Richard Rogers, Lord Rogers of Riverside

Richard Rogers, Lord Rogers of Riverside (1933- ), British architect and one of the founders of the so-called “High-Tech” style. Rogers is one of the few living British architects to enjoy a worldwide reputation based on commissions in many countries.

Rogers was born in Florence on July 23, 1933. He trained at the Architectural Association School, London, and at Yale University. A partner in the Team 4 practice from 1964 to 1966 (with Norman Foster, Wendy Cheesman, and Su Rogers), Rogers teamed up with Renzo Piano to win the competition for the Pompidou Centre, Paris, in 1971. He subsequently founded the Richard Rogers Partnership, his present practice.

Rogers’ architecture appears to reflect a preoccupation with technology and the idea of buildings as machines, yet he is also a passionate urbanist who is committed to creating “people’s places”. The Lloyd’s Building, London, completed in 1986, was designed for maximum flexibility and is Rogers’ most significant British building. His other works include the Reuters and Channel 4 buildings in London, the European Court of Human Rights, Strasbourg, extensions to Marseille Airport, and office buildings in Germany and Japan as well as master plans for Berlin and London’s South Bank Centre.

A passionate public advocate of the cause of modern architecture, Rogers was awarded the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1985. High-profile projects embarked on later in his career include the master-plan for the Millennium Exhibition site in Greenwich, London, encompassing the Millennium Dome (later renamed “O2”), which opened on December 31, 1999; the design (unveiled in 2006) for one of three skyscrapers to be built beside the Freedom Tower on the site of the former World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York; and the new terminal at Barajas Airport, Madrid, for which the Richard Rogers Partnership received the 2006 Stirling Prize, accompanied by praise for its use of light, space, colour, and practical layout, as well as the elegant sweep of the building’s undulating bamboo-lined roof.

In 2007 Rogers was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize in recognition of his lifetime contribution to architecture. He was knighted in 1991, granted a life peerage in 1996, and made a Companion of Honour in 2008.