1976 Herman Miller factory in Bath was typical: a modern, modular, humanised version of the archetypal Victorian satanic mill, where employees took their lunches on picnic tables among willow trees, enjoying views of the River Avon. The cream hue of the fibreglass cladding panels was chosen to match the colour of Bath stone.
> Their early lives were shaped by very different backgrounds and experiences
>
>
In the equally rarefied ambience of London’s St John’s Wood, they designed an 11-storey apartment block sheathed in a skin of corrugated aluminium modelled on a Citroën van (pictured). Known as the Sardine Can, it became so popular that at one point were more than 400 people on a waiting list to secure a flat.
The trajectories of their early lives were shaped by very different backgrounds and experiences. Farrell was of Irish Catholic ancestry and grew up on a peripheral council estate in Newcastle; “the edge of the edge”, as he put it. Grimshaw came from a line of engineers and artists and went to a public school whose motto was “fortune favours the bold”.
Farrell took up architecture at Newcastle University, as his parents refused to countenance his ambition to be a painter. Grimshaw started studying at Edinburgh and ended up at the Architectural Association, where he imbibed the heady atmosphere of Archigram and Cedric Price.
They first met in London County Council’s architecture department and went into partnership in 1965. Some sense of how divergent their paths might become was hinted at in their first widely publicised project for student residences in Paddington. Grimshaw conceived a high-tech service tower, with bathroom pods linked by a spiralling, Guggenheim-style ramp, while Farrell remodelled the Victorian terraces around it.
In form and execution the pod contraption was sufficiently daring to attract the attention of Buckminster Fuller, who was photographed admiring it in the company of a floppy haired Grimshaw, like sorcerer and apprentice.
Yet both the design process and the collaboration required to achieve it contrived to sow the seeds of a nagging incompatibility. As the less assertive of the two, Farrell would later say that “for 15 years I tagged along in Nick’s wake”. They eventually split in 1980.
> The stylistic chasm between them was neatly encapsulated by two buildings set within a quarter of a mile of each other
>
>
Timing is everything, and in this, Farrell and Grimshaw got lucky. Their architectural mitosis was perfectly in sync with the start of a new decade and the incoming Thatcher era. Impelled by her aperçu that there was “no such thing as society”, atomised individualism came to trump the communitarian values of post-war socialism which had hitherto informed the modernist project.
Fertilised by economic liberalisation, postmodern theories and the potential of technology, the ground was laid for new kinds of architecture to emerge from the ruins of modernism. Dominating the British architectural scene for the next 30 or so years, pomo and high tech proved its most tenacious variants, to which Farrell and Grimshaw took, respectively, like ducks (or decorated sheds) to water.
Over time, both established prolific international firms, but where you might struggle to separate a Grimshaw building from one by Norman Foster or Richard Rogers, there was no such difficulty in distinguishing between a Grimshaw and a Farrell. The stylistic chasm between them was neatly encapsulated by two buildings set within a quarter of a mile of each other in London’s Camden Town.
First came Farrell’s deft cannibalisation of a former car showroom to provide a suitably swashbuckling headquarters for the operations of TV-am, its launch heralding a brave new dawn for British television. The Architectural Review put Farrell’s exuberant MDF mash-up of Mayan and Japanese stylings on its cover, dubbing it “scavenger architecture”. The scavenger became the scavenged when one of the jaunty blue and yellow eggcup finials ended up, slightly curdled, on the Antiques Roadshow being solemnly appraised by a valuation expert.
Around the corner on Camden Road, Grimshaw’s superstore for Sainsbury’s dispensed with the usual corporate normcore, transforming it into a grittily steampunk aircraft carrier while solving the problem, with NASA-like intensity, of how to get shopping trolleys down a travelator to the basement car park.
The enduring value of TV-am was that it showed how architecture might communicate directly with passersby, through its beguiling, populist jokiness, while also demonstrating the virtues of repurposing existing structures. The environmental importance of retaining and reusing original fabric is now at the forefront of architectural concerns, but Farrell knew it some time ago.
> Their reputations will live on through the juggernauts of their firms
>
>
Grimshaw did too, and it is apt that one of his last projects was the conversion of the duo’s Herman Miller factory to accommodate Bath Schools of Art and Design, a genuinely transformative endeavour that persuasively illustrated how buildings could have dynamic second acts.
For now, their reputations will live on through the juggernauts of their firms and the resonance of philanthropic outreach. Grimshaw’s eponymous foundation addresses issues of accessibility within the profession, while Farrell’s “urban room” in Newcastle is aimed squarely at demystifying the processes of design and planning.
Nonetheless, there is still a sense of an era ending. That extraordinarily influential “britischer Architekt” generation of men who grew up toying with Meccano and went on to change the world is finally leaving the stage.
Catherine Slessor is an architecture editor, writer and critic. She is currently acting architecture critic for The Guardian and is a former editor of The Architectural Review and the former president of architectural charity the Twentieth Century Society.
The photo is courtesy of Grimshaw Architects.
**Dezeen In Depth**
If you enjoy reading Dezeen’s interviews, opinions and features, subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines.
Following the recent deaths of British architects Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell, Catherine Slessor reflects on their intertwined but highly distinct careers.
The recent deaths of Nicholas Grimshaw and Terry Farrell, within a fortnight of each other, have prompted fulsome appraisals of their careers and their place in British architecture. From these encomiums, it might seem as though they both evolved independently to embrace oeuvres that were as disparate as chalk and cheese.
Yet for 15 years they were in partnership together, turning out neat industrial sheds and tidy social housing, as around them, the nascent high-tech movement gathered pace. The 1976 Herman Miller factory in Bath was typical: a modern, modular, humanised version of the archetypal Victorian satanic mill, where employees took their lunches on picnic tables among willow trees, enjoying views of the River Avon. The cream hue of the fibreglass cladding panels was chosen to match the colour of Bath stone.
Their early lives were shaped by very different backgrounds and experiences
In the equally rarefied ambience of London’s St John’s Wood, they designed an 11-storey apartment block sheathed in a skin of corrugated aluminium modelled on a Citroën van (pictured). Known as the Sardine Can, it became so popular that at one point were more than 400 people on a waiting list to secure a flat.
The trajectories of their early lives were shaped by very different backgrounds and experiences. Farrell was of Irish Catholic ancestry and grew up on a peripheral council estate in Newcastle; “the edge of the edge”, as he put it. Grimshaw came from a line of engineers and artists and went to a public school whose motto was “fortune favours the bold”.
Farrell took up architecture at Newcastle University, as his parents refused to countenance his ambition to be a painter. Grimshaw started studying at Edinburgh and ended up at the Architectural Association, where he imbibed the heady atmosphere of Archigram and Cedric Price.
They first met in London County Council’s architecture department and went into partnership in 1965. Some sense of how divergent their paths might become was hinted at in their first widely publicised project for student residences in Paddington. Grimshaw conceived a high-tech service tower, with bathroom pods linked by a spiralling, Guggenheim-style ramp, while Farrell remodelled the Victorian terraces around it.
In form and execution the pod contraption was sufficiently daring to attract the attention of Buckminster Fuller, who was photographed admiring it in the company of a floppy haired Grimshaw, like sorcerer and apprentice.
Yet both the design process and the collaboration required to achieve it contrived to sow the seeds of a nagging incompatibility. As the less assertive of the two, Farrell would later say that “for 15 years I tagged along in Nick’s wake”. They eventually split in 1980.
The stylistic chasm between them was neatly encapsulated by two buildings set within a quarter of a mile of each other
Timing is everything, and in this, Farrell and Grimshaw got lucky. Their architectural mitosis was perfectly in sync with the start of a new decade and the incoming Thatcher era. Impelled by her aperçu that there was “no such thing as society”, atomised individualism came to trump the communitarian values of post-war socialism which had hitherto informed the modernist project.
Fertilised by economic liberalisation, postmodern theories and the potential of technology, the ground was laid for new kinds of architecture to emerge from the ruins of modernism. Dominating the British architectural scene for the next 30 or so years, pomo and high tech proved its most tenacious variants, to which Farrell and Grimshaw took, respectively, like ducks (or decorated sheds) to water.
Over time, both established prolific international firms, but where you might struggle to separate a Grimshaw building from one by Norman Foster or Richard Rogers, there was no such difficulty in distinguishing between a Grimshaw and a Farrell. The stylistic chasm between them was neatly encapsulated by two buildings set within a quarter of a mile of each other in London’s Camden Town.
First came Farrell’s deft cannibalisation of a former car showroom to provide a suitably swashbuckling headquarters for the operations of TV-am, its launch heralding a brave new dawn for British television. The Architectural Review put Farrell’s exuberant MDF mash-up of Mayan and Japanese stylings on its cover, dubbing it “scavenger architecture”. The scavenger became the scavenged when one of the jaunty blue and yellow eggcup finials ended up, slightly curdled, on the Antiques Roadshow being solemnly appraised by a valuation expert.
Around the corner on Camden Road, Grimshaw’s superstore for Sainsbury’s dispensed with the usual corporate normcore, transforming it into a grittily steampunk aircraft carrier while solving the problem, with NASA-like intensity, of how to get shopping trolleys down a travelator to the basement car park.
The enduring value of TV-am was that it showed how architecture might communicate directly with passersby, through its beguiling, populist jokiness, while also demonstrating the virtues of repurposing existing structures. The environmental importance of retaining and reusing original fabric is now at the forefront of architectural concerns, but Farrell knew it some time ago.
Their reputations will live on through the juggernauts of their firms
Grimshaw did too, and it is apt that one of his last projects was the conversion of the duo’s Herman Miller factory to accommodate Bath Schools of Art and Design, a genuinely transformative endeavour that persuasively illustrated how buildings could have dynamic second acts.
For now, their reputations will live on through the juggernauts of their firms and the resonance of philanthropic outreach. Grimshaw’s eponymous foundation addresses issues of accessibility within the profession, while Farrell’s “urban room” in Newcastle is aimed squarely at demystifying the processes of design and planning.
Nonetheless, there is still a sense of an era ending. That extraordinarily influential “britischer Architekt” generation of men who grew up toying with Meccano and went on to change the world is finally leaving the stage.
Catherine Slessor is an architecture editor, writer and critic. She is currently acting architecture critic for The Guardian and is a former editor of The Architectural Review and the former president of architectural charity the Twentieth Century Society.
The photo is courtesy of Grimshaw Architects.
Dezeen In Depth
If you enjoy reading Dezeen’s interviews, opinions and features, subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines.
