Richard Rogers

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 1990

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

The castaway in this week's Desert Island Discs is one of Britain's leading and most controversial architects Richard Rogers. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about two of his most celebrated designs - the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Lloyds Building in London - and describing how his passion for the new and the innovative has brought him into disagreement with many critics, including Prince Charles, with whom he shares a passionate concern for the quality of our built environment.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Piano Concerto No 24 Second Movement by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: The Odyssey by Homer Luxury: His wife, Ruth, but if this is disallowed then a painting

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1990, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is an architect, born in Florence to an Italian English family he came to this country at the age of five
0:36.0	unable to speak a word of English his work often reflects the artistic divisions between England and
0:42.4	mainland Europe.
0:43.7	In Paris, for instance, his design for the Pompidu Centre attracts universal admiration
0:48.8	and exceeds the Eiffel Tower in popularity.
0:52.0	In London, his design for the Lloyds building remains more
0:54.8	controversial, its acclaim tempered by more traditional views. But this man enjoys
1:00.2	being radical and his passion for the new, for the innovative has made him a
1:04.4	leading figure not only in his profession but in the world of the arts as a whole.
1:09.4	He is Richard Rogers.
1:11.7	Yours is a profession, Richard, not without its critics. Do you feel sometimes that you're under constant
1:16.4	siege? We have much to be blamed for, of course, and therefore in one sense I accept it at the same time no one likes
1:24.8	to be under siege as you call it and it is a problem of today that architecture is in a very
1:30.8	critical state while cities are in very critical state.
1:33.2	So I have a divided feeling about it.
1:36.5	On the other hand it means that people are noticing what you do and they're talking about
1:40.0	what you do which is not to be scoffed at is it?
1:42.4	No, I think the fact that there is now a debate what you do which is not to be scoffed at is it?
1:42.6	No I think the fact that there is now a debate going is certainly good.
1:46.9	The question of whether the debate is the right debate is more complicated.
	...

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