Why Richard Rogers turned buildings inside out to celebrate their structural bones

Art · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Richard Rogers redefined modern architecture by exposing the guts of his buildings. By moving service elements like elevators and ductwork to the exterior, he created flexible, high-tech spaces that prioritized function. His radical approach transformed global skylines, from the colorful Pompidou Centre in Paris to the polished Lloyds of London.

Born in Florence in 1933, Richard Rogers struggled with dyslexia as a child, a challenge he only fully understood later in life. After his family fled Fascist Italy for England in 1938, he eventually pursued architecture, studying at the Architectural Association in London and later at Yale University. His early career was defined by collaborative partnerships, most notably Team 4, which he co-founded in 1963 with his then-wife Su Brumwell and fellow architects Norman Foster and Wendy Cheesman.

Rogers gained international fame for his high-tech design philosophy, which emphasized the visibility of a structure's components. This was most dramatically realized in the Pompidou Centre (1971–77), designed with Renzo Piano. The building featured an exposed steel skeleton and externalized services, such as tube-encased elevators and brightly colored ductwork. This mechanistic aesthetic continued in his design for the Lloyds of London skyscraper (1978–86), where a central atrium was surrounded by a rectangular core and external service towers, allowing for easier maintenance and future modernization.

Beyond individual buildings, Rogers became a prominent voice in urban planning and sustainability. In 1995, he was the first architect to deliver the BBC Reith Lectures, later published as Cities for a Small Planet. He also chaired the Urban Task Force in 1998, which produced the white paper Towards an Urban Renaissance to address urban decline. Despite controversies—such as the mixed public reception of the Millennium Dome in 1999—Rogers remained a prolific force, receiving the Pritzker Prize in 2007 and continuing to design major projects like the Leadenhall Building until his retirement in 2020. He passed away in 2021 at the age of 88.

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