We continue our high-tech architecture series with a profile of Nicholas Grimshaw, who has stayed true to his high-tech ideals over a career spanning more than 50 years.
Nicholas Grimshaw is the details man of high-tech architecture, a style that emerged in the 1960s and emphasises and celebrates structural and circulation elements.
His buildings tell the story of a man who loves engineering as much as architecture, an architect who is fanatical about the craft of construction. He looks the part too, with his signature round spectacles and floppy haircut.
Infrastructure has always been at the core of Grimshaw's practice. In train stations, factories and housing, he reveals the qualities he values most in architecture: functionality and flexibility. "Buildings should have good bones and they should be reusable," he told Dezeen in a recent interview. As perhaps the most consistent of all the high-tech architects, he has carried this same message throughout his career.
Nicholas Grimshaw designed high-tech buildings for 50 years, including Waterloo station. Photo is by Image by Jo Reid + John Peck
Born in 1939, Grimshaw showed an interest in building from an early age, no doubt influenced by his family. He was raised in Guildford, in the south of England, by a mother and grandmother, who were both artists.
However his father, who died when Grimshaw was just two years old, had been an aeroplane engineer. Grimshaw also speaks fondly of two great grandfathers ? one a c...