0:00:12 > 0:00:18The Royal Academy Britain's oldest and most distinguished cultural institution.
0:00:18 > 0:00:23Established by George III in 1768, under the watchful gaze
0:00:23 > 0:00:28of its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and his fellow academicians.
0:00:28 > 0:00:33If you are just a little bemused at the sight of those brightly coloured air ducts
0:00:33 > 0:00:36obstructing the classical facade of a much loved London building,
0:00:36 > 0:00:39imagine what conservative Parisians must have thought
0:00:39 > 0:00:41when they first caught sight of the
0:00:41 > 0:00:46Rogers and Piano Pompidou centre in Paris in 1976.
0:00:49 > 0:00:52Richard Rogers is a unique figure in world architecture,
0:00:52 > 0:00:56renowned for his pioneering work with buildings such as the Pompidou
0:00:56 > 0:00:58and Lloyds here in the city of London,
0:00:58 > 0:01:02which has the singular distinction of being the youngest building
0:01:02 > 0:01:08ever to be granted a grade one listing, the highest honour English Heritage can bequeath.
0:01:08 > 0:01:11But Richard Rogers is equally admired for his humanism
0:01:11 > 0:01:15and his passionate belief that the life of any city
0:01:15 > 0:01:21is as dependent on the quality and vitality of its public space as it is by its surrounding buildings.
0:01:21 > 0:01:27He is here at the Academy for a major exhibition to make his 80th birthday
0:01:27 > 0:01:33and to celebrate an extraordinary half century as an icon of world architecture.
0:01:39 > 0:01:43To celebrate the occasion, Imagine revisits the film we made in
0:01:43 > 0:01:502007 which proved to be yet another vintage year for Lord Rogers and his practice.
0:01:52 > 0:01:55At the end of last year, the Pompidou Centre,
0:01:55 > 0:01:58the building he designed with Renzo Piano 30 years ago
0:01:58 > 0:02:01and which propelled him to the forefront of modern architecture,
0:02:01 > 0:02:09celebrated its 30th anniversary with a major retrospective of 40 years' work by Rogers and his partners.
0:02:14 > 0:02:18Those 40 years have produced some of the most groundbreaking buildings
0:02:18 > 0:02:21and provocative ideas in modern architecture.
0:02:22 > 0:02:24APPLAUSE
0:02:24 > 0:02:28Just over a year ago at the Venice Biennale, Rogers was presented
0:02:28 > 0:02:32with the Golden Lion for a lifetime's work on cities.
0:02:32 > 0:02:36And then, two months later, the practice was awarded
0:02:36 > 0:02:39Britain's most prestigious architecture award,
0:02:39 > 0:02:43the Stirling Prize for the new airport terminal in Madrid.
0:02:43 > 0:02:45APPLAUSE AND CHEERS
0:02:45 > 0:02:49Six months after that he received the highest honour in world architecture
0:02:49 > 0:02:53and was made a Laureate of the Pritzker Prize.
0:02:54 > 0:03:01And if all this wasn't enough, Rogers and the practice are enjoying unprecedented success in New York,
0:03:01 > 0:03:05the city that so inspired him when he first came here nearly 50 years ago.
0:03:05 > 0:03:08One of my great memories is...
0:03:08 > 0:03:13arriving in New York, which probably was the greatest visual moment of my life,
0:03:13 > 0:03:16when you arrive and you wake up in the morning and you see
0:03:16 > 0:03:19this amazing city, which is reaching up to the sky...
0:03:19 > 0:03:23I just was stunned by the scale and by the modernity.
0:03:24 > 0:03:28Now Rogers and his partners have been chosen to build
0:03:28 > 0:03:31one of the four new towers at Ground Zero,
0:03:31 > 0:03:36perhaps the most scrutinised and sensitive site on the planet.
0:03:36 > 0:03:40If it was like this, I'd say it's definitely wrong to tighten it up.
0:03:40 > 0:03:43Because these are not there, they're actually inside the skin now.
0:03:43 > 0:03:46He may be right, so I think we need to look at it.
0:03:46 > 0:03:53It seemed there was no better time to examine the roots and unravel the story of a remarkable career.
0:03:53 > 0:03:56..but I think to have this on that side, it's fantastic.
0:03:56 > 0:03:58Very exciting!
0:04:23 > 0:04:27Surprisingly for someone who has always championed modernism and the urban environment
0:04:27 > 0:04:30Richard Rogers draws inspiration from the Renaissance
0:04:30 > 0:04:32and his Italian roots.
0:04:38 > 0:04:43Although he came to England as a child, Italy remains his spiritual home.
0:04:44 > 0:04:51He returns every year with his family and his wife Ruthie, to this valley near Pienza in Tuscany.
0:04:55 > 0:04:58When I come here and I start working in the early hours
0:04:58 > 0:05:00and I see the sun coming over the hills and so on,
0:05:00 > 0:05:03that's fantastic it's like... That's a real theatre,
0:05:03 > 0:05:05and I like both the...
0:05:05 > 0:05:08The theatre of nature and the theatre of man.
0:05:08 > 0:05:11I mean, Italy is so much part of your life, or seems to be.
0:05:11 > 0:05:13what draws you back here again and again?
0:05:13 > 0:05:17I find my culture comes very much out of this, really.
0:05:17 > 0:05:21I am Italian in everything, except that I'd been brought up in England.
0:05:21 > 0:05:25- You were born in Florence. - I was born in Florence, which is of course,
0:05:25 > 0:05:28a wonderful city to be born in as an architect...
0:05:28 > 0:05:30One of the most beautiful cities in the world.
0:05:38 > 0:05:40D'you think of this as your city?
0:05:41 > 0:05:45Certainly it's where I got my culture from.
0:05:45 > 0:05:50- Leonardo, Donatello, Masaccio. - They were not just architects or artists for that matter.
0:05:50 > 0:05:53They were fascinated by science. So this is a city where science
0:05:53 > 0:05:57and art and architecture sort of all co-existed at this moment, didn't they?
0:05:57 > 0:05:59Yes, the very words are re-birth.
0:05:59 > 0:06:02Everything was advancing at that time.
0:06:02 > 0:06:07Galileo, Dante, all these things came out of what was then a reasonable sized city...
0:06:07 > 0:06:09It was tiny by our comparison.
0:06:10 > 0:06:17Much of what I believe in, which is the compact civil society, comes out of this, out of this city.
0:06:17 > 0:06:21I remember coming up here when I was four or five, I guess,
0:06:21 > 0:06:24with my mother and walking through all these amazing hills
0:06:24 > 0:06:28and being told stories about Leonardo and others who had walked through this.
0:06:28 > 0:06:30BELL TOLLS
0:06:30 > 0:06:32That dome, do you remember that as a child?
0:06:32 > 0:06:34Do have a memory of actually entering
0:06:34 > 0:06:38that Duomo and seeing that dome and seeing it from every street side as you...?
0:06:38 > 0:06:40You can't miss it, can you?
0:06:40 > 0:06:45My memory of the Duomo was from a flat that we had very close by...
0:06:45 > 0:06:48- Up there?- That must be it there.
0:06:48 > 0:06:52The terrace must be that one there on the corner, cos there's the Duomo in front of it.
0:06:52 > 0:06:57I've known Richard Rogers since he built the Pompidou Centre in 1976,
0:06:57 > 0:07:00and was surprised to learn that in all his visits to Florence,
0:07:00 > 0:07:04this was the first time he'd returned to the street where the apartment was.
0:07:04 > 0:07:06There's the roof terrace.
0:07:06 > 0:07:09- The roof terrace was much bigger than the flat, I remember that. - Gosh, that's...
0:07:09 > 0:07:10It's a real surprise...
0:07:10 > 0:07:14- That's rather a grand building. - I think it's an amazing view.
0:07:14 > 0:07:16So from that terrace you'd see the Duomo.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19Well, you can see it there's the Giotto tower.
0:07:19 > 0:07:22Really quite amazing. Quite moving.
0:07:24 > 0:07:28In my opinion it's much better than Michelangelo's dome in Rome.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30You can see the structure much more.
0:07:30 > 0:07:33If there's one architect one would like to emulate in any way
0:07:33 > 0:07:40it's the great Brunelleschi because he epitomises, I think, the concept of the Renaissance man.
0:07:40 > 0:07:43A great architect, a great engineer, fantastic sculptor,
0:07:43 > 0:07:45could do nearly everything.
0:07:47 > 0:07:52In 1939, Rogers and his family left Italy, repelled by Mussolini's fascism
0:07:52 > 0:07:56and arrived in England, replacing the grandeur of Florence
0:07:56 > 0:07:59with a boarding house in West London.
0:07:59 > 0:08:03The transition to life in Britain wasn't easy for him.
0:08:03 > 0:08:06He had to learn English and struggled with dyslexia.
0:08:06 > 0:08:13But if his education was uninspiring his family still maintained a strong creative influence.
0:08:13 > 0:08:18My mother was very keen on the arts. So I was really very much brought up on the arts side,
0:08:18 > 0:08:21though of course, also, my father was the scientific side...
0:08:21 > 0:08:25And if you put science, doctors and art, you get architecture...
0:08:25 > 0:08:26Not quite like that, but sort of.
0:08:26 > 0:08:32And what about politics? Did your parents influence you politically?
0:08:32 > 0:08:39Obviously as a person "escaping" from facism, I became very politically conscious.
0:08:39 > 0:08:41My parents were very politically conscious.
0:08:41 > 0:08:44And I think I built that also into my architecture.
0:08:44 > 0:08:49There is a very major part of my architecture which is about trying to create a world
0:08:49 > 0:08:54which is influenced for the better through public space, through private space and so on.
0:08:55 > 0:09:02Unfortunately Britain in the 1950s didn't leave much scope for big ideas in architecture.
0:09:02 > 0:09:08However, Rogers managed to win a place at the Architectural Association, better known as the AA,
0:09:08 > 0:09:14although it soon became apparent that he needed to look further afield for inspiration.
0:09:14 > 0:09:16England had hardly been touched by modernity.
0:09:16 > 0:09:19When I started school, the AA was the only school
0:09:19 > 0:09:23in the whole of Britain that taught modern architecture.
0:09:24 > 0:09:27The whole concept of modernity was so exciting to me,
0:09:27 > 0:09:30I was brought up in that sort of environment of modernity,
0:09:30 > 0:09:33all the great architects had moved basically,
0:09:33 > 0:09:38mostly from Europe to the States of course, they had the great Frank Lloyd Wright,
0:09:38 > 0:09:41so the whole tone of the States was what I was interested in.
0:09:41 > 0:09:44FOGHORN BLOWS
0:09:47 > 0:09:51One of my great memories is leaving Southampton,
0:09:51 > 0:09:54where the Queen Elizabeth was the largest thing you'd ever seen.
0:09:54 > 0:09:59It was a sort of skyscraper and the little guys with their peaked caps and their bicycles
0:09:59 > 0:10:01and all the houses were somewhere down there.
0:10:03 > 0:10:10The boat arrived at dawn and I remember going on deck, and being absolutely shocked,
0:10:10 > 0:10:15awed, by this change of scale, from toy-town England
0:10:15 > 0:10:18to these immense steel structures of high rise buildings
0:10:18 > 0:10:21and these great canyons all the way down.
0:10:21 > 0:10:23I'd never seen anything like it.
0:10:28 > 0:10:32Rogers had come to America to study architecture at Yale.
0:10:32 > 0:10:37With him and also enrolled at the school was his first wife Su.
0:10:38 > 0:10:42Being a student at Yale there was very little time for thinking.
0:10:42 > 0:10:45Incredible pressure. You produced a scheme design every two weeks,
0:10:45 > 0:10:50crit, next design. We were three days late, and basically,
0:10:50 > 0:10:53we never caught up cos there's so much pressure!
0:10:54 > 0:10:59At Yale they met another young English architect, Norman Foster.
0:10:59 > 0:11:03Norman and Richard were in the same class...
0:11:03 > 0:11:10They became very close during that year in Yale and it became known as the English year.
0:11:11 > 0:11:14In the end it wasn't so much the teaching at Yale that inspired them
0:11:14 > 0:11:21but exposure to the work of the great American modernists in particular Frank Lloyd Wright.
0:11:23 > 0:11:28We went to see every practically every Frank Lloyd building ever built, Norman and I, Su.
0:11:28 > 0:11:30We just travelled by car.
0:11:33 > 0:11:35And everybody let us in, quite incredible
0:11:35 > 0:11:39and it was the most, I mean, really uplifting experience.
0:11:42 > 0:11:46You can't appreciate Frank Lloyd Wright without being there.
0:11:46 > 0:11:48It's about movement, how you approach the buildings,
0:11:48 > 0:11:50it's designed to be approached from certain angles,
0:11:50 > 0:11:52to go through the rooms and get a surprise.
0:11:52 > 0:11:58Actually Frank Lloyd Wright is the master of suspense and that's again interesting.
0:11:58 > 0:12:02Yes, you talk about buildings as if there was a sort of thriller element in them.
0:12:02 > 0:12:06Well, there are. It IS like a story, you know, it unravels like a story.
0:12:06 > 0:12:12The different pieces and so on and they register like, you know, like different pages,
0:12:12 > 0:12:15like different themes within a book or a poem.
0:12:25 > 0:12:29On their return to England in 1963, Rogers, Su,
0:12:29 > 0:12:36Norman and his wife Wendy formed an architectural partnership called Team 4.
0:12:36 > 0:12:41Together they built this house at Creek Vean near Falmouth in Cornwall.
0:12:47 > 0:12:53When you returned to England as a team, you and Norman and Wendy and Su
0:12:53 > 0:12:59and the first commission you had was the home for Su's parents,
0:12:59 > 0:13:02- five architects, you said... - Six, when I think about it,
0:13:02 > 0:13:06all worked and I'm sure there was a few others, on this one house,
0:13:06 > 0:13:10for three or four years, erm, I mean...
0:13:10 > 0:13:15If I and Norman hadn't been teaching we'd have gone bankrupt. Literally.
0:13:17 > 0:13:20When we finished it, and it was a very beautiful house. It was an organic house.
0:13:20 > 0:13:23It was on a wonderful slope with a creek at the bottom.
0:13:23 > 0:13:27Complex in its way. Though it did use neoprene, did have some fluidity in it.
0:13:27 > 0:13:29It opened up to the views.
0:13:32 > 0:13:34Very much influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright.
0:13:34 > 0:13:38I always state jokingly that it took me 20 years to get rid of his influence.
0:13:38 > 0:13:40Actually, I still haven't.
0:13:41 > 0:13:47While undeniably beautiful, the intricate design concealed unforeseen problems.
0:13:48 > 0:13:52When we first started Team 4, the work was using traditional materials.
0:13:52 > 0:13:54And it was only with the realisation
0:13:54 > 0:14:00building a house in the traditional way was incredibly laborious,
0:14:00 > 0:14:03that we started looking at new materials.
0:14:03 > 0:14:07And I mean, for instance, this house, because it's on the diagonal
0:14:07 > 0:14:12we had a mason here for nearly two years, cutting concrete blocks on the diagonal.
0:14:12 > 0:14:17Cos once you start that game, everything, every corner, has to be a special block.
0:14:17 > 0:14:23And it's wonderful as a result, but it was very expensive and very, very time consuming.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28But it was a beautiful house. But clearly was not economically viable.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31The client nearly went bankrupt because it cost much more.
0:14:31 > 0:14:35And then again, partly driven by the fact that I wanted to be part of
0:14:35 > 0:14:39the problem solving age of housing for the people, housing for the masses.
0:14:39 > 0:14:45We really changed quite strongly to standard components, for a building like this.
0:14:49 > 0:14:54The years dedicated to Creek Vean had left Team 4 short of other work
0:14:54 > 0:14:57and soon after completion of the house in 1967,
0:14:57 > 0:15:01Rogers and Foster had to dissolve the partnership.
0:15:01 > 0:15:08Salvation for Richard and Su came in the shape of this house in Wimbledon built for Richard's parents,
0:15:08 > 0:15:10and now lived in by his son Ab.
0:15:13 > 0:15:16It was in this building, completed in only a year,
0:15:16 > 0:15:19that Rogers and his partners began to express the ideas
0:15:19 > 0:15:22that would direct the future of the practice.
0:15:25 > 0:15:29The Wimbledon House programme of clear span structures,
0:15:29 > 0:15:34repetitive steel frames, borrowing industrialised pre-fabricated components
0:15:34 > 0:15:39from other industries - the wall panels were from the refrigerated transport industry.
0:15:39 > 0:15:41And although we only built two houses like it,
0:15:41 > 0:15:43the one for Richard's parents in Wimbledon,
0:15:43 > 0:15:49Richard always saw them as repetitive structures,
0:15:49 > 0:15:52for a much wider audience.
0:15:53 > 0:15:58Many of the buildings we've designed are open-ended,
0:15:58 > 0:16:00and this is a real open-ended building.
0:16:00 > 0:16:04In other words there's no conclusion to it. It feels as though it could take over.
0:16:04 > 0:16:09- It's like a journey. - Exactly. And sort of limitless
0:16:09 > 0:16:14and I think that's sort of important to our architecture.
0:16:14 > 0:16:16And completely transparent?
0:16:16 > 0:16:18And completely transparent, as you say.
0:16:21 > 0:16:25It's deeply rooted in, I suppose, the modern movement.
0:16:25 > 0:16:29It's clearly influenced by Mies van der Rohe, Charles Eames...
0:16:29 > 0:16:31So it doesn't come out of nowhere - nothing does.
0:16:31 > 0:16:33It's a progress, hopefully.
0:16:41 > 0:16:45This is really meant to be - not totally - Meccano.
0:16:45 > 0:16:49I was brought up on Meccano. There's a definite link between Meccano and this.
0:16:50 > 0:16:52This is really a kit of parts off the shelf.
0:16:52 > 0:16:57And the idea of assembling them any length and then total transparency.
0:16:57 > 0:17:02You saw this as a potential model for low-cost housing
0:17:02 > 0:17:05which had the values that you wanted.
0:17:05 > 0:17:10- Is that right?- Yes, just before this we won a competition
0:17:10 > 0:17:13for the Daily Mail - House of the Year, I think -
0:17:13 > 0:17:16and that was a more pure concept of this tube.
0:17:16 > 0:17:23We took aluminium panel which was used in things like in refrigeration, buses and so on,
0:17:23 > 0:17:26zipped together with neopreme, so it was called a Zip-Up House.
0:17:26 > 0:17:28The floor, the wall, and the ceilings, glass at both ends.
0:17:28 > 0:17:33Then you could open up these panels by just putting a window wherever you liked.
0:17:33 > 0:17:35Total flexibility, a lot of transparency.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39But most important of all, it was all a kit of parts so you could erect it there and then.
0:17:43 > 0:17:48The competition prize was a contract to construct the winning design.
0:17:48 > 0:17:51Unfortunately the Zip-Up House was only runner up
0:17:51 > 0:17:58as the judges it felt it was far too ahead of its time and sadly the house was never built.
0:17:58 > 0:18:03In the end though, ideas expressed in both the Zip-Up House and Wimbledon,
0:18:03 > 0:18:06went on to be used on a much grander scale.
0:18:07 > 0:18:12So this building, is it critically important in how your work developed from then onwards?
0:18:12 > 0:18:16Yes, I think this was the building which probably inspired our work.
0:18:16 > 0:18:18It was the seeds of our future work.
0:18:25 > 0:18:30It's a strong structure, it's tough. I think you're right.
0:18:30 > 0:18:33If we start getting into the...
0:18:33 > 0:18:37If the Wimbledon House is an expression of the physical aspects of Rogers' work,
0:18:37 > 0:18:40underpinning everything he does is a belief
0:18:40 > 0:18:44that architecture should be at the heart of delivering a vibrant, civil society.
0:18:46 > 0:18:51I'm very into the whole concept of how people get together, how they exchange ideas.
0:18:51 > 0:18:56The idea of the marketplace, and the streets,
0:18:56 > 0:18:59the parks, the piazzas, the places which contain the people.
0:18:59 > 0:19:04So the whole vitality of life is connected between social and physical.
0:19:07 > 0:19:11And of course, Italy is a country of the piazza and the passeggiata.
0:19:11 > 0:19:14BELL TOLLS
0:19:17 > 0:19:20- It's ten o'clock and there's still...- Yeah, sunlight.
0:19:20 > 0:19:22The streets are full.
0:19:22 > 0:19:26In neighbouring Pienza many of Richard Rogers' beliefs
0:19:26 > 0:19:28about urban life come together in the piazza,
0:19:28 > 0:19:33believed to be the first purpose built public space since Roman times.
0:19:33 > 0:19:35This is a real mixed place...
0:19:35 > 0:19:38which is very much what I believe, that the vitality has to be
0:19:38 > 0:19:40in the centre, and that this is a point of compression.
0:19:40 > 0:19:46All these roads leading to here, and people meet, sometimes accidentally, and probably regularly,
0:19:46 > 0:19:49at six o' clock in the evening to have their vino, whatever it may be.
0:19:49 > 0:19:51And I think that's really what we're trying to do.
0:19:51 > 0:19:54And this is quite a small space but it is dynamic.
0:19:56 > 0:20:00We come back to the whole concept of humanism, people come here, meet here.
0:20:00 > 0:20:04They sit on the steps all the way round here. Actually it's a stage,
0:20:04 > 0:20:08you're looking at a stage, aren't you? A piece of theatre.
0:20:09 > 0:20:12Children should have a place where they can go and play
0:20:12 > 0:20:17within a few feet or a few metres of their house. People should find a bench and so on.
0:20:17 > 0:20:22So that's very much about the humanist tradition and I'm a great believer in that tradition.
0:20:31 > 0:20:37Rogers' passion for public spaces was central to the vision for his next building
0:20:37 > 0:20:40designed with his new partner Renzo Piano.
0:20:40 > 0:20:43It was to be the turning point in his career.
0:20:45 > 0:20:50In 1970 the French government had launched a competition to find architects to design
0:20:50 > 0:20:55a national arts and culture centre adjacent to Les Halles in the centre of Paris.
0:20:55 > 0:21:01Rogers, however, distrusted a project which seemed to him to be elitist.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04You must have been the rank outsiders?
0:21:04 > 0:21:09You hadn't had a commission and you didn't exactly play safe with your plans, did you?
0:21:09 > 0:21:14I don't think we really knew what we were starting...
0:21:14 > 0:21:17When you look back you realise, especially when you're young,
0:21:17 > 0:21:22there is an advantage of being somewhat naive, otherwise we probably wouldn't have done it
0:21:22 > 0:21:24because if we'd known there were 700 entries
0:21:24 > 0:21:27and that it would be a tremendously political situation,
0:21:27 > 0:21:29we probably would have said, and in fact...
0:21:29 > 0:21:32I opposed it from the beginning to end.
0:21:32 > 0:21:35He was the one who actually pushed me into doing it!
0:21:35 > 0:21:41He was much more relaxed and I kept on saying, "I don't really want to do this!"
0:21:41 > 0:21:48I don't believe in centralised cultural centres, it's going to be a palace for a president,
0:21:48 > 0:21:50and I opposed it from beginning to end.
0:21:50 > 0:21:53Luckily, in this democratic relationship, I lost and we did it.
0:21:56 > 0:22:01But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Rogers and Piano proposal
0:22:01 > 0:22:05was to insist on just as much space for a piazza as for the building itself.
0:22:07 > 0:22:12You know, the idea of making a piazza was mad, completely against nature.
0:22:12 > 0:22:18In fact, that was the only entry out of the 681 with a piazza...
0:22:18 > 0:22:21We threw out half of the space
0:22:21 > 0:22:25and we only used half so it was completely mad,
0:22:25 > 0:22:30but the idea came from this vision that Richard came up with. A place for people,
0:22:30 > 0:22:34the piazza being the centre of gravity and the entire idea.
0:22:36 > 0:22:40What we did, if we examined the area, and we felt there was a need.
0:22:40 > 0:22:44That probably was the most, in some ways, the most important step...
0:22:44 > 0:22:51The mixing of public space and building and the relationship between sense of place and construction.
0:22:51 > 0:22:54We made the piazza because we never thought we were going to win.
0:22:54 > 0:22:58So we did a piazza because we thought, I mean, do whatever...
0:22:58 > 0:23:00We did what we wanted to do.
0:23:06 > 0:23:09If we go a little bit further, we can get some shelter!
0:23:09 > 0:23:12Hey, Renzo, the building leaks everywhere!
0:23:12 > 0:23:14THEY LAUGH
0:23:14 > 0:23:15It does NOT leak!
0:23:17 > 0:23:19Yeah, the concept of the building was a place,
0:23:19 > 0:23:25the first lines of the competition, was a place for all people, all ages,
0:23:25 > 0:23:30all creeds, for the poor and the rich, for the young and the old.
0:23:30 > 0:23:33That was really the concept... To create a place...
0:23:33 > 0:23:38It was really a shelter for culture rather than something that sat on a hill.
0:23:38 > 0:23:41CROWDS ROAR
0:23:41 > 0:23:45The idea of the Pompidou Centre had been conceived in politically charged times.
0:23:45 > 0:23:50In 1968, two years before the competition was announced,
0:23:50 > 0:23:56the streets of Paris had been awash with student anti-Vietnam riots.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59Much of Rogers' initial resistance to the project,
0:23:59 > 0:24:03and his passion to provide a democratic, non-elitist space,
0:24:03 > 0:24:09had been a reaction to dramatic images of the French establishment at war with the students of Paris.
0:24:09 > 0:24:12'68 inspired a lot of what was going on here.
0:24:13 > 0:24:19There's nothing more utopian than the idea of a place for all people. And there was an aspect...
0:24:19 > 0:24:23There were many things going on at that time, but, the world could be changed.
0:24:23 > 0:24:26I mean, we have to remember that the old order nearly collapsed.
0:24:26 > 0:24:30We had Pompidou with his plane ready to escape from France
0:24:30 > 0:24:33and the intellectual and the worker were going to come together.
0:24:33 > 0:24:35So it was a very exciting time.
0:24:35 > 0:24:39OK, so it didn't happen, but this is part of that expression.
0:24:39 > 0:24:42And the technology is also the optimistic concept.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45If you look at the facade drawings and, you know,
0:24:45 > 0:24:50with all the audiovisual on the outside, it's full of references
0:24:50 > 0:24:53to, at that point, it was Vietnam, and political and social...
0:24:53 > 0:24:55it was part of our society, our generation.
0:24:55 > 0:24:59And I think this is part of the inspiration of that period.
0:25:03 > 0:25:05When the building was completed in 1976,
0:25:05 > 0:25:09it was as if they'd landed a spaceship in the middle of Paris...
0:25:11 > 0:25:13But there was method in their madness.
0:25:13 > 0:25:17This extraordinary external appearance, on the inside,
0:25:17 > 0:25:23created vast unbroken spaces, allowing for maximum flexibility.
0:25:26 > 0:25:29To achieve this, the team put all the services, heating, water,
0:25:29 > 0:25:33air-conditioning, on the outside of the building,
0:25:33 > 0:25:37creating an exterior like the world had never seen.
0:25:37 > 0:25:42The look of all our buildings from Pompidou onwards has been derived
0:25:42 > 0:25:44from what we want them to do...
0:25:44 > 0:25:47You look at the problem that you're trying to solve
0:25:47 > 0:25:50and the aesthetic and the expression comes from that.
0:25:50 > 0:25:53Paxton, the Crystal Palace, to great railway stations.
0:25:53 > 0:25:56So we didn't think we were doing anything radical.
0:25:56 > 0:26:02We were absolutely within the mainstream great engineering tradition.
0:26:02 > 0:26:05And still are faithful to that today.
0:26:06 > 0:26:10People often say to me, and I'm sure they say it to Renzo, "Why didn't you tell us
0:26:10 > 0:26:13"that the building would look like this?" Whether it's Lloyds, or...
0:26:13 > 0:26:17The answer is, I didn't know. Not at that first moment.
0:26:17 > 0:26:20It evolves, we are evolved with it. We respond.
0:26:22 > 0:26:30In Florence, the narrow medieval streets hold the clue to another key element of Rogers' work.
0:26:30 > 0:26:32I mean, it's an absolute perfect room.
0:26:32 > 0:26:37Richard's Italian birth and upbringing
0:26:37 > 0:26:41are still incredibly strong in the work today.
0:26:41 > 0:26:48And I believe that Florence as his home town has so much that informs the work we do today.
0:26:48 > 0:26:50It's endemic, it's in the soul.
0:26:50 > 0:26:54The notion of surprise rather than pomp.
0:26:54 > 0:26:56That's the drama of this city, isn't it?
0:26:56 > 0:27:00That you go down a narrow street, you'll see the skyline above you
0:27:00 > 0:27:04and then suddenly it'll open up this sort of vista.
0:27:04 > 0:27:07The medieval city which is very tight with its space.
0:27:07 > 0:27:10And you go down these... and it explodes, and I love that contrast.
0:27:10 > 0:27:12You get these dark shadows because it's narrow
0:27:12 > 0:27:15and then you explode into the sun with these big spaces.
0:27:15 > 0:27:19There are all these contrasts in the buildings both in terms of style
0:27:19 > 0:27:24and actually the period and yet they make it.
0:27:24 > 0:27:26They are harmonious.
0:27:26 > 0:27:29This idea that, before modern, everything is the same.
0:27:29 > 0:27:33It can't be more different than that medieval style,
0:27:33 > 0:27:36beautiful as it is, to the Renaissance style of the building next door.
0:27:36 > 0:27:37- The Uffizi?- Yeah.
0:27:37 > 0:27:40There must have been an amazing shock at that time when they did this.
0:27:40 > 0:27:43So we've have always had this question of,
0:27:43 > 0:27:46self-expression and a conflict between different styles
0:27:46 > 0:27:50which, if well-handled, gives all the excitement and vitality to a space like this.
0:28:04 > 0:28:09Amazingly, for two years after the completion of the Pompidou Centre,
0:28:09 > 0:28:12Rogers and his team struggled to find any work at all.
0:28:12 > 0:28:16Until this building, a surprising commission from one of the City's
0:28:16 > 0:28:20most traditional institutions, Lloyds of London.
0:28:20 > 0:28:26It would cement Rogers' reputation as one of the world's foremost modern architects.
0:28:27 > 0:28:31A parallel Italian image for Lloyds would be the narrow street
0:28:31 > 0:28:35that looks towards the Uffizi, you have this very narrow, tiny street
0:28:35 > 0:28:40and at the end of it, you get the tessellated, sort of castellated battlement and a great tower.
0:28:40 > 0:28:43That's Florence and that's Lloyds.
0:29:27 > 0:29:33'It's interesting about these views down the long corridor streets,
0:29:33 > 0:29:37'it reminds you of Florence and those views we get of the Duomo,
0:29:37 > 0:29:39'that you sort of glimpse at the end.'
0:29:39 > 0:29:42It is and when we designed this building, it's to catch these,
0:29:42 > 0:29:45if you go down this narrow street and you look up at these towers,
0:29:45 > 0:29:48it's very much the same idea, it's a sort of juxtaposition
0:29:48 > 0:29:52which you see in medieval cities between different forms of buildings.
0:29:52 > 0:29:57And these little snippets of views, so the building has to be really in part, not as a whole.
0:29:58 > 0:30:03Of course, it's an incredibly radical vision, this building.
0:30:03 > 0:30:06How did you conceive it? I mean, it has lots of names.
0:30:06 > 0:30:09The Inside Out building, the Oil Refinery.
0:30:09 > 0:30:12Lloyds wanted a building that had flexibility,
0:30:12 > 0:30:15it needed an atrium, it was a market space, they wanted to see each other.
0:30:15 > 0:30:18And what was the reason behind putting the lift on the outside,
0:30:18 > 0:30:21except it's more fun to be on the lift on the outside?
0:30:21 > 0:30:23The main reason was because if you're inside,
0:30:23 > 0:30:26you encase everything and you don't get the flexibility.
0:30:26 > 0:30:32Remembering that services have a short life, like the engine of a car.
0:30:32 > 0:30:34It's only going to have ten, twenty years before
0:30:34 > 0:30:36a better engine comes along, and then the warehouse,
0:30:36 > 0:30:41if you like, the four square building inside, will maybe last a hundred, two hundred years.
0:30:45 > 0:30:52'Like the Pompidou, this sense of a building created inside out might have seemed outrageous,
0:30:52 > 0:30:56'but it produced the most spectacular office space London had ever seen.'
0:30:59 > 0:31:02- Makes me smile every time I come here.- It's a great view.
0:31:02 > 0:31:04This atrium is fantastic.
0:31:04 > 0:31:09Stunning the way the light comes down, especially on a day like this and lights up the whole centre.
0:31:09 > 0:31:12This is where normally there'd be a concrete core.
0:31:12 > 0:31:16That's the real reason for removing all the towers to the outside.
0:31:20 > 0:31:22This is the wow space.
0:31:22 > 0:31:28Suddenly feel you can look up and get all this light
0:31:28 > 0:31:30and you can see all the way that it works.
0:31:30 > 0:31:34And these are the open galleries for the trading and there are the offices
0:31:34 > 0:31:36and they change, they can be changed,
0:31:36 > 0:31:41take off, out the glass and you get more galleries.
0:31:41 > 0:31:42I'm reminded of your Meccano idea
0:31:42 > 0:31:46and this does seem...
0:31:46 > 0:31:49Like Meccano, my period, yes.
0:31:57 > 0:32:00It's meant to be fun, obviously, as well, which is the escalators,
0:32:00 > 0:32:05the movement, the yellow workings of the interior of the escalators over there,
0:32:05 > 0:32:09and it now looks like a kinetic sculpture, and it draws your eye and it's fun.
0:32:34 > 0:32:39When you designed it, did you at all ever think of a cathedral space
0:32:39 > 0:32:41in one of those great public buildings, in other words.
0:32:41 > 0:32:45I think one's influenced by cathedrals, by railway stations,
0:32:45 > 0:32:49I mean, I never saw the Crystal Palace but I saw the photographs and drawings,
0:32:49 > 0:32:54all these things in one's memory, I don't think one specifically goes and copies them.
0:32:54 > 0:32:59But one knows that those spaces give you that wild feeling you get when you're inside.
0:33:08 > 0:33:11In Lloyds, we launched another spaceship.
0:33:11 > 0:33:16It was radical, it was a bit of a shock,
0:33:16 > 0:33:21and the old underwriters had great difficulty adjusting to the building.
0:33:21 > 0:33:23The younger underwriters, I think, didn't.
0:33:23 > 0:33:27The old, and it's interesting to see the evolution over time,
0:33:27 > 0:33:28The older underwriter said,
0:33:28 > 0:33:33"I work in that bloody dreadful building, you know, on Leadenhall Street."
0:33:33 > 0:33:35And then four years later, they're saying,
0:33:35 > 0:33:38"Well, I work in that unusual building in Leadenhall Street,"
0:33:38 > 0:33:40and three years further on, they say,
0:33:40 > 0:33:43"I work in that interesting and characterful building in Leadenhall."
0:33:43 > 0:33:46It's a gradual acceptance of a gothic building.
0:33:46 > 0:33:52'However, when Lloyds opened in 1986 the British were not as ready
0:33:52 > 0:33:55'as the French had been a decade earlier
0:33:55 > 0:33:58'to accept Rogers' latest radical creation.'
0:33:58 > 0:34:01It's an abortion, it's an excrescence, quite frankly.
0:34:01 > 0:34:04It's what his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales described as
0:34:04 > 0:34:08a carbuncle on the face of whatever you like to call it.
0:34:10 > 0:34:12When I came to the opening of Lloyds,
0:34:12 > 0:34:17I sat next to the Dean of St Paul's,
0:34:17 > 0:34:19and he said, "Do you feel beleaguered?"
0:34:19 > 0:34:21And I said, "Yes, I feel pretty beleaguered."
0:34:21 > 0:34:23All the headlines were "terrible architect".
0:34:23 > 0:34:27The public were not used to this type of building.
0:34:27 > 0:34:31So it was a shock of the new, so on the whole, the press saw it
0:34:31 > 0:34:35as a destruction of a great historic tradition of the City of London.
0:34:35 > 0:34:38There was a lot of aggressive criticism.
0:34:40 > 0:34:45'Today, the criticism in the media has returned, as Prince Charles,
0:34:45 > 0:34:49'among others, has re-launched the debate about tall buildings.'
0:34:49 > 0:34:51How do you think the attitudes
0:34:51 > 0:34:53to tall buildings in the City have changed?
0:34:53 > 0:34:55Big change.
0:34:55 > 0:34:5915 years ago, the City of London very much about conservation.
0:34:59 > 0:35:02and I think that's why Canary Wharf got done,
0:35:02 > 0:35:05because there weren't any really large sites
0:35:05 > 0:35:07for the big offices to develop.
0:35:07 > 0:35:11- Because the city had pushed them out.- Pushed them out.
0:35:11 > 0:35:16And then it realised what it was doing to itself and it's changed.
0:35:16 > 0:35:19You can't constrain a powerful element without it popping out somewhere.
0:35:19 > 0:35:23It was all going, as I said, to Frankfurt or Paris, the two challengers.
0:35:23 > 0:35:27And for a while it undermined economy in the City, then the City changed,
0:35:27 > 0:35:33and said, you've got accept bigger buildings, bigger floors and you see them all around you now.
0:35:34 > 0:35:38'The issue of tall buildings in the City remains controversial,
0:35:38 > 0:35:42'but of course, Rogers relishes the contrast between old and new.'
0:35:44 > 0:35:48Opposite here is Norman Foster's building, which came later and there is the church.
0:35:48 > 0:35:52And that other building on the left hand side, which you'd think,
0:35:52 > 0:35:57the presence of that building behind would cause an uproar,
0:35:57 > 0:36:00but actually the juxtaposition is rather marvellous, actually.
0:36:00 > 0:36:04To see these two eras juxtaposed in that way.
0:36:04 > 0:36:07It's typical of any city - I mean any city like this one,
0:36:07 > 0:36:10which is 2,000 years old, because it was a Roman city.
0:36:10 > 0:36:13Any city is, is a layering of history
0:36:13 > 0:36:17and every building around here was modern in its time and I love that,
0:36:17 > 0:36:21that reading of the modernity against the nineteenth, eighteenth,
0:36:21 > 0:36:24and probably this church, which is a few hundred years old.
0:36:27 > 0:36:30'Now under the spotlight is the new building Rogers and the practice
0:36:30 > 0:36:34'have designed opposite Lloyds in Leadenhall Street.
0:36:34 > 0:36:41'When completed in 2011, it will be among the tallest buildings in London.
0:36:41 > 0:36:45'But Rogers maintains that the unprecedented transparency
0:36:45 > 0:36:49'of the Leadenhall building will have a positive impact on the surrounding space.'
0:36:49 > 0:36:52That's a Lutyens facade, that building is by Lutyens,
0:36:52 > 0:36:55just over a hundred years old.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59And what's interesting about this one is that the Lutyens building
0:36:59 > 0:37:01will be able to fit into the open space below it.
0:37:01 > 0:37:04This piazza will continue through this,
0:37:04 > 0:37:07and this will be a great new public space,
0:37:07 > 0:37:11and then you have a 43 storey building on top of it.
0:37:11 > 0:37:14It slopes back because, there's actually a view of St Paul's
0:37:14 > 0:37:17and up there, you have to keep that view open.
0:37:17 > 0:37:22So to get out of the view the building slopes out of that side.
0:37:22 > 0:37:26And that makes it that sort of A shape, what people call a cheese grater.
0:37:26 > 0:37:27A cheese grater?
0:37:27 > 0:37:29- That's what they call it. - That's what they call it.
0:37:29 > 0:37:33But Lloyds was called an espresso machine in the old days.
0:37:33 > 0:37:37'Today the 20th Century Society is campaigning for Grade 1 listed
0:37:37 > 0:37:41'status for the once reviled Lloyds building.
0:37:41 > 0:37:45'As for the Cheese Grater, we shall have to wait and see.
0:37:47 > 0:37:51'Towards the end of Lloyds, Rogers started work on a more personal project,
0:37:51 > 0:37:58'but one that continued to express the ideas so evident in the work of the practice.
0:37:58 > 0:38:01'For his own house, he carved out a modernist interior
0:38:01 > 0:38:08'behind a Georgian facade in a continuing fascination with the juxtaposition of old and new.'
0:38:08 > 0:38:11Why that, why here, why a Georgian terrace?
0:38:11 > 0:38:14Because this is an amazing view and you have a view
0:38:14 > 0:38:19across this beautiful park to perhaps one of the greatest buildings in England,
0:38:19 > 0:38:23the Wren Royal Hospital, which is very quiet but very beautiful.
0:38:23 > 0:38:25You move on up and then you're full of light and
0:38:25 > 0:38:28the sort of surprise element is easier in this type of house,
0:38:28 > 0:38:33so we created a dialogue between the old and the new.
0:38:35 > 0:38:40Making this journey up the steps and arriving here in
0:38:40 > 0:38:43this sort of room, this huge room, it's a bit like that sense
0:38:43 > 0:38:46of going down a street in Italy and coming to the beautiful piazza
0:38:46 > 0:38:48which is full of light.
0:38:48 > 0:38:53In fact it is a bit like a piazza, a square, with the outside almost in.
0:38:53 > 0:38:56Yes, these are all a very key part of my architecture,
0:38:56 > 0:38:58or our architecture, the idea of surprise.
0:38:58 > 0:39:00It's a part of architecture, it's like music.
0:39:00 > 0:39:03You need ups and downs and different types of forms and rhythms.
0:39:03 > 0:39:06There's a dialogue between the solidness of the house,
0:39:06 > 0:39:09the lightness of the structure, the way that the light falls in,
0:39:09 > 0:39:11but you come from a dark space before.
0:39:11 > 0:39:15It's all composed in a way, there's a rhythm, like poetry if you like.
0:39:15 > 0:39:18The other thing is that this staircase and the lightness of this material,
0:39:18 > 0:39:21the sort of engineering dynamic in this room, I mean this is not what
0:39:21 > 0:39:27you expect in this solid kind of house and it's absolutely amazing, this staircase.
0:39:27 > 0:39:32For me, this is the sort of architecturally probably the most important piece, the staircase.
0:39:32 > 0:39:38It's so light that it nearly feels slightly in tension and slightly dangerous, cos you actually,
0:39:38 > 0:39:40you know... and I like that feeling.
0:39:40 > 0:39:44You've taken things to the extreme and you feel as though
0:39:44 > 0:39:49you're entering, let's say on a gang plank, on going to a boat and you get that springiness and
0:39:49 > 0:39:51all the pieces are absolutely necessary.
0:39:51 > 0:39:54If you took any material away, it would probably start to bend.
0:39:56 > 0:40:02'Soon after the completion of Lloyds, the practice established a new base here at Hammersmith.'
0:40:02 > 0:40:06- I understand how it works, but... - The crazy thing...
0:40:06 > 0:40:10'And shortly after, in a radical move unique to the world of architecture,
0:40:10 > 0:40:14'the partners turned the practice into a charity.
0:40:14 > 0:40:18'None of the directors, Rogers included retained any ownership,
0:40:18 > 0:40:23'with the profits shared among the employees and their nominated charities.
0:40:23 > 0:40:27'It was clear that Rogers was keen to practice what he preached.'
0:40:27 > 0:40:32Most architects like the idea that when they die, the practice dies too.
0:40:32 > 0:40:34Richard's not like that.
0:40:34 > 0:40:36He never pretends he can do it all on his own.
0:40:36 > 0:40:39He needs these people, he needs other people around him
0:40:39 > 0:40:42to work with, he's never pretended to be the complete architect.
0:40:44 > 0:40:47'The urban placement of Lloyds had triggered in Rogers
0:40:47 > 0:40:49'a more specific interest in city making,
0:40:49 > 0:40:53'and he began to pursue his long term vision for London.
0:40:56 > 0:41:00'His first piece of major city planning was a dramatic proposal in
0:41:00 > 0:41:06'1986, to pedestrianise key public spaces in the heart of London.'
0:41:07 > 0:41:11We thought it would have been a wonderful opportunity to look at
0:41:11 > 0:41:15a piece of London and think about how could London be,
0:41:15 > 0:41:17not that it should be, but it could be.
0:41:17 > 0:41:21and all the arguments that I had, even at that time,
0:41:21 > 0:41:26about how can Trafalgar Square be the centre of an empire if it's a roundabout,
0:41:26 > 0:41:32and why is most of the famous walks full of cars rather than walks.
0:41:32 > 0:41:35'The principal behind the plan involved the removal of cars
0:41:35 > 0:41:39'from the north side of the square, adjacent to the National Gallery.'
0:41:39 > 0:41:42We were the first people to make that proposition.
0:41:42 > 0:41:47There is a wonderful drawing here, done by Laurie, of Trafalgar Square
0:41:47 > 0:41:50after the renaissance, after the change,
0:41:50 > 0:41:53and it captures what the practice is about in urban terms,
0:41:53 > 0:41:56which is the return of people space to cities.
0:42:01 > 0:42:07Ironically, their vision was eventually realised 15 years later by Norman Foster.
0:42:07 > 0:42:13Another element of that project was the burying of the road along the Embankment,
0:42:13 > 0:42:17on the basis that that way you could free up the whole of the Embankment
0:42:17 > 0:42:19as a great people's park and people's place.
0:42:19 > 0:42:24'Rogers' plan was an attempt to restore the relationship
0:42:24 > 0:42:28'that Londoners had once had with the Thames 300 years ago.'
0:42:30 > 0:42:33Creating a park all along the South Bank.
0:42:33 > 0:42:37Ken Livingstone is now going to do this with my unit,
0:42:37 > 0:42:42we're going to have a park from Westminster Bridge to Blackfriars.
0:42:42 > 0:42:45That's going to be a fantastic south-facing park,
0:42:45 > 0:42:48not quite as we imagined, because we can't get rid of the road completely,
0:42:48 > 0:42:49but we'll cut it down.
0:42:49 > 0:42:53So these things are now becoming alive again but it was a very exciting moment,
0:42:53 > 0:42:58and I would say that, in many ways, it did foreshadow the future.
0:42:59 > 0:43:02'At the time, however, Rogers was frustrated by a lack of progress
0:43:02 > 0:43:07'and decided to take a more proactive role in politics.'
0:43:07 > 0:43:12I mean, what made you take on Prescott's challenge of the Urban Task Force?
0:43:12 > 0:43:14After all, bureaucracy, government,
0:43:14 > 0:43:17I mean, it's tough stuff for someone who likes to get things done.
0:43:17 > 0:43:21I remember he phoned me up and said "I've just read your Reith Lectures,
0:43:21 > 0:43:25"I would like your help on a rather specific element about housing."
0:43:25 > 0:43:28I said a few days later, I said yes, I will chair this,
0:43:28 > 0:43:30but it mustn't be a specific...
0:43:30 > 0:43:32I want to look at the state of our cities -
0:43:32 > 0:43:35out of which came the report which was Towards an Urban Renaissance.
0:43:35 > 0:43:38Up to then, all governments had been scared of cities
0:43:38 > 0:43:41and they'd encouraged people to go out.
0:43:41 > 0:43:44Cities were pretty hellish to live in, not least because of the car,
0:43:44 > 0:43:48then industrialisation had created appalling conditions within cities,
0:43:48 > 0:43:52and suddenly Tony Blair, John Prescott and the Urban Task Force
0:43:52 > 0:43:55all said, no, we should be moving people back in.
0:43:55 > 0:43:58Cities are the only sustainable form of development.
0:43:58 > 0:44:02Public transport is the only way of moving and if you sprawl out,
0:44:02 > 0:44:03you have to go by car.
0:44:03 > 0:44:05The cities are for the meeting of people,
0:44:05 > 0:44:09if you're going to have that, you have to have good public spaces.
0:44:09 > 0:44:13Other people were doing that type of thing around the world and we weren't unique.
0:44:13 > 0:44:16We were probably unique in having the ear of a very powerful
0:44:16 > 0:44:19Prime Minister who'd asked us to do it. That was unique.
0:44:21 > 0:44:26'Rogers is now chief adviser on architecture and urbanism for Ken Livingstone.'
0:44:26 > 0:44:31Richard's Urban Task Force report challenged everything.
0:44:31 > 0:44:36And I wrote his basic recommendations into my election manifesto
0:44:36 > 0:44:39and we've carried them forward since.
0:44:39 > 0:44:41Heavens, how do you get from one place to another?
0:44:41 > 0:44:47'Central to Rogers' philosophy for cities and now adopted by the mayor as policy for London,
0:44:47 > 0:44:51'is the commitment to curb urban sprawl by only building
0:44:51 > 0:44:54'on previously developed or brownfield land.'
0:44:54 > 0:44:56Here's your carbon site beyond this park.
0:44:56 > 0:44:58There's two major problems.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01That's one, bureaucracy, slowness of planning.
0:45:01 > 0:45:03More tall buildings than I remember.
0:45:03 > 0:45:06The other is, the structure of house builders.
0:45:06 > 0:45:10In this country, there's such a demand, they can sell nearly anything.
0:45:10 > 0:45:13There's no real pressure to change the way they're building.
0:45:13 > 0:45:19we need to use the talent we have, in this country and abroad, to get quality.
0:45:19 > 0:45:23Otherwise we're going to go through the whole cycle of the post-war period and I am very worried.
0:45:23 > 0:45:27If you take a boat down the Thames, it's shockingly bad what's being
0:45:27 > 0:45:29built along most of the Thames at this point.
0:45:29 > 0:45:36'But Rogers and his practice have responded to the housing crisis with a project of their own.
0:45:38 > 0:45:42'At last, it seems like Rogers' dream of the zip-up house
0:45:42 > 0:45:45'40 years earlier is being realised.
0:45:45 > 0:45:49'Working with Wimpey, the practice has picked up Prescott's challenge
0:45:49 > 0:45:52'to design high quality, low cost housing that
0:45:52 > 0:45:55'can be effectively mass produced,
0:45:55 > 0:46:00'and they've already built the first 50 at Oxley Park near Milton Keynes.'
0:46:00 > 0:46:05The point of this housing is it's not only low cost, but it's also fast build.
0:46:05 > 0:46:09There's a prefabricated kit which I've always been interested in since the first houses.
0:46:09 > 0:46:13They're made actually primarily of lightweight panels,
0:46:13 > 0:46:16they're built in a factory, which you have proper control of,
0:46:16 > 0:46:19and in very few days, four or five days,
0:46:19 > 0:46:21you build sufficient panels for the house,
0:46:21 > 0:46:25and then you go on site and in even less days, you make it water tight.
0:46:25 > 0:46:30So it's really a very appropriate house to the house builders, who love it,
0:46:30 > 0:46:33and also, of course, the need we have to create houses
0:46:33 > 0:46:38which are beautiful and also environmentally sensitive.
0:46:46 > 0:46:50It's a tricky place politics, to be involved.
0:46:50 > 0:46:52Here you are, you're involved in politics.
0:46:52 > 0:46:55You've been involved in politics before, you know, with the Dome,
0:46:55 > 0:46:59and you may regret it in some ways, but at the same time here
0:46:59 > 0:47:03you built this building which did capture the imagination of people.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07But somehow it got stuck in bureaucracy and other things.
0:47:07 > 0:47:11I mean what do you feel about the Dome now, all those years later?
0:47:11 > 0:47:14I think for us, first of all, the Dome has always been
0:47:14 > 0:47:15a success as a structure.
0:47:15 > 0:47:21We had two years to build it, we had a very low budget, it actually cost £44 million,
0:47:21 > 0:47:25and not £800 million, which was for everything else, mainly the contents.
0:47:25 > 0:47:31It's really again about using the least material to do the maximum amount of work.
0:47:31 > 0:47:35It's absolutely in the spirit of the practice's ethos.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39It's absolutely the ultimate in terms of structural economy,
0:47:39 > 0:47:44it's the lightest structure of its size ever built on the planet.
0:47:44 > 0:47:45It's made of virtually nothing.
0:47:45 > 0:47:48It's an ecologically light touch building.
0:47:48 > 0:47:52We collected our rainwater, we flushed all the loos with the rainwater.
0:47:52 > 0:47:56It's a lovely story, if you don't connect it with the Millennium Exhibition.
0:47:59 > 0:48:04It was 7% of the budget, we were never allowed to say so.
0:48:04 > 0:48:06We were forbidden to talk to journalists.
0:48:06 > 0:48:09Richard and I suffered for five years over that, it was hell.
0:48:10 > 0:48:13'In spite of its troubled, political, past,
0:48:13 > 0:48:19'the Dome is now, among other things, a successful concert venue,
0:48:19 > 0:48:22'and it seems the building does have a future.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32'Since the early '90s, Rogers and his partners have been creating
0:48:32 > 0:48:36'radical modernist buildings all over the world.'
0:48:45 > 0:48:49I think our buildings have a common language which you can follow back,
0:48:49 > 0:48:52I think practically from Creek Vean, certainly from the Wimbledon House,
0:48:52 > 0:48:59but as new problems arise so we have to meet those problems
0:48:59 > 0:49:01and the buildings have to respond to those problems.
0:49:01 > 0:49:06Therefore the form changes and I think, whereas at the beginning,
0:49:06 > 0:49:08and even more in the early modern movement,
0:49:08 > 0:49:11the buildings had to be political statements as well,
0:49:11 > 0:49:13they said, I'm different,
0:49:13 > 0:49:15I've got to win this battle and the only way I can do it
0:49:15 > 0:49:18is to have big headlines. That battle, I think, has been won.
0:49:18 > 0:49:21I think post-modernism, historicism is not a threat any longer,
0:49:21 > 0:49:24so I think we can be more relaxed about the way we do it,
0:49:24 > 0:49:28we can be more poetic, maybe more elegant in certain things.
0:49:28 > 0:49:30Doesn't mean it's better. But things have changed.
0:49:38 > 0:49:43'Nowhere is this new found freedom better expressed than in the Law Courts in Bordeaux.'
0:49:47 > 0:49:50If people ask me what has changed most in your architecture
0:49:50 > 0:49:54over the 45 years or so, I'd say the environmental elements in it,
0:49:54 > 0:49:58the buildings are beginning to respond to the wind,
0:49:58 > 0:50:00either the way that the wind moves across surfaces,
0:50:00 > 0:50:03the way it can take heat off the surfaces and using concrete mass
0:50:03 > 0:50:08to contain energy, all these elements start to change the shape of the buildings.
0:50:09 > 0:50:13These seven funnels are each one a court room.
0:50:13 > 0:50:16You could call them big chimneys, if you like,
0:50:16 > 0:50:19with people at the bottom and then the air flowing up to the top,
0:50:19 > 0:50:20and that's one of the critical parts.
0:50:20 > 0:50:26You get a 50% energy saving against a normal court building.
0:50:26 > 0:50:29It's quite an interesting building also because it's the beginning
0:50:29 > 0:50:32of both Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour working with me
0:50:32 > 0:50:35as senior designers and that's probably their first building,
0:50:35 > 0:50:37and it's important in terms of the practice.
0:50:46 > 0:50:52The practice has had what I would say are evolving philosophies.
0:50:52 > 0:50:55Some of them have been pretty consistent, you know,
0:50:55 > 0:50:58an attitude to public space,
0:50:58 > 0:51:04philosophies about a building being understandable.
0:51:04 > 0:51:06We call it, you know, legible.
0:51:06 > 0:51:09You can look at it and you can understand, you know,
0:51:09 > 0:51:10how it's gone together.
0:51:17 > 0:51:19Wales works beautifully.
0:51:19 > 0:51:24When people wander in at the front door and wander into this space
0:51:24 > 0:51:27and they look around, and then they go, wow,
0:51:27 > 0:51:30and then they realise that actually it's a space that they can enjoy.
0:51:30 > 0:51:35They can find a little place, it's a sort of living room, really.
0:51:35 > 0:51:37PLANE ENGINE
0:51:37 > 0:51:41'Perhaps the greatest challenge of all, for the modern architect
0:51:41 > 0:51:45'in recent years has been to design an airport
0:51:45 > 0:51:48'that can transcend the tedium of travel.
0:51:50 > 0:51:53'In Terminal 5 at Heathrow, which opens next month,
0:51:53 > 0:51:57'Rogers and his partners have created a vast space
0:51:57 > 0:51:59'flooded with natural light,
0:51:59 > 0:52:05'which will provide the largest uninterrupted space in the UK.
0:52:05 > 0:52:08'But best of all and perhaps Rogers' favourite building
0:52:08 > 0:52:12'is the inspirational new terminal at Barajas airport in Madrid.'
0:52:47 > 0:52:51I always think that airports are totally spiritless,
0:52:51 > 0:52:55they're sort of utility machines.
0:52:55 > 0:53:00Whereas our aim was to create a place that took the concept of travel
0:53:00 > 0:53:03and gave it a spirit, just like the big railway stations.
0:53:11 > 0:53:15The bamboo roof, which is this flowing wave of a roof,
0:53:15 > 0:53:18which you can construct very well in pieces,
0:53:18 > 0:53:23and you have to construct very fast, but the interior is very human, very soft.
0:53:29 > 0:53:33This is a very large building, 1.2 kilometres long.
0:53:33 > 0:53:36So one wanted to create a situation where it wasn't either black, white
0:53:36 > 0:53:40or yellow but it was all the colours so we said let's try a rainbow,
0:53:40 > 0:53:41and that gives it an identity,
0:53:41 > 0:53:45it breaks down the length of the building
0:53:45 > 0:53:48but also allows you to say, let's meet under the rose column.
0:53:52 > 0:53:57Barajas is a building of which I'm very, very proud.
0:53:57 > 0:54:02I often say the buildings which I'm proud of stem from the Wimbledon House,
0:54:02 > 0:54:09because it's small and it begins to contain the spirit of all the future architecture we build.
0:54:10 > 0:54:13The Pompidou, cos it gets really to grips with a public element,
0:54:13 > 0:54:18people walk over the facade, though it's vertical.
0:54:18 > 0:54:20The Barajas airport in Madrid,
0:54:20 > 0:54:26because I think we've made travelling fun and we've brought back enjoyment
0:54:26 > 0:54:28to the traveller rather than just being a function of life.
0:54:34 > 0:54:39Inside Out, the new Richard Rogers exhibition, opens this week
0:54:39 > 0:54:44at the Royal Academy in London.
0:54:51 > 0:54:55Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:55:07 > 0:55:09E-mail Subtitling@bbc.co.uk