Writing / Tamer Tageldin
In memory of Richard Rogers…
In memory of Richard Rogers…
“Our best buildings do not just arise from the requirements of the client, but seek to answer broader social questions. The Pompidou Centre brought culture into the public domain. The Lloyd's Building was designed as a flexible machine for a financial marketplace, but also as a carefully considered expression of those activities, designed both for the user and for the enjoyment of the passer-by. The Bordeaux Law Courts that we built in the 19905 rethought the purpose of judicial architecture; they were designed to draw the public in and explain the role of justice in society, as a school of law, not a citadel of crime and punishment. The Welsh Assembly Building, completed a few years later, does more than accommodate a legislature. The ground floor is essentially an indoor piazza for public use, with cafes, meeting spaces and a gallery that enables citizens to view the assembly chamber, where their representatives make decisions. The Leadenhall Building is a 50-storey-high skyscraper, the highest in the City of London when it was completed in 2014. The first seven storeys are given over to an open piazza with no walls, from which escalators carry you up to the reception. Architecture creates shelter and transforms the ordinary. Architects are both scientists and artists, solving problems in three dimensions, using structure and materials to create scale and humanise space, capture the play of light and shadows, and make an aesthetic impact. From the primitive hut to the Athenian Agora, from medieval palace to city hall, from the street bench to the great piazza, architecture shapes our lives. Good architecture civilises and humanises, bad architecture brutalises.”