Architecture · Contemporary
1933–2021 · British (born in Italy)
High-tech architecture; 'inside-out' buildings
With Norman Foster and Renzo Piano, the architect who invented high-tech: buildings turned inside out, with structure, lifts, staircases and ducts hung on the outside in bright colours so that the interior can be a flexible open floor. Rogers was also a public figure — an urbanist who gave the 1995 Reith Lectures, chaired the Urban Task Force and sat as a Labour peer. He and Renzo Piano won the competition for the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1971.
A City of London insurance market of 1986 with six satellite service towers, external glass lifts and a barrel-vaulted atrium, Grade I listed at only 25 years old (1986)
Lime Street, City of London
The Lloyd's building — the eighteenth-century Adam Room was reassembled inside it
The largest single-roofed structure in the world when built, a Teflon-coated dome on twelve 100 m masts beside the Thames, built to house a millennium exhibition (1999)
Greenwich Peninsula, London
The Millennium Dome, now the O2 Arena; the twelve masts stand for the months and the hours
A 2005 airport terminal with a rippling bamboo-lined roof on branching Y-shaped columns painted through the spectrum, so travellers can tell where they are (2005)
Madrid, Spain
Terminal 4 at Barajas, with Estudio Lamela — winner of the 2006 Stirling Prize
A 2006 parliament building in a Welsh capital, with a slate plinth, a glazed public hall and a great timber funnel drawing air out of the debating chamber (2006)
Cardiff Bay, Cardiff
The Senedd, home of the Welsh Parliament
A 2014 City of London tower with a sloping wedge profile adopted to protect a cathedral view, universally named after a kitchen utensil (2014)
City of London
The Leadenhall Building, the 'Cheesegrater' — the slope preserves the view of St Paul's from Fleet Street