Name : Yu Tieng Wei

Metric No. : 155498

Assignment No. : 1a (Individual)

Course : ARC3201 History & Theory of Architecture 2,

Bachelor of Design (Architecture)
2nd Year Semester 1 2011/2012

Due Date : 21st October 2011

A Revolutionized Museum: Pompidou Centre

In the 1970s, new materials and technologies had been introduced, that encouraged
development of a new architectural style – High Tech architecture. The High Tech in
architecture is different from the high tech in the industry. In industry, it means electronics,
microelectronics, mobile phones and other digital appliances, whereas in architecture, it
defines a particular style of buildings, it has nothing to do with high technology (Davies,
1988). High Tech buildings have a framework and character that designed to be flexible,
which it is able to be added to or reduced. Characteristics of High Tech architecture include
the distinguishing display of the building’s structure, technical and service components, and
the use of metal and glass altogether, giving the architecture a new touch of aesthetic.

One of the outstanding examples is the Pompidou Centre, in full George Pompidou
National Centre for Art and Culture. It was the winning entry among 681 entries in the 1971
international competition, for an “information, entertainment and culture centre”. It is located
on the site of Les Halles market in the central of Paris. The competition was an initiative by
Georges Pompidou Jean Raymond, the French President after whom it is named. Its winning
design team was made up of a British architect, Richard Rogers; an Italian architect, Renzo
Piano; and an Irish structural engineer, Peter Rice. Given that, the team submitted their radical
entry at the very last moment and this entry has sparked an architectural revolution in its own
right in Paris, France.

In the past, museums had been elite monuments. However, the Pompidou Centre was
designed as a modern exhibition center for social activities and cultural exchange, totally
subvert the brief which required a cultural centre for Paris. Piano and Rogers redefined the
relationship of the building with culture as “live centre for information and entertainment”
(Sudjic, 1995, p.56). Instead of having the formal, public facades that a museum should have,
the Pompidou Centre was to be presented in a new sort of public forum, with a “nuts-and-
bolts, exposed pipes, technological look” (Kron and Slesin, 1978, pp286). The architecture is
then in sharp contrast to the traditional surrounding houses of Paris’s district.

The goal of Piano and Rogers was to “turn the building inside out”, by exposing the
technical elements of brightly colored tubes on the exterior, including escalators in glass tubes
zigzagging up the building’s principal façade to maximize functional movement and flow,
freeing up internal space and foster an interdisciplinary approach. The use of colours is one of
the important characteristics of High Tech architecture. Hence, the colour-coded service pipes

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and ducts attached to the outside of the building are part of the design concept. The colours
used tend to be primary and for practical purposes: blue for air (air-conditioning ducts); green
for fluids (water pipes); yellow for electricity cables (electrical conduits); and red for
movements and flow (escalators) and safety (fire extinguishers); and white in the underground
areas (ventilation shaft). Moreover, the chosen colour coding – red, white and blue, also
making a French tricolor.

Like the building, the original layout was characterized by flexibility i.e. designed as
an open-plan articulated by the internal spaces that can be altered. Piano and Rogers described
the building as “a giant Meccano set rather than a traditional, static, transparent or solid doll’s
house” (Peel, Powell and Garrett, 1998, p. 97). The open-plan floors of the multistory
building were designed on the lines of an “evolving spatial diagram” in two parts: firstly, a
three level infrastructure housing the technical facilities and service areas; secondly, a vast
seven level glass and steel superstructure, including a terrace and mezzanine floor,
concentrating most of the centre’s area of activity (Bachman, 2002). As built, the original
concept had been compromised with the partial compartmentalization of the interior insisted
on by the fire regulation. Still, the space cannot be committed to a single function because the
whole design is committed to the idea of flexibility.

The Pompidou is the caricature of the Modernist ideal of the building-as-kit-of parts,
where structural elements such as frames, floors or roofs to be made demountable in any
practical sense, that often implied in the form of the building. The building is never quite
complete and final in form. It is an open ended structure, which the structural elements could
be added or taken away without affecting the perfect composition of the building and the use
of internal spaces. With the concept of having the continuity between the inside and the
outside, the form of the Pompidou which is a huge transparent glass box with the exposed
frameworks had enhanced the building’s aesthetic value.

The vast building houses a museum of modern art, reference library, industrial design
centre, temporary exhibition space, children’s library and art centre, audio-visual research
centre (IRCAM), a roof top café and restaurant and a continuous cinema programme. Inside
the Pompidou Centre, light and spaciousness abound. It was the result of the column-free
structure that allows for the display of everything. Both inside and out of the building look
like an exposed steel structure, but in fact is being re-examined as part of a continuing
maintenance and refurbishment programme of the building.

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 The construction work started in April 1972 and work on the metal framework was
begun in September 1974. The building’s framework has 14 porticos with 13 bays, each
spanning 48m and standing 12.8m apart. There are moulded steel beam hangers, measuring
8m in length on top of the posts on each level. The tie-beams anchored on cross bars were
used to balance the 45m long girders rest on the beam hangars, which spread through the
posts. Each storey is 7m high floor-to-floor. It completed in 1977 and cost 993 million of
Francs, in 1972. (Architecture of the Building, 2003)

The Pompidou Centre had successfully created a dynamic place where the modernity
and tradition can profitably interact by having great public involvement and at the same time
enhance the historic cities. As the Pritzker jury stated, “Transforming what had once been
elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of
the city.” (Pogrebin, 2007)

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References

Book:

Buchanan, Peter. (2003). Renzo Piano Building Workshop. Phaidon Press Limited,
pp. 50-63.

Glancey, Jonathan. (2006). Eyewitness Companions Architecture. Dorling Kindersley

Limited, pp. 486.

Kron, Joan and Slesin, Suzanne. (1978). High Tech: The Industrial Style and Source
Book for the Home. New York. Clarkson N. Potter, Inc, pp. 286.

Peel, Lucy; Powell, Polly; Garrett, Alexander. (1998). An Introduction To 20th –

Century Architecture. Quantum Books Limited, pp. 96-99

Sudjic, Deyan. (1994). The Architecture of Richard Rogers. Fourth Estate and
Wordsearch Ltd, pp. 54-63.

Newspaper and Magazine Articles:

Pogrebin, Robin. (2007, March 28). Richard Rogers, architect of Pompidou Center,
wins Pritzker. The New York Time, Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/world/europe/28iht-prize.5.5063163.html?
pagewanted=all

Electronic document:

Bachman, Leonard R. (2002). Integrated Buildings : The Systems Basis of

Architecture. John Wiley & Sons, from
http://www.architectureweek.com/2003/1203/building_1-2.html

Davies, Colin. High Tech Architecture, from

http://www.crowstep.co.uk/Resources/HighTechArchitecture.pdf

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Educational Dossiers : Richard Rogers + Architects, from
http://www.centrepompidou.fr/education/ressources/ENS-Rogers-EN/ENS-Rogers-
EN.html

Tzortzi, Kali. (2009). The Art Museum as a City or a Machine for Showing Art? from
http://www.sss7.org/Proceedings/04%20Building%20Morphology%20and%20Emerg
ent%20Performativity/117_Tzorti.pdf

Webpage:

Architecture of the Building. (2003). Retrieved October 14, 2011 from

http://www.centrepompidou.fr/pompidou/Communication.nsf/0/B90DF3E7C7F18CA
EC1256D970053FA6D?OpenDocument&sessionM=3.1.12&L=2

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