Sir Nicholas Grimshaw (born 1939) is a prominent English architect, particularly noted for several modernist buildings, including the international railway terminal at London's Waterloo Station and the Eden Project in Cornwall. In late 2004, he was elected President of the Royal Academy.

Born in Hove, West Sussex, Grimshaw inherited an interest in engineering (one of his great-grandfathers was responsible for overseeing the installation of Dublin's drainage and sanitation system, while another built dams in Egypt. He is also reputed to have displayed an early interest in construction; his boyhood interests included Meccano, building tree houses and boats.

From 1959 to 1962, he studied at the Edinburgh College of Art before winning a scholarship to attend the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, where he won further scholarships to travel to Sweden in 1963 and the United States in 1964. He graduated from the AA in 1965 with an honours degree, and having entered into a partnership with Terry Farrell, he joined the Royal Institute of British Architects two years later in 1967.

He worked with Farrell for 15 years before establishing his own firm, Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners, in 1980. In 1989, he won a RIBA national award for his design of the Financial Times printworks in east London. After designing Britain’s pavilion for the Seville Expo in 1992, he was appointed a CBE in 1993, and the following year saw his Waterloo railway terminal awarded the accolade of ‘Building of the Year’. That same year (1994) also saw him elected a vice-chairman of the Architectural Association, a member of the Royal Academy and a member of the American Institute of Architects.

Projects

Projects include:

• BMW (UK) headquarters, Bracknell (1980)
• Oxford ice rink, Oxford (1984)
• Financial Times printworks, Blackwall, London (1988)
• Rank Xerox Research Centre, Welwyn Garden City (1988)
• Sainsbury's supermarket, Camden Town, London (1988)
• Stockbridge leisure centre, Liverpool (1988)
• Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, France (1989)
• British Pavilion Expo 92, Seville, Spain (1992)
• international railway terminal at London’s Waterloo Station (1993)
• Western Morning News HQ and printworks, Plymouth (1993)
• RAC regional headquarters, Bristol (1994)
• British Embassy, Berlin, Germany (1997)
• Lord's Cricket Ground Grandstand, London (1998)
• Terminal 3, Heathrow Airport (1998)
• North Woolwich pumping station, London Docklands (1998)
• Bilbao Bus Station, Bilbao, Spain (1999)
• Eden Project, Cornwall, (2001)
• Frankfurt Trade Fair Hall, Frankfurt, Germany (2001)
• National Space Centre, Leicester (2001)
• Folly Bridge, Oxford (2002)
• Bath Spa, Bath (2002)