British architect Richard Rogers, known for designing some of the world's most famous buildings including Paris's Pompidou Centre, has died aged 88.
Rogers, who changed the London skyline with distinctive creations such as the Millennium Dome and the "Cheesegrater", "passed away quietly" on Saturday night, a spokesman said.
His son Roo Rogers also confirmed his death to The New York Times, but did not give the cause.
The Italian-born architect won a series of awards for his designs, including the 2007 Pritzker Prize, and is one of the pioneers of the "high-tech" architecture movement, distinguished by structures incorporating industrial materials such as glass and steel.
RIP Richard Rogers, one of the very greatest pic.twitter.com/ALuU27RJ96
— D Fletcher Dunham (@dfdunham) December 18, 2021
He is the co-creator of France's Pompidou Centre – opened in 1977 and famed for its multi-coloured, pipe-covered facade – which he designed with Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Rogers' other well-known designs include Strasbourg's European Court of Human Rights and the Three World Trade Centre in New York, as well as international airport terminals in Madrid and London's Heathrow.
Defining space between buildings
Born in Florence in 1933, his father was a doctor, his mother a former pupil of the famed Irish writer James Joyce. The family fled the dictatorship of Mussolini, settling in England in 1938.
He left school in 1951 with no qualifications but managed to gain entry into London's Architectural Association School, known for its modernism.
- Paris crowds flock to see Arc de Triomphe, dressed to impress
- Paris's Pompidou Centre to get an American outpost near New York
He completed his architecture studies at Yale in the US in 1962, where he met fellow British architect Norman Foster.
Although buildings were Rogers' world, he insisted it was the space around them that was key in defining those that worked.
"The two can't be judged apart," he told The Guardian in 2017.
"The Twin Towers in New York, for instance. They weren't great buildings, but the space between them was."
(AFP)
