Heavyweight, humanist, intellectual hero, and pioneer of the high-tech style. Such are the remembrances of a beloved architectural icon seen in the outpouring of tributes circulating on social media following the death of Richard Rogers in London over the weekend. 

Reminiscent of the Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, Rogers was a genius in the application of color theory to his creative work. His breakthrough Pompidou Center is considered a landmark in part for its incorporation of symbolic color coding as signifiers of the building’s mechanical services and can trace its inspiration to early projects such as the unbuilt Zip-Up House and family home in Wimbledon.

Born in Florence and educated at the Architectural Association and Yale, Rogers was known for his attire as well as his architecture, affecting a style that was noted by almost every architecture student, designer, and member of the press that he interacted with during his illustrious six-decade career. 

“I used to work in [his] office. At the time, Richard was always wearing blue,” architect Takaharu Tezuka recalled in a Vestoj interview. “And everyone in the office was trying to wear blue, because everyone wanted to be like him. Rogers himself didn’t like that solution. So he changed the color to shocking pink, so that nobody could follow. But still, we stayed in blue.” 

“I don't understand why everyone has to wear black, grey, and white,” Rogers once quipped. “I remember my mother taking me to see the Picasso show in the 1940s, and I was impressed by the life and vibrancy of it all. It was a bit too avant-garde for most Londoners at the time, but since then, the city has become a center for modern culture.”

His Pritzker-winning design for the Lloyd’s of London headquarters was the living embodiment of the cultural phenomenon art critic Robert Hughes referred to as “The Shock of the New.” Its initial reception in the late-80s heyday of high finance and the waning social influence of the stodgy upper classes in English society came to be viewed through a contemporary lens as more than just a building but rather as a talisman for the impending changes which today can be seen emergence of high-density cities spread throughout the UK. 

“Both colors and architecture are expressions,” he told ChinaDaily in a 2012 interview. “Colors are components of our buildings, which help to divide functions and bring enjoyment.”

Above all, Rogers strived (though imperfectly) to create an architecture that was “legible” and fundamentally inclusive in a world that had long ago turned away from designing, as he put so aptly in the title of his 2017 memoir, A Place for all People.

“We, the citizens, also need a more engaged public debate,” Rogers wrote near the end of that book, “to celebrate and empower the best architects, to join the struggle for greater fairness and equality, and to demand more from the profession as a whole.”

Richard Rogers was 88 years old.