RIBA gold medal 2019 awarded to architect Nicholas Grimshaw

UK’s highest praise for architecture, RIBA gold medal 2019, was awarded to Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, the designer of the Eden Project and Waterloo station’s International Railway Terminal.

Sir Nicholas Grimshaw was born in 9 October 1939. At the age of 23, he won a scholarship to attend the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and further scholarships afterwards to travel to Sweden in 1963 and the United States in 1964. He graduated in 1965 with an honors diploma and two years later he joined the Royal Institute of British Architects.

In 1980, he established his own firm (Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners). 9 years later he won a Royal Institute of British Architects national award for his design of the Financial Times printworks in East London. In 1994, Waterloo railway terminal project was named ''Building of the Year'' and at the same time he was elected vice-chairman of the Architectural Association, a member of the Royal Academy and a member of the American Institute of Architects.

Grimshaw became known designing lightweight industrial building in the 1970s and 80s. He adopted a style that embraced the manner these utilitarian sheds were made. Experts state that he has been the most single-minded of the hi-tech architects, “pushing the functionalist dream to the last.” While other famous architects experimented with historical allusions or form, he has remained stable in his initial ideas concerning the appealing of naked aluminum. His persistence might have been an obstacle to recognition as the aforementioned architects received the RIBA gold medal in the 1980s and 1990s.

He admits that his favorite project remains the International Terminal at Waterloo station. “It seems run-of-the-mill now but it was a huge emotional thrill at the time, to be connected to Europe like this.” According to Grimshaw, there is still “something heroic” about railway stations that airports don't have “with the excitement of departure and the exhilaration of arrival”. 

Source: Theguardian.com, Royalacademy.org