Collaboration: The Lineage of an Architectural Practice

RSHP’s history offers a remarkable lens on the task and the potential of architecture.

Engaging with select themes and projects from RSHP’s nearly four decades of design, this symposium will unravel a series of issues that have been central to the firm’s practice and vital to the practice of architecture, including the role of collaboration and the question of architecture’s relationship to society.

Richard Rogers, Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour will be among the symposium’s speakers, who include RSHP collaborators past and present. Participants are to include Dean Mohsen Mostafavi, K. Michael Hays, Hanif Kara, and Farshid Moussavi from Harvard GSD; Laurie Abbott, Ricky Burdett, Mike Davies, Philip Gumuchdjian, Eva Jiřičná, John McAslan, and Chris Wilkinson, among others.

The symposium will comprise three sessions, organised thematically around the firm’s history and evolution. Opening session “Tradition or Industrialisation?” will trace the firm’s origins and its early relationship with industrial practice. Among specific projects discussed will be the celebrated house that Rogers built for his parents in Wimbledon, London, in the 1960s.

Session Two “The Public and the Private,” will be presented by Graham Stirk and Ivan Harbour and will examine the firm’s private buildings, such as the Lloyd’s and Leadenhall buildings in London, alongside its public projects, including the Centre Pompidou and National Assembly of Wales.

In the final session, “The Task of Architecture,” Rogers will discuss the ongoing issue of social responsibility in architecture. He will then join Mostafavi, Moussavi, and Burdett for a conversation on the field’s potential for societal impact.

“Richard Rogers, Graham Stirk, Ivan Harbour and their collaborators have demonstrated how architecture can have real and lasting influence,” Mostafavi said. “We are grateful for the opportunity to engage in conversations about the practice and potential of architecture, and to use London as a platform for future convenings on its role in society.”

The symposium ‘Collaboration: The Lineage of an Architectural Practice’, is a collaboration between The Harvard Graduate School of Design (Harvard GSD) and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP), held Thursday 17 March from 4.00pm – 8.00pm at the Leadenhall Building in London.

Use #ArchLineage on Twitter to follow the event live.