The Crit #27: Ab Rogers
Do designers like their own work? In The Crit, a podcast from Disegno, we find out the answer!
Each fortnight, Disegno’s editor-in-chief Oli Stratford invites a leading designer to Kef Music Gallery to review their own work. Our guest reveals what worked best; what failed; what pushed their career to new heights; what feedback most shaped their practice; and what they feel needs to be redesigned.
At the end of each episode, to complete their crit, they’ll be asked to give themselves a grade for their career to date: fail, pass, commendation or distinction.
It’s a design-school crit, delivered every fortnight! Subscribe to the show here, or sign up wherever you get your podcasts from.
Our twenty-sixth guest on The Crit is Ori Orisun Merhav, accompanied by show host Oli Stratford.
Episode #27: Ab Rogers
Ab Rogers is the founder and creative director of Ab Rogers Design (ARD), an architecture and design practice whose focus on experiential sensation and human care is manifest across projects that range from healthcare to retail, hospitality to exhibition design.
Having earlier worked as part of Kitchen Rogers Design, Rogers founded ARD in 2004, with the studio quickly becoming known for projects that played with colour and material, and which were designed around heavy consultation with users, to create human-centred spaces. Whether designing retail spaces such as the Comme des Garçons Paris boutique, exhibitions like Wes Anderson: The Archives at London’s Design Museum, or winning the 2021 Wolfson Economics Prize for a project focused on redesigning hospitals (a project that has resulted in the foundation of the dedicated DRU+ healthcare research unit), Rogers’s work always focuses on the experience and needs of the people who actually use his spaces.
During his crit, Rogers examined his belief in collaboration as an antidote to authorship, his love of cooking as an essential element of his practice, his horror of “wackiness” in architecture allied to the importance of triggering delight in a space. He also shared details of his new book Richard Rogers Talking Buildings, a publication that introduces children to urbanism through the celebrated work of his father, architect Richard Rogers.
Show Notes: Ab Rogers
Best design: Maggie’s at The Royal Marsden
Worst design: Waiting room at the Charing Cross Hospital breast unit
Most successful design: Tate Modern Public Concourses
Most impactful feedback: Aric Chen describing his work as “wacky”
Dream design: A culture-centred health hub
This episode of The Crit was recorded at KEF Music Gallery London.
The Crit’s graphics were created by Leonhard Rothmoser.
The Crit’s music was created by Yuri Suzuki and Team Suzuki.