A Place for All People: Life, Architecture and the Fair Society
by Richard Rogers with Richard Brown (Canongate, £30)
On the front cover of this autobiographycum- polemic, Richard Rogers is depicted, arms folded, gazing out of the frame with half-closed eyes, looking visionary. “This is an essential book for anyone interested in our human future”, writes the sculptor Antony Gormley on the bright-pink back of the dust-jacket. Inside, many of the pages are bright yellow. Perhaps it is a mercy that the cover photograph is black and white, for the author is given to wearing trademark bright lime-green shirts enhanced by orange braces. “If a colour is beautiful”, he explains, “it will go with another beautiful colour.”
Rogers, elevated to Lord Rogers of Riverside in 1996, is perhaps the best known living British architect. Indeed, along with his former professional partner, Norman Foster, otherwise known as Baron Foster of Thames Bank, he was the first of the “starchitects”, the growth of the cult of celebrity coinciding with the huge success of their careers as creators of striking “high-tech” buildings. Along with Renzo Piano and a team of young and enthusiastic designers and engineers, Rogers won the competition for the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1971. His practice went on to design the new building for Lloyd’s of London, which opened in 1986. Important recent commissions include those for the Bordeaux Law Courts, Terminal 4 at Barajas Airport in Madrid and Terminal 5 at Heathrow. The Richard Rogers Partnership is now Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, and was responsible for, among other buildings, the excellent new cancer centre at Guy’s Hospital.