Richard George Rogers

Richard George Rogers, British architect of international renown, one of the founders of the so-called high-tech style and a co-designer of the Pompidou Center in Paris.

Rogers was born in 1933 in Florence, Italy, of Anglo-Italian parents. He trained at the Architectural Association School, London, and at Yale University in Connecticut. A partner in the Team 4 practice from 1963 to 1968, Rogers worked with Italian architect Renzo Piano on the winning proposal in the 1971 competition to design a cultural center in Paris, the Pompidou Center. He subsequently founded the Richard Rogers Partnership.

Although Rogers's architecture reflects a preoccupation with technology and the idea of buildings as machines, he is also an urbanist committed to creating what he calls “people's places.” His works include the Lloyd's Building, London, completed in 1986, and Rogers's most significant building in Britain; the Reuters and Channel 4 buildings in London; the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France; extensions to Marseille Airport, also in France; and office buildings in Germany and Japan, as well as masterplans for Berlin and for London's South Bank Centre. Rogers was honored with a Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1985 and was knighted in 1991. He was made a life peer in 1996 and took the title Lord Rogers of Riverside. In 2007 he was awarded the Pritzker Prize, the world’s most prestigious architecture award.