Our Favourite Richard Rogers Projects

December 28, 2021 Comments Off

December saw the sad news of the death of Richard Rogers, one of the architects who have made a major contribution to the look of modern London. We look at three of our favourite Richard Rogers projects.

The Lloyds Building – chosen by Marylin Greene

One of the things I like most about the City of London is the juxtaposition of different periods of architecture.

One of the most exciting is the approach from Horace Jones’s iron structured 1880-1 Leadenhall Market into to Lime Street when you exit and are confronted by the dramatic steel “Bowlism” the Lloyds Building.

This is one of the most radical and architecturally important buildings of the 20th century. Its architecture complements its function as a market rather than a company and the service functions (bowls) of the building such as lifts, ventilation and toilets bulge out in a series of service towers from the main structure.

These free up space for the meeting of clients for brokering deals. Richard Rogers previously designed the Pompidou Centre in Paris with Renzo Piano along the same principles. Inside a huge atrium is criss-crossed by souring escalators almost like a Jacob’s ladder to the heavens.

Richard Rogers won an international competition launched in 1977 to design a building for Lloyds Insurers to take it into the next century. It was completed in 1986 and in 2011 was awarded Grade I listing status by Historic England; the youngest building at the time to gain such status.

Situated where the original East India House was, it largely replace an older Lloyds building deigned by Edwin Cooper from the 1920s when Lloyds moved from offices in the Royal Exchange. The ornate original Cooper frontage is still present in Leadenhall Street but now leads directly into the Rogers building.

Founded in 1680s by Edward Lloyd in a coffee shop first in Tower Street followed by Lombard Street, it originally specialising in shipping insurance. The company now negotiates all kinds of insurance from ships, art-work to celebrities body parts!

The building features in several of Marilyn’s City walks

Tidal Basin Pumping Station – chosen by Rob Smith

The Lloyds building made features out of the service functions of the building by putting them on the outside for all to see. Rogers continued that idea in a much more humble structure in East London next to the vast Royal Victoria Dock.

The Tidal Basin Pumping Station is designed to channel surface water into the nearby River Thames, but rather than make a discreet anonymous building Rogers designed a colourful eye catching structure.

It makes a feature out of the pumping equipment using blue green and yellow to turn it into a local landmark visible from the Docklands Light Railway. It’s ironic that this humble water pumping station is more eye catching than many of the newer hotels and housing blocks that are springing up in the area.

When the Royal Victoria Dock was built in 1850 it was built on marshy ground – an achievement in itself, but when the area started to be redeveloped in the 1980s draining the marshy land was still an issue. Rogers pumping station fits in to the tradition of the great Victorian engineering projects, like Bazalgette’s sewage pumping stations, where infrastructure buildings were seen as a thing of pride, and not to be hidden away.

Rob will be talking about the Pumping Station in his Virtual Tour – Newham’s Best Buildings

Air Vents – chosen by Jane Parker

I really like the colourful air vents that can be found adjacent to most of Richard Rogers’ marvellously innovative buildings where functionality doubles as street sculpture with personality.

These were first seen, I think, at The Pompidou Centre in Paris in the 1970s. They often look like periscopes from a Teletubbies-style landscape.

The various groups of different sized red and blue vents along London Wall at 88 Wood Street, always bring a smile to my face, resembling meerkats keeping watch in all directions above an underground den.

Jane leads walking and virtual tours featuring London Buildings, especially ones on Art Deco London