Sir Terry Farrell died on September 28, 2024

UP in the architectural heaven in the sky, Sir Nicholas Grimshaw may have been forgiven for a double take looking back at the queue at the Pearly Gates.

Almost right up behind him: his old friend and collaborator Sir Terry Farrell.

Life’s funny ways had it that these two, at one stage perhaps the most talked about architects in the UK, died just two weeks apart.

They had spent 15 years in a partnership slaving away together before going their separate ways and working on their own remarkable business.

Sir Terry’s death last week at 87 has meant lots of talk about egg cups ­– or the colourful finials which decorated the studios in Camden Town he had designed at the start of the 1980s for breakfast show TV-AM.

The little touch meant more people than might have stared his canalside building. Years later, he was watching at home when a punter on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow turned up ask.

Sir Terry’s building for the MI6 headquarters, as blown up in Skyfall

It so transpired that one of the eggs had been sawn off its perch by a member of a striking camera workers’ union in protest during a dispute – and then chucked in a skip before being rescued. There it lay until its cultural significance was recognised and it made its way, in 2022, onto the BBC show.
Architectural historian Owen Hopkins, who is the chief executive of Newcastle University’s Farrell Centre, said this week:“Terry told me the client said yes to everything else – but the egg cups were a step too far.

“But Terry thought they were vital, so he commissioned them himself. He got them made in fibre-glass by a car repair firm.. The design team installed them themselves and, once they were up, they were not coming down. It is a classical finial turned into an egg cup for Britain’s first breakfast TV franchise and there they remained – well, most of them.

“One came up for auction seven or eight years ago and Terry sent an assistant to bid for it. He told them not to spend more than £2,000, and in the end she spent close to £5,000 of her boss’s money – but he was very pleased he got it back. It is now at the V&A.”

One of the egg cups in Camden Town

Sir Terry was born in Greater Manchester in 1938 and grew up in Newcastle. He studied architecture at the city’s university and then worked for London County Council’s architects department.

He would run a practice with Sir Nicholas from 1965, who built the Sainsbury’s supermarket on Camden Road. Sir Nicholas was 85 when he passed away last month.

Sir Terry would go on to design the celebrated Comyn Ching Triangle in Covent Garden and the M16 headquarters on the banks of the Thames.

Imagine the scene when, again sat at home years later, he watched the distinctive building ‘blown up’ – using special effects of course – ­in the James Bond movie, Skyfall.

Sir Nicholas Grimshaw

Sir Terry believed in considering the wider picture of architecture and how it fitted into planning systems – a legacy of his childhood, Mr Hopkins told me.

“Terry grew up in Newcastle as it was on the cusp of a modern transformation,” he said.

“He had first-hand experience of the damage that could be done. He saw the TV-am work as a process of urban repair, using an architect to knit bits back together, places that could sensitively be re-invented – he was ahead of his time with this.”

Sir Terry lived above his practice in a converted aircraft components factory in Lisson Grove,
Mr Hopkins said: “His legacy is reflected in what the Farrell Centre does – a focus on inclusion and democracy, putting people who are outside architecture and planning front and centre.”