Tower 3 of the New York World Trade Center | NY
Richard Rogers, the influential British architect, his the 2007 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize. The Pritzker, for those of you who may not know what it is, is the highest accolade that a living architect can receive, and has been awarded to such luminaries such as Zaha Hadid (Iraq and UK), Rem Koolhaas (Netherlands), Luis Barragan (Mexico) and Norman Foster (UK).
Rogers is best known for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which was designed in conjunction with Pritzker winner Renzo Piano. The building which can only be described as a landmark in modern architecture is shocking in its treatment of its façade. Rather than hiding the mechanical services, the design called for the exposure of all the plumbing, ducting and wiring around the principal façade of the building. The building started a trend for him that continued with the Lloyd’s of London building, Barajas Airport , the extremely controversial but impressive nonetheless Millennium Dome, and more recently Tower 3 of the New York World Trade Center project. All of Rogers’ projects show an interest in exposing the services of the building, providing a feel of the building as a working machine and understanding the required flexibility of the modern user.
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