Richard Rogers, Architect of the "Inside-Out" Style

Italian-British Architect Richard Rogers was born on July 23, 1933 in Florence.  He may be most well known for his contribution to the Centre George Pompidou in Paris which, according to the New York Times, "turned the architecture world upside down."

He was part of a team, along with Renzo Piano and Gianfranco Franchini, which won a Design Competition in 1971 for the Pompidou Centre.  Rogers had already established himself as a a High-Tech Architect, when he had partnered early in his career with Norman Foster.  High-Tech Architecture incorporates elements of the high-tech industry and technology into building design.  High-Tech Architecture served as a bridge (albeit with a few areas of crossover) between modernism and post-modernism, emerging in the 1970's.

In buildings such as the Pompidou Centre, the idea of revealed structure is taken to the extreme, with apparently structural components serving little or no structural role.  In this case, the use of "structural" steel is a stylistic or aesthetic matter.  The outside look of the building reflects the modern art kept inside.  Rogers developed his trademark style during the execution of this project, which was exposing most of the building's services on the outside of the building (water, heating and ventilation ducts, and stairs), leaving the interior spaces clutter-free and open for the art.  Some critics coined this look "Bowellism."   The Pompidou Centre was completed in 1977.

Roger's also incorporated this "inside-out" style in the design of the Lloyd Building in London in 1986.

Lloyd's Building - London

He has won countless awards during his long, illustrious career and has devoted his later years to wider issues surrounding architecture, urbanism, sustainability and the ways in which cities are used.