Death of Richard Rogers, father of Beaubourg, architect who revealed the bowels of buildings


The British architect and town planner, designer with Renzo Piano of the Pompidou Center, died on Saturday at the age of 88.

All those who considered that the only real exhibition of architecture is the real visit of a building had been filled by the retrospective devoted to Richard Rogers by the Pompidou center in 2007. After that devoted to Renzo Piano in 2000, this presentation, coiled up in the bowels of Beaubourg, had finished reconsidering “This machine to do everything”, in the words of the British architect, now completely adopted in the landscape of Les Halles, but so contested in its time.

However, in 1977, thirty years earlier, at the time of the inauguration, the form invented by Rogers and Piano had caused much ink to flow. Intestinal building, viscera center, stove pipe building, expressions flourished, often pictorial, not always happy. Today, we no longer watch Beaubourg, we circulate there. By dwelling on its fluid systems, its very staged outdoor circulations, its technical facade with industrial codes, its thunderous colors, we will remember that it was a radical project in osmosis with the invention of a social practice of culture, open to all audiences.

Interview with Renzo Piano on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Center Pompidou

Died Saturday, December 18 at the age of 88, the Briton had gained international notoriety thanks to this building. “Rogers is unfairly little recognized in France, explained in 2007 Olivier Cinqualbre, curator of the exhibition at the time. He is criticized for doing mechanics, for always doing the same thing. However, it is in line with the great French manufacturers, from Pierre Chareau to Jean Prouvé. He should have aroused envy in France. ” Evil tongues even evoke its architecture “Bicycle wheels”. He has also built little in France. However, the Bordeaux courthouse (1998) is worth a detour: between narration and engineering, he exhibits transparency as a manifesto for an institutional place, usually withdrawn, and the bioclimatic principles that he will not cease to develop.

Cheese grater

It is not easy to immerse yourself in the work of Rogers, born July 23, 1933, in Florence, Italy. His glass and metal buildings (initially high-tech, often expressive, but which have nothing to do with the beautiful sculptural objects in vogue) are sometimes blurred by too much apparent technology. We will even invent a neologism to speak of this architecture which reveals the circulations: the “bowellism”, taken from bowel, gut, intestine in English.

One can grasp the evolution of his work by the great city where he built, London. It was there that, in the wake of Beaubourg, and in kinship, he designed the tower for Lloyd’s, an international insurance market, completed in 1986. Icon renowned for being a flexible place of exchange organized around an atrium , Lloyd’s is identified by its elevator movements and its external technical ducts; again, the mechanical aesthetic is overflowing, but despite its technological tricks, this building has the oddly shaped silhouette of a contemporary medieval edifice.

Annotated in 1991 by Elizabeth II and created Baron Rogers of Riverside in 1996, the architect sat in the House of Lords on the benches of the Labor Party.

Also in the 1980s, the extension of the National Gallery will be described as “Trafalgar Square wart” by the very conservative Prince Charles. The controversy will be lively. Rogers will reply that the “Buildings can be harmonized by contrast and not only by drawing inspiration from a style”. In 1986, in an exhibition-manifesto (“London as it could be”), he already laid down the main principles of his vision of architecture and town planning: that is to say, dense cities, social diversity and respect for the environment. Some of his proposals have been realized, such as the South Bank public promenade. From the very poetic Millennium Dome in Greenwich, which caused controversy in 2000, to the tower at 122 Leadenhall Street renamed “cheese grater” and next to the tower nicknamed “gherkin” by Norman Foster, Rogers is inscribed in the landscape Londoner.

Utopia and constructivism

But he did not stop only in Great Britain: his travels took him to Japan and China, but also to Spain, notably to Barajas airport in Madrid (2005). What emerges from these expressive vessels invented by the one who received the Pritzker Prize in 2007 is a will in principle to work collectively: from the Team 4 agency created in 1963 with Norman and Wendy Foster to its collaboration with Renzo Piano until his last branch Rogers Stirk Harbor + Partners.

The other constant of this architect who still claimed to be “Political animal” (created Baron Rogers of Riverside in 1996, he sat in the House of Lords on the benches of the Labor Party) remains social commitment. Between trips to the United States and long hair, the 2007 exhibition allowed us to uncover his first approaches with “the Zip-Up house”, a modular capsule. With this lord rich in two cultures, those of Italy and Great Britain, between utopia and constructivism at the start and the desire to create viable cities on the planet (1), there has always been a lot of air and youth.

(1) Cities for a small planet, published by the Moniteur, January 2000.

Obituary written from a previous article from 2007, on the occasion of a retrospective at the Pompidou Center.



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