Center Pompidou is one of the buildings that anyone interested in architecture today would regard as Paris’s symbol. This building, which can be considered one of Renzo Piano and RichardRogers’s youth projects, has a different appearance than the classical Parisian landscapes that come to mind even today. Also, try to imagine how the people living in the 1970s reacted to this building.
The construction of the Center Pompidou, the winner of the competition held to evaluate a vast area of two hectares in Paris, started in 1971 and ended in 1977. The building was one of the best examples of High-Tech architecture for that period. Its innovative, modern, and unconventional style has suddenly brought Center Pompidou to the discussion Center. Although it is a significant art center for Paris today, Center Pompidou was not readily accepted in its period. The people of Paris did not like the project, although it was chosen as the first among hundreds of projects. They thought that the Center Pompidou did not reflect the historical texture of the city.
Center Pompidou is a building where modernism is genuinely felt with its glass and steel facade. Moreover, this is not the only point that makes it so extraordinary. Strange-looking colored pipes wrapped around, and details such as the staircase outside of the building must have made it difficult for people of the 70s to love the Center Pompidou.
Simplicity Requires Detail
The Center Pompidou may seem like two newly-grown architects taking the inside of a building outside from a distance. However, much more has been done here. Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers wanted the Center Pompidou to be as free-planed as possible as an art center. It is a very reasonable request for multi-purpose use of fields. However, we think that no one predicted that the duo would attract the entire load-bearing system to the building’s facades.
In Center Pompidou, 48 meters of spans can be passed in one go. Also, there is not a single carrier within a total of 8500 square meters. These are possible with a system named “generate,” specially designed for truss beams, steel carrier systems, and truss beams.
Moreover, Rogers and Piano were not satisfied with those. They seriously did not want any carrier in the area where they will construct the art center. For this reason, they preferred to carry all kinds of elements that require a carrier, from installation pipes to stairs and elevators to the exterior of the building and facades. It is possible to climb to the Pompidou Center’s upper floors with Paris’s views through the escalator that goes around the building.
The designers painted the pipes, carried them to the seven-story building facades, and made them visible in different colors according to their functions. The electrical lines are yellow, while the ventilation pipes are blue. Architects have given plastic value to these pipes as well as functionality.
High-Tech Building and Public Garden
Center Pompidou, which was beyond its time in its period, has also been criticized for using too little of the project area in question. This place, which architects transformed into a public square, is one of Paris’s most popular sites today.
Center Pompidou, one of the successful examples of high-tech architecture, is also proof of how much effort functional simplicity requires. With the Center Pompidou, the star of the people in Paris, which reminds the importance of its fiction and the use of modern materials once again, finally seems to have made peace with its people after fifty years.