{"id":168679,"date":"2025-09-29T18:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T18:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/168679\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T18:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T18:25:07","slug":"terry-farrell-architect-who-designed-mi6-building-dies-aged-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/168679\/","title":{"rendered":"Terry Farrell, architect who designed MI6 building, dies aged 87"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sir Terry was born in 1938, and like many architects of his generation, he was blown away by the modernist buildings of America he encountered when he travelled to the US on a scholarship in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

In 1965, he went into practice with Nicholas Grimshaw, who became another international architecture superstar, and who died earlier this month<\/a>. <\/p>\n

To begin with, the pair’s practice focused on sleek, stripped-down buildings with little or no ornament, in which a structure’s function was meant to dictate its form.<\/p>\n

One of their first designs was an aluminium-clad block of flats in north London. Built for a housing association, it was known to taxi drivers as the sardine can, and both architects and their families took flats there.<\/p>\n

But while Grimshaw remained true to the hi-tech minimalist creed, Farrell increasingly felt pulled in a different direction. In 1980 they parted and Farrell established his own practice.<\/p>\n

His breakthrough came in 1982 with the headquarters for TV-am, external<\/a> in a repurposed canalside warehouse in north London’s Camden.<\/p>\n

It was colourful and over-the-top, full of witty references to the architecture of the past, like a pastiche of a Japanese temple, a Mesopotamian ziggurat (temple tower) and a massive cartoon cutout keystone, suspended in a skeletal arch of brightly coloured tubular steel over the entrance.<\/p>\n

But what caught the popular imagination were the giant breakfast eggcups on the roof overlooking the canal.<\/p>\n

Sir Terry later described the project as a “tremendous release”, and the Royal Academy called it a “pop building, through its sheer abundance of metaphor”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Terry was born in 1938, and like many architects of his generation, he was blown away by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-168679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}