Ab Rogers on colour, food and the power of architecture on The Modern House Podcast
This month’s guest on The Modern House Podcast is designer Ab Rogers, creative director of his namesake studio, an interior design and architecture practice based in east London. We ask Ab to select his top three homes around the world, plus talk to him about his life, work and love of cooking – listen to the podcast here.
Born to architect parents Su and Richard Rogers, Ab says he grew up “marinated in design”. But while some of his earliest memories might be walking around the building site of the Centre Pompidou, which his father was designing with Renzo Piano in the early 1970s, Ab’s entry to the world of design was far from pre-ordained. Struggling at school with dyslexia and behaviour, he dropped out to become a carpenter aged 16.
It wasn’t until a fortuitous meeting at the Royal College of Art, which he’d tried to get into several times, that Ab began formal art and design training, setting himself on a path that would culminate in his first major commission for Comme des Garcon in 2001. The high-gloss, blood-red shop interior in Paris, “launched the name of the studio”, and set the agenda for later projects – courageous colours, tactility, excitement and an underpinning simplicity have been the themes that have defined the studio’s output ever since.
In a neat narrative dovetailing, Ab’s most recent project, and the one he considers the most important of his career so far, has echoes of his reputation-launching debut. The studio’s Maggie’s Centre at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton is a curvaceous, red-accented space with the same clarity and boldness as his first gig, but with all the sensitivity and tact required from a refuge for cancer patients. It was, as Ab puts it, a project about architecture’s power to uplift and inspire. Tune in now to find out Ab’s top three living spaces around the world, and hear him reflect on his work, life and memories of his childhood, which is coloured by holidays at Pillwood House, the high-tech Cornish holiday home designed by his mother in 1974. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode, and if you could rate and review us, we’d be more than grateful. Happy listening.
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