Review - Exhibition - Richard Rogers Restrospective
- Published: 30 November 2007 10:25
- Author: Christine Murray
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- Last Updated: 30 November 2007 10:25
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The City of Richard Rogers
EXHIBITION
Christine Murray visits Paris for the launch of the Richard Rogers retrospective
Richard Rogers + Architects, Pompidou Centre, Paris, France, 21 November 2007 to 3 March 2008. www.centrepompidou.fr
A retrospective often feels like a celebration, especially when it's also a birthday party. The Pompidou opened its doors 30 years ago, and its position in the history of Richard Rogers' practice is reflected in this new exhibition. There is a moment of disorientation when you step into the Richard Rogers + Architects show, but designer Ab Rogers (also Richard's son) assures me this is intentional.
'When you arrive in a city you decide what road to take,' says Ab, a handful of hours before the opening party. 'We wanted to create a world of Richard's architecture in which people could get lost, and this is very much based on an elevated city plan.'
Populated by large-scale models of projects such as the Lloyds building, the Millennium Dome (now the O2 Centre) and Madrid's Barajas Airport, Ab's retrospective city consists of colour-coded 'avenues' of hot pink, electric blue and green tables, arranged in 'urban blocks' loosely defined by themes such as 'Transparent', 'Legible', 'Green' or 'Urban'. The avenues converge at a giant pink sofa, referred to as the 'piazza', where visitors are supposed to meet, relax and debate. On the periphery, a 30m timeline provides a pictorial journey through 40 years of practice.
I confess to Ab that, for a city plan, the avenues seem too wide, the models too far apart, and he admits that the exhibition design was originally more dense: 'It was expanded due to health and safety issues.' The 'piazza' was also originally conceived as a vibrant coffee bar, but due to the complications of selling food, this was abandoned.
Designed for a general audience, plans and technical details are limited, but the models are beautifully made and displayed. In many ways, however, it is the Pompidou itself that steals the show. For years, its street-level Galerie Sud has been a dreary, uninspiring space, but in preparing for the exhibition, the Rogers team unblocked the windows and removed all internal walls, revealing a naked space with a two-way relationship to the street. Although the lurid pink 'piazza' demands attention, it is at the windows, with their view on to a pedestrian avenue and a public square that the exhibit's city plan truly completes.
CHRISTINE MURRAY INTERVIEWS ROGERS AT THE OPENING PARTY
Are you pleased with the retrospective?
Yes, it's very good. You know, I didn't design it, Ab did. Obviously it was done together, but basically it's Ab who's had to sweat all the way through. I'm really delighted. It was part of our concept to make it enjoyable.
Yes, there's a tremendous sense of play.
It's the same as the Pompidou, it's about fun. When we put in the competition for the Pompidou, we said: 'A place for all people, all ages, all creeds.' This exhibition continues that concept; a cross between New York's Times Square (a fun palace) and The British Museum (culture). This concept also appears in the buildings; Barajas Airport, for example, is very much about enjoying yourself, the spirit of travel, the spirit of culture, the spirit of everything else.
In your speech at the opening, you called for the renaissance of the city. Can you expand on that?
For a long time the city was difficult to live in and if you had any money you moved out. Now we realise it's no good moving people out of the city; that makes them completely unsustainable. Social inclusion and good design are absolutely interwound. If you want sustainability you have to live in sufficient density for public transport, to walk, to go by bicycle, and also a mix of live, work and leisure. All those things come in a compact city, and those are the studies I'm involved in. I chaired the Urban Task Force for the government, and now I work with [London Mayor] Ken Livingstone as his chief advisor, advising on public space and the Thames Gateway, which will be a city the size of Leeds.
Was the Urban Task Force as successful as you'd hoped?
I think in architecture it's gone, on one level, way beyond what I expected. It's taken up the idea of the compact city, densification... Having said that, I wrote over a year ago on what hasn't been done. London still has three of the poorest boroughs in Western Europe, so there are serious problems, such as the distribution of wealth, that we need to address.
What's your opinion of the emergent London today?
As I remind people, when we were building Lloyds in 1980 we were discussing whether the future business capital of Europe would be Frankfurt. Now I've got nothing against Frankfurt, but today it just doesn't sound possible. London is so dominant, and it's a fantastic economic renaissance for Britain, which was going downhill very fast. It's definitely better to be wealthy, but America is wealthy and it has the worst cities. It's all about a civil society. The most important thing we said in the Urban Task Force was that you must only build on all previously used land, and to not expand; put a belt around the city and bounce everything back in. Densification gives security. The best CCTV cameras are nowhere near as good as eyes.
Resume: The Pompidou is the host and star of the Richard Rogers show
