Born in Florence, Italy, Richard Rogers trained at the Architectural Association and at Yale University. On his return to London, Rogers set up the architectural practice, Team 4 Architects (1963-1967), in conjunction with his first wife Su Rogers, his colleague Norman Foster (who had been a fellow student at Yale), and Wendy Cheesman (who became Foster's first wife). This practice established the reputations of both Rogers and Foster for housing projects and for industrial buildings.In 1967 Foster and Rogers went their separate ways, and Rogers joined the Italian architect Renzo Piano to win the competition for the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 1971. The partnership with Piano ended in 1977, and Rogers founded his present practice, the Richard Rogers Partnership.
Rogers is responsible for a number of famous buildings which have sometimes aroused controversy in conservative quarters. For instance, his extension to the National Gallery in London was condemned by the Prince of Wales as "a modern carbuncle".
However, among his colleagues and most architectural critics, Rogers has received acclaim for his bold and eye-catching designs. As the Pompidou Centre demonstrates, Rogers accepts and celebrates the idea of technology, but is also committed to ensuring that his buildings should be "people's places". In his Lloyds Building, London, completed in 1984, the structural elements are highly visible and brightly painted, but the building is designed for maximum flexibility. It is regarded as one of the finest buildings in the post-modern style erected in the City of London since the 1980s.
Other notable buildings by Rogers include the Reuters building and the Millennium Dome in London; the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg; an extension to the airport at Marseille, and office buildings in Germany and Japan. A design by Rogers which won the competition for a Welsh Assembly chamber in 1998 was described by Lord Callaghan, Chairman of the selection panel, as having "the potential architecturally to be a little gem of a building which will be a credit to Wales".
Rogers is also an enthusiastic advocate of sensitive urban regeneration and has been appointed Chairman of the government's Urban Regeneration Task Force. Contemptuous of money-driven projects such as Canary Wharf, which made little attempt to integrate local communities, he believes that there is great potential to develop inner city "brownfield" sites in derelict inner city areas, with more attention paid to the "spaces between places". Richard Rogers, knighted in 1991, was made a lord in 1996.
