Sir Terry Farrell, the “nonconformist” architect and planner, whose bold designs defined the “hi-tech” era and included the MI6 headquarters in London, has died aged 87.
The architect’s studio in London confirmed the death in an Instagram post, writing: “It is with deep sadness that, on behalf of his family, the partners and practice of Farrells acknowledge the death of our founder, Sir Terry Farrell.”
Farrell was, along with Nicholas Grimshaw, one of the key minds behind the “hi-tech” movement of the 1980s and 90s, creating futuristic buildings, including one of his best known, the TV-am studios in Camden, London.
Grimshaw, who died earlier this month, was a longtime collaborator with Farrell, with the pair creating the Herman Miller Factory in Bath and the 125 Park Road residential building in London – both considered emblematic of their style and approach.
Farrell was born in Sale, Cheshire, in 1938. His family moved to Newcastle and he grew up on what he described as “the edge of the edge” of the city, “on a building site next to the fields”, in a council estate called the Grange.
He stayed in the city, graduating with a degree in architecture from the Newcastle University School in 1961, before crossing the Atlantic to attend the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he obtained a master’s degree in urban planning.
Farrell would come back to the UK, working briefly with the architects department of the Greater London Council, by which he was unimpressed. He told the Observer: “It was astonishing, leaderless and rudderless; people just invented their own solutions.”
It was away from the public sector that Farrell would flourish.
In 1965 he moved to London, forming a partnership with Grimshaw. Dubbed the Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership, they also shared a studio with experimental British architecture collective Archigram.
Grimshaw would go on to design the Eden Project in Cornwall, while Farrell was often described as the “less assertive” of the pair. “For 15 years I tagged along in Nick’s wake,” he once said.
Despite his modesty, Farrell’s buildings were often bold and loud.
The MI6 headquarters in Vauxhall, which opened in 1994, is perhaps Farrell’s best-known building. Once described by the architecture critic Rowan Moore as a “flesh-coloured ziggurat” of a building, it was typical of “the big, imposing buildings for powerful institutions” that Farrell specialised in.
Other Farrell buildings include Embankment Place and the Home Office headquarters in London as well as the Deep in Hull, and Alban Gate – the “shoulder-padded office block” that defined the “big bang architecture” in the City of London.
He also worked in east Asia, designing Beijing railway station and Guangzhou South railway station in China. He also created the 442-metre KK100 tower in Shenzhen – the world’s tallest building by a British architect.
“Terry was frequently called a maverick and a nonconformist, which he relished,” his studio continued in its social media post. “He was an architect who was never quite part of the ‘club’. He will be remembered as the UK’s leading architect planner whose enduring commitment to urbanism has helped shape government policy on key built-environment issues.”
He was 84 when the Farrell Centre, part of Newcastle University, opened. It includes a gallery and an “urban room” – a place where “local people can go to learn about the past, present and future of where they live”, something that was important to Farrell, who invested £1m of his own money in the project.
Farrell campaigned for conservation but was also keen on buildings being adapted. “Conservation is a mind thing rather than a designation,” he said in 2023, when the Farrell Centre was opened. “A cardboard house,’’ he added, if people are motivated to take care of it, “lasts for ever.”