richard rogers' legacy honored at his drawing gallery turned vivid pink

Château La Coste presents its annual modern art show

Set in one of the oldest winemaking regions of France, Château La Coste is a vineyard where wine, art, and architecture unite in an annual exhibition launched in 2011, during which visitors discover over forty major modern artworks installed in the open air and five galleries dotted across the 500-acre site. Each year, the vineyard invites artists and architects to explore the domain and create site-specific works in any area that inspires them. Participating visionaries include Frank O. Gehry, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Tracey Emin, and Jean Nouvel. For this year’s fall show, Château La Coste presents Richard Rogers at the Drawing Gallery — a glowingly pink visual experience conceived by Ab Rogers, founder of Ab Rogers Design and the late architect’s son. Fittingly staged at the Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery (2020), a single lightweight structure seemingly floating off its Luberon hillside, the show journeys into Roger’s mind, unpacking the motivations, ambitions, and ideologies that have fuelled his practice over 50 years, offering visitors the chance to explore his architectural legacy and enduring impact.

all images © Stephane Aboudaram | We Are Contents (unless stated otherwise)

an immersive look into Richard Rogers at the Drawing Gallery

Richard Rogers is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential architects of our time, leaving an indelible mark on the 20th-century architectural landscape. He was also a thinker, campaigner, humanist, and activist who began his career in the progressive climate of the post-war years. Through an immersive experience at Château La Coste, the exhibition unravels Rogers’ most radical ideas across his career with ten pivotal projects – seven realized, three unbuilt – Centre Pompidou (1977), to Industrialized Housing (1992), The Millennium Dome (1999), Tree House (2016), concluding with Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery (2020). These projects are from Zip-Up House (1967-69), which Château La Coste presents within a framework of key themes encompassing pragmatic, political, and philosophical concerns rooted in humanist principles, demonstrating the remarkable breadth of Rogers’ unconventional concepts.

distilling and unpacking rogers’ ideas via different mediums

Central to the exhibition is the distillation and deconstruction of the architects’ ideas through different mediums, including drawings, models, and a series of silent films displayed across small screens. In the gallery’s single volume, with walls painted a deep glowing pink, visitors will take in the exhibits as Rogers’ voice fills the space, echoing from an introductory film ‘Exposed’. By presenting the final buildings as by-products of a broader ethos, the show provides a comprehensive understanding of the visionary ideas underpinning Rogers’ illustrious career. Encompassing spatial programming, the public realm, and the role of citizens in shaping their cities, it delves into the psychological impact of built spaces on users and the potential for different architectural forms to influence behavior. These preoccupations illustrate Rogers’ outward-looking language of adaptability and change and how it gave rise to his most influential architectural schemes.

a glowingly pink visual experience conceived by Ab Rogers

how the architect’s son, ab rogers, envisioned the exhibition

Ab Rogers has curated Richard Rogers at the Drawing Gallery’s different levels of detail and complexity, considering the individual visitor’s varying depths of understanding and engagement. One can witness the emergence and evolution of Rogers’ ideas over time or equally explore thematic interconnections, allowing one to traverse between projects and years, unraveling the evolution of his defining ideas and concerns. He says: ‘This is an immersive portrait of a man who never stopped developing his social, environmental, ethical and political passions and for whom buildings were the physical manifestation of his beliefs, but not necessarily the final legacy.’ The show will run until January 10, 2024.