In 2006, the Richard Rogers Partnership was awarded the Stirling Prize for Terminal 4 of Madrid’s Barajas Airport, and in 2007 Rogers was awarded the Pritzker Prize, the “Nobel Prize” for architecture. The quote noted that it had “revolutionized museums, transforming what were once elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city.”
The following year saw the opening of Heathrow Terminal 5, the culmination of a two-decade operation that included the longest public inquiry in Britain’s history. In 2009, the Stirling Prize was won again, for the Maggie’s Center at Charing Cross Hospital, one of a series of cancer reception centers.
Rogers returned to town after winning the commission to design a new building at 122 Leadenhall Street. Opened in 2014, it became known as a “Cheesegrater” after the city’s chief planning officer Peter Reese saw a model that, he recalls, “told Richard Rogers I could imagine his wife using it for a Parmesan gravy.”
Rogers himself lived in a typical house from the early 19th century in Chelsea, where the noble interior was influenced by Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Vere in Paris. His love of family life was reflected in the open plan, with apartments for his mother and eldest child on the lower floors.
Rogers confessed his passion for Meccano and built a LEGO model for the Pompidou Center. He adored the children and encouraged his employees to bring their children to the office.
Richard Rogers, who retired in September 2020, was knighted in 1991 and rose to noble rank in 1996. In 2006 he was made a Companion of Honor. He married first, in 1960, to Sue Brumwell. They had three sons. Secondly, in 1973 he married Ruth Elias, who runs the River Café restaurant in London. Her husband redesigned a former oil storage facility to house him. They had one son, and a son who died before him.
Lord Rogers of Riverside, born on July 25, 1933, died on December 18, 2021
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