Nicholas Grimshaw

Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, CBE, PPRA (born 9 October 1939) is a prominent English architect, particularly noted for several modernist buildings, including London's Waterloo International railway station and the Eden Project in Cornwall. He was President of the Royal Academy from 2004 to 2011. He is chairman of Grimshaw Architects (formerly Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners).

Biography

Grimshaw was born in Hove, East Sussex 9 October 1939. His father was an engineer, and his mother a portrait painter and he inherited an interest in engineering and art. One of his great-grandfathers was a civil engineer who built dams in Egypt, and another was a physician who campaigned for the installation of Dublin's drainage and sanitation system after showing a link between waterborne diseases and streams joining River Liffey. His father died when he was two and a half, and he grew up with his mother, grandmother who was also a portrait painter, and two sisters in Guildford. He displayed an early interest in construction; his boyhood interests included Meccano, building tree houses and boats.