{"id":1349,"date":"2025-10-06T10:00:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laurenhwhite.com\/?p=1349"},"modified":"2025-10-06T10:41:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T10:41:19","slug":"that-generation-of-men-who-grew-up-toying-with-meccano-and-went-on-to-change-the-world-is-finally-leaving-the-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laurenhwhite.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/that-generation-of-men-who-grew-up-toying-with-meccano-and-went-on-to-change-the-world-is-finally-leaving-the-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"“That generation of men who grew up toying with Meccano and went on to change the world is finally leaving the stage”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Park<\/div>\n

Following the recent deaths of British architects Nicholas Grimshaw<\/a> and Terry Farrell<\/a>, Catherine Slessor<\/a> reflects on their intertwined but highly distinct careers.<\/span><\/p>\n

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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.<\/strong> From these encomiums, it might seem as though they both evolved independently to embrace oeuvres that were as disparate as chalk and cheese.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> gathered pace. The 1976 Herman Miller factory in Bath<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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Their early lives were shaped by very different backgrounds and experiences<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the equally rarefied ambience of London’s St John’s Wood, they designed an 11-storey apartment block<\/a> sheathed in a skin of corrugated aluminium modelled on a Citro\u00ebn 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.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> and Cedric Price<\/a>.<\/p>\n