Competition: Dezeen has teamed up with Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners to give away five pairs of tickets to a retrospective exhibition of work by architect Richard Rogers at the Royal Academy of Arts.
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Competition closes 23 August 2013. Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeen Mail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.
In our second exclusive video interview with Richard Rogers, the British architect reveals that key elements of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which he designed together with Italian architect Renzo Piano, were strongly influenced by the radical thinking of the 1960s.
The Centre Pompidou was born out of a competition launched by the French government in 1970 and was completed in 1977. However, Rogers cites the political unrest in Paris in the previous decade, when protesting students and workers came close to overthrowing the government in 1968, as a key influence.
“That moment nearly changed history, certainly for Europe,” Rogers says. “It looked as though there would be a revolution. In fact, it didn’t happen. But we captured some of it in the building.”
He adds: “It was a highly active period of politics, and you could argue that it was a part of the concept [for the building]. This was a dynamic period, a period of change, but we wanted to catch what was going on at the moment.”
The Centre Pompidou, Paris. Photo copyright: Philippe Migeat
The Centre Pompidou is also linked to 1968 by its name. Originally called the Centre Beaubourg, the building was renamed when Georges Pompidou, who was prime minister of France when the protests kicked off and became president after Charles de Gaulle was forced to resign, died during construction of the building.
“It is said in France that Pompidou had a plane revving up because he thought he would lose the war against the students, the intellectuals, and the workers,” Rogers says.
The original competition model of the Centre Pompidou, currently on show at The Royal Academy of Arts in London
In Roger’s and Piano’s original design, the main facade of the building featured a large screen, which would have displayed information from other arts and cultural institutions around the world. But this was scrapped after Pompidou’s death for political reasons.
“The facade on the building, if you look more carefully, was very much about the riots and very much about Vietnam,” Rogers says. “We had it all going very well until Pompidou died and Giscard [the subsequent president of France] came in and sunk it with no hands. He said: ‘It is a political weapon, I don’t want it.’ So that died.”
Model showing the external structure and services of the Centre Pompidou
Rogers says that the idea of the putting all the structure and services on the outside of the building to maximise the flexibility of the internal space also has its roots in the volatility of this period of history.
“We wanted to make a building that was clearly of our period, which caught the zeitgeist of the now,” he says.
Richard Rogers with Renzo Piano
“The one thing we knew about this age is it’s all about change, if there’s one constant, it’s change. So we said that we’d make massive floors, which were the size of two football pitches with no vertical interruptions, structure on the outside, mechanical service on the outside, people’s movement on the outside and theoretically you can do anything you want on those floors.”
“We didn’t say where the museum should go, where the library should go, and of course, the library changed radically because when we started there were books and by the time we finished it books were almost finished because of I.T. So again that’s about change.”
Section from the original competition entry for the Centre Pompidou
The radical design of the building was initially met with hostility, Rogers claims.
“It was vilified whilst we were designing it from the first day onwards,” he says. “Nobody said one kind word until it opened and when people started to queue up.”
He reflects: “I remember once standing outside on a rainy day and there was a small woman with an umbrella who offered me shelter. We started talking, as one does in the rain, and she asked: ‘what do you think of this building?'”
“Stupidly, I said that I designed it and she hit me on the head with her umbrella. That was just typical of the general reaction of the people, especially during the design and construction stage. [People thought we were] destroying their beautiful Paris.'”
However, Rogers believes that shock-factor is a mark of good architecture.
“All good architecture is modern in its time,” he says. “Gothic was a fantastic shock; the Renaissance was another shock to all the little medieval buildings.The shock of the new is always rather difficult to get over.”
External escalator on the facade of the Centre Pompidou. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
Despite the initial reaction, Rogers says that the French public warmed to the building over time and maintains that the project as a whole was always designed “for the people.”
“When we did our first studies, it showed that there was no public space nearby,” he says. “So we created this big piazza. There were, I think, 681 entries [to the original design competition] and strangely enough there were no others with a big piazza. That is really critical to the workings of the Pompidou.”
Piazza in front of the Centre Pompidou. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
“We said that we will put the building not in the middle of the piazza, but actually on one side because that will give people a place to meet,” he continues. “The idea was that you had a public space, and you’d go up the facade of the of the building in streets in the air with escalators floating across it, so the whole thing became very dynamic. People come to see people as well as to see art; people come to meet people. So we wanted to practice that as theatre.”
Rogers concludes: “The whole idea of Pompidou was that it is a place for the meeting of all people. And the success of it was that the French took it over and it became the most visited building in Europe.”
The Centre Pompidou. Photo copyright: Georges Meguerditchian
Rogers was speaking to Dezeen to mark the opening of an exhibition called Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The movie contains rare archive material provided by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners to coincide with the show.
The London home designed by Rogers for his parents, and which influenced his later design for the Pompidou Centre, was recently put on the market for the first time since it was built in 1968.
In the first of a series of exclusive video interviews with Richard Rogers, who celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday, the British architect discusses the themes of his current Royal Academy of Arts retrospective and explains why he believes that a building should not just be designed for a specific client, but society as a whole.
“The Royal Academy asked whether I would like to do an exhibition about my life, not specifically about my work,” he says. “[It is] more about the thinking and also a section through 80 years of life.”
The key theme of the exhibition, Rogers explains, is social responsibility.
“We’ve decided to call the exhibition Inside Out, partly because I often put structure and ducts on the outside of buildings,” he says.
“But the real title is Ethos. The idea is that we have a responsibility to society. And that gives us a role as architects that is more than just answering the client but also to answer the passerby and society as a whole.”
Greeting visitors in large letters on the wall of the first room in the exhibition is a quotation that reads: “A place for all people, the young and the old, the poor and the rich.”
Rogers explains that this was the first paragraph that he wrote with Italian architect Renzo Piano when they were preparing their competition entry for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which would go on to become one of Rogers’ most famous buildings.
“It shows the heart of this exhibition because that gave us the way of handling the Pompidou not just as a building, but also as a place, which I’m much more interested in,” Rogers says.
Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano
In this room there is also a video projected on the wall, in which Rogers explains his concept of “ethos”.
“It’s based funnily enough on my mother’s watch, which I always wear,” Rogers says.”It is a Bulova, which has beautiful workings in it. It’s some 50 years old now, and [the video] sort of explains my work through that watch.”
On the wall of the exhibition’s final room is another quotation, a translation of an oath that young men of ancient Athens had to swear before becoming full citizens: “I shall leave this city not less but more beautiful than I found it”.
“It is an oath which I would like to think we are all trying to do,” says Rogers. “Using beauty in that very broad, shall we say Greek way: democratic and intellectual, not just purely aesthetic.”
Rogers goes on to explain that he believes that good architecture is the result of teamwork, rather than one person’s vision.
“I work very much with colleagues, with friends,” he says. “Architecture is about teams. The idea that you suddenly wake up and do a sketch is not true. The only time I do that, I usually wake up with a hangover the next morning.”
He continues: “Like any work, whether film or book, [architecture] has its own inertia, it changes direction. And also the scale changes. The scale in your mind, the scale in models slowly gets more and more attuned to what you’re actually doing. You can’t imagine a building as complete any more than you can imagine 500 pages [of a book].”
The exhibition also features a number of personal items, including a report card from Rogers’ fourth year as a student at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, which doubts his ability to succeed as an architect.
Rogers’ report card from the Architectural Association School of Architecture
“Rogers’ late entry into the 4th Year was not successful,” reads the report. “He has a genuine interest in and a feeling for architecture, but sorely lacks the intellectual equipment to translate these feelings into sound building.”
“I was an appalling student, all my life,” admits Rogers, who was later diagnosed as suffering from dyslexia. “In fact, I enjoyed myself much more in the last third of my life than I did in my first third.”
“Everybody said I was stupid and then I found out that actually I had learning difficulties. So those gave me a lot of problems for the first thirty years. But the last 30 years of my life have been fantastic.”
The London home designed by Rogers for his parents, and which influenced his later design for the Pompidou Centre, was recently put on the market for the first time since it was built in 1968.
News: the seminal London home designed by British architect Richard Rogers for his parents – and which influenced his later design for the Pompidou Centre – has been put on the market for the first time since it was built in 1968 (+ slideshow).
Sketch of Rogers House by Richard Rogers
Rogers House, at Wimbledon in south-west London, was designed to provide a flexible, open interior and is cited by Rogers himself as the precursor to the Pompidou Centre, the groundbreaking 1977 arts centre in Paris he designed with Renzo Piano.
In their description of the property, the agents describe it as “one of the most important and celebrated houses of the 20th century”.
Talking to Dezeen recently about the house, Rogers said: “If you look at the house in Wimbledon for my parents, which is a single storey house, it’s steel and highly insulated, it’s transparent, the bathroom is very compact and all the partitions can move – you can see a link from that to the Pompidou with the difference being about a thousand times the scale,” Rogers said.
The main house is a single-storey building with a simple yellow-painted steel frame, which is fully glazed at both ends. The internal moveable partitions within the buildings allow residents to utilise and section the spaces as they wish.
The house represented Britain at the 1967 Paris Biennale and was described as “the most technically interesting and visually striking house in Europe” by Richard Einzig in his book, Classic Modern Houses in Europe.
The building is set in gardens landscaped by Rogers’ mother, Dada Rogers, and faces a second, smaller building with a similar yellow-steel frame that was originally built as a pottery studio. Both buildings retain their original, vibrant colour scheme, which was developed by Rogers’ mother in conjunction with Richard and Su Rogers.
At the rear of the garden there is a third building, designed by Rogers’ son and the house’s most recent occupant, Ab Rogers. This consists of a single open space and kitchenette.
The grounds feature a small building designed by Rogers’ son, interior designer Ab Rogers
The house was given a grade II* listing earlier this year – a rare accolade for such a recent building.
At the time the listing was announced, culture secretary Ed Vaizey said: “This is an outstanding and innovative example of a high-tech steel frame house that has clearly stood the test of time. Though many will always associate Lord Rogers with iconic works like the Lloyds Building in London, the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the National Assembly of Wales in Cardiff, this much earlier building is highly significant too; a masterpiece from one of the most imaginative and exciting periods in private house building in this country.”
Ahead of the exhibition, Rogers spoke to Dezeen about how architecture’s civic responsibility has been eroded in “an age of greed”. Read the interview »
Photographs are copyright Tim Crocker/The Modern House.
Plan of the property, with the pottery studio at the bottom and the main house in the centreGround floor plan of house and lodgeGround floor plan of house and lodge
News: London architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) have been appointed to design a new terminal at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport at Lyon in France.
The terminal will double the size of the airport, which is one of two that serve France’s second-biggest city, and increase capacity from 10 to 15 million passengers per year by 2020.
RSHP were asked to design a terminal that “didn’t detract from” Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s TGV station, which is next to the airport. Their circular design features shops and gardens at its centre.
Lyon airport commissions Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, architects of Heathrow Terminal 5 and Barajas Airport, for their new European gateway
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) are pleased to announce their appointment to design the Future Terminal 1 project at Lyon-Saint Exupéry Airport. The new terminal will cover roughly the same area (70,000m2) as all of the existing buildings combined and will enable the airport to welcome an extra 5 million passengers by 2020 (taking the total from 10 to 15 million).
The brief for the project was challenging: to create a new identity for the site that remained in keeping with the high-calibre existing campus and didn’t detract from the distinctive TGV train station, designed by Santiago Calatrava. RSHP’s solution is a circular building made up of bold, simple and elegant structural elements. The terminal will offer a spacious and clearly defined entrance, a hanging garden and large shopping area at the centre, which will enrich the travelling experience for passengers.
Graham Stirk, senior partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, designer of the project said:
“We are very pleased to be involved in the new terminal for Lyon Airport. The existing airport campus has a very distinctive structural and architectural language in both form and colour. This ‘DNA’ determines the character of the new proposal. We look forward to working with GFC Construction and Aéroports de Lyon to create a new European gateway to the city and its region.”
Centre Pompidou, photo by David Noble. Top photo by Katsuhisa Kida
Timed to coincide with Rogers’ 80th birthday, the exhibition contains a retrospective of the architect’s career – from his early experiences and education to his current portfolio of work with Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners.
Escalators of the Centre Pompidou
Original architectural drawings, sketches and photographs of his iconic buildings will be displayed, such as the radical Centre Pompidou in Paris, designed with Renzo Piano, Lloyd’s headquarters in London and the Bordeaux Law Courts.
Centre Pompidou elevation from the competition entry
The Room at Lloyd’s of London, photo by Janet Gill
A series of Friday evening talks themed on architecture and urban design will include speakers Michael Pinsky, Dan Pearson and Douglas Murphy and will be free to anyone with an exhibition ticket.
New Area Terminal, Madrid Airport, photo by Manuel Renau
The exhibition opens to the public from today until 13 October at the Burlington Gardens gallery of the Royal Academy of Arts.
National Assembly for Wales, photo by Katsuhisa Kida
Tickets cost £8 and concessions are available, while children under 12 free and Friends of the RA go free.
Ahead of the exhibition, Richard Rogers spoke to Dezeen about how architecture’s civic responsibility has been eroded in “an age of greed”. Read the interview »
Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out will explore the ideas and ethos of the internationally renowned architect and urbanist Lord Rogers of Riverside. Timed to coincide with Rogers’ 80th birthday, the exhibition will examine his social, political and cultural influences and their connection to his architecture. Previously unseen original material, drawings and personal items, will present a unique insight into the thinking behind one of the world’s most celebrated architects. Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out will be held in Burlington Gardens, the Royal Academy’s new venue for contemporary art and architecture.
The exhibition will draw on key stages in Rogers’ life, from the influence of his Italian family, his experience of wartime and post-war Britain, his education at the Architectural Association and Yale, and the impact of seeing new American architecture and technology. Visitors will be introduced to Rogers’ principles through the presentation of major projects and collaborations, revealing his pioneering ideas about architecture and his belief in the need to create vibrant cities for everyone.
Rogers has consistently worked with themes that are far wider than conventional architectural thinking, articulating them as a spokesperson, writer, politician and activist, as well as an architect. For over half a century, Rogers has advocated the social objectives of architecture, the importance of public space, urban regeneration and better planning, through innovative design. He has played a pivotal role in master-planning and shaping government policy on urban development, believing that architecture is the most powerful agent for social change.
A number of high-profile projects that incorporate Rogers’ architectural principles will be showcased. These will include the Centre Pompidou, designed with Renzo Piano and still considered one of the most radical modern buildings since its opening in 1977, the Grade 1 listed headquarters for Lloyd’s of London, and the Bordeaux Law Courts. Through these projects Rogers has established himself and his practice, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, as standing at the forefront of the architecture industry.
The exhibition will bring together the far reaching effects that Rogers’ interest in the politics of social justice has had on architecture and public policy.
Wimbledon House sketch
Join the debate
To encourage visitors to engage in the debates and issues around architecture today, the final room in the exhibition will be a space for dialogue and discussion, events and workshops, where visitors can share their views and hear from high- profile speakers in related fields. Also look out for Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners Manufactured House in the courtyard through August until early September. This innovative, flat packed, environmentally efficient home is an example of how new building technologies can help shape better mass housing.
Friday Evening Soapbox Talks
Taking place in Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out, the Soapbox provides a literal platform for key figures from the worlds of architecture, design, art and engineering to make fresh and passionate 15-minute polemics on some the central issues confronting architecture and cities, today and in the future. Provocative and inspiring, contentious and stimulating, audience participation is actively encouraged!
7–7.30pm – Gallery 10, Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington Gardens. Free with an exhibition ticket (no booking required).
» 26 July: Michael Pinsky – fresh and passionate polemics on central issues confronting architecture and cities. » 2 August: Douglas Murphy – writer and critic. Murphy will be asking ‘Whose Future?’ » 9 August: Carolyn Steel – architect and leading thinker on food and cities, Steel will discuss “Sitopia: The Creative Power of Food”. » 16 August: Dan Pearson – leading landscape designer, Pearson’s work ranges from small private gardens to large-scale, multifaceted public spaces and parks. » 30 August: Anna Minton – Minton discusses ‘how the security which comes with privatised ‘public’ places creates fear and paranoia. A truly public realm by contrast, is open, inclusive and democratic’.
Zip-up House, courtesy of Richard + Su Rogers
Evening Events
Please check RA website for full details, timings and tickets.
Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out is organised by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSH-P) and the Royal Academy of Arts. The exhibition has been curated by Jeremy Melvin, Consultant Curator for Architecture, Royal Academy of Arts. The exhibition is designed by Ab Rogers Design with graphics by Graphic Thought Facility.
Supported by: Ferrovial Agroman, Heathrow and Laing O’Rourke. Investing today to transform tomorrow.
Media Partner: The Guardian
“London As it Could Be” drawing
Catalogue
An illustrated catalogue has been published to accompany the exhibition Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out, with contributions from Michael Heseltine, Anne Powers, Michael Craig-Martin and Ricky Burdett amongst others.
Dates
Open to the public: Thursday 18 July – Sunday 13 October 2013, 10am – 6pm daily (last admission 5.30pm)
Late night opening: Fridays until 10pm (last admission 9.30pm)
Admission
£8 full price; concessions available; children under 12 free; Friends of the RA go free.
Tickets
Tickets for Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out are available daily at the RA or visit www.royalacademy.org.uk. Group bookings: Groups of 10+ are asked to book in advance. Telephone 020 7300 8027 or email: groupbookings@royalacademy.org.uk
News: on the eve of a major exhibition about his life, architect Richard Rogers has spoken of how architecture’s civic responsibility has been eroded in “an age of greed”.
“In my generation the idea was you’d build for the future,” Rogers told Dezeen. “We’d just had a horrible war and there was this very strong feeling that the state could be enriched by the way we played out our abilities.”
He added: “This has gone. It’s much more an age of greed. It’s much more about dog eat dog and the acceptance that it doesn’t matter what you earn, you have no duty to society.”
“The real title [of the exhibition] is Ethos,” said Rogers, who celebrates his 80th birthday this month. “The idea is that we have a responsibility to society. That gives us a role as architects not just to the client but also to the passer-by and society as a whole.”
The exhibition at the RA will explore the ideas and philosophies behind Rogers’ work, exploring his social, political and cultural influences as well as the influence he has had on those spheres over a career spanning 50 years.
“On one wall [of the exhibition] it will say ‘a place for all people, all ages, all creeds, the rich and the poor’,” Rogers explains. “That was actually the first paragraph I wrote with Renzo [Piano] when we entered the Pompidou competition but it also explains the heart of the exhibition. That gave us the way of handling the Pompidou, not just as a building but as a place – which I’m much more interested in.”
Rogers and Piano, then relatively unknown, entered the competition to design the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris against 700 other entrants with a design for a radical, flexible building with its service ducts on the outside and a large public square in front of it. The building made both their reputations when it was completed in 1977.
Rogers continues: “On another wall there will be the Hellenic oath which states ‘I will leave this city more beautiful than I entered it’. It was an oath that all citizens made and I would like to think it’s an oath we are all required to make.”
Rogers described how the social ethos of his generation led most of his contemporaries to spend time working on public projects. “I was at the Architectural Association in the 50s and then I went to Yale,” Rogers said. “Everyone I was at school with went on to work for schools departments, hospital departments, housing departments, the local county council and so on. I worked on schools. I’d say 90% of students who were at the AA with me went on to work [in the public sector].”
However he added that, in some senses, there are greater opportunities for architects today. “Britain now has very good modern architects. You could argue that no nation has better. Political interest? There’s never been much.”
“But in some ways [things are] better. If you go to the City of London, it’s pretty good. I was coming out the other day from the Design Museum on the other side of Tower Bridge and I thought I was in New York, with all the towers and lights. I’m not saying that it’s good or bad but it’s very exciting, it’s very dynamic. It’s something that was impossible before. It’s a very exciting time.”
He added: “I wouldn’t say that things are uglier, but we need to be very wary of protecting the public domain.”
Rogers won the Pritzker Prize in 2009 and was knighted in 1981 and made a lord in 1996. He has designed landmark buildings including Lloyds of London, Bordeaux Law Courts, Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Millennium Dome (now the O2 Arena).
Videos of our interview with Rogers will be published on Dezeen in the coming weeks. Richard Rogers RA: Inside Out is at the Royal Academy, Burlington Gardens, London from 18 July to 13 October 2013.
News: relaxing planning restrictions on the green belt would destroy London’s vitality “even more surely than it would despoil the countryside,” architect Richard Rogers has warned.
“I do not say this as a rural nimby, though I treasure England’s natural landscape, but as a defender of cities,” writes Rogers in the London’s Evening Standard newspaper, arguing that the city’s mix of jobs, shops, restaurants, parks and nightlife acts as “a magnet to people from across the globe.”
“Letting the city sprawl would undermine this mix and intensity, reversing the rebirth of city-centre living,” he warns, saying suburban sprawl not only leads to “social atomisation” but becomes “environmentally disastrous” as car journeys displace public transport.
To solve the UK’s housing crisis, architects, planners and developers “need to show ingenuity” by redeveloping thousands of hectares of brownfield land as well as empty offices and houses across the country – but simply converting buildings is not enough, he argues.
“It will not create homes or communities unless intelligent urban design and planning also create the schools, shops and public transport hubs civilised life demands.
“And why should we rush to convert office blocks when we already have three-quarters of a million homes in England lying empty, and sites with planning permission for 400,000 more?”
According to homeless charity Shelter, the government’s plan to build 150,000 “affordable” homes – priced below market rates – over four years will provide less than a third of what is needed, with over 1.7 million households currently on local authority housing waiting lists.
Dezeen Wire: plans for a 40-storey tower designed by British architect Richard Rogers to sit on top of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York have been shelved following the Chinese backer’s decision to pull out – The New York Times
Dezeen Wire: British architect Richard Rogers has warned that plans by the UK government to simplify planning regulations could lead to unmoderated urban sprawl, “with rust belts and towns joining each other” – Daily Mail
He added: “If the framework is not improved it will lead to the breakdown and fragmentation of cities and neighbourhoods as well as the erosion of the countryside.” Rogers’ concerns about the government’s new National Planning Policy Framework are shared by environmental campaigners who say they don’t offer a clear enough definition of sustainable development.
Richard Rogers was involved in a planning battle in 2009 over his proposed redevelopment of Chelsea Barracks in London – see reports on Dezeen Wire
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