GRIMSHAW, Sir Nicholas Thomas CBE 1939-2025
Richard R
He was the only s of Thomas Cecil GRIMSHAW 1907-42 scion of that Irish gentry family f/o Priorsland and (Hannah) Joan 1907-2006 d of Edward John DEARSLEY 1863-1936 of The Gallop, Sutton, Surrey by his 1899 m reg Q3 Lambeth to Olive Maria EDWARDS 1876-1962 . He m 1972 Lavinia b 1946 reg Q3 Hampstead only child of John RUSSELL CBE 1919-2008 (Who’s Who) and his 1st w (her 2nd of 3 h) Alexandrine Antoinette Marie Julianne Katalin Huberta Franciska (Oct)1919-(April)2019 (Mrs Andreas Mayor) d of Antal Alfred APPONYI 1883-1954 (Lausanne) by his 3 June 1912 m (London) to Kate Emma Margaret NELKE 1893-1977 (Lausanne), and had two daus.
Obit in the Times of 16 Aug 2025:
E X T R A C T
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw obituary: visionary architect of the Eden Project
Futuristic architect behind the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo and Eden Project who had a decades-long feud with a former partner, dies aged 85
Nicholas Grimshaw was responsible for some of the iconic structures of his age, notably the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo, the spectacular Southern Cross station in Melbourne and the Eden Project in Cornwall. “I asked for the Eighth Wonder of the World and I got it,” quipped Sir Tim Smit, the horticulturist who co-founded the Eden Project.
Only a notch below these ran a steady series of highly acclaimed and original projects: the Financial Times Printworks, the British Pavilion for the 1992 World Expo in Seville, the boat-shaped Western Morning News headquarters in Plymouth, the eye-catching RAC building on the M5 and the Rolls-Royce factory near Chichester.
Grimshaw was one of the pioneers of the engineering style known as “high tech”, which sought to flaunt the structural components of a building using the latest technology and materials.
… He was born in 1939 in Hove, East Sussex, to Thomas, an aircraft engineer, and Hannah, an artist. One of his great-grandfathers built dams in Egypt while another was responsible for overseeing the installation of Dublin’s drainage and sanitation system. After Grimshaw’s father died when he was two, his mother took him and his two sisters to live in Guildford, Surrey.
… He had married Lavinia Russell, an expert on Chinese culture, in 1972. She and their two daughters, Chloe and Isabel, survive him. They had their family home in Primrose Hill, north London, but spent many weekends at their house on the Norfolk coast — Grimshaw was a keen sailor and rebuilt a 1930s Sharpie which he would sail off Burnham Market.
He was appointed CBE in 1993, elected a Royal Academician a year later and knighted in 2002. By then the ice seemed to have thawed between him and Farrell, who wrote to congratulate him on his knighthood.
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, architect, was born on October 9, 1939. He died on September 14, 2025, aged 85
https://www.thetimes.com/article/280645ef-0c25-44a9-be4d-cb6e70a26d47
