Millenium meetings - today we have reached the seventh meeting - are the result of developmental policies which focus mainly on individual potential.

These policies are updated by constantly referring to reality and studying works created in recent years by the best contemporary architects.

Waterloo International Terminal

After the first meetings, considerations centred on the worlds opened by projects which expressed the poetics of Richard Meier, Eric Miralles, Dominique Perrault and Steven Holl: High Tech.
Nicholas Grimshaw, one of this trend’s greatest representatives, was also present. Nicholas, a London architect, born in 1939 and part of Grimshaw & Partners, is one of the most original designers as concerns High Tech aesthetics, together with Norman Foster and Richard Roger.
Grimshaw & Partners is an architectural firm of international repute for its excellent projects based on quality, innovation and care for details; besides Nicholas Grimshaw, the firm numbers a staff of eleven, four directors and seven associate directors.
Their buildings, master plans and industrial projects are the answer to today’s world needs.
Right from his very first works (i.e. the housing complex in Park Road, London), Nicholas Grimshaw shows the care he gives to one of the facets of High Tech poetics - buildings themselves become expressive shapes, with visible networks and a flexible layout. His projects centre on the new idea of balance between the inside and the outside - the “outside film” that covers the carrying structure, usually in steel or concrete, presents a certain independance.
This sensitivity towards the new technology, combined with the essential aesthetical message each material conveys, does not however shift the relations with the environment and energy conservation to the background; a nature/artefact ratio is also an essential feature in architect Grimshaw’s creations. ‘’Nature teaches us many things.

The Eden Project, Cornwall

To be more explicit, nature makes the minimum use of energy and careful use of resources. What often seems fragile, is in reality strong’’ he stated at the “Eden Project” opening ceremony; here, materials were used to implement a hexagonal building, resembling a honeycomb - it is one of the biggest biospheres in the world.
Extremely versatile and open to change, in June 1997 the firm Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners won the international competition for the construction of the first two bridges inside the Ljburg complex in Amsterdam. The first bridge, 240m long, acts as the “gateway” and symbolically marks the transition from the old area to the new one. A second and smaller bridge which joins the two islands uses the same language with a slightly different configuration.
Both bridges represent a sort of “umbilical cord” in regards to public infrastructures - they have at present been completed and are open to the public. This project too shows typical High Tech features: the choice of supporting materials - strong steel for the bridges’ piers which in this case are covered with other film-forming materials; and, the great care given to the appearance - soft uninterrupted lines enhance the entire bridge.
However his choice of project is perfectly represented in his most important work - the Continental Train Platform at the Waterloo railway station, where the glass volume is modulated in a special manner with full and empty spaces as it follows the long curve of the railway tracks.
This is another project which, in its extraordinary technological and constructional qualities, calls to mind that architecture is also a formal presence inside the urban fabric. Nicholas Grimshaw has won many Awards, both for his projects and the quality of his work; two of these awards were won for “Project Eden” and his work at the Waterloo station.
Lastly, the architectural firm Grimshaw & Partners has won the assignment for a Stock Exchange in Old Bridge Street in London. The firm is also in charge of the project for the National Institute for Research Into Acquatic Habitats, a tourist/scientific project of 300 acres with tanks, a hotel and a conference centre. The firm also won an Award for the National Space Centre, located always in England. r.p. (traslation by Interpres)