Postmodern star with a cinematic flourish

Terry Farrell made his mark on London. All of his buildings had a certain swagger but one of his most conspicuous (ironically, in view of its function) was the headquarters of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, on the site of the former Vauxhall pleasure gardens by the Thames.

- Catherine Slessor

Completed in 1994, MI6 showed Farrell in his postmodern pomp, energetically juggling historicist motifs to conjure a flamboyant, flesh-coloured fortress, replete with ziggurats and crenellations.

Deyan Sudjic described MI6 as "an epitaph for the architecture of the 80s" with styling "which could be interpreted equally plausibly as a Maya temple or a piece of clanking art deco machinery". Others were less complimentary: "Ceauşescu Towers", pronounced one critic. In a case of art imitating life, the MI6 building featured in several James Bond films and was reduced to rubble in the 2015 epic Spectre.

Farrell would have relished this conjunction of architecture and popular culture. His buildings were nothing if not scenographic, always ready for their closeup.

Farther down the Thames there was more art deco clanking with the equally exuberant Embankment Place (1990), an office block suspended over Charing Cross station, reminiscent of a colossal Wurlitzer organ in a 1930s cinema.