Richard Rogers: architecture in public service

Last night I started to write a post with reflections on working in local government, on the occasion of moving on from my role at the Greater Cambridge planning service. This morning I checked my phone to find the news that Richard Rogers had died, prompting a host of other reflections on what public service means for an architect. 

When I was looking for Part 1 jobs in the early 2000s, people were starting to talk about this unit that had been set up in the new Greater London Authority - run by Richard Rogers, no less. The Architecture + Urbanism Unit, or A+UU, was suddenly the place to be. The most talented of my graduating cohort, Emily Greeves, got a job there, and over after-work pints we would hear exciting stories of how they were radically changing the city from their messy studio in City Hall. 

The A+UU made working for the public sector aspirational - something that hadn't occurred to me before. But apart from the A+UU itself (I wasn't brilliant like Emily, and I was so nervous the one time I interviewed for a job there that I completely flunked it) I couldn't see another place with the same ambition and power to actually change things, in either central or local government. It took over 15 years for me to finally try out public sector employment, through the inaugural cohort of Public Practice placements in 2018. 

Public Practice itself is some part of trying to deliver what Rogers called for in his 2008 speech in the House of Lords “Trained architects should be placed at the heart of decision-making, at ministerial level in government and at cabinet level in local authorities. We must make sure that these design champions have the clout to make a real difference to decision-making.” PP has turned the tide – very slightly – in placing architects into government, but the clout is sorely lacking. The architects who are most technically senior in local and national government are nowhere near the calibre of Rogers, and the big names in contemporary architectural practice aren’t stepping up to the plate of political engagement.

It’s difficult to imagine what politician-architect pairing today could write a manifesto with the depth of Rogers’ 1992 collaboration with the MP Mark Fisher, A New London. We’ve gone from the ambition of Towards an Urban Renaissance to Building Better, Building Beautiful, with its reductive formulas and lack of social agenda. The weak mantras around ‘beauty’ suggest that the only thing wrong with our towns and cities is the styling of their facades. Rogers understood that it was the structure and functioning of a place – not the styling – that made it successful. He knew that architecture could only be part of the process of renewal – not the answer in itself – and that social, environmental and economic policies all needed to be part of the mix.

Rogers was passionate about the impact of places on the people that lived in them, and an eternal optimist that places could be transformed for the better. So are many architects and planners. But few with reputations to lose put themselves consistently in the front line, as Rogers did for so many years – and are willing to take all the flak that came with it, as he did. It was brave, public-spirited, and inspiring - and I, for one, am grateful.