Cutty Sark

Nicholas Grimshaw has passed away. Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, actually, a title this architect earned for the many buildings he designed over the past half-century. His most famous legacy is the Eden Project, a botanical garden on a former china clay quarry in Cornwall. It includes two greenhouse complexes formed by several geodesic domes . Apparently, he built it for free, without pay. I've always suspected that the creators of the Teletubbies were inspired by Grimshaw's Gardens of Eden.

Sir Nicholas himself was inspired by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Joseph Paxton, the man who built the Crystal Palace for the 1851 Great Exhibition. He loved glass, that's for sure. Grimshaw was convinced that people, even the British, would appreciate the new and the radical if it was well-made. "Not the least of Grimshaw's achievements," wrote The Daily Telegraph, "was to persuade the British that they needn't cling doggedly to the past and to make them more receptive to architectural modernism."

He also left his mark on Greenwich, where he was responsible for the renovation of the Cutty Sark. The world's only remaining tea clipper was partially destroyed by fire in 2007. Grimshaw lifted the ship, allowing visitors to walk beneath its copper hull. The Cutty Sark was covered by a glass canopy that reached the waterline. From then on, she wore a kind of skirt, which is fitting and appropriate. The name "Cutty Sark" comes from Robert Burns' poem "Tam o' Shanter," which describes a witch, Nannie, wearing a revealing cutty sark, or short underwear.

It wasn't a success. In 2012, it won the famous Carbuncle Cup, the wooden spoon for the dregs of British architecture. "the worst thing about it is the glass pool into which the ship is plunged, and the infantile raising of the ship beneath. It offers more 'wow' to the paying spectator, but while before a passer-by could look at the ship, now they have it blocked by this clumsy, faceted glass bulge. It's the final death of High-Tech as a design language worthy of respect."

Journalist Andrew Gilligan wasn't much more positive: “The architects, Grimshaw, have taken something delicate and beautiful and surrounded it with a building that looks like a 1980s bus station. Clumsy and ineptly detailed, their new glass greenhouse around the Cutty Sark totally ruins her thrilling lines, obscures much of her exquisite gilding and cynically forces anyone who actually wants to see her to pay their £12 and go inside. The sight of people pressing their faces forlornly against the smoked glass to try to see something of the ship is one of the sadder in London.”