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| The Rogers house offers a glowing presence by night in the mature suburban garden in which it was built. |
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| The interior of the house is furnished with an eclectic mix of items, including designs by Ernesto Rogers and other designers. |
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| The house is designed to offer both privacy and a sense of openness. |
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| Views into the green space of the garden are an essential element in the experience of the interior. |
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| In contrast to the all-glass principal facades, the boundary walls use prefabricated, story-height, insulated panels. |
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| The house is an evocation of the West Coast of the USA. |
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| Exterior shot showing the openness and transparency of the house. |
Minimal Modernist Architecture 1968
The Rogers House was designed by the British architects Richard + Su Rogers in 1968. The house was designed as a transparent, flexible tube which could be adapted
and extended, or completely opened up to involve everyone – guests, friends
and family.
The house, commissioned by Richard Rogers’ parents, sits within a long and narrow wooded urban plot, opposite Wimbledon Common in South West London and adjoining a major road. It is designed to provide maximum privacy and seclusion, and consists of two separate elements facing on to an internal garden courtyard. The small unit houses the separate flat and pottery studio and acts as a sound barrier between the house and the road. Rogers describes the house as ‘a transparent tube with solid boundary walls.’ The steel structure is brought inside the skin to eliminate maintenance and to simplify junctions between structure and skin. Eight welded clear-span rigid portals fabricated in standard steel sections permit maximum demountability and the re-use of the enclosing envelope and internal partitions. Walls are composite panels of plastic-coated aluminium inner skins with foam plastic core and neoprene jointing system. Flexibility was a high priority and most internal partitions are moveable. Maximum sized, doubleglazed, sealed units in painted steel frames have been used and glazed roofs, neoprene zipped and solar reflecting, enclose the bathrooms. The house represented British Architecture at the 1967 Paris Biennale.
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| Ground floor plan of house and lodge. |
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| Ground floor plan of house and lodge. |
