The Conference Centre in Edinburgh

Terry Farrell is one of the most successful British architects of the last decade. He has completed a series of major urban design projects in London and other cities in the UK. As an architect, he has designed a number of projects in other countries.

Farrell was among the first high-profile architects to identify with the popular revolt against old-style modernism, which began in earnest during the 1970s.

Half a century of modernist planning has left major European cities, including London, mutilated. But Farrell was an optimist. Our towns and cities, he believed, are full of rich opportunities for positive planning.

“Trust the past to understand and plot the present,” he urges.

The urbanistic concerns that are the centre of Farrell’s approach to architecture derive in the first instance from his postgraduate training in the US, at the University of Pennsylvania.

His dissertation at Pennsylvania was a study of public spaces and pedestrian movement.

In the strictly demarcated circles of British architecture, Farrell is often described as simply a post-modernist. He considers the term meaningless.

“I’m more anti-modern than post-modern,” he says, insisting that his concerns are not primarily stylistic but about space in and around buildings.

Farrell’s rejection of modernism began with a conviction that the “clean sweep” approach just did not work. In the mid-seventies, he worked on a number of projects aimed at revitalising old but neglected and undervalued quarters of London, most significant among them being the Comyn Ching triangle site in Covent Garden.

It was the kind of area that could easily have been swept away in the 1950s and 1960s without anybody really caring and most of it was in a very poor condition.

Farrell’s scheme, which took some years to accomplish, included both careful refurbishment and the insertion of some new buildings.

At its core, physically and conceptually, was a new public space — or rather a semi-public space of the sort typical of London.

It does not announce its presence — you have to find the way in. The scheme was of great significance for Covent Garden, an area saved from total clearance but under enormous pressure from developers.

Working within a tight budget, Farrell managed to secure a healthy mix of uses (offices, shops and houses) which has since been echoed in several other projects in the area.

Comyn Ching was nothing less than a blow struck for London and against the “mono-cultural” approach to development, which had been seen as the only way forward for the capital.

It remains one of Farrell’s finest achievements and continues to inspire other architects and developers.

Comyn Ching made Farrell a hero of the conservation movement, which had grown immensely in influence during the seventies as the public turned to history in reaction to the horrors of modernity.

In Birmingham, a city badly mauled by post-war planning blunders, Farrell has developed a master plan for Brindleyplace, an area of mixed uses.

In Edinburgh, his Conference Centre (which suggests new themes in his architecture) forms part of an area critical to the future of the city, a link between old and new towns.

The site recalls London’s King’s Cross, the scene of one of Farrell’s less well-known but most interesting planning exercises.