Urban Taskforce author to retire from practice

Architect and Urban Taskforce author Richard Rogers has retired as a director of the practice he founded more than 40 years ago.

The decision, revealed in termination documents lodged at Companies House on Friday, means his name will be dropped from his practice, Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, by July 2022.

Rogers, a Labour peer behind former deputy prime minister John Prescott’s Urban Taskforce report in 1999, turned 87 in July.

In a statement issued to Housing Today sister publication Building Design, the practice said his retirement from the board had been “planned since 2007, as part of the comprehensive succession planning strategy established when the Richard Rogers Partnership became Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners”.

Ivan Harbour said in the statement: “Richard has been a huge inspiration to us all at RSHP and to the architectural profession globally. His humanity, integrity and generosity are reflected in the practice he founded, and which continues to be guided by his principles.”

Harbour and Graham Stirk now have the support of nine other partners, the statement said.

The practice’s output has in recent years included high profile residential schemes such as Neo Bankside, next to the Tate Modern in London for Native Land, and Riverlight, another Thames-side scheme for Berkeley Group (pictured, left).

However, Rogers’ biggest influence in the housing world is through his work as an advocate for high-density urbanism based around the concept of compact cities. This culminated in the work of the Urban Taskforce in 1999 and the publication of its report, Towards and Urban Renaissance. This led to a government policy focus on public transport-supported higher-density housing, as well as the foundation of design quango Cabe.

Baron Rogers of Riverside, as the Labour peer is properly titled, has won some of the biggest prizes in architecture, including the Pritzker and Praemium Imperiale as well as Gold Medals on both sides of the Atlantic. He has won the Stirling Prize twice, for Barajas Airport in Madrid and the west London Maggie’s Centre, though his best-known buildings remain the Pompidou Centre, Lloyds of London, the Millennium Dome and Heathrow Terminal 5.

Rogers also advised both Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson during their tenures as mayor of London. He has also sat on the boards of Tate and Moma as well as being an active member of the House of Lords.

Although its work has become more commercial in recent years, RSHP famously gives 20% of its profits to charity and pegs the highest salary to the lowest.

The statement insisted the partners would “together… maintain the continuity and consistency of the philosophy and ethos which RSHP applies to all its work. They will continue to recognise and encourage new talent within the practice.”