A Place for All People
Life, Architecture and the Fair Society
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- $29.99
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
Richard Rogers was born in Florence in 1933. He was educated in the UK and then at the Yale School of Architecture, where he met Norman Foster. Alongside his partners, he has been responsible for some of the most radical designs of the twentieth century, including the Pompidou Centre, the Millennium Dome, the Bordeaux Law Courts, Leadenhall Tower and Lloyd's of London. He chaired the Urban Task Force, which pioneered the return to urban living in the UK, was chief architectural advisor to the Mayor of London, and has also advised the mayors of Barcelona and Paris. He is married to Ruth Rogers, chef and owner of the River Café in London. He was knighted in 1991 by Queen Elizabeth II, and made a life peer in 1996. He has been awarded the Légion d'Honneur, the Royal Institute of British Architects' Royal Gold Medal, and the Pritzker Prize, architecture's highest honour.
Richard Brown is Research Director at Centre for London, the independent think tank for London. He was previously Strategy Director at London Legacy Development Corporation, Manager of the Mayor of London's Architecture and Urbanism Unit, and an urban regeneration researcher at the Audit Commission.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British architect Rogers, who is known for his exoskeleton designs, offers thoughts on his life and craft with the same admirable transparency that characterizes his buildings. Rogers takes readers behind the scenes of his storied career, from early residential and industrial projects to his large-scale corporate and civic commissions. Combining elements of memoir and monograph, he mixes details from cantilever engineering for the Pompidou Center with personal anecdotes, as when he met the prime minister of France while wearing a denim suit. The story of his collaboration with Renzo Piano on the winning entry in the Pompidou Center competition brings to mind two college students scrambling during finals week: the architects cut and pasted drawings in a late-night post office in Leicester Square, and then smudged the postmark to comply with the competition's deadline. Rogers is relatable throughout, still raffish despite his title (he was knighted in 1991). For an architect whose works are consistently avant-garde, Rogers's book is surprisingly down to earth.