Something as big and grand as this starts to look very like an airport terminal, so it comes as no surprise to find that one of the biggest jobs in the Grimshaw office right now is the £205m rebuilding of Zurich Airport. In a way this is what you'd expect him to be doing, however, which is probably why, if asked, he tends to point to the smaller, city-centre projects as his favourites. Notably the pending £10.5m Bath Spa and the £15m Caixa Galicia Foundation art gallery in Coruna, Spain. Getting to grips with the historic urban grain is what drives him at the moment - he still keenly regrets losing out to Daniel Libeskind in the competition to extend the Victoria and Albert Museum, though the nearby Royal College is as good as consolation prizes get.
As to why Grimshaw's ultra-progressive architecture strikes a chord with the public, I discovered that when I visited the Eden Project in Cornwall. It was teeming with backbone-of-England types of the kind you normally encounter in National Trust properties. They'd paid £3 each to see the enormous intersecting domes being built, and they were having a great time. They were fascinated by the Meccano-kit nature of it all, the way you could see how it all went together. It was big, it was optimistic, and it was, quite plainly, ingenious. The appeal of Grimshaw's architecture is that - while often theatrical in its effects - it is neither arrogant nor condescending. It holds an intelligent discussion with you. You can see what it's trying to do. People seem to like that.
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