Reply
Thu 29 Mar, 2007 12:47 am
Quote:Rogers takes the 'Nobel for architecture'
Jonathan Glancey
Thursday March 29, 2007
The Guardian
Lord Rogers has been awarded the 2007 Pritzker architecture prize, it was announced in Los Angeles last night. Created as a stand-in Nobel prize for architecture by the wealthy Pritzker family, the prize, along with the British royal gold medal, is the most prestigious of its kind.
The prize comes with a glowing citation, a cheque for $100,000 and a bronze medal - to be hung around Richard Rogers's neck this June in a ceremony in London at the Banqueting Hall, Whitehall.
Lord Rogers, whose designs include the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Lloyd's of London, the Welsh assembly building, the Millennium Dome, and Terminal 5 at Heathrow, is the fourth British architect to win the Pritzker; the others were the late James Stirling (1981), Norman Foster (1999) and Zaha Hadid (2004).
In announcing the award, which was launched in 1979, Thomas J Pritzker quoted from the international jury's citation. "Born in Florence, Italy, and trained as an architect in London, at the Architectural Association, and later in the US at Yale University, Rogers has an outlook as urbane and expansive as his upbringing ... Rogers is a champion of urban life and believes in the potential of the city to be a catalyst for social change."
The Pritzker prize jury chairman, Lord Palumbo, added: "Throughout his distinguished career of more than 40 years, Richard Rogers has consistently pursued the highest goals for architecture."
The architect's sources of inspiration have been both local and international. The influence of Joseph Paxton's legendary Crystal Palace of 1851 as well as North Sea oil rigs, together with a dash of Soviet constructivism, are all apparent in the striking Lloyd's of London building.
The Richard Rogers Partnership is to be renamed Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners next month in recognition of the contributions of younger architects in the team.
Source
Quote:
KATHARINE BARNEY
LORD ROGERS launched a scathing attack on modern British architecture as he was announced the winner of the industry's most prestigious honour.
The 73-year-old will receive the 2007 Pritzker Architecture Prize in recognition of more than 40 years of landmark designs, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris, Lloyd's of London, the Millennium Dome and more recently the new terminal at Madrid's Barajas airport.
But he hit out at present-day designs, saying they fell short of the standards set by the Georgians. He said that as a result, British cities were not as enjoyable to live in as they had been 200 years ago.
"We still haven't achieved a high enough quality in terms of both the buildings and public spaces in contemporary architecture. There's a long way to go," he said. "If you take a trip to the Thames Gateway, it's pretty disappointing to see what's been built on one of the most beautiful rivers of the world.
"It's basic stuff ?- if you take a boat you see that half the buildings look away from the river.
"The battle is to get cities as a whole up to the standards that Georgian cities used to be at with their tree-lined avenues, wonderful squares and great windows overlooking garden areas."
However, he conceded that there were patches of London where the architecture was "surprisingly successful" ?- such as the stretch of the South Bank from Westminster Bridge to the docks, past Tate Modern and the Globe Theatre.
Lord Rogers is the fourth British architect to receive the Pritzker since it was founded in 1979. He was lauded by a panel of architects and academics as a "champion of urban life" who believed in cities' potential to be catalysts for social change.
Lord Rogers's practice, Richard Rogers Partnership, has designed one of the new towers for the World Trade Centre site in New York and is working on Heathrow's Terminal 5.
source: Evening Standard, West End Final, 29.03.07, page 22
That's interesting in the context of the article before this one...
Will reread both again later.
And more, in Slate -
architecture: What we build.
A Prize for Mr. Rogers
Why was the architect's Pritzker so long in coming?
By Witold Rybczynski
Posted Monday, April 2, 2007, at 1:16 PM ET
Richard Rogers has been awarded the 2007 Pritzker Prize. It's about time. The British architect has been a leader in the profession since 1971, when he and Renzo Piano?-both still in their 30s?-won an international competition to design what would become the Pompidou Center in Paris. This building, with its structure, pipes, ducts, elevators, and escalators exposed on the exterior rather than hidden?-as is usually the practice?-was the first major public building in the so-called high-tech style. The Pompidou, which some compared to a chemical plant, was the most-talked-about building of the decade, and the most popular tourist destination in Paris.
Inspired by the aesthetics of engineering structures such as oil-rig platforms and the launch pads of Cape Kennedy (as it was named then), high tech was the wave of the future, supplanting Postmodernism, which was already showing signs of fatigue. Norman Foster, who had been Rogers' classmate at Yale and later became his partner (1963-67), conceived the headquarters of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank as a banker's gray-pinstripe version of the Pompidou. Other British architects such as Nicholas Grimshaw and Michael Hopkins were likewise inspired by Rogers' example.
In time, both Foster and Piano abandoned the exuberant let-it-all-hang-out structural and mechanical gymnastics of high tech for a more conventional?-and, it must be said, more practical?-approach that dealt with technology in a less aggressive manner. Rogers, however, soldiered on. In a series of buildings such as Lloyds of London (1984), the law courts in Bordeaux (1998), and the National Assembly for Wales (2006), he has continued to dramatize the structural and mechanical systems of buildings. One of his largest commissions was the Millennium Dome in London, a feat of engineering that never quite got the plaudits it deserved, partly because of its lackluster contents and partly because it was upstaged by the spectacular London Eye. Rogers' latest buildings are Madrid's Barajas International Airport (2005) and Terminal 5 at Heathrow (to be completed in 2008). His firm, always active in Europe, is currently at work on several projects in the United States: an office building in Washington, a makeover of the Javits Convention Center in New York, and an office tower at the World Trade Center site.
Rogers, 73, was born in Florence?-he is related to the Italian Modernist, Ernesto Rogers?-and is arguably the most charismatic and glamorous architect of his generation. (He was knighted in 1981.) So, why was the Pritzker so long in coming? It may be because Rogers, unlike many of his high-profile colleagues, has generally avoided playing the star. The Richard Rogers Partnership, soon to be renamed Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, limits the income of its directors to no more than six times the salary of the lowest-paid architect and donates much of its profits to charity. The work is theatrical, sometimes almost operatic, and characterized by structural legerdemain, exaggerated lightness, and bright colors; but it is also flexible, adapted to function, and energy-conscious. While his colleagues Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid have attempted to build what are, in effect, works of art, Rogers has been content to practice the art of building. Not at all the same thing, and a curiously traditional attitude for such a resolute iconoclast.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace