One of Britain’s most celebrated architects, Richard Rogers, known for designing some of the world’s most famous buildings including Paris’ Pompidou Centre, has died aged 88. Rogers, who changed the London skyline with distinctive creations such as the Millennium Dome and the ‘Cheesegrater’ Leadenhall Building, “passed away quietly” Saturday night, publicist Matthew Freud told the Press Association. His son Roo Rogers also confirmed his death to the New York Times, but did not give the cause. Fellow architect, Norman Foster, described Rogers, as a “kindred spirit” whose buildings are “a social mirror” of his personality - “open, welcoming and, like his wardrobe, elegantly colourful”. Foster, who studied alongside Rogers at Yale, would go on to collaborate with him as Team 4, alongside Su Brumwell and Wendy Cheesman. Describing Rogers as “a tireless supporter of the compact, sustainable, pedestrian-friendly city and a passionate opponent of mindless suburban sprawl”, Foster said that he had “fire in his belly… up to the very end”. Paying tribute, former colleagues from Rogers, Stirk, Harbour + Partners, described a man who “was gregarious, always completely free of status, always inclusive, always exploring and looking ahead”. He retired last year from the architecture practice he founded in 1977. A statement said Rogers was a man of “immense drive and charisma” with a love of people, highlighting his political commitment to positive social change. Director Ivan Harbour, said: “I will never forget his wry smile, his infectious laugh, his paternal nature, and his sharp intellect. He was not an archetypical architect, but he was a unique and wonderful human being.” He was married to River Cafe cook and writer Ruth Rogers, and had five grown-up children – three from a previous marriage to Brumwell – and 13 grandchildren. His son Bo died in 2011 at 27 from a seizure. The Italian-born architect won a series of awards for his designs, including the 2007 Pritzker Prize, and was one of the pioneers of the “high-tech” architecture movement, distinguished by structures incorporating industrial materials such as glass and steel. He was the co-creator of France’s Pompidou Centre – opened in 1977 and famed for its multi-coloured, pipe-covered facade – which he designed with Italian architect Renzo Piano. Rogers’ other well-known designs include Strasbourg’s European court of human rights and the Three World Trade Center in New York, as well as international airport terminals in Madrid and London’s Heathrow, and the Welsh Senedd. He advised Tony Blair, who awarded him a peerage in 1996, and Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson. He quit as mayoral aide under the latter, accusing Johnson and his team of blocking attempts to design public spaces in London. He was also awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1986, and knighted in 1991. Born in Florence in 1933, his father was a doctor and his mother a former pupil of the famed Irish writer James Joyce. The family fled the dictatorship of Mussolini, settling in England in 1939, when Rogers was six. It was not an easy adjustment. The family, comfortably middle-class in Italy, lived in a single-room flat in Bayswater, London, that ran on a coin metre for heating and a bath in the cupboard. “Life had switched from colour to black-and-white,” Rogers recalled in his 2017 autobiography “A Place for all People”. School was no easier either. Rogers was dyslexic at a time when there was no diagnosis for the condition and he was “called stupid”, he told the Observer in 2017. He was miserable, he said in his autobiography, “crying myself to sleep every night - years of unhappiness”. Happier in later years, he described his upbringing by his leftist parents as “strict in some ways. But as a teenager, they didn’t mind who I slept with, so long as she was there for breakfast. I was brought up to be free.” After the war, his family could return to Italy for summers, and he described his adventures travelling independently from 17, writing, “I ran with the bulls in Pamplona, and dodged ticket collectors by hanging on the outside of trains; I spent a night in the cells in San Sebastian after being arrested by the Franco-ist Guardia Civil for swimming naked in the sea.” He left school in 1951 with no qualifications but managed to gain entry into London’s Architectural Association School, known for its modernism. He completed his architecture studies at Yale in the United States in 1962, where he met Foster. Although buildings were Rogers’ world, he insisted it was the space around them that was key in defining those that worked. “The two can’t be judged apart,” he told the Guardian in 2017. “The Twin Towers in New York, for instance. They weren’t great buildings, but the space between them was.”