Pritzker Prize winner Richard Rogers is set to retire, ending a long, storied, and well-awarded architecture career. The Guardian broke the news earlier this morning that Rogers, 87, is retiring and that his name will be removed from Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners (RSHP) in the next few months.
Rogers was born Florence, Italy, in 1933 and moved to England shortly after, eventually enrolling in the Architectural Association School of Architecture from 1954 through 1959. After that, Rogers graduated from the Yale School of Architecture, where he met future London peer Norman Foster and Su Brumwell, who Rogers would later go on to marry (and eventually divorce from in the 1970s).
At the start of the ’70s, Rogers, Brumwell, and Renzo Piano joined forces under Piano + Rogers to design the Centre Pompidou in Paris, an “inside-out” arts complex that would herald the high-tech style Rogers would become best known for. Although the project was criticized at the time for the building’s radical looks, the selection of non-French architects by Minister of Cultural Affairs André Malraux, and the destruction of the historic Les Halles food market, the Pompidou Centre has since become a Parisian fixture and helped the Musée National d’Art Moderne inside become one of the largest and most visited art museums in the world.
Piano + Rogers broke up in 1977, the same year the Centre Pompidou was completed, and Richard Rogers Partnership was formed in its stead. The firm name morphed to Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007, the same year Rogers took home the Pritzker; and, according to The Guardian, the same year that plans were reportedly put in place to begin his transition towards retirement. Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour will still have the support of nine other active partners, and the firm is currently engaged with a number of projects all over the world, including an “inside-out” office building in Manhattan and a condo tower in Tribeca; in a 2018 interview with AN, Rogers mentioned that his time in New York City helped broaden his horizons on what architecture could be.
Rogers officially left the RSHP board in June and will be retiring to his London home to spend more time with his children and numerous grandchildren.
AN will follow this breaking news story with a more in-depth overview of Rogers’ storied career, especially his contributions to planning policies in the United Kingdom.
