Peter Murray reflects on the life of Sir Terry Farrell, an architect of great generosity: generosity in his work, his hospitality, his friendships and, importantly for NLA, to London.

Sir Terry Farrell was an architect of great generosity: generosity in his work, his hospitality, his friendships and, importantly for NLA, to London. His friend and collaborator, the critic Charles Jencks, described Terry as “an architect who makes the city itself the client.” 

Terry’s impact embraces not just his buildings but his whole approach to urbanism and change in a historic city. He reintroduced context into the architects’ and developers’ vocabulary at a time when RIBA President Owen Luder was praising “sod-you” architecture. 

Terry split with Nicholas Grimshaw in 1980. Farrell Grimshaw had championed hi-tech; Terry became the UK’s leading postmodernist. His TV-am building in Camden Town was a flamboyant response to the aluminium-clad housing pods of the former partnership a few hundred metres away, overlooking Regent’s Canal. 

His regeneration of the Comyn Ching Triangle in Covent Garden in 1982 was radical in a period when total demolition and new build was the norm. The level of detail in the historical studies of the area around Charing Cross Station prior to the development of Embankment Place was rare in those days and led to a design that continued the sequence of grand palaces on the north bank of the Thames running from Hungerford Bridge to Somerset House. Alban Gate on London Wall and Vauxhall Cross completed a trio of landmark postmodern buildings of which Terry was very proud. 

A slump in the property market following the stock market crash of October 1987 prompted Farrell to seek work in Hong Kong. He began by winning the high-profile Peak Tower competition. The wok-shaped structure was a dramatic entry into this brand-conscious market. 

Hong Kong in the early 1990s was booming, and transit-oriented mega-projects needed masterplanners. His designs for Kowloon Station and Union Square put him at the heart of Asia’s infrastructure-led development. There he evolved as a masterplanner and urbanist — lessons he brought back to Britain in projects such as Paddington Basin, Greenwich Peninsula, Earls Court, Lots Road and Convoys Wharf (the last two for the Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa). 

His Manifesto for London of 2007 included a range of still-relevant proposals such as: urban design should lead planning and architecture; plan around connectivity and movement; learn from history and context; celebrate routes; make London a city of streets and boulevards; rediscover markets and festivals; and empower communities and citizens. 

Significantly, Terry was the first to view Old Oak Common as a Hong Kong-style interchange: a place where HS2 and Crossrail could generate a whole new district, not just a rail depot. As a member of Boris Johnson’s Design Advisory Group he promoted the idea of an urban design framework for Nine Elms, with connected streets, active public realm, and integration of the Northern Line extension. The framework was launched in 2009 by Sir Simon Milton at the NLA. 

Some obituaries for Sir Terry Farrell have suggested his early collaboration with Nicholas Grimshaw was unusual — a well-connected public schoolboy partnering with a working-class lad from Manchester. It was not. The 1960s was a period of peak social mobility, and there were a number of similar architectural liaisons that followed the same trajectory. The working-class partner grew in confidence and financial security and, after a few years, realised they could do their own thing. That’s what Terry did. 

He ascribed his growing confidence to branch into postmodernism to his relationship with Charles Jencks, whose 1977 book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture was the key reference for the movement. Charles gave Terry the confidence to embrace pluralism, irony and contextualism at a time when modernism was still dominant. Jencks was from a wealthy American background, married to Maggie Keswick, a scion of Hong Kong’s most important colonial family. 

Nevertheless, he saw the class system as one of the most entrenched barriers in British life — a structure that denied opportunity and left society democratically impoverished. Against this, he spent his life championing social mobility, determined to widen the paths of opportunity that had once been closed to him and countless others. This is reflected in the ethos of the Farrell Centre: to remove barriers between experts and the public, so that design and planning are not reserved for professionals or elites but are open to anyone. It is about “making architecture and planning part of everyday democratic conversation.” 

This is what drives us at NLA, and we thank Terry for his inspiration and guidance — from the bottom of our hearts.