One of the most influential British architects of our time, RICHARD ROGERS has established himself and his practice, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, at the cutting edge of today’s architecture industry.
The Pompidou Centre in Paris has proved itself to be one of the most remarkable buildings of the 20th century. The image of the Pompidou pervaded popular culture in the 1970s, making appearances on album covers and even acting as the set for a Bond film. It appealed to a wider audience both stylistically and in its content; to some it was a sensation and to others it fought against the previous traditional style locals were use to and expected. Although Rogers won the competition to design a new cultural centre for Paris, he claimed that he had to be talked into it, because he believed that there was little chance that the French government would be interested in building anything radical.
When he moved back to London his first job came in the unlikely form of the insurance brokers, Lloyd’s of London. Lloyds of London has a concrete structure, unlike the Pompidou Centre which is built in steel although there are some similarities. Indeed it is hard to imagine a more traditional project, despite Rogers’ association with modernity. Lloyd’s of London is a tailor-made building designed as the city centre headquarters. With the completion of Lloyd’s of London, Rogers became involved with the exploration of urban issues. He began to work on master planning as well as individual buildings. He became a Labour peer. Rogers set out to use his skills to shape government policy on the shape of the city. Rogers found his political experiences frustrating but he persisted, and moved on as the Mayor of London’s architectural advisor. At the same time he was working on bigger projects from Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport to a tower for the site of the World Trade Center in New York.
Richard Rogers was born in Florence in 1933 of Anglo-Italian parents. His cousin was Ernesto Rogers, the celebrated Italian architect. Rogers graduated from the Architectural Association in 1959. In 1961, after completing his education by taking a postgraduate planning course at Yale, he met a fellow British student Norman Foster. Foster was born in Manchester, into a family not as well off as Rogers. In 1963 they set up a practice called Team 4, which lasted until 1967. It was composed of Rogers and his first wife Su Brumwell, Foster and his first wife, Wendy. Team 4’s first project was a house for relatives. They were asked to design a home for Su Rogers’ parents, Marcus and Irene Brumwell in Cornwall. The Brumwells sold a Mondrian painting they had bought from the artist in the 1930s, to pay for it. The house is half buried into the contours of its magnificent coastal site, with slate floors and exposed concrete block work. The project really brought the two architects’ together but on the completion in 1967, the partnership was over. In 1971, Rogers went into partnership with Renzo Piano, an architect from Genoa who shared his taste for new technology.
“Technology cannot be an end in itself, but must aim at solving long-term social and ecological problems”
Rogers
In the end, Rogers’ greatest contribution to architecture has not been in creating a technological image, as the Pompidou seemed to suggest, but in emphasising the social and urban dimension of architecture, as well as in their sometimes brilliant synthesis with detail and structure to create architecture with a powerfully inventive character.
