Part of Beijing Design Week “Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners – From the House to the City” on view at the Beijing Capital Museum

TEXT:Sue Wang    DATE: 2012.9.25

Bordeaux law courts

Pritzker Prize-winning British Architect Richard Rogers and his practice, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP), are presenting over 40 years of their best works in a major exhibition, “Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners: From the House to the City” at the Beijing Capital Museum, 21 September to 18 November 2012. The exhibition is a flagship design project within UK Now – A Festival of the UK Arts and Creative Industries – and an important part of the Beijing International Design Week.

About the Exhibition

The “Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners: From the House to the City” exhibition premiered in Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2007 and has since travelled to London, Barcelona, Madrid, Taipei, Singapore and Hong Kong attracting more than half a million visitors to date.

Starting with Richard’s early collaborations with Norman Foster in the 1960s and Renzo Piano in the 1970s, the exhibition covers iconic projects such as Centre Pompidou, Lloyd’s of London and Terminal 4 at Barajas Airport, Madrid, as well as exhibiting current ongoing projects such as the World Conservation and Exhibition Centre at the British Museum, the Leadenhall Building in the City of London and Tower 3 at the World Trade Center site in New York. The exhibition offers an enlightening and insightful journey into how architecture has shaped cities and it covers key issues and challenges of our times, from environmental sustainability, to creating compact, 24-hour cities, and innovation in architectural production processes.

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and the Beijing Capital Museum will run family workshops during the exhibition. The workshops are designed to introduce young people to architecture by giving them an overview of the processes of design – understanding a brief, designing a building and create a model within the context of a city. Using a map of Beijing, participants will allocate different building types and land uses, gaining knowledge of the relationship between buildings and public spaces. RSHP architectural modelmakers will give a demonstration on how to build a model and give hands-on advice and guidance on how to realise the participant’s model design using recycled and professional modelmaking materials. At the end of the workshop, all participants will present their designs to the group and their models will be displayed on the map to create a new city.

[gallery link="file" orderby="title"]

Some of the exhibition highlights include:

? A bright pink 1:2 scale model of a key structural node used at Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport, London

? Original film footage from the 1970s showing the construction of the Centre Pompidou, Paris

? New projects being shown for the first time in Beijing

? An exclusive video interview with Richard Rogers discussing his early works, inspiration and influences

? An interactive model of the Shanghai Pudong Masterplan

? A 35-metre-long timeline incorporating all key works of Richard Rogers and his partners covering more than four decades

? A KONE lift installation

About Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) is an international architectural practice based in London. Over three decades, RSHP has attracted critical acclaim and awards with built projects across Europe, North America and Asia. The practice is experienced in designing a wide range of building types including: office, residential, transport, education, culture, leisure, retail, civic and healthcare. The quality of its designs has been recognised with some of architecture’s highest awards, including two RIBA Stirling Prizes, one in 2006 for Terminal 4, Madrid Barajas Airport and the other in 2009 for Maggie’s London.

RSHP Chairman, Richard Rogers, is the 2007 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, winner of the 2000 Praemium Imperiale Prize for Architecture and the recipient of the RIBA Gold Medal in 1985. Richard was awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1986, knighted in 1991 and made a life peer in 1996. He was Chief Advisor on Architecture and Urbanism to the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone and has played an advisory role on design to the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. He has acted as Chairman of the British Government’s Urban Task Force and was a member of the Mayor of Barcelona’s Urban Strategies Advisory Council.

Richard’s ability to bring together the best team for a job, coupled with a clear design focus and intuitive understanding of how cities and people interact have ensured a string of successful commissions and projects and made a major impact on contemporary architecture. Key projects include the Centre Pompidou, Paris, Lloyd’s of London and Terminal 4 Madrid Barajas Airport.

Richard Rogers Partnership became Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2007 to reflect the growing importance of two of the younger Partners, Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour, and their role alongside Richard Rogers in the practice's future. Together with other long-standing Partners, Stirk and Harbour represent the inherent continuity and consistency of the philosophy which the practice applies to all its work. The name change also demonstrates the practice’s confidence in its ability to continue to meet those challenges still to come.

RSHP employs around 180 people, including 10 Partners, 10 Associate Partners and 57 Associates, in offices across the world – London, Madrid, Sydney and Shanghai.

More information please visit www.rsh-p.com.