Richard Rogers Quotes:
My architecture tends to be legible, light and flexible. You can read it. You look at a building, and you can see how it is constructed. I put the structure outside.
Richard Rogers
You have to modernise; you have to change – you can’t just be traditional for the fun of being traditional.
Richard Rogers
Architecture is a living thing. If I want to leave something to the future, it has to be able to change – but retain something of the ethos that we built up over 50 years.
Richard Rogers
In Florence, classical buildings sit against medieval buildings. It’s that contrast we like.
Richard Rogers
The Ranelagh Gardens in Chelsea provide plenty of opportunities to walk, think and relax.
Richard Rogers
Architecture is measured against the past; you build in the future, and you try to imagine the future.
Richard Rogers
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Suburban sprawl leads to social atomisation and fragmentation and is environmentally disastrous, as carbon-intensive car journeys displace local shops and replace public transport.
Richard Rogers
Source: Designboom
Society has to get a grip and put a tax on carbon. Of course, there is much that flows from that, and it is a complex situation. The small details of something such as climate change are political and social, and they are a lot about fairness and how we rebalance towards a fairer society.
Richard Rogers
I had lots of trouble in school as a child, and I lost confidence. Teachers thought I was stupid. I learned to read very late, when I was 11. Dyslexia wasn’t recognized then, and the assumption was you were incapable of thinking.
Richard Rogers
I love cities, I spend most of my life talking about cities. And the design of cities does have an effect on your life. You’re lucky if you can see trees out of your window and you have a square nearby, or a bar, a cornershop, a surgery. Then you’re living well.
Richard Rogers
If you had a carbon tax, you’d have less cars and more bicycles, more people getting around on foot and by public transport.
Richard Rogers
I don’t believe in the ownership of work.
Richard Rogers
Dyslexia, though, made me realise that people who say ‘but you can’t do that’ aren’t actually very important. I don’t take ‘no’ too seriously.
Richard Rogers
My passion and great enjoyment for architecture, and the reason the older I get the more I enjoy it, is because I believe we – architects – can effect the quality of life of the people.
Richard Rogers
I think we did a pretty good role, linking, being a sounding board really and a driving force, especially from the bottom up. I think that part of this is bottom up as well as top down.
Richard Rogers
Watching TV on your own is not very inspiring. But meeting people is where you get new ideas and get things done.
Richard Rogers
There is a Jewish tradition of family, too, but then not all Italian or Jewish families are close.
Richard Rogers
When I started out, nearly every architect I knew was working in public practice; that’s where the radical thinking was done. But, there’s always a danger of looking back as our fathers did and saying, ‘Things were better then.’
Richard Rogers
Clearly, private developers can have different aims, and architects can only play a certain role. You can have some pretty big battles on public commissions, too. The key is to have a good client.
Richard Rogers
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges facing our cities or to the housing crisis, but the two issues need to be considered together. From an urban design and planning point of view, the well-connected open city is a powerful paradigm and an engine for integration and inclusivity.
Richard Rogers
The Athenians had an oath for someone who was about to become a citizen. They had to swear that ‘I shall leave the city not less but more beautiful than I found it.’
Richard Rogers
I love my job. What would I retire to?
Richard Rogers
Architects design buildings; that’s what we do, so we have to go with the flow; and, even though I’m still an old Leftie, global capitalism does have its good side. It’s broken down barriers – the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union – it’s raised a lot of people up economically, and for architects, it has meant that we can work around the world.
Richard Rogers
I think greed is a critical problem – the gap between the poor and the rich. The gap between the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent.
Richard Rogers