Richard Rogers’ Year
Feb 27th, 2008 by Eats Wombats
There is a verb in our marriage: to collopse.
I forget who used it first, a child perhaps. But the first to collopse, the person for whom the word was coined, was a plastic donkey with elasticated legs. When the base of his little pedestal was pushed… he collopsed, to general amusement. Every time.
All that remains from whatever Christmas it was, long ago, is an addition the family vocabulary.
Last night I collopsed after a few days of MBA busyness. And the trouble with collopsing with a glass of wine in your hand is that you have to get up and clean it up. I was that tired.
I was looking forward to and I greatly enjoyed a program on BBC TV about the work of the architect Richard Rogers. That will be good, I thought. It was sublime. I am annoyed I didn’t think to record it.
I knew little of Rogers before and I’d only heard of the Modernity movement in accounts here and there of his supposed rivalry with Norman Foster.
That Rogers’ native city was Florence — that his emotional feeling for its architecture, its use of civic spaces and surprises was so much part of his work — was a revelation. Listening to him in the context he was speaking of was delightful — hearing him speaking of Leonardo walking the same streets and hills, essentially unchanged, and of his absorbing feelings for that city from his mother.
His description of the impression New York made on him was a shot of electricity in the memory bank.
And later, seeing the spectacular inside of the Lloyds Building, I could see immediately, it must have inspired the same sense of awe in many and a desire to be an architect in more than a few. It’s a stupendous thing, right here, and although I can see it through the study window in front of me I have never felt an urge to visit it. I shall!
Adding to the empathy, Rogers’ architectural practice belongs to the employees and will continue indefinitely.
his practice is organised as a charitable trust in which he, as chairman, can only earn nine times what an entry-level architect earns. Foster, meanwhile, presides over a 1000-strong practice and pays himself in the millions. “He’s more interested in power,” says Rogers, adding, “He’s a good friend of mine. But we compete … I swear when he wins.”
(source)
All those awards… couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, apparently.
Imagine arriving at your own airport
I said, as I drank in Madrid’s new Barajas airport with my rioja and London’s Terminal 5 (due to open next month). Of course, I know there’s no such thing, and I was really thinking it would be even more of a blast to travel from one to the other with, say, Richard and Leonardo himself, conversing in Italian.
As it happens, I recently discovered that we live in an architecturally significant building, London’s first skyscraper, albeit a small one, now listed and protected.
Which will come first, I wonder, collopse or the end of our 999 year lease? Not that it matters much.
I’d give Mr.Rogers a year if I could, for a pink shirt, or maybe nothing at all. Kudos and thanks to all the partners.
Gosh. I’ve been to meetings in your building. And visited the pub across the road afterwards, as well.
Richard Rogers - yes, fantastic work, I agree.