Ten years ago this summer, architect Sir James Stirling died unexpectedly while in hospital for a routine hernia operation. He was 66. One of the big three of British architecture – alongside Lord Norman Foster and Lord Richard Rogers – his death was as much a shock to the architecture fraternity as it was to his employees.

But the Stirling legacy – and business – looked to be in good hands. After his death, partner Michael Wilford stepped in and reformed the practice as Michael Wilford & Partners. The same staff and offices soon were winning more business than the old practice, overcoming Stirling’s reputation for designing failure-prone buildings – most notoriously a low-rise housing estate in Runcorn, Cheshire, that was pulled down after 20 years because its tenants hated it so much.

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