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‘Frustrated’ Lord Rogers quits as Boris Johnson's design expert
Katharine Barney, City Hall Reporter18.09.09
Leading architect Richard Rogers today announced that he is to quit his City Hall role as design adviser to Boris Johnson as it did not give him "sufficient scope".
Lord Rogers was deputy Chair of both the Mayor's Design Advisory and Great Spaces panels and offered advice on planning applications. Both panels were chaired by Sir Simon Milton, the Mayor's chief-of-staff and deputy for policy and planning.
Mr Johnson said: "For many years now Richard has played an important role in making London a better place to live, work and visit and I know he will continue to contribute his invaluable experience to that debate."
Lord Rogers, also chief adviser on architecture and urbanism to previous mayor Ken Livingstone, steps down on 14 October.
Reader views (6)
These crabby comments are unfair. Richard Rogers has always been an advocate of cities that work organically, blending old and new buildings and infrastructure of all different styles. He has given his time free to help make the city he loves more beautiful for the past eight years, and he should be thanked for this. In the interests of full disclosure, I worked with him at the GLA.
- Richard, London
Ask Lord Rogers to design a city from scratch and he would make a good job of it. Give him a brief including the words 'sympathetic' or 'context' and he is utterly clueless.
- Tim, London
Mind the door doesn't hit your backside on the way out.
- Ken, Bexleyheath
Good career move, he would have been severely under employed. Why wait another 2 weeks?
- Paul, Rochester UK
This is great news. Lord Rogers will obviously be biased in favour of ugliness, because his own work is ugly.
- Oliver Chettle, Bedford
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
- Annie Hardcastle, Chelsea, UK
