Richard Rogers Wins the 2019 AIA Gold Medal

Centre Georges Pompidou / Richard Rogers + Renzo Piano. Image © Flickr user dalbera licensed under CC BY 2.0

Richard Rogers has been awarded the 2019 AIA Gold Medal by the American Institute of Architects. The world-renowned architect and founding principal of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners has been recognized “for his influence on the built environment [that] has redefined an architect’s responsibilities to society.”

Honoring “an individual or pair of architects whose significant body of work has had a lasting influence on the theory and practice of architecture,” the AIA Gold Medal is often considered the highest honor awarded in the United States for architecture.

© 2013 Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners LLP

As one of the leading architects of the British High-Tech movement, Pritzker Prize-winner Richard Rogers stands out as one of the most innovative and distinctive architects of a generation. Rogers made his name in the 1970s and ’80s, with buildings such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Headquarters for Lloyd’s Bank in London. To this day his work plays with similar motifs, utilizing bright colors and structural elements to create a style that is recognizable, yet also highly adaptable.

Rogers was born in Florence, but his family moved to Britain during the Second World War, when Rogers was a child. After attending the Architectural Association in London, Rogers studied in the United States at Yale University, where he met fellow Brit Norman Foster. After graduating, the two architects joined forces with Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheeseman to form Team 4 in 1963. Though their collaboration as Team 4 lasted just four years, it would prove to be a crucial formative stage in British architecture, as both Rogers and Foster went on to be the leading names of the British High-Tech scene.

3 World Trade Center. Image Courtesy of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners

In the 1990s Rogers became involved in British politics, sitting in the House of Lords as a Labour Peer (his full title is Baron Rogers of Riverside). This led to an invitation by the government to set up the Urban Task Force, which in 1998 conducted a review into the causes of urban decay and outlined a vision for the future of British Cities in the paper “Towards an Urban Renaissance.” For 8 years he was also chief advisor on architecture and urbanism for the Mayor of London.

The Leadenhall Building. Image © Richard Bryant – Courtesy of British Land/Oxford Properties

In more recent years Rogers has continued to produce work of great merit, winning theStirling Prize in 2006 and 2009, and the Pritzker Prize in 2007.

As the 75th recipient of the Gold Medal, Rogers joins an esteemed list of winners including Frank Lloyd Wright (1949), Louis Sullivan (1944), Le Corbusier (1961), Louis I. Kahn (1971), I.M. Pei (1979), Thom Mayne (2013), Julia Morgan (2014), Moshe Safdie (2015) and Denise Scott Brown & Robert Venturi (2016). Last year, the award was given to James Stewart Polshek.