Sixty-nine-year-old British architect Sir Richard Rogers has been one of the world's foremost architects for the last 30 years. Awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1985, he was further rewarded for his outstanding achievements with a knighthood from the Queen six years later, and Japan's Praemium Imperiale Laureate for architecture in 2000.
It was back in 1977, however, that London-based Rogers, working in partnership with Genoa-based Renzo Piano, first skyrocketed to fame with the Centre Pompidou in Paris, a pioneering postmodern creation that caused a furor at first but has now become one of the city's chief tourist attractions.
The brainchild of the late former French President Georges Pompidou, who envisioned a cultural space wholly distinct in form and content from Paris's leading, "exclusive" galleries of the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay, the Centre Pompidou houses and hosts all forms of contemporary art, from sculpture to paintings, books, cinema, video, performances and music.