Richard Rogers, architect of Centre Pompidou and other grand sites, has died.

Lloyd's Building, London

Richard Rogers (1933-2021) was born in Florence, son of William Nino Rogers and cousin of Italian architect Ernesto Rogers. The family moved back to UK in 1939 and after leav­ing school, Richard did a basic course at Uni for the Creative Arts, then National Service. He went to Archit­ectural Association School in Lond­on (1954-9), then a master's degree from Yale School of Architecture (1962).

Rogers founded his own firm in 1977, accepting some very im­p­ortant pro­j­ects. Lloyd’s Building in London was built in 1986 as a grand struc­t­ure that had its architectural elements on its ext­er­ior. Built as the head­quarters of Lloyd's, a very large ins­urance firm, the 14-storey office block was wrapped around a cent­ral atrium, having its structure and services clearly visible on its exterior. This created flexible office-space inside, keeping the floors cl­ear, and achieving Lloyd's 2 goals: A] a building that would last in­to the next century and B] a building that could meet their changing needs.

High-tech architecture focused on creating flexible buildings in choice of materials, internal structural elements and programmatic de­sign. It sought to avoid associations to the past, and thus avoided buil­d­ing materials used in older architect­ure. Common elements included factory aesthetics, overhanging floors, large central space, lack of in­ternal load-bearing walls and recon­fig­urable spaces.

In his London-based firm Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, Rogers was considered one of the finest architects then and later collected awards eg the Pritzker Architecture Pr­ize. But his early famous build­ings were greeted with disbelief, as we’ll see.

His most important and famous building, Centre Pompidou Paris, was co-design­ed with Italian ar­ch­itect Renzo Piano. Centre Pom­pidou was es­s­en­t­ially built as an in­verted mus­eum in 1977: its air conditioning, elec­tr­ical and plumbing syst­ems were each given a specific colour and disp­l­ayed outside the buil­­ding. The structure and mechanical services of the art gallery were vis­ible outside, creating open, flexible int­er­ior spaces.

Front of the Pompidou Centre

Pompidou Centre
structure and mechanical services visible on the exterior of the building

The building was initially seen as modern ugliness, including by the French newspaper Le Monde, and by me! But by 2021 The New York Times Style Magazine put Cen­tre Pompidou at #16 on its list of the most significant works of post-war arch­itecture, drawing more global attention to both architects and the high-tech move­ment.

Rogers managed projects that had an explicitly socio-political context. In 1998, the British government invited him to lead an urban task force regarding the national housing crisis. In 2001-8 he became Lond­on Mayor Ken Living­stone’s chief advisor on ar­chitecture and urbanism.

In his book A Place for All People: Life, Ar­chitecture and Fair Society 2017, Rogers wrote he believed that there was more to ar­chitecture than archit­ecture. Architecture was inseparable from the social and economic values of the individuals who practised it and the society that sustained it.

Now the other Rogers sites that I, Helen, was not familiar with, but were noted by Tom Raven­scroft. Designed in partnership with Norman Foster while Rogers was part of Team 4, the Reliance Cont­rols fac­tory in Swindon (1967) was their first high-tech industrial building. Rel­iance Controls, which had both the factory and off­ices for pre­cis­ion elec­t­ronic inst­ruments, provided the hallmark st­ructure of high-tech architecture.

Following Team 4, one of Rogers’ first projects was the parental home in Wimbledon (1969). Rogers designed the home to demonstrate how pre-fab­rication could enable homes to be built quickly and affordably i.e a standardised system that could solve Britain’s housing problem. It didn’t, but it certain­ly led to work which he still did decades later.

At Inmos Microprocessor Factory in Newport Wales (1982), Rogers cont­inued the idea of inside-out architecture. To create the large, col­umn spaces required by the microchip factory, the building's roof was supp­orted by 9 tubular steel towers, pos­it­ioned along the roof’s centre. Rogers designed the highly-flexible single-storey steel struct­ure as a pref­ab­ricated kit, so other similar struc­tures could easily be built.

Built in 1999 to house a London exhibition celebrate the new mil­l­en­n­ium, Millennium Dome was designed as a giant tent. The 50m high dome in Greenwich was supp­orted from 12 bright yellow towers. Even though it was among the largest structures of its kind anywhere, when 6 million+ people visited the att­raction in 2000, it wasn’t viewed as a success and was subsequ­ently converted into a con­cert venue.

Millennium Dome, London

Rogers' terminal 4 building at Barajas Airport Madrid won his Stirling Prize (2005). Designed in col­lab­oration with Spanish tradit­ion, the terminal was given a bamboo-clad linear roof supp­orted on central col­umns, brightly colour­ed to mark the different sections.

In May 2006, Rogers was chosen as the architect of Tower 3 of NY’s new World Trade Centre, replacing the old World Trade Centre that had been destroyed in the Sept attacks. And similarly, wanting to have flexible internal space, Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow (2008) was a 396ms long column-free space topped by a curved roof. The free­standing structures housed departure and arrivals areas, book­ings, shops and offices were all designed to be dis­mant­led and reconfigured, if requirements changed.

The Hammersmith Maggie's Centre (2008) won Rogers' studio its second Stirl­ing Prize. Designed for cancer-care charity Maggie's, the orange-coloured centre was to be a welcoming space for patients, with­in the Charing Cross Hospital site, Hammersmith.

Opposite the Lloyd's building in central London, the Lead­en­hall Building was a wedge-shaped skyscraper (2014). The 224m office tower was designed with a slop­ed facade so that it didn't interfere with sight lines to St Paul's Cathedral. In 2016 Rogers' 200-strong studio moved into the building. 

The Leadenhall Building, London
All image credits: Dezeen. 

The very talented Richard Rogers died at 88 in Dec 2021.