Richard Rogers

The awardees in the architecture section of this prize that from the east compensates the absence of a Nobel of the arts often coincide with the Pritzker nominees, but in its year 2000 edition, it hasn’t been so: Richard Rogers is, after James Stirling, the second Brit ever to receive it. Born in 1933, Rogers initiated his career with Norman Foster in Team 4, built the Paris Pompidou Center with Renzo Piano (Imperiale in 1996), and designed one his finest buildings, the Lloyd’s company headquarters in the heart of London’s financial district. A tenacious opposer to the nostalgic urban and architectural approach of the Prince of Wales, Roger has assumed a leading role in the discipline’s debate in his country. The ecological concerns and political correctness underlying his technological expressionism have earned him institutional commissions such as the Bordeaux courthouse, with rooms evoking wine barrels, or the Welsh Parliament, which holds the plenary sessions under a warped roof. In Spain he is extending Madrid’s Barajas Airport, he will build a hotel in Hospitalet and will remodel the Arenas bullring in Barcelona.