A Place for All People
Life, Architecture and the Fair Society
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Richard Rogers, founder of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, is a pre-eminent architect of his generation, whose approach to buildings is infused with his enthusiasm for modernism, love of life and strong sense of social justice.
From the Pompidou Centre in Paris to the Lloyds Building in the City of London, and from airports, to cancer care centres to low-cost homes, the buildings he and his partners have designed blend private use, public space and civic value.
In part inspired by his 2013 Royal Academy exhibition, A place for all people is a mosaic of life, projects and ideas for a better society. Ranging backwards and forwards over a long and creative life, and integrating relationships, projects, stories, collaborations and polemics, with case studies, drawings and photographs A place for all people is a dazzling and inspiring book as original as its author.
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.
