Architecture · Contemporary
1938â2025 · British
Postmodernism, after a high-tech beginning; urban design
The architect who gave British postmodernism its public face. Farrell spent fifteen years as half of the high-tech Farrell/Grimshaw Partnership before breaking away in 1980 and turning decisively to colour, ornament, symmetry and the skyline â the egg cups of the TV-am studios, the pastel ziggurat of the Secret Intelligence Service headquarters at Vauxhall, the great arch over Charing Cross. Later he worked increasingly in East Asia and campaigned for urban design as a public good, leading the 2013â14 government review that bears his name.
A cream and sand-green ziggurat of 1994 at Vauxhall Cross, nicknamed Legoland and Babylon-on-Thames, blown up on screen in a Bond film (1994)
Vauxhall Cross, London
The headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6); seen in GoldenEye, The World Is Not Enough â where the river frontage is destroyed â and Skyfall
A 1990 office and shopping development built on air rights over a Thames-side railway terminus, its great glazed arch and side wings rising above the platforms (1990)
Strand, London
Embankment Place, above Charing Cross station â the building sits on a deck over the tracks
A converted Camden garage of 1983 for a breakfast television company, with a Japanese-garden atrium and a row of fibreglass egg cups along the canal parapet (1983)
Hawley Crescent, Camden Town, London
The TV-am studios â the egg cups saluted breakfast; the building later housed MTV Europe
A 1992 postmodern block straddling a City of London street on a bridge, with twin pyramid-roofed towers over a Roman fort site (1992)
London Wall, City of London
Alban Gate, built over the line of London Wall
A wedge of glass and aluminium of 2002 rearing over the Humber estuary, housing a public aquarium on a former dockland point (2002)
Sammy's Point, Hull
The Deep â a Millennium Commission project credited with kick-starting Hull's regeneration
A 441.8 m Shenzhen skyscraper of 2011, its tapering glass form topped by a crystalline sky garden â the tallest building designed by a British architect (2011)
Luohu, Shenzhen, China
KK100, originally the Kingkey 100
A vast 2008 Chinese railway terminus built for the Olympic year, its elliptical roof carrying solar panels over 24 platforms (2008)
Fengtai, Beijing, China
Beijing South â a hub of the Chinese high-speed network
A Whitehall government headquarters of 2005, a much-criticised 1970s megastructure rebuilt behind coloured glass fins and opened-up public routes (2005)
Westminster, London
The Home Office at 2 Marsham Street, replacing the reviled Marsham Towers