So I went to the Royal Academy’s Richard Rogers exhibition. Pretty interesting, but bloody hell, the privilege and self-satisfaction, it is to laugh.
All the way round, there’s a belt of little personal quotes, photos, artefacts and the like that constantly remind you that his parents’ flat in Florence overlooked Brunelleschi’s Dome (I count three mentions), or that he was just having dinner with Ronald Dworkin when, or here’s a photo of our flat in the Place des Vosges during the Beaubourg project, or here’s that book one of his kids wrote. Also, if you like pompous archispeak, it’s an absolute feast.
Further, if he really was so fascinated by the relationship between architecture and democracy, what was he doing in the House of Lords of all places? I actually like a lot of the buildings, and I can’t think of any really defensible argument against Italian food, but bloody hell it’s just annoying.
In the last room, you are invited to leave your ideas for the future of London on stickers. I realised that “Occupy Rogers” would fit on three of the sheets of four in a 4×3 Bell keypad grid, and so here goes – if they haven’t removed it, you’ll need to walk over it to leave.
Also, I think I find some architectural visuals less comprehensible the more handsome they get – really? multicoloured dots showing “investment strategy/new technology” on a administrative map of Paris with no labels?