The RWA is saddened to announce the passing of Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, who died on September 14, 2025, at the age of 85. He served as President of the Royal Academy of Arts from 2004 to 2011. Sir Nicholas leaves behind a vast architectural legacy, marked by iconic buildings in the UK and around the world. 

RWA Chair of Trustees, George Ferguson CBE, reflects on his life, his remarkable career, and his significant contributions to the arts:

I am, together with many of his colleagues and admirers, greatly saddened by the death of one of the UK’s most adventurous and principled architects, Nicholas Grimshaw. He qualified from the Architectural Association in 1965, the year I arrived at the University of Bristol School of Architecture (ex RWA). I was fortunate enough to get to know him and many of his projects. 

Nick’s pioneering spirit resulted in him forming a practice with Terry Farrell in preference to working for others. The practice made waves early on with their high-tech schemes, including the corrugated metal-clad Park Road Apartments in 1970, with its rounded corners and industrial bus windows. This was a highly innovative project to provide affordable London accommodation for themselves and forty friends – their brilliant device to join the contemporary architectural elite, alongside the likes of Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. Grimshaw continued to push out the boundaries throughout his architectural life while Farrell developed his flamboyant post-modernist architecture after they parted ways in 1980.  

Apart from meeting at various architectural events I first got to know Nick during my Presidency of the RIBA when in 2004, he became President of the Royal Academy – which he regarded as an immense honour and one that he embraced with enthusiasm. His influence on the RA including the establishment of more space for architecture, is, along with his remarkable buildings, a fitting legacy. When we were planning to move the RIBA Drawings Collection to its new home at the V&A he was extremely encouraging and famously had chosen our world beating collection as his luxury item as the guest on Desert Island Disks so he could pace out the buildings on the beach! 

I had the good fortune to visit the 1992 Seville World Expo while we were planning the 1996 Bristol Festival of the Sea. Grimshaw designed a pre-fabricated British Pavilion where its spectacular wall of water stole the show.  Even greater things were to come both in the UK and USA, including the Manhattan Fulton Centre subway station, out of Grimshaw’s New York studio, with partners Robert Whalley and Vincent Chang, who generously gave me a tour of their projects. They also won the ‘Green Way’ competition for social housing in the South Bronx.    

The Eden Project, probably his most famous work, is of course within our RWA ‘catchment’ area and is now one of the most loved structures in the country. That it was denied the 2021 RIBA Stirling Prize, in spite of winning the public vote, was a travesty that hurt Grimshaw and shocked the architectural world – the greatest building to get away. However, he had won the 1994 RIBA Building of the Year award with his sinuous Waterloo Station International Terminal and lived to see his practice’s Elizabeth Line project awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize last year.  

There are not many motorway buildings that will be remembered for their architecture, but North of Bristol we probably have the most memorable – the 30 year old RAC Regional Control Centre at Almondsbury Interchange – an unmissable high-tech landmark with its towering ‘crow’s nest’ lookout – and one that should continue to remind of us of Nicholas Grimshaw long after the end of his remarkable life. 

 George Ferguson 

Chair of the Trustees, The Royal West of England Academy (RWA) 

Photograph by Rick Roxburgh