Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Philip Dodd, and welcome to the Arts and Ideas Discussion Program from BBC Radio 3,

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It would be easy to walk past the unremarkable entrance to his studio in Paris.

But once inside the space is airy, everyone industrious,

and my interviewee is sat at the far end

in a glass office head down, working on what looks like an urban map. He's been working for more

than 50 years. He's now 80. I've come to the Rue des Archive in Le Maire, an old formerly

aristocratic quarter of the city,

to meet a man who's got a claim to have done more than most to reinvent cities since the 1970s.

He's the architect of the Centre Pompidou, O'Bouborg, as it used to be called with Richard Rogers,

an art centre which reinvented what a museum was,

how it looked and how we experience it, of the shard in London, whose spire rises into the sky,

dominating the city's skyline to some people's delight, to the horror of others.

Not to mention legions of other buildings from the new Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, to the horror of others, not to mention legions of other buildings from the New Whitney Museum of

American Art in New York to the new courthouse in Paris and the waterfront of Genoa his hometown.

...