Post-modern pioneer celebrated by his practice as a ’non-conformist’ who never considered himself ’part of the architecture club’
Post-modern pioneer Terry Farrell has died at the age of 87.
Farrells, the practice which Farrell founded in 1980, said today: “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.”
The announcement of Farrell’s death comes just two weeks after the announcement of the death of his former business partner Nicholas Grimshaw.
The two architects worked in a partnership in the 1960s and 1970s before founding separate practices which each went on to design multiple high profile and award-winning projects across the world.
While Grimshaw became known for his work in hi-tech, Farrell spearheaded the postmodern style which swept the UK in the 1980s and 90s.
Some of Farrell’s most famous postmodern works include the MI6 headquarters in Vauxhall, the redevelopment of Charing Cross station, the former base of television company TV-am in Camden and the Comyn Ching Triangle in Covent Garden.
Farrells described its founder as “the UK’s leading architect-planner and postmodernist whose enduring commitment to Urbanism has helped shape government policy on key built environment issues”.
Born to a working class family in Sale, Cheshire in 1938, Farrell was known as a champion of social mobility who strived to improve opportunities for aspiring young creatives from under-represented backgrounds.
At the age of eight he moved with his family to a council estate in Newcastle upon Tyne, where he initially struggled in the academic system at St Cuthbert’s Grammar School.
His practice described him as a “self- confessed loner and an academic disaster” in his early years who found solace in art. He won a regional architectural competition before securing a place to study architecture at Newcastle University, graduating in 1961 and moving to London.
Farrell spent six months working at the former London county council, where he first met Grimshaw, and was given a degree of autonomy on the design of the Blackwall Tunnel ventilation buildings, which were influenced by the work of Oscar Niemeyer in Brasilia.
In 1962, he gained a place on the Harkness Fellowship to study at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and was awarded a masters in urban planning before returning to the UK in 1965, where he set up a practice with Grimshaw.
After setting up his own practice, initially known as Terry Farrell & Partners, Farrell’s first major success was his early post-modern work for TV-am, the building now known as Breakfast Television Centre, which came to be called the Eggcup building because of a series of bright blue and yellow eggcup sculptures on its roof.
Despite his reputation as a leading figure in the post-modern movement, Farrell resisted being pigeonholed, according to his practice.
“He never accepted the label of either modernist or post modernist believing his work to be purely contextual,” Farrells said. “For him, postmodernism was a way of dealing with complexity, a way to talk about history and context in a contemporary manner rather than just an architectural style.”
Some of his later work, including the Comyn Ching Triangle at Seven Dials, which incorporated several 18th century buildings, focused on conservation and inner city urban renewal.
“He was frequently called a maverick, radical and a non-conformist which he relished. He considered himself an architect who was never quite part of the ‘architecture club’, his thinking often going against the architectural establishment, arguing for a more responsive, responsible approach to large scale projects with adaption and conversion as a creative and viable option to wholesale demolition and rebuild,” Farrells said.
During the 1990s, the practice expanded with a new office in Hong Kong leading to a string of major projects in the Far East including the 528m-tall China Zun tower in Beijing and highly complex infrastructure schemes such as West Kowloon Station.
Farrell was awarded a CBE in 1996 and a Knight Bachelor in 2001. He was cited in the 2013 London Planning Awards as making the greatest contribution to planning and development over the previous 10 years. In 2017 he was awarded the Royal Town Planning Institute’s Gold Medal in recognition of his outstanding achievements as one of the world’s most influential architects, planners and urban designers. In 2016 he was awarded an Honorary Freeman of Newcastle.
In 2023 he concluded his career in the place where it started, in Newcastle, with the opening of the Farrell Centre, a community initiative hosting public exhibitions, debates, workshops and activities for young people and schools.
In a summary of his life’s aims, Farrell said: “My work these last 50 or so years has been heavily involved in creating a kinder, less doctrinaire world than that of the previous era of high modernism.
“It has been about layering, learning from the past and regenerating with communities’ involvement from the bottom up.”
He added: “One thing I have learned is that we should make it easier for the aspiring child, because all too often society is not fair and not remotely equal.”
Farrell is survived by his wife of 18 years, Mei Xin, his children Bee, Jo, Milly, Max, and Luke, his stepson Zhe, and seven grandchildren and great grandchildren. He was previously married to Rosemarie and to Sue, who passed away in March 2025.
No comments yet