the beaubourg experiment

T h e

B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t

by ALUN DOLTON Dissertation Submitted to the Birmingham School of Architecture University of Central England In partial fulfilment of the Post Graduate Diploma in Architecture

A b s t r a c t

This study is about a process, an experiment, focusing on

the Centre Pompidou at Beaubourg in Paris. Designed by

Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers and built between 1973

and 1977, it places the Centre in a chronological context,

viewing it as an experiment in architecture on a colossal

scale. It investigates the ongoing architectural process that

has resulted in the building of, and the phenomenon of

Centre Pompidou.

T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t C o n t e n t s

P a g e Preface B e a u b o u r g ! 6 Introduction T h e B e a u b o u r g P r o c e s s 9 Chapter 1 B e f o r e B e a u b o u r g 11

Chapter 2 T h e c o m p e t i t i o n 23 Chapter 3 T h e D e s i g n p r o c e s s 29

Chapter 4 B e a u b o u r g , e f f e c t i v e ? 36 Chapter 5 T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y 46 Conclusion L e a r n i n g f r o m B e a u b o u r g 55 Bibliography 57 List of illustrations 60 Appendix F r a g m e n t a t i o n a n d S i m u l t a n e i t y 63

T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t B e a u b o u r g !

P r e f a c e

.

From the terrace of the Sacre Coeur (church of the

Sacred Heart), the Parisian roofscape stretches out for

miles into a vast, diverse panorama, the bustle of the

densely packed streets seems far removed from here. In

amongst the slate rooftops a splash of blue interrupts the

scene, it's not new in fact it has been part of the scene for

over twenty years.

The splash of blue nestling between the rooftops belongs

to the air conditioning and ventilation ducting of Centre

Pompidou.

A later visit to the now legendary product of the union of

Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers completely changed the

course of my studies in architecture, and probably

countless others.

I approached from the sloping piazza with its huge white,

steel air intakes that would not look out of place aboard

an ocean liner. There was an artist offering to draw

caricatures for 500 Francs or some price that I could not

afford at the time, however there were some good

sketches of Mick Jagger and David Bowie. The Piazza

was otherwise populated by clusters of students much the

same as our party, looking, examining, taking

photographs.

I don't remember exactly which day of the week it was,

but there is one day a week that all the Parisian Museums

are closed for cleaning, all of them on the same day!

Unfortunately the day that we picked to go to Beaubourg,

was 'cleaning day'.

The fabled escalator tubes that climb diagonally skywards

across the East facade were stood dormant; the only

people within the tubes were indeed the cleaners. So the

6


arguably, best experience that Paris has to offer for free

was unavailable to the public.

The 'building', 'Centre de Arts et de Culture de Georges

Pompidou' that I had understood as the Pompidou Centre

or simply Pompidou, was one that I knew was an 'inside

out' building to allow for the interior to be arranged freely

and re-arranged at will. At the time I had seen the image

of the external escalators on the cover of a book, and did

not know who the designers were, shame on me! An

architecture student on the second year of the BA course.

However, a close inspection from ground level. The huge

white steel columns, the elaborate system of cross

bracing and tension rods, the dramatic, skeletal, highly

crafted cantilevers, seemingly supporting the escalators,

raised enough interest for me to be reading books and

asking questions for a very long time.

At the northern end of the piazza, adjacent the entrance

to the escalator tube, the concept of supporting great

indeterminate floor spaces becomes apparent with the full

depth of the building visible, the sheer size of the trusses

that span from front to back, 48 metres to be precise. The

whole mechanism that holds these beams in place is

illustrated immaculately at full scale.

The East facade, on the rue de Renard presents a

completely different picture from the one of the West

facade. The elaborate tangle of ventilation ducts, supply

pipes threaded in around the structure. The structural

bays almost hidden beneath the services, being defined

by the cross bracing, each bay slightly different, air

conditioning in one, passenger lifts in another.

7


8

The issue of addressing urban context with such a large

building is surprisingly very well resolved. At the time of

my visit the colours of the external ductwork were not so

strident, faded and partially hidden beneath a thick layer

of grime and pigeon droppings. But somehow the used

look permits it to 'fit in' to the tight grain of Paris as though

it had always been there. The clusters of service pipes not

too dissimilar in form to the clustered columns that are

carved in the Gothic stonework of Notre Dame. But here

the forms serve a functional rationale rather than a

philosophical one.

I began reading around the subject of the design and

started to unravel some of the complexities of the forces

at play on those active facades. The structure to

accommodate change and flexibility to allow for

indeterminate floor volumes.

The external services able to be repaired, altered,

removed and replaced at will without interrupting activities

inside the building. Shall we enter?

Fig. 2 Fig. 1

T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t

B e a u b o u r g P r o c e s s

I n t r o d u c t i o n

The conversation with Pompidou, the building, not the past President of

France, will focus on the process rather than the product in the making of

the building that has become synonymous with Georges Pompidou.

The investigation into some of the design issues and influences at the

time, will create an understanding of some of the reasons for the

phenomenal success of Centre Pompidou

Chapter 1, 'Before Beaubourg', looks at Beaubourg in the 1960's, giving

an overview of cultural and political events, events that have challenged

public opinion and contributed to the climate in which the Beaubourg

competition, this chapter gives a profile of the work of the independent

members of the design team, and their contemporaries to give a

background to the subsequent design process at Beaubourg.

Chapter 2, 'The competition', examines the reason that the competition

was launched and outlines the requirements as defined by the project

brief. The study looks at the members of the competition jury and some of

the entries from fellow competitors, to explain why the Piano and Rogers

scheme was the winner.

Chapter 3, 'The Design process', profiles the design Team's reaction to

and interpretation of the brief, possible influences are investigated to

inform the team's approach to the design problem.

Chapter 4, 'Beaubourg, effective?' examines the reality of the built

design, looking at how the product of this extraordinary design was

received, by the public and critics.

9


B e a u b o u r g P r o c e s s

Chapter 5, 'The Beaubourg Legacy', talks of the subsequent shift in

architectural approach, especially to museum design. The chapter also

profiles the work of the design team, since the Beaubourg project. The

design process is followed through their subsequent projects. The life of

Centre Pompidou is profiled over the past twenty years to give an

informed view of how the design of the Centre will shape up in the future.

The Conclusion, 'Learning from Beaubourg', looks at Beaubourg as a

phenomenon restating its value in the context of youthful experiment.

10

T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t

B e f o r e B e a u b o u r g

Chapter 1

In order to begin to understand the influences shaping

architectural theory in the 1960's it is important to study

the immediate historical context, in which architects

were working. In Europe conditions were particularly

harsh following the second world war, as countries

started the long, painful process of recovery, it was a

time of desperate hardship, rationing and poor health,

financially most countries were struggling as a result of

the War effort. The construction industry also suffered

greatly, there was a material shortage, especially steel,

forcing architecture to take on a new direction.

The deep felt hardships broadened the distinctions

between classes and the

monumentalism of architecture was

seen as a potent symbol of this

bitter class conflict. The issue in

particular, of attitudes towards

museums represents a recurring

aspect of the processes at play in

the design of Centre Pompidou. In

the 1960's museums were considered as monuments to

old In general they were places that nobody went to,

they were in buildings that were, solid, impenetrable,

dreary and dusty, representing esoteric institutions,

places built on preserving a sacred mystique as

something for the elite. Attitudes that were highlighted

by Le Corbusier some four decades earlier in his

publication 'The decorative art of today.' In 1925, where

observations point to people who go to museums feel

that they are a pillar of society. Museums were

regarded by the masses as representing old-fashioned

Fig. 3 three flags. Jasper Johns 1954-1955

11



values held by the upper classes. The very same values

that were being opposed by the 1950's modern

architecture movement.

During 1945 there was a recognised need for architects

to combine form giving with complex socially

engineered planning schemes, these immense

rebuilding programs were being drawn up throughout

Europe, following modernist principles, which were

regarded as the appropriate 'style' for new social

democratic settlement. This accumulation of moral and

functional concerns pushed Architects to integrate their

approach with experience of 'new' methods and

materials that had been gained from tactical necessities

of war. This new wave of building was seen to be

sweeping away signs of status and sentimentality.

Architecture practice was conceived as continuous with

other social and scientific discourses. Modernism was

ideologically opposed to what was regarded as

undemocratic neo-classical grandeurs, embodied in the

design of public buildings during the first half of the

twentieth century. These new notions of participation,

equality and access had determined the new meaning

in architecture, whereas seminal modernist buildings,

like those of Mies, Gropius and Le Corbusier were

known to most students by their monochrome, strongly

lit and uninhabited photographs.

Where manifestos of modernism had previously been

heroic in proposing new ideas, this 'new' modernism

gave way to more explanatory and on occasions,

patronising addresses to the new citizen. Architects

were expected to invest more concerns in sociological

issues and to have a better understanding of new

materials and building techniques.

12



The era of reconstruction planning also saw political

changes such as nationalisation, de-colonisation and

the installation of welfare states. However, many

Architects were working for the local councils where

demands on them to deliver new buildings,

compromised most designs. Architecture was becoming

difficult to consider as a discrete matter between

architect and client, this was a time of fundamental

change, and never before had the opportunity to build

new communities on such a grand scale presented

itself. Architects now had a responsibility to the public!

The attributes of professional practice that belonged to

the pre-war generation was rejected by a new

generation of architects, these had been students in the

radical contexts of the 1930's and were seeing some of

the theories put into practice.

In 1957 MARS, the modern architecture research

group, was dissolved. A moment when, the 'intellectual,

architects weaned on Vers une architecture gave way to

An angrier generation '. 1 Debates on architecture in

1960's, conceived architecture as being continuous with

social and scientific discourses, to the point of

discussing architecture into a hybrid activity.

1. Barry Curtis, Archigram a necessary Irritant, from Concerning Archigram, London 1998.

Part of this movement towards producing an alternative

kind of Architecture was represented by the works of

Alison and Peter Smithson. Peter Smithson was

teaching at the Architectural Association, during the

1950's and 1960's. In 1960, Richard Rogers graduated.

From the AA Finding work with Middlesex County

Council, Architects' Department, whilst applying for

scholarships in the United States. Rogers accepted the

invitation to study at Yale University in 1961. It was at

Yale University, under supervision of Paul Rudolph, that

Rogers joined up with Norman Foster to collaborate on

several projects. Whilst in America, Rogers met another

13



prominent figure in the 1950's modern movement,

James Stirling, and worked briefly for Skidmore Owings

and Merrill. It was in America that Richard Rogers

discovered the works of Buckminster Fuller, who was

already known, for his innovation in design, the

Dymaxion house of 1927 and geodesic domes 1959.

The work of the American represented a technocratic

idealism of efficiency, in 1962 Fuller proposed a giant

dome over the whole of mid town Manhattan to act as a

smog shield.

In Britain major players in the

architectural debate were Cedric

Price whose Fun Palace and

potteries think belt projects

provided a new discourse in

architecture placing emphasis

on indeterminacy of use and

construction.

Fig. 4 Cedric Price Fun Palace, 1961

In 1961, a new experimental architecture group of

Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David

Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb, began

publishing their Architectural Telegram, starting as a

broadsheet and becoming a magazine, spawning the

group name 'Archigram'. The group's work represents a

set of proposals through which to view the 'New World'.

The restlessness of the population was seen as the

cultural condition, developing a territory in which

Archigram could explore new ideas. Archigram is about

possibilities in architecture both/and rather than

either/or, in a New World where nomadism is a

dominant stasis. Consumption, Lifestyle and Transience

become the programme for the projects. This

conceptual shift was one from interests in commodity,

towards interest in protocols, structures and processes

in mid twentieth century culture. In this new context of

14



consumerism, the work displayed a marked optimism in

technology and pure faith in the future. The intention

was not to restyle modernism, In an era where panic

seemed to be the psychological mood of Post-

Modernism, Archigram represents a point of slippage

between modern and Post Modern.

One of the best known projects, the 'Plug in city' is a

total project that is the

combination of a series if

ideas worked upon

between 1962 and 1964.

The prototype was the

metal cabin housing

project of 1962; the

progression became the placing of removable house

elements into a concrete megastructure. As the

discussions of Archigram 2 and 3 built up arguments in

favour of expendable buildings, the further investigation

evolved into what would happen if the whole

environment could be programmed and structured for

change.

Fig. 5 Peter Cook: Plug-in city Maximum Pressure area, 1964.

Aside from the architectural debate, the 1960's were a

turbulent decade whose events set part of the

contemporary context in which the new generation of

architects were working. It was the time of the 'Cold

War' and the 'Space Race', the Vietnam War, political

crises concerning The Suez Canal and Cuba, the

Profumo sex and spies scandal, the great train robbery

and the Kennedy assassination. Events such as Harold

Wilson's Scarborough Speech on 'the white heat of

technology', and the world wide student crises and

resulting political turmoil, In response to consumer

society came Pop Culture.

15



Pop art had developed during the

late 1950's and into the 1960's with

prominent American artists such as

Jasper Johns, Roy Liechtenstein,

and Andy Warhol, probably best

known for his mass produced

portraits and Campbell's Soup can

paintings. Fig. 6. Marilyn Diptych, By Andy Warhol, 1962, Oil, Acrylic and silk screened enamel on canvas.

Richard Hamilton of the RCA published a Pop Art

Manifesto. Describing Pop Art as: designed for a mass

audience, being concerned with transience and offering

short term solutions, Expendable and easily forgotten,

low cost and mass produced, young in that it is aimed at

youth, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous and big

business.

In 1963, California was in the grip of 'Flower Power' and

the haze of Marijuana and sitar music of the Hippy

movement.

In the same year, Richard and Su

Rogers returned to London to set up

'Team 4' architects with Norman Foster,

who completed various projects, mainly

private houses and two factories,

Reliance Controls at Swindon being the

best known. Winning the Architectural

Design Award in 1966 and the Financial

times Award for the most outstanding

work of industrial architecture in 1967,

Reliance controls was the last project of

team 4. This signified a change in

direction of the Two partners, inevitably,

1966 saw the break up of Team 4.

16Fig. 7. Team 4 Reliance Controls, Swindon



In 1968 global events forced a major change of

direction in culture. In France a crisis developed out of

an increasing gulf between French people and its

leaders during 1965 and 1967. The people were

challenging the basis for reconstruction of post war

France. They felt a distinct shortfall between the

traditional 18th century values, which structured the

organisation of French society, and the realities of

growth and consumption, patterns. Unrest took the

conventional logical pattern students - society - politics.

The student revolts were part of an international

movement, particularly in the US, Japan and West

Germany. The driving force was the rejection of

consumer society and traditional social values. Students

were reacting against disparities between industrialised

nations and developing countries. It was forced by a

Marxist derived critique of oppressive capitalism,

environmental destruction and pollution. The Principal

student demand was the right to happiness and

achievement of liberty and basic needs that they felt

were being threatened by Vietnam War. Demonstrators

also stormed the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square,

London to protest against the Vietnam War.

The French University system was unable to cope with

the dramatic increase in student numbers. The

students felt were being handled in an adhoc

way by government. Numbers of Professors

and lectures were extremely inadequate,

coupled with the lack of accommodation,

demonstrations became widespread leading to

riots in Paris, subsequent events led to strikes

of workers in public and private sectors from the grass

roots level - resulting chaos ground France to the halt.

Fig 8. Whaam! Roy Liechtenstein. Acrylic on canvas, 1963

17



The events of 1968 Paris represented the most

traumatic period in French history since the Second

World War. During this period new experimental

architecture groups emerged, expressing new ideas to

further broaden the parameters of architectural theory.

Swiss-French Architecture Bernard Tcshumi was a

student at the ETH Zurich in 1965, later comments upon

the events of 1968, talking of the need for architecture

that might change society, highlighting demands for

adaptation of space to the existing social and political

structure. He expressed a fascination with the

metropolis generating unexpected cultural

manifestations, following observations of the misuse of

cities, particularly Paris. In his essay 'The environmental

trigger' at the AA in 1972 he was asking 'How could

architecture and cities be a trigger for social and

economic change?' Identifying three possible roles for

architects, one, to conserve out historical role as

translators of form givers. Two, critics and

commentators, intellectuals who reveal the

contradictions of society, and thirdly as revolutionaries

using environmental knowledge to be part of

professional forces trying to arrive at new social and

urban structures.2 In Paris were another group, Utopie

who were experimenting in the use of inflatable

structures. As a tutor at the AA in London Tschumi

worked with Superstudio and Archizoom, who were

making ironic and critical projects from1969.

2. Bernard Tcshumi 'Architecture and Disjunction.' MIT Press 1996

18



In 1968, three members of the Archigram team moved

to the USA, Ron Herron, Warren Chalk and later Peter

Cook, to teach at UCLA. Three AA students also moved

to Los Angeles to escape the volatile situation that was

developing in Europe of 1968, Alan Stanton, Chris

Dawson, and Mike Davis. The three, taking the name

Crysalis, were being tutored at UCLA by Peter Cook,

Ron Herron and Arata Isozaki. One of the major

projects of Crysalis was the Myra Breckonridge Dome,

a mirrored dome for Osaki Expo 1969. Some of the

other experimental groups at the time include

Zund-up, Missing Link, 999, Clip-kit, Wolf Prix and

Helimuth Swicinsky from Austria, who formed Coop

Himmelblau in 1969. The Chrysalis practice joined

Piano and Rogers in 1973.

The Archigram team returned to London in1969 to set

up an office after winning a competition for an

Entertainments centre in Monte Carlo.

Fig 9. Monte Carlo Entertainments Centre.

In Prague, 1968 saw the invasion of Soviet Troops,

after two years of Czech independence from Moscow.

In the thousands of young people emigrating from

Czechoslovakia emerged Architect, Jan Kaplicky who

arrived in London, in the September. Although Kaplicky

had completed works in private practice whilst in

Czechoslovakia work was difficult to find in London, at

most interviews, nobody believed that he had built

concrete houses and built a lightweight steel entrance

ramp. Eventually after working for small practices,

19



Kaplicky joined the office of Denys Lasdun in 1969,

subsequently working for two years on the National

Theatre, on the south bank of the Thames. During this

time Kaplicky with fellow émigré Eva Jiricna, entered

the competition to design an extension to house the

Burrell Collection in Glasgow.

The late 1960's saw the completion of important

projects by the Richard Rogers office, in particular the

Rogers and Spender Houses, and theoretical projects

known as Zip up houses. In July 1969 Richard Rogers

produced two manifesto's explaining the practical and

technological bases for their work. The theoretical

manifesto talks of expressing need for Architecture to

become multi-disciplinary activity placing the architect

and student in a position to question whether an object

is needed at all. Being able to suggest complete

reconsideration of any problem on the part of the client.

The practical manifesto sets the precedent of Rogers'

subsequent work, the points of which are listed below.

'1 general purpose to cater for different requirements. 4. Bryan Appleyard. Richard Rogers, biography.

2 maximum flexibility to accommodate change.

3 minimum erection time.

4 high environmental standard.

5 minimum maintenance.

6 minimum number of prefabricated components.

7 dry joints.

8 use maximum spans to give flexibility to partitioning.'4

20



In 1964 Renzo Piano graduated from Florence

Polytechnic and worked mainly in Milan on a number of

research projects whilst working for Franco Albini. The

research projects, described by Piano as having a

utopian element, were looking for absolute space

without form, structure without weight, concentrating on

lightness, flexibility and ease of construction.

The projects include a mobile sulphur extraction plant in

1967, the tunnel enclosure, uses small lightweight

modules that can be assemble by hand. In

essence, the enclosure 'crawls' along the ground

as the operation progresses. The explorations in

use of lightweight panels and structure became

further refined in the pavilion for the fourteenth

Trienalle Expo in Italy, 1967 and the Italian

Pavilion for the Osaka Expo of 1969.

During this time piano had also worked with Z.S.

Malowski in London, developing a knowledge of spatial

structures, and with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, on the

Olivetti Underwood factory, at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Fig. 10 Renzo Piano. Detail of Italian Pavilion at Osaka Expo 1969

Renzo Piano contacted Richard Rogers expressing

admiration for his work, pointing out similarities in

directions with his own work, frequent meetings

possibility of their collaboration. The practice of Renzo

Piano joined forces with John Young, Marco

Goldschmied and Richard Rogers in 1970. The new

practice became a virtuoso performer employing an

alternative approach to Architecture building up a

stylistic repertoire using radical materials. Technological

and practical considerations were based upon elements

of the designs of Buckminster Fuller, expressing ideals

of a world saved, by using efficiency of new design and

materials.

21



In the January of 1971 Piano and Rogers entered

competition for museum housing Burrell collection in

Glasgow, their entry was unplaced but provided an

important platform to exhibit their 'Sophisticated

awareness of building and manufacturing processes.' -

Piano and the 'Expressive powers and beauty of steel.' -

Rogers. In the march of 1971 Kaplicky joined Richard

and Su Rogers, John Young and Marco Goldschmied,

to become Job Architect for a project for a penthouse

office suite for Design Research Unit at Aybrook Street

in London.

The engineers Ove Arup and

Partners had recently

achieved international

recognition for being the

engineers on the hugely

controversial Jorn Utzon's

Sydney Opera House. It was

Ted Happold contacted

Rogers expressing an interest in collaborating with the

Practice on a building competition in Paris.

Fig 11. Sydney Opera House. Jorn Utzon with Ove Arup and Partners.

22


23

T h e C o m p e t i t i o n

Chapter 2 Situated in the historic centre of Paris Plateau

Beaubourg is within a kilometre of Notre Dame and the

Louvre, and is on the edge of the densely populated

Marais Quarter.

Les Halles, built by Victor Baltard,

under the direction of the great

rebuilder of Paris, Baron Haussmann,

in 1853, being built in iron and glass,

was one of the world's greatest

markets being a popular focus for

activity. The market was no longer

large enough to supply the whole of

France, plans to redevelop the site

had been considered since before the Second World

War, where a project had been initiated but

subsequently abandoned.

Fig 12. Les Halles

Centre National d' Art et de Culture (CNAC) resulted

from an entirely different project, in which the entire

area was to be developed, in 1967 plans were drawn up

in which Les Halles would be demolished to partly to

make way for a new metro line beneath the market. A

small number of French architects submitted designs

that included a new Museum of Modern Art, a new

business centre, a new building for the Ministry of

Finance, with offices, hotels, dwellings, in short a whole

new a commercial centre and public transport

interchange.


24


At that time, the Beaubourg plateau was being used a

truck park for Les Halles, it had been one of the most

densely packed quarters of Paris which was cleared of

slum housing in the 1930's due to its high levels of

prostitution and tuberculosis. The first firm decision that

anything would be built on the site was taken in 1968,

when it was announced that a new library be built on

the Beaubourg Plateau. In the discussions about the

future of Les Halles the markets were to be moved out

of the city centre to the suburb of Rungis, the debates

drew attention the whole Marais district.

When political events intervened, Georges Pompidou

succeeded Charles De Gaulle as President 1969.

Continuing in the tradition of his Royal predecessors, to

spent vast sums of public money on ambitious building

projects. Georges Pompidou adopted the earlier

scheme to build a library at Beaubourg, proposed under

the De Gaulle Government, but combining it with the

idea of including a Museum of Modern Art to replace the

Pallais de Challiot which had a magnificent collection

but only attracted small numbers of visitors, due to its

inadequate facilities. The project was initially

commissioned by the Ministry of culture, Pompidou

became the driving force, who with his wife were great

admirers of modern art and decided from the outset that

the Ministry of culture was not to run the project, to

avoid restriction by existing thinking on arts centres. He

set up a team to produce a brief for an international

competition.

Pompidou's aim was for millions of people to know his

name; Pompidou wanted the best in the world for the

glorification of Paris.


25


In 1970 the brief was set for the provision of a Cultural

Centre, that was to comprise four main specialist

activities. Including a Museum of Modern Art; a

reference library; a centre for industrial design and a

centre for music and acoustic research. The centre also

required supporting services including a car park and

restaurant. The building area totalling 1 million square

feet. The brief mentioned the general notion of an

information centre, placing emphasis on making the

place active all day, the idea being to avoid the

deadness that afflicts arts palaces during the day,

expressing the notion of flexibility.

Pompidou assembled a jury led by Jean Prouve,

innovative French Engineer.

Philip Johnson, virtuoso New York Architect, who had

worked alongside Ludwig Mies van der Rohe on the

Seagram Building, whose approach to 'post modern'

architecture delivered the A, T & T Building, also in New

York.

Oscar Niemeyer an internationally renowned Architect,

best known for his designs for the Government

Buildings of Brasilia between 1956 and 1963.

Aillaud, largely unknown French architect.

Michel Laclotte, curator of paintings at the Louvre.

Gaetan Picon, French writer.

Jorn Utzon, the Danish architect of the world famous

the Sydney Opera House.

Herman Liebaers, director of the Royal Library of

Belgium.

Sir Dick Francis, former curator of the British Museum.

Willi Sandberg, a Dutch Museum curator who had been

a major influence in contemporary thinking about

museum design.


26


The selection process involved 681 entries from

architects from fifty countries. Architects initially limited

themselves to the design of a new museum but not

along traditional lines. There were ideas about breaking

through the imposing facade to present to the man in

the street. This would be a monument to Pompidou in

the centre of old Paris therefore the issue of context

would play a key role on the design process.

Fig 13. Competition entries

Manfred Schiedhelm proposed a transparent

dome covering entire plateau. The scheme

received an honourable mention.

The Dennis Crompton and Will Alsop proposal

uses partial underground structure. Some

elements of the design are not too dissimilar to

Archigram's competition winning design for an

Entertainments centre at Monte Carlo. The

Scheme received an honourable mention.

Moshe Safdie whose proposal covered the

entire site with underground areas, beneath a

stepped overhanging structure.


27


Minoru Takeyama whose scheme involved

placing most of the structure underground to

leave a greater area open to the public.

Charles Vandenhove whose proposal was to

cover the entire site with a megastructure

following neo-miesian grid.

Jan Hoogstad whose brutalist, proposal

covered most of the site, allowing for some

degree of public space much in the manner of

Alvar Aalto.

J.L.C. Choisey, R. Quendag, G. Martens'

proposed to cover the entire site with a

modernist megastructure.


28


The design of Piano and Rogers demonstrates

a departure from the approaches in design of

the other entries. Illustrating a clear

understanding of the urbanity of such a project.

Where many designers sought to cover the

whole site, the winning entry leaves half of the

site clear to allow the city to breathe, replacing

some of the open space that would be lost with

the departure of Les Halles.


T h e d e s i g n p r o c e s s

29

The Eiffel tower has been accepted as architecture. 1. Le Corbusier,

The decorative art of today.

In 1889 it was seen as the aggressive expression of mathematical calculation. In 1900 the Aesthetes wanted to demolish it. In 1925 it dominated the exhibition of modern decorative arts. Above the plaster palaces writhing with decoration. It stood out pure as crystal. Le Corbusier.1

As the design team considered the competition, Richard

Rogers was violently opposed to the idea of entering,

he saw the project as one of wasteful flamboyance and

grand gesture. For Rogers the idea of a cultural centre

with its elitist overtones conflicted with the principles

that defined his work.

In France, the fact that the government had played such

a central role in the wars with students during the May

of 1968, Rogers felt a deep mistrust of the very word

'culture', and the notion that it was to be accommodated

in a national arts centre, a cultural monument to one

man, compounded his reluctance.

The image of French riot police was a consistent

element of hate iconography of the late 1960's. Even as

late as 1971 the image of armed police on the streets

overwhelmed the Piano and Rogers team.

Rogers believed that feelings within besides the British

Architectural profession, that the competition was one of

a forum for architectural ideas rather than a serious

building were held by those who had misread the

situation, this was a live project which was going to be

built! This was the President's pet project; it was felt that

the usual beaurocracies such as the Ministry of Culture,



30

whose involvement could normally scupper such a

project, had been bypassed, by the president's direct

involvement. It was widely held that no nation other than

France could win.

Renzo Piano was in favour of entering on the basis that

the practice had no work and stood to lose nothing.

Eventually Su Rogers agreed with Piano's stance and

Richard Rogers was out voted by Su, Piano and

Happold; so the team agreed to enter, the project was

financed by Arups to the tune of £300. A colleague of

Renzo Piano, Giancarlo Franchini joined the practice

from Genoa to assist in the production of competition

drawings.

As the team began to discuss the design of Beaubourg,

Rogers' initial concerns subsided as the design team

conceptually changed the brief to suit their own

preoccupations. From an early stage Piano and Rogers

assembled a team to investigate ways of giving the

centre a wider mix of activities, a deliberate subversion

of the brief the idea of a cultural centre replaced by 'Live

centre for information and entertainment'. 2 Aim to

produce a flexible container that would become a

dynamic communications machine made using

prefabricated components. The objective to attract a

wide a public as possible, cutting across traditional

institutional limits, making a peoples' centre, a university

of the street, becoming an urban landmark, a

replacement for the missing Agora. The new centre

would be a high-tech Agora, a special place within the

city, part of the public domain. Here the term High-tech

refers to the medium of communication rather than the

architecture.

2. Brian Appleyard. Richard Rogers, Biography.



31

The design approach signified a change of emphasis

that would combine elements of Times Square and the

British Museum. The design cultivated the public square

by sinking the building into the ground and occupying

only half of the site area.

3. From the Design Brief, as cited by Deyan Sudjic, in 'The Architecture of Richard Rogers.

'In our eyes the square was as important as the building. In a

city as dense as Paris, we thought it was important not to

occupy the whole of the site.' 3

It was to be a place wholly devoted to spectacle, a

place where people would, look, meet, talk, eat, drink

and shop, pushing the 'museum' towards becoming a

public space. On a building enclosing 1 million square

feet, the size of Harrods, transparency and permeability

became major design issues.

In response to the museum becoming the Antithesis of

1960's culture. The Underpinning Approach to the

design was the conviction that traditional museum was

no longer relevant.

Where initially Rogers felt that the competition brief

represented bad faith that opposed Fullerian values of

efficiency and flexibility, the design brief was to produce

a building that was rigorously worked out with Flexibility

becoming a central design element. The initial design

issues providing maximum flexibility were answered by

proposing 150feet 48 metre clear span movable floors,

at the time of entering the team had no idea of how this

was to be achieved, and the main floors remain static in

the completed building.



32

Technology was seen by Richard Rogers as not being

an end in itself but must aim at saving long term social

and ecological problems. The design pays a clearly

acknowledged debt to Archigram and Cedric Price's fun

palace project of 1961, the fusion of seductive imagery

of Archigram and Victorian engineering. Combining

visual bravura with structural pragmatism.

For Piano and Rogers the roots of modernism were in

the Fabrications of Joseph Paxton at London's Crystal

palace in 1851; and with Duterts's Gallerie des

machines, built for the Paris exhibition of 1889 these

early steel structures emphasised tension at every

point, evoking movement rather than stasis, they were

'Live Buildings.' By being simple spatial enclosures

producing vast rectangular internal areas that could be

filled with appropriate activities, these spaces could be

changed without the need for further architectural

modification.

Fig. 14 Gallerie de Machines, 1889.

In contrast most modernist buildings highly planned and

deterministic, whereas in the 1960's the ethic was of

indeterminacy. Modern architecture with its pursuit of

pure forms, the architects were forgetting a key attribute

of the city, its messy changeability. As buildings

became more pure, the street life became less so. At

Beaubourg, the design brief submitted by Piano and

Rogers talked of the need for buildings to possess the

ability to change, especially as institutions often change

more quickly than the buildings built to accommodate

them. The ability for a building to change was

considered to be a vital design issue, being able to

change in its plan, section and elevation. This was seen

to be instrumental in allowing people the freedom to do

their own things, the building's expressive construction

detailing, along with the order and scale, would create a



33

clear understanding of the process of building and how

it could be used. Each individual component was

optimised being, carefully designed to express the

forces at play on the building, whilst achieving the

maximum efficiency in position and during the

manufacturing processes. The structure regarded by

the Engineers Ted Happold and Peter Rice, as being a

flexible framework rather than traditional building. The

design of each individual component, from its storage,

transportation, erection and connection, were all

carefully considered, and in the completed building

would be expressed within a clearly defined and

notional framework.

The framework was conceived as one that should allow

for performance to take place inside and out, so blurring

the boundaries between within and without, turning its

back on the traditional idea of the museum.

4. Richard Rogers as quoted in 'The architecture of Richard Rogers', Deyan Sudjic.

The new building was communicated as being a 'free

and changing performance which would clearly express

the architecture of the building, a giant Meccano set

rather than a traditional static transparent or solid dolls

house.'4

It was anticipated that the new centre would naturally

focus attention and excitement within the ancient city

quarter, allowing for interaction between all members of

the public, free of class distinction, free of national and

regional differences. It was intended that dynamic

forces of public participation, the provision of an event,

would revitalise the entire quarter of the city.

The design organisation made four major zones, the

environment and the square, the superstructure, the

sub structure and IRCAM, which is situated, beneath

ground.



34

The sub-structure at street level contains a forum,

theatre, cinema, shops, reception, cafe, children's area

and exhibition areas. Bus and car arrival areas are

situated beneath the public square.

In the competition design, external video screens were

to cover the building with constantly updated moving

images, these were omitted for fears of political

agitation although the fixings are in place on the

completed building.

Renzo Piano talks of the concepts of culture at the start

of the seventies, taking different directions, there was

the traditional view of culture in an institutional, esoteric,

or even intimidating context; or of culture that was

spontaneous, unofficial and informal. The team opted

for the latter being that they wanted to produce a way of

concentrating unofficial culture, in a place that is entirely

open to the public. The proposal was that this would be

achieved by the design of the building by

accommodating the movement of people on the outside

of the building, in the suspended glass elevator tubes.

'The transparency dominating the urban panorama,

creating a spectacle in itself, the idea being that nothing

is rigid, the container is flexible, being adaptable

through soft mechanisms.' 5

5 & 6. Renzo Piano. the 'Renzo Piano Logbook.'

The place that is open to change integrates many

functions as opposed to segregating them. Renzo Piano

describes the building as a diagram which people can

read in a flash, by seeing the way that people get

around, using the exposed lifts and escalators.



35

The centre acting as a magnet, to draw the crowds into

that part of Paris addresses the issue of urban context,

it acts as a catalyst reactivating a relationship with the

surrounding area.

'The streets and building form a homogenous space:

they penetrate and shape each other.'6

Fig. 15. Competition Drawing


36

B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?

Chapter 4.

'Sometimes the use to which the construction is put

surprises its creator, and sometimes the creator is to

incorporate this into future projects. In practice as well as

in theory, the process of construction is always in

movement, "Never finished."' 1

1. Renzo Piano, commenting on the finished building in the 'Renzo Piano Logbook.'

The events of 1968 highlighted the individual's need of

development, education and cultural expression;

President Georges Pompidou translated these needs

into the need for a bond between knowledge of the arts

and democracy.

Centre Pompidou was completed within the time frame

and within budget. The process of getting the Centre

built was a difficult one; there were several attacks on

scheme during construction. Six lawsuits were brought

against the scheme to try to prevent it being built for

various reasons. Steelwork had to be brought in from

Germany almost in secrecy; it's quite difficult to hide a

48m steel truss in the centre of Paris! As with many

ambitious projects, certain elements of the design

process become omitted or 'designed out' as other

factors begin to influence the design. At the time of

entering a competition it is extremely difficulty to

summarise any design process into a few pages in

which to sell an idea.

Fig. 16

The major influence was that the project instigator,

Georges Pompidou died in 1974. His successor Giscard

d' Estang, 'called in' the project along with Les Halles.

As a result Arups produced a lengthy report to show

that eighty percent of the construction cost had already

been committed in the project. Giscard did not 'pull the


37


plug' on the Centre, but demanded that certain

elements be cut from the scheme.

The building was reduced in height by one storey, the

Institute de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique

Musique, (IRCAM) was reduced in size significantly.

Where in the original scheme, it would be

accommodated in the main building; it was sunk

beneath the piazza, adjacent the Centre.

As a result, the completed Centre

Pompidou is not quite the open ended

structure that Piano and Rogers had

planned, its permeability impaired by

fire regulations and the cuts that

Giscard had demanded.

However, many of the original design

features have survived the building programme to be

part of the finished building. The built product is the third

version of the design, it is pretty much the 'Live centre

of information'2 as stated in the competition entry, with

the exception of electronic signage systems. Giant

screens were proposed that would cover the west

facade of the building, to address the piazza with

constantly updated moving images, these were shown

in the competition winning design and have even made

it through to the final design model. Unfortunately these

proved to be too much for the Parisian authorities,

which feared that the screens would be used for political

agitation. However, the fixings for these devices are in

place on the finished building should the authorities

have a change of heart.

Fig. 17 IRCAM Piazza.

2. Piano & Rogers, Competition Entry, as quoted By Bryan Appleyard in Richard Rogers Biography.

Centre Pompidou represents to a degree a form of civic

disobedience, an 'exploration of the concept of the

adaptable, pluralist institution', 3 and in many ways

makes a deliberate taunt aimed at conservatism usually

associated with such institutions. It challenges

3. Richard Rogers. Cities for a small planet.


38


4. Renzo Piano. Renzo Piano logbook.

convention, it communicates a refusal to inflict

institutional kind of building on the heart of Paris, a city

'already over burdened with memories.' 4

The Centre has been likened to being 'obviously a

realisation of the technological and infrastructural

rhetoric of Archigram', 5 'The Pompidou centre is

Archigram's Plug-in city.'6 referring to its exposed

structure and mechanical equipment. However, leading

Archigram member, Peter Cook comments on these

comparisons, talking of his proposal for a plug-in city.

5. Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture, a critical history.

6. Charles Jencks, Modern Movements in Architecture.

'You plug it in, pull it out, bits of it come and go. So it

can be said to involve metamorphosis, though the basic

structure is on along stay cycle and the capsules on a

short stay cycle.' 7

7. Peter Cook, Six Conversations.

Making the clear distinction between Pompidou and the

Plug-in city. Although the image of the Centre does

capture some of the mood as expressed in Archigram

drawings.

The construction of Centre Pompidou was conceived as

a kit of parts that could be assembled in various ways.

Referred to as a high-tech prototype, in view of its

aesthetic seemingly derived from technical structure, 'to

see it as high-tech is misunderstanding'8 the design.

Centre Pompidou is certainly a machine, that flaunts

brightly coloured metal and transparent tubing,

represents the fulfilment of an urban symbolic function

rather than a technological one. The technological

function could have been equally effective, using a

concrete structure; the services could have been

concealed behind a cladding system, presenting a

formal facade to the street scene.

Fig. 18

8. Renzo Piano The Renzo Piano Logbook.


39


'The building was conceived not as a monument but as

a people's place where different ages, interests and

cultures can come together.'9

9. Richard Rogers. Cities for a small planet.

Centre Pompidou is essentially place, of meeting and

contact, the layered facade giving a sense of

permeability, placing the exhibits on show, the scale of

the building being defined by the articulation of its parts

rather than its mass. 10. Renzo Piano. Renzo piano logbook.

The designers fiercely defended the four and a half

hectares of pedestrian space at street level.

'It only makes sense to build a transatlantic liner of this

kind if it places art at the social life of the city.' 10

There is a need for the Centre to be located in the city

centre, it was seen as essential that the new building

created of relationship with its context, a one hundred

thousand square building could never be made to fit in.

Such prominent features as the Escalator tube,

extending the Piazza up the face of the building,

represents a game played with technology. Whilst riding

on the escalator you can be inside and outside the

building at the same time. Fig. 19

Renzo Piano talks of the program, being highly

innovative and open, a program requiring a radical

response. The approach to the design makes a double

provocation, firstly it is a challenge to academicism, and

secondly it is intended as a parody of technological

imagery of the time. It represents the exact opposite of

technological model of an industrial city. It represents a

Medieval village of 25,000 people, who visit the centre

every day to experience the various events that the

Centre accommodates. The only difference is it extends

upward, the streets follow a vertical layout rather than

the traditional horizontal one.


40


The Centre has received a steady flow of visitors ever

since its opening. Initially expecting numbers between

five and ten thousand per day, the reality is that the

centre has been attracting a steady twenty to twenty

five thousand in a day.

The Centre Pompidou in the anti authoritarian manner

typical of its time rejects any such structuring that the

traditional institution would place on a museum, offering

huge open interiors free of interruptions. A container,

offering the users the opportunity to alter the spaces

dramatically and unpredictably, without compromising

the coherence of the whole. The interior of the centre

represents the design approach, of indeterminacy and

optimum flexibility. Fig. 20

A problem encountered by the museum of Modern Art

was that it quickly possessed too many works of art to

display on the movable partitions that the scheme

provided, in any case it felt that the movable partitions

were not doing the works any justice. In order to provide

additional wall space, designers Gae Audlenti were

commissioned in 1983 to practically insert a building

within the building, to provide a more permanent display

space for the museum of Modern Art in a setting which

is closer to the more conventional gallery. Externally the

layering of the facade sets up a dialogue between the

building and the Piazza.

The Piazza is conceived as a mediating space, setting

up two dialogues, one between Beaubourg and the

quarter, the other between official and street culture. In

many ways the Piazza has become the focus of human

activity that the designers intended, it is a performance

space, which has improved conditions around the entire

quarter.

Some argue that life around the centre and in the

piazza is mean and oppressive, the cafes are


41


expensive, visitors are said to complain of hustling from

beggars, and the Centre is shunned by the natives of

the city, who complain not of street culture as such, in

the case of fire eaters and mime

artists, but take objection to what

they refer to as 'endless noise of

street people miming to ghetto

blasters and psychotic heavy metal

guitarists plugged into amplifiers.

This does however, represent street

entertainment of the 1990's, probably typical of any

westernised city. I have certainly noticed this to be the

case in London, New York, Birmingham and Frankfurt.

Fig. 21 The Piazza.

11. Renzo Piano. Renzo Piano Logbook.

'Those who perform in the square have interpreted its

meaning correctly: The square is a location for art that

is not formal, not institutional.' 11

There are discussions centring on whether the piazza

should be privatised to control the 'bad behaviour', but

this is surely a move that would undermine one of the

original concepts of the place. The entire Centre was

designed to be open to the public, and this bad

behaviour is no different from activities in public spaces,

taking London's Trafalgar Square for instance. 'Once

the heart of the Empire, now a polluted tourist trap

encircled by traffic. Isolated from the public life of the

city.' 12 Fortunately this is a mere discussion point at the

moment. Although it is said that the days of youths

lounging around a rucksacks is now gone. The

escalators are to be a ticket only affair, in a move that

undermines the principles of the escalators being there.

12. Richard Rogers, Cities for a small planet.


42


13. Reyner Banham , Architecture Review, February 1977. 14. Kenneth Frampton Modern Architecture a critical History. 15. Charles Jencks. Modern Movements in Architecture.

Reyner Banham introduces Centre Pompidou as the

'apotheosis of Archigram and of the megastructure

idea'. 13 Kenneth Frampton refers to the Pompidou

Centre as emulating an oil refinery14, Massino Dini

describes it as a 'ship in Paris.'15 During the past twenty

years the centre has come under attack from countless

critics, attacks that are inevitable with such a radical

building, reflective of the Eiffel tower had been received

in the previous century. Most

of the negative criticism can

be summarised up by the

French Philosopher, Jean

Baudrillard, in his essay 'The

Beaubourg Effect, implosion

and deterrence,' (1984)

presents Pompidou as a

confused cultural object 'devouring cultural energy like

the Black monolith of 2001'. 16

Fig. 22 Rue Renard Facade

16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Jean Baudrillard, 'The Beaubourg Effect, implosion and deterrence' as published in Rethinking Architecture, Neal Leach. (ed)

'Puzzle of carcass of signs of flux, of networks and

circuits... the ultimate gesture toward translation of an

unnameable structure: that of social relations consigned

to a system of surface ventilation (animation, self-

regulation, information, media) and an in-depth,

irreversible implosion.' 17

The centre houses some of the most powerful works of

twentieth century art in the world. Popular opinion is that

the image of the building is detracting from the exhibits

inside. The same criticism could be made of Frank

Lloyd Wright's Guggenhiem Museum in New York

where the huge concrete spiral ramp is a piece of

sculpture in itself, however the visitor will only pay to

visit the art collection if it is something that they wish to

see.


43


Such criticisms do raise the question of how well the

Centre is accommodating its function, whether it is

perceived as an art gallery or a museum, obviously it is

much more than this. By the Corbusian definition as

outlined in the 1925 publication, 'The decorative art of

Today' the centre being the dynamic container that it is

goes further towards representing contemporary society

than say the British Museum. Le Corbusier's point was

that the museum takes objects out of context and is

therefore bad, if the museum could reveal the full story

it would be good. At Beaubourg, the 'museum' defines

its own context, it is an event in itself the event tells us

something of the way that the public regard 'culture'.

'Beaubourg not created just to present culture, but to

produce it - Utopian vision may not be attainable but is

worthy striving for!' 18

18. Renzo Piano Renzo Piano Logbook.

Baudrillard talks of contradictions expressed within the

centre - ' fluid communicative exterior - cool and modern

- interior uptight with old values' 19. However Centre

Pompidou was extremely innovative for its time, and the

possibility that the centre could be run to be more rigid

than the designers allowed is quite real. Maybe the

people responsible for the running of the Centre are still

treating the centre as though it is the Louvre or the

British museum, for example not yet ready to accept the

communications revolution. It is worth remembering that

Jean Baudrillard's Essay was written in 1984, when

today's communications revolution was still more

science fiction than an actual reality. Describing the

centre as a 'Space of deterrence, ideology of visibility,

transparency, polyvalence, concensus'20 certainly

reflects the way that the centre is being run rather than

Fig. 23


44


its actual design, and one thing the design is to allow for

is for the institution to change within its framework.

Certainly the insertions of Gae Audlenti in 1986 to make

the museum of modern art more like the traditional art

gallery make little sense in the overall scheme of things.

As they have in effect frozen the entire floor.

'Culture itself is dead.' 21 reflects the fact that traditional

culture has changed with the times, it is true that many

young people have no interest in classical art or music.

Considering that the design emerged out of the decade

of Pop Culture the notion that culture is dead is

unrealistic, it would be more realistic to say that culture

has changed and the Centre assists the change and

diversity of culture by providing a stage, a backdrop for

people. Fig. 24.

A paradox of the Centre is fact that at the outset

Richard Rogers loathed the idea of a cultural monument

dedicated to one Man, insisting that the centre be

referred to as Beaubourg, but since Pompidou died

before the centre's completion, the name Centre

Pompidou has stuck. This coupled with the powerful

image of the building the Centre has inevitably become

a monument, an icon.

The exterior, deliberately turning its back on the

traditional idea of a museum, has shaped the way that

museums have evolved during the past twenty years,

Jean Nouvelle's Arab Institute also in Paris, flaunts the

use of technology to control the internal environment,

and has roof terraces, and cafes. The building goes

some way towards making a public spectacle, much in

the same way as Pompidou. Norman Foster's

Sainsbury Centre, at the University of East Anglia in

Norwich, for example demonstrates the loose fit and


45


For me Pompidou does represent architecture but far

beyond the context of object buildings. Yes the centre

Pompidou is an Icon, a huge object, but also represents

the change in direction that Architecture had taken at

that time and the subsequent movements that have

followed. The design process that delivered the building

in the state that is evident on the Plateau Beaubourg is

clearly expressed in the rigorous attention to detail. The

impression of changeability, the visual flexibility, in that

when we as the public view such an artefact, such an

icon, we immediately question the appearance, and

some of us try to understand how it has arrived at that

appearance.

long life approach. At Centre Pompidou, for the first

time a museum did not resemble a temple it looked far

more comfortable along side of engineering structures,

a fitting progression from the Eiffel Tower or Dutert's

Gallerie des Machines.

21. Deyan Sudjic The architecture of Richard Rogers.

'There are those who argue that the philosophy of

Pompidou represents not Architecture at all.' 21

Fig. 25

'The whole story of Beaubourg was like a long voyage to

the sources of architectural creation, with occasional forays

into a computerised future. Then finally the great ship

reached port, safely within the deadlines and cost margins

of the contract. Today you can see it, anchored in the

ancient centre of Paris, ready to sail off once more in

defiance of imitators and culture beaurocrats. It is a

symbol, even more than that, it is alive!' 22

22. Massimo Dini. Renzo Piano, Buildings and Projects 1964-1983.


T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y

Chapter 5

During the twenty years following the project's practical

completion, Centre Pompidou has undergone some

relatively minor physical changes, the design team on

the other hand has gone through some very major

changes, and is now primarily three separate practices:

the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Richard Rogers

Partnership and Future Systems. In this time the centre

has welcomed some one hundred and fifty million

visitors.

The presence of Centre Pompidou on the Plateau

Beaubourg has instigated an important shift in French

Architecture, allowing it to recover from the 'doldrums'

that followed the death of Le Corbusier in 1965. A whole

new school of architects, pushing design in

technological dynamic directions from Jean Nouvelle,

known for the Arab institute, to Dominique Perrault.

known for the Bibloitheque d' Paris. Architects have

made tirelessly energetic experiments in the

subsequent 20years.

Centre Pompidou has become a catalyst in forcing self-

conscious exploration of the limits of technology

in shaping new buildings, notably in the work of

Future Systems, founded by Jan Kaplicky who

left the Piano Rogers in 1973, to work for Rogers'

former partner Norman Foster. Kaplicky worked

on Foster Associates' famous Willis Faber

Dumas Building at Ipswich in 1975. Kaplicky set

up the practice with David Nixon in 1979, the duo has
Fig. 26 Project Zed, Future Systems, 1995.
46

produced projects for NASA, in addition to research

projects.



47

The work is constantly testing the boundaries of

technology in construction. With the addition of

Kaplicky's wife Amanda Levete to the practice in 1989,

the experimentation of Future Systems became a

serious practice, incidentally all three partners in Future

systems have at some time worked for Richard Rogers.

The design process that started in 1971 is very much

alive and ongoing. During the Beaubourg project Renzo

Piano set up a permanent base in Paris, hence picking

up the residual work. Although he talks of being

blacklisted from the schools, clubs and academies for

some time following the completion of Pompidou. Two

projects at Beaubourg form an important progression

from the initial design, where the Centre Pompidou

forms the context in which to set the new works. In 1988

IRCAM, which formed part of the original scheme in

1973, set beneath the public Piazza adjacent Centre

Pompidou, to provide the greatest level of sound

proofing, and to maximise space inside the main

building. The new extension houses the offices in a nine

storey building of which six are above ground, which

forms a tower to create a dialogue with Centre

Pompidou. Although very different in appearance, some

of the elements of the IRCAM extension demonstrate a

refinement of those same elements used in the Centre.

Fig 27. IRCAM Extension. Renzo Piano Building Workshop. 1988.

For Richard Rogers too, it seemed that Pompidou was

going to prevent him receiving any work again, the

Project was just too radical for most people to even

comprehend giving him a commission. With John

Young, Marco Goldschmied and Mike Davies, Rogers

set up the Richard Rogers Partnership. In 1978 the city

finance firm, Lloyds contacted the RIBA asking them to

recommend an architect who could fulfil some difficult



48

and uncertain requirements. A short list of six architects

was drawn up and the six were invited to a competitive

interview, to present their strategic proposals for a new

headquarters building. The uncertain brief

led to a proposal where maximum flexibility

was put forward as an option, with Rogers'

innovative approach and recently acquired

expertise in producing flexible architecture

won the practice its first commission.

Lloyds building London, 1978 - 1986, where

the further ideas of flexibility are expressed

on much the same way as at Pompidou.

Lloyds pushed that particular path of inquiry

to its logical conclusion, and it left Rogers

searching for new challenges. In 1989 a

competition to design a vast conference centre in the

heart of Tokyo, the Tokyo Forum presented that

opportunity, inviting entries from top architects around

the world The practice did not win, but the project

represented a major point of progression in the work of

Richard Rogers. The

problem necessitated the

definition of a broader

context, beyond the

confines of the brief, to

generate new forms of

public space and

architecture. The scheme

required three enormous

conference halls to be

placed on a congested

site. Much in the same way as with Pompidou the

practice investigated ways of providing public space to

allow the people of the city to be able to slow down,

meet and converse. In assessing the impact that the

Fig. 28. The writing Room at Lloyds. Richard Rogers Partnership, 1986.

Fig. 29 The Tokyo Forum. Competition Entry, 1989.



49

centre of such a scale would have on the site, the

approach was to suspend the giant silver auditorium

capsules six storeys up. Placed within an exposed steel

megastructure, with lifts and escalators reaching down

into a public plaza below. This allowed room for public

activities. The public plaza was ringed with shops,

cafes, restaurants and exhibition spaces. The

experiment into how buildings interact with the public

domain, and contribute to the public realm that is

embodied in the design of Centre Pompidou has clearly

evolved here. For Rogers these projects represent a

move towards humanising the city.

Fig 30. Atelier Brancusi. Renzo Piano Building Workshop 1992.

In 1992, Renzo Piano Building Workshop completed

their second post Pompidou project at Beaubourg; it is

the reconstruction of the Atelier Brancusi, situated in the

main Piazza of Centre Pompidou. The aim to provide a

container in which the work of Constantin Brancusi will

be displayed in context, it was the Artist's

will that the work be kept together, that the

whole would be made by the sum of the

parts being kept in the same place. The

very modest building uses lightweight

materials, forming a relationship with the

works that it contains. The Renzo Piano

Building Workshop has completed

numerous projects worldwide; the design

process that delivered Centre Pompidou is

very much an ongoing one. The concerns

for buildings forming relationships features

strongly in the projects whether between

form and constructed object, between impermanence of

event and structure, or between the relative

impermanence of the whole and the permanence of the

topography. At the San Nicola Stadium, Bari, Italy in

1992, the stadium by definition is a container.

Fig 31. San Nicola Stadium, Bari, Italy, 1992



50

Described as a space to be filled with events and

people who watch them. Space plays a significant role;

it has been treated in two ways, the tension between

solids and voids, and between form of construction and

form of the place. The project manifests itself as space

characterised by cuts, expansions and compressions.

Again the expertise in moulding materials to enhance

human events, that forms an important part of the

experience of Pompidou is clearly demonstrated.

Renzo Piano's approach to the problem of context is

that it should be understood, absorbed and interpreted

to inform the design. At Kansai

Airport, Osaka, Japan 1988-1994,

The issue of addressing site context

posed a problem. Osaka a city is

already overcrowded and had no

space to build a new airport, the

solution was to build the airport in

the sea on an artificial island.

The context moved outside the

physical into the collective

unconscious in memory, in culture.

The lightweight waveforms and

aerofoil forms drew their, inspiration

from flow patterns of air and water.

The structure being aerodynamic minimises wind

loading in an area particularly prone to storms. It is

significant that both Piano and Rogers are involved in

the design of major airports, the ultimate in large

structures, sheltering and enhancing human events.

Fig. 32 Kansai Airport, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, 1992



51

The Richard Rogers partnership is currently

working on Heathrow Airport, Middlesex. The

design approach is to celebrate the excitement

of international travel,

the main Core Building

is characterised by a

soaring waveform roof,

floating above

transparent glass walls

demonstrating the

practice's ongoing

concern for permeability and making positive

contribution to the public realm and the

environment. Terminal 5 is scheduled to

commence works on site in the year 2000, with

completion date set for 2008. Flexibility is a

major driving force

behind the

approach of the

Richard Rogers

Partnership. The

practice is currently

completing the

Millennium Dome at Greenwich that looks set to

be the practice's highest profile project. The

project demonstrates the degree to which

technology and materials have evolved in the

past twenty years; the Dome provides a fitting

sequel to Centre Pompidou, expressing ideas of

enclosing vast indeterminate spaces whilst

providing highest degree of flexibility.

Fig, 33 Heathrow Terminal 5. Richard Rogers Partnership. 1989-2016

Fig. 34 Millennium Dome Richard Rogers Partnership.



52

After twenty years of use and well over a hundred and

fifty million visitors, more than the Louvre and the Eiffel

Tower combined, Centre Pompidou, the 'dynamic

communications machine' has earned itself a good rest,

to allow time for it to be rejuvenated. Many of the

components used in the construction of the building

employed technology that by today's standards has

become antiquated or inadequate. Conceived as a

building to have a long life span through its flexibility

and the ability to change as functional requirements and

technology evolve. This is currently being tested to the

full, and theoretically repair and refurbishment of the

building should be relatively easy, although the

outdated technology is making this slightly more difficult

than as is envisaged. The use of materials in old

buildings is merely accepted as the best that could be

done at the time, the Eiffel Tower or Notre Dame for

instance. Centre Pompidou reflects the technology of

the 1970's, therefore it would follow that in the late

1990's the technology will be outdated. Part of the

design philosophy is that the technology can be

upgraded in time, and it is precisely this that is being

undertaken at present. The spirit

of experiment as illustrated in the

1970's can only be kept alive if

many of physical components are

replaced. It is argued that the

building as it stands can no longer

be responsive to change in use or

function. From investigating the

design and the works being undertaken, it appears that

the Centre Pompidou possesses the ability to be

upgraded far easier than the main buildings of the

Louvre for example. The difference being that historic

buildings can be patched up in restoration projects.

Fig. 35

Fig. 36



53

Here the upgrade of a twenty one-year-old machine

takes considerably more design skill and innovation, if it

is to retain its magic.

Detailed design work for the overhaul Is being handled

by the Paris office of the Renzo Piano Building

Workshop, in consultation with the London office of the

Richard Rogers Partnership, who still retain control over

the external appearance of the building. In essence the

original design team is overseeing the works.

A testament to the vision of the designers in providing

maximum flexibility is demonstrated in the fact that the

phenomenon of Centre Pompidou is still very much

alive, the events supported by the Centre are still

functioning even though the building is closed to the

public during its overhaul. The centre supports travelling

exhibitions, that shows the collection that the centre

possesses in different galleries around the world.

The exterior of the building was upgraded first, mainly a

project involving repainting of all the exposed steelwork

and pipes and provision of additional exterior lighting.

The more radical internal changes require reconfiguring

of existing air conditioning layouts to maintain flexibility

and create greater efficiency,

some of the external ductwork

has been modified to reflect the

new internal configuration, and

some has been removed. The

external facelift and repaving of

the Piazza was executed in

1997 whilst the building was

open, so that the building forms

a backdrop to external events in the piazza. During the

design process the accident of placing IRCAM under

the adjoining Piazza has proved to be fortuitous in that it

is still up and running whilst its parent building is not.

Fig. 37



This along with the construction of the Atelier Brancusi

in the main piazza has ensured that Centre Pompidou

can sustain itself as a focus for public activity

indefinitely. Fig. 38

Gae Audlenti retain control of the gallery spaces

inserted which were inserted into the main

structure between 1983 - 1986, these are also

being upgraded and enlarged, as other spaces

change. The internal restructuring works

include the removal of administrative offices

that formerly neutralised 20% of the floorspace.

Allowing for the expansion of the previously

undersized bookshop and library. Some of the upper

level open terraces are being reduced in size. Jean-

Francois Bodin is

handling work to

mezzanine levels

around double

height entrance

forum and to

upper levels. On

the ground floor,

the existing

cinema moves to

the basement

level, freeing up

Fig. 39

EXISTING

D

PROPOSE

54

more space in the forum, allowing for greater

permeability. These radical changes to the building are

bringing the Centre Pompidou closer to the initial ideas

of Piano and Rogers' design.

Fig. 40

B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t

L e a r n i n g f r o m B e a u b o u r g

Conclusion What cannot be denied is the fact that as a public focus,

Pompidou is immensely successful, the centre alone

has constantly attracted in excess of five time its

anticipated numbers. When designed the projected

numbers were thought to be around five to six thousand

a day. Whether it is to view the artwork in the exhibition,

ride the escalators or just to engage in activities in the

Piazza it is due to the design. Quite how it is interpreted

is down to the individual visitor.

On such a radical building as Centre Pompidou, we

must look further than the appearance, or the

practicality of the construction details, the design

process that delivered the building has moved on, the

philosophy of the design has evolved based upon the

experience of making the building and with subsequent

projects. The technology and design of the building

belongs to the 1970's in the same way as the stonework

of Notre dame belongs to the Gothic period. The fact

that the technology has progressed does not render the

building obsolete.

Although the building object is highly visible and

monumental in its manifestation, it is the dialogue with

the public spaces and the Marais quarter that it is

situated that is attracting the crowds.

The provision of flexibility has allowed the building to

change with its context, whether it is a travelling

exhibition, an event, or the progression of technology,

the building can still support them as they change.

55

B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t

L e a r n i n g f r o m B e a u b o u r g

56

The Paris of 1998 is a far different place to the Paris of

1968, as it will be different to the Paris of 2028.

The physical context changes very little, but the cultural

context will render the Paris of 1968 almost

unrecognisable to the Paris of 1998.

Centre Pompidou did not fit in to the Urban Grain in

1977, it was not intended to, it will probably never fit into

the urban grain but will be accepted as part of it in the

future. In 1977 Centre Pompidou did address the

cultural context of the time. When the major alteration to

the flexible container are complete, the Centre will

address the cultural context of the next millennium, and

should continue to do so, when it reopens on 31st

December1999.

Fig.41


60

L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t i o n s .

Fig.

1 Sketch from visit 1995, by Alun Dolton

2 Sketch following visit 1995, by Alun Dolton.

3 Three flags, Jasper Johns.1954-1955

Encarta interactive Encyclopedia, Microsoft Corporation, 1995.

4 Cedric Price fun palace, 1961.

The Architecture of Richard Rogers. Sudjic, D. (1994)

Blueprint Monograph,

5 Plug-in city, maximum pressure area, 1964, Peter cook

The Architects' Journal 12 February 1998.

6 Marilyn Diptych, by Andy Warhol, 1962,


7 Reliance Controls, Swindon. 1966.Team 4 Architects


Blueprint Monograph,

8 Whaam!, Roy Liechtenstein, 1963.


9 Monte Carlo Entertainments Centre, 1969. Archigram,

Architectural Competitions 1950-today, de Jong, C . (1994)

Benedikt Taschen, Koln, Germany.

10 Italian Pavilion an Osaka Expo, 1969, Renzo Piano.

The Renzo Piano Logbook. Piano, R. (1997)

Thames and Hudson, London.

11 Sydney Opera House, Jorn Utzon.

Ove Arup & Partners, Engineering the Built Environment.

Sommer, Stocher, Weisser. (1994)

Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland.


61


25 Rue Renard, Darren Staples.

12 Les Halles. Paris.



13 Beaubourg competition Entries.



14 Gallerie des Machines, Dutert, 1889.

Supersheds, Wilkinson, C. (1996)

Second Edition, Butterworth Architecture, Oxford.

15 Beaubourg Competition Drawing, Piano and Rogers, 1973

Cities for a small planet, Rogers, R. (1997)

Faber and Faber, London.

16 Centre Pompidou from Les Halles, from Site Visit, by Darren Staples

17 IRCAM Piazza. http://www.cnac.gp.fr/english/

18 Renard facade close up. Darren Staples

19 Escalator, The Renzo Piano Logbook. Piano, R. (1997)


20 From Rue Renard, Alun Dolton

21 The Piazza, http://www.cnac.gp.fr/english/

22 Rue Renard facade, http://www.cnac.gp.fr/english/

23 Detail, http://www.cnac.gp.fr/english/

24 Viewing Platform, Alun Dolton

26 Project Zed, Future, Systems 1995. The architects' journal, April 1998

27 IRCAM Extension, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, 1988

The Renzo Piano Logbook, Piano R. (1997).

Thames and Hudson, London. 28 Lloyds, Richard Rogers Partnership, 1986


Blueprint Monograph.

29 Tokyo Forum, Richard Rogers Partnership, 1989.

Cities for a small planet. Rogers, R. (1997)

Faber and Faber, London.


62


30 Atelier Brancusi, Renzo Piano Building Workshop. 1992

The Renzo Piano Logbook, Piano R. (1997)


31 San Nicola Stadium, Bari, Italy.

32 Kansai Airport, Osaka, Japan. Renzo Piano Building Workshop. 1992

The Renzo Piano Logbook, Piano R. (1997)

33 Heathrow Terminal 5, Richard Rogers Partnership, 1989-2016

rproject - http://richardrogers.co.uk./

34 The Millennium Dome, Richard Rogers Partnership, 1998

Computer Weekly, July 1998-10-08

35 Piazza, Dennis Gilbert. RIBA Journal, April 1997.

36 Piazza facade, http://www.cnac.gp.fr/english/

37 Piazza facade at dusk, http://www.cnac.gp.fr/english/

38 Tipi, http://www.cnac.gp.fr/english/

39 Gae Audlenti, gallery spaces 1986, Dennis Gilbert. RIBA Journal, April 1997.

40 Sections. RIBA Journal, April 1997.

41 Column, Alun Dolton

F r a g m e n t a t i o n

a n d

S i m u l t a n e i t y Appendix Seminar paper on the works of Daniel Libeskind and Jean Nouvel P.G. Dip. 513 History & Theory II Birmingham School of Architecture University of Central England Post Graduate Diploma in Architecture January 1999.

P.G. Dip 513. History and Theory II 1998-1999. F r a g m e n t a t i o n a n d S i m u l t a n e i t y

I n t r o d u c t i o n 'Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art by a collectivity in the state of distraction.'1

UNDERGROUND WORKS

'I saw in a dream barren terrain. It was the market place at Weimar. Excavations were in progress. I too scraped about in the sand. The tip of a church steeple came to light. Delighted I thought to myself: a Mexican shrine from the time of pre-animism, from the Anaquivitzli. I awoke laughing.'2 1. Walter Benjamin. 'The Work of Art in the Age of

Mechanical Reproduction' in Illuminations, Fontana, 1975 as

cited by Brian Hatton in 'Notes on Location' Nouvel, Jean

Nouvel, Emmanuel Cattani et Associes. Artemis, London.

Blazwick, Jacques, Withers, (ed.) (1992)

2. Walter Benjamin, 'One Way Street' 1926.

Contained in 'One Way Street and other Writings'.

NLB, London, 1979

Both of the projects that I have studied for this seminar

make reference to the work of Walter Benjamin, (1892 -

1940) a German literary theorist, referred to by critics as

the key theorist of modernity.

The projects deal with the notions of modernity in

contrasting ways, challenging issues of memory,

information and context. Issues that I am concerned

with in the making of the AAD project for an 'Information

Powerhouse for Birmingham'.

This is a new building accommodating the city's Archive

and extending the facilities of the Birmingham Central

Library, providing place where visitors can come to

learn about or even rediscover the city.


In Exploring the primary function, the housing of the

city's 'Archive', and the notion of 'Archive' as a

repository for all forms of information, containing

fragments that are a representation of past events that

form evidence, that enable viewers to develop an

understanding of the evolution of the city.

The project is concerned with the representation of

those fragments that make up the city's memory or

culture and placing within the context of the city. These

two projects of Daniel Libeskind and Jean Nouvel both

make strong cultural references in their design

approach, where 'Fragmentation' and 'Simultaneity'

become devices to connect their work with the

contemporary and the future city.

P.G. Dip. 513. History and Theory II F r a g m e n t a t i o n

D a n i e l L i b e s k i n d

T h e J e w i s h E x t e n s i o n G e r m a n M u s e u m , B e r l i n

1 9 8 9 - 1 9 9 9

1

Daniel Libeskind was born in Poland 1946.

Studied Music in Israel, Architecture at the Cooper Union in New York, MA History and

Theory of Architecture in Essex.

Libeskind has taught at many Architecture Schools including Harvard's Graduate School

of design.

P.G. Dip 513. History and Theory II 1998-1999 F r a g m e n t a t i o n D a n i e l L i b e s k i n d

T h e J e w i s h E x t e n s i o n ,

G e r m a n M u s e u m B e r l i n

2

B e t w e e n t h e L i n e s .

The design approach is based upon juxtaposition of

forms, lines of interaction and cultural references. The

work demonstrates allusions to art history, philosophy,

ballet and musical composition. The overlaying of

contrasting elements take cubism as the point of

departure. Cubism, the first era of fragmentation, in

that artists were reconstructing the object to show the

entire object in two dimensions. Libeskind's early work

developed into the reconvening of fragments to create

machines, demonstrating the scattering of architectural

and formal references, challenging the need for

architectural at all.

The competition for the Jewish Museum was launched

in 1989, open to both West Germans and international

architects, totalling 165 entries. The powerful

symbolism incorporated in Libeskind's design

prompted the jury's decision to award first prize.

The Site for the project is located in the centre of old

Berlin on Lindenstrasse, near the famous Baroque

intersection of Wilhelmstrasse, Friedrichstrasse and

Lindenstrasse. The site conditions prompted Libeskind

to draw relationships between the visible and invisible

traces of Berlin's past. Libeskind's design philosophy

generated the title 'Between the Lines', the project is

about two lines of thinking, organisation and

relationship. The first line is a straight line broken into

many fragments. The second line is a tortuous line that

continues indefinitely.

Fig. 1




3

The two lines develop architecturally and

programmatically through a limited but definite

dialogue becoming disengaged, exposing the void

through Architecture and museum, a discontinuous

void. The form follows an irrational matrix, a system of

squared triangles, forming a distorted Star of David.

The matrix comprises four

elements; the first

connects the addresses of

famous Jewish Berliners;

writers, poets, artists,

cultural figures. The

second Arnold Schonberg,

a composer who was

kicked out of the academy

whose greatest work, an opera, Moses and Aaron

which was never completed, it is performed

incomplete. The missing words signify a relation

between the revealed and unimaginable truth, and the

spoken and mass-produced people's truth. The third

aspect is the names of those people, mainly Jews who

were deported from Berlin from 1933 onwards. The

fourth aspect from the text 'One Way Street', by Walter

Benjamin, a German literary theorist and

critic who committed suicide on the

Spanish border fleeing occupied France

from the Nazis.

The matrix manifests itself in the lines

that invisibly and irrationally connect the

star that 'shines with the absent light of

individual addresses'1. Lines that form a

cut of act Two of Moses and Aaron, which has to do

with the non-musical fulfilment of the word.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

1. Daniel Libeskind, in a transcript of a talk given at Hannover University, December 1989. Published in New Science = New Architecture, AD Vol 9/10, Sept. - Oct. 1997. Maggie Toy, (ed.)




4

Lines that show the way of the

deported Berliners, and lines that

illustrate the 'One Way Street' aspect

of the city.

Fragmentation expressed within the

Scheme relates to the separation

brought about by the history of Berlin,

a phenomenon that can only be

experienced as the effect of time. 'Out

of this absolute event of history which

is the Holocaust with its concentration

camps, annihilation and complete burn-out of the city

and of humanity - out of this event which shatters this

place comes a gift of that which cannot really be

related by architecture.'2

The project represents an urban, architectural and

functional paradox of the closed/open, stable/unstable,

classical/modern, museum/amusement.

In making the translation to built form, the

richness of objects is harnessed with

references to a dramatically conceived

program of exhibition spaces.

The new extension is conceived as an

emblem where the common fate,

common to both what is and what is not,

are represented in the invisible and

visible which are reconciled in the

language. The invisible is represented in

the void. The extension is cut into the existing Baroque

building, going under and criss-crossing underground

to materialise itself independently on the outside.

Fig. 5

Fig. 4

2. Daniel Libeskind, op. Cit.




5

In essence, the existing building is tied to

the extension underground, preserving the

contradictory autonomy of new and old

together on depth, underground.

The 'discontinuous void' is materialised in

continuous spaces as something that has

been ruined. The solid, representing the

residue of independent structure, a 'voided

void'. The fragmentation and splintering of

the form marks the incoherence of the museum as a

whole, showing that it has come undone to become

accessible on a functional and intellectual level. The

past fatality of German/Jewish cultural relations in

Berlin is now enacted in the realm of the invisible.

The museum exists in the relationship between the two

architectures and two forms. What is not visible is the

Jewish Museum because it is reducible only to archive

material, since its physicality has

disappeared.

The extension is a zigzag with a structural

rib, which is the void of the Jewish Museum

running across it. The void is something that

every participant in the museum will

experience at his or her absent presence.

The void has been surgically removed from

the building, rotated in the site and

materialised in terms of fragments of shards

that have no access from public level, they

are only accessible from underground in

special ways. The voids within the building are tight

jagged, top-lit volumes enclosed by naked concrete

walls, completely devoid of exhibits, but full of echoes.

Fig. 7

Fig. 6




6

In short the 'museum' seeks to alienate viewer who is

after the history of Berlin. This alienation is continued

outside the building, in the 'garden of exile', a dense

colonnade of 49 square concrete pillars, tilted at ten

degrees from the

vertical. The aim is that

the participant will

become acclimatised to

the odd angle only to

emerge shocked to see

that the surrounding

buildings have acquired

an alarming tilt,

symbolising

the disorientation

experienced by the

exiled Jews.

Void and invisible; both

are structural features

gathered in the space of

Berlin and exposed in

architecture in which the unnamed remains because

the names keep still.

Daniel Libeskind writes of the museum being a place

where all citizens, those of the past present and future,

find their common heritage and individual hope, which

is to transcend involvement and become participation.

Fig. 8




7

The particular urban condition of Lindenstrasse,

becomes a spiritual site, a nexus where Berlin's

precarious destiny is mirrored, fractured and displaced,

at the same time as being transformed and

transgressed. the project seeks to reconnect Berlin

with its own history.

'The extension of the Berlin Museum with a special

emphasis on housing the Jewish Museum Department

is an attempt to give voice to a common fate: common

to both what is and what is not. The Museum must not

only serve to inspire poetry, music and drama, (etc.)

but must be the threshold of the ordered-not-

disordered, chosen-not chosen, silent-not- silent.'3

Fig. 9

3. Daniel Libeskind Between The lines. As published in New Architecture, the new Moderns and the Super Moderns.. Academy Editions. London 1990. Andreas Padadakis. (ed.)

P.G. Dip 513. History and Theory II 1998-1999. S i m u l t a n e i t y . J e a n N o u v e l

I n s t i t u t d u M o n d e A r a b e , P a r i s

9

'We must face the fact that modern cities have

invented themselves without us - and sometimes

despite us.'4

Jean Nouvel sees himself as an Architect,

dealing with the problem of values, recognising

the tension between social and cultural issues.

His architecture is expressed as a response to

the growing awareness among the general

public, and the confrontation of physical,

contextual and existential problems of the city.

Aimed at understanding its topology and the

patterns it bears on human activity, the city is

seen as a product of evolution, as one more layer

on the surface of the planet. Architecture is

entering a new era, an urban age. Architects

have a social role in the participation of urban

evolution. Nouvel draws distinctions between

private clients for who the penalties are

economic; and for public clients for whom the

penalties are political. There is a well-defined

symbolic function of urban monuments, where

architecture, must express, reveal, signify and

demonstrate, its appearance must communicate

ideas pertinent to the project.

Nouvel clearly acknowledges a debt to the

student radicalism of 1968, a series of events,

that sparked off an 'explosion' in architecture.

Architects such as Bernard Tschumi were

seriously questioning their role in society, and

producing radical and challenging designs.

4. Jean Nouvel in a lecture given at the Centre Georges Pompidou in January 1992.

Fig. 10



10

For Nouvel the most

significant change was the

democratisation of public

space, made possible by

the events at Beaubourg

that culminated in Piano

and Rogers' Centre

Georges Pompidou in 1977.

The work of Nouvel demonstrates a continued

commitment to democratising public space, in the

use of the image and function to lateralise the

hierarchies of labour or spectatorship. The work

contains a rich blend of cultural, technological

and environmental components, which are held

fundamental the design approach.

The work of Jean Nouvel is a synthesis if

simultaneity; comprehending the

juxtaposition of history and modernity;

space and place; creation and acreation;

interiority and opening; integration and

differentiation, and at solving complex

dialectical relations of issues concerned

with site and culture. It is the interrelation

of specifity of place and cultural resonance

that develops and consolidates the notions

of democratising of public space.

In the built forms, the dimension of time

and movement is expressed, and

paradoxes of relativity become realisable,

within the depth of field, a space becomes legible

in terms of its thickness and depth.

Fig. 12

Fig. 11



11

The emphasis on depth

of field draws influences

from the Cinematheque

and more particularly,

the influence of post-

Godardian film technique

which, is translated into multi-layered,

perspectivally complex vistas. Plays on surfaces,

interiors and reflections exploit the movement of

the camera to create buildings that cannot be

apprehended in a single glance.

The competition for the design of the Institute du

Monde Arabe followed the cancellation of an

earlier project. The Competition was inaugurated

by Francois Mitterand's new policy on Major

Works.

Jean Nouvel's design team won the limited

competition of five entries much in the way that

Piano and Rogers won the competition to design

what we now know as Centre Georges

Pompidou, some ten years previous. The jury's

decision was based on the liberation of a public

square, which was built over in all of the other

proposals.

The Program for the IMA

is aimed at connecting

two cultures and the two

urban fabrics, a project,

being conceived as a

cultural centre providing

a showcase for Arab

culture in Paris. Fig. 14

Fig. 13



12

Aimed at linking and distinguishing

Western and Arab cultures, the

program comprises four main

elements:

Tension - Screen - Interface - Editing.

Where 'Tension' characterises

contemporary evolution of the object,

parts of which tend to integrate the

global form of the structure.

The 'Screen' characterises new

aesthetics of communication, in the particular the

use of scanned photographs in magazines, and

the aesthetic of video and TV screens.

The 'Interface' represents the contemporary fate

of the wall density, showing a tendency to act

less and less as limits of a volume and more as a

means of transmission, either through greater or

smaller porosity or through the

information that they convey inside,

being Arabian culture, exactness,

internality, light filtering, and symbolic

elements such as the Hypostyle hall.

The element of 'Editing', displays the

economy learned from Film

techniques. In that it is useless to

show whole development of the action

where a few images are sufficient, as

our mind has been trained to

reconstitute the rest. Here layering is

used effectively in solving some of the

relational issues of location.

Fig. 15

Fig. 16



13

The Institut du Monde Arabe is sited on

the fringe between the traditional

Parisian Urban fabric, the faubourg

Saint-Germain, and the contemporary

loose weave of the Universite de

Jussieu The IMA presents a dark, long,

thin, crystalline volume to the obtrusive

humanities department of the university

sited across the new public square.

The disposition of the interior spaces

and activities are intent on forming

relationships, both internally, and

externally in its connection with the city.

The building comprises two main

volumes kept apart by a 'fault', creating a void

that resolves the problem of their contact,

remaining pure without lessening the intensity

that is created by their closeness. The edge of

the northern volume of the building follows the

curve of the river Seine. The void is aligned on

an axis with Notre Dame, and opens onto a

square patio that forms a hub that holds the two

volumes together or apart.

Layering of grids and

screens on the facades blur

the edges between interior

and exterior producing the

simultaneity of activities that

allow them to co-exist.

Internally, through further

layering of planes, screens of

varying degrees of transparency, dialogues are

developed between the different spaces.

Fig. 17

Fig. 17

Fig. 18



14

The Museum of Arabian Art and

Civilisation is accommodated in the

north wing interspersed with temporary

exhibition spaces. The library occupies

the south wing, with its circular book

stack on the west end and protected on

the south by the diaphragmmed facade.

A 400 seat auditorium is situated

beneath the public square, as is the

Hypostyle Hall that forms a Mosque-like

space that mediates between underground and

above ground activities, by being open to the

reception hall. Administration accommodation is

located on the upper levels of the south wing

along with a rooftop restaurant, with a roof

terrace on the north wing reconnecting the visitor

with the river Seine and the old Paris beyond.

'Making people aware of the

scale of a building, displaying

its largest dimension, playing on

the largest depth of field are

constant motivations for me.

And this comes from

scenography. For me, again,

architecture is the science of

behaviour.'5

Fig. 19

5. Jean Nouvel in an interview with Gilles de Bure, Paris 1992.

Fig. 20


15

Conclusion

Concept, sensation, emotion.

Nouvel talks of Architecture being faced with the

problem of dealing with chaos and participating in urban

evolution in the advancement, modification and

extension of the world. Libeskind talks of using

architecture to give new value to existing context. The

works of both very different architects demonstrate a

marked challenging of the ambiguity associated with

entering the realm of architecture in the contemporary

city. Through programmes associated with dealing with

the notion of 'end' and linking and distinguishing

cultures, participation transcends passive involvement.

Both projects display common elements such as the

void used to create dialogues and forge relationships.

The behaviour exhibited in these projects illustrates a

paradox of relativity, by allowing seemingly opposing

forces to co-exist in the same place. This is partially

aided by 'fragmentation' in the case of Libeskind, and

'simultaneity' in the case of Nouvel, both approaches

have their roots firmly embedded in cubism.

Fragmentation demonstrates a challenge of social

values; a well documented aim of deconstructivist

manifestos. The projects both confront change and

express the notion of evolution in terms of the city,

modernity and of the Human spirit. Resolving differences

between history and modernity by promoting

compromise as a way of exploiting memory.


S e l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y .

16

B o o k s .

Benjamin, W. (1928) One Way Street.

Contained in 'One Way Street

and other Writings'.

NLB, London, 1979

Blazwick, Jacques, Nouvel, Jean Nouvel

Withers, (ed.) (1992) Emmanuel Cattani et

Associes.

Artemis, London.

Cook & Llewellyn-Jones (1992) New Spirit in Architecture.

Rizzoli, New York.

Glusberg, J. (ed.)(1991) Deconstruction, A Student

Guide.

UIA Journal of Architectural

Theory and Criticism.

Academy Editions, London.

1996 Edition.

de Jong, C. (1994) Architectural Competitions 1950-

today

Benedikt Taschen,

Koln, Germany.

Leach, N. (ed).(1997) Rethinking Architecture, a

reader in cultural theory.

Routledge, New York and

London.


S e l e c t e d B i b l i o g r a p h y .

17

Papadakis, A. (ed.)(1990) New Architecture, The New

Moderns and The Super

Moderns.


Papadakis, A. (ed.)(1994) Deconstruction II.


J o u r n a l A r t i c l e s .

Gouret, P. (1988) Jean Nouvel, Concept plus

Context. A+U 8807.

Architecture and Urbanism.

Vol. 214, July 1988.

Yoshida, Japan.

Toy, M. (ed.)(1997) New Science = New

Architecture?

AD. Vol 9/10 September -

October 1997.

German Expressionism

Reborn.

Building, 6th February 1998.

Varnier, T. (1995) Culture Clash.

Progressive Architecture

Vol 176. No. 9

September 1995



18

Front Cover Jewish Museum, model from

New Architecture, The New Moderns

and The Super Moderns. Papadakis, A. (ed.)(1990)


Arab Institute. Diaphragm on South facade.

From. 'Jean Nouvel, Concept plus

Context.' Gouret, P. Architecture and Urbanism.

Vol. 214, July 1988.

Japan.

Fragmentation. Jewish Museum, Exterior View with Garden

of Exile, Nearing Completion.

From New Science = New Architecture?

AD. Vol 9/10 September - October

1997. Toy, M. (ed.)

Fig. 1 Distorted Model. Original image used from.

New Architecture, The New Moderns

and The Super Moderns. Papadakis, A. (ed.)(1990)


Fig. 2 Irrational matrix. (op. cit.)

Fig. 3 Model View. (op. cit.)

Fig. 4 Ground Floor Plan (op. cit.) .

Fig. 5 Basement Plan. (op. cit.)

Fig. 6 Model View. (op. cit.)



19

Fig. 7 Interior of Void.

From German Expressionism

Reborn.

Building, 6th February 1998.

Fig 8 View up main stair.

From New Science = New Architecture?

AD. Vol 9/10 September - October

1997. Toy, M. (ed.)

Fig. 9 Exterior View. (op. cit.)

Simultaneity. Arab Institute, West End View



Vol. 214, July 1988.

Japan.

Fig. 10 Diaphragm to South Facade. (op. cit.)

Fig. 11 View across River Seine.

Nouvel. Jean Nouvel, Emmanuel

Cattani et Associes.

Artemis, London. Blazwick, Jacques, Withers, (ed.) (1992)

Fig. 12 Void from within patio.



Vol. 214, July 1988.

Japan.



20

Fig. 13 Typical upper floor plan. (op. cit.)

Fig. 14 Site location.

Culture Clash.

Progressive Architecture

Vol 79. September 1995

Varnier, T.

Fig. 15 South Facade from public square.



Vol. 214, July 1988.

Japan.

Fig. 16 View through void towards Notre Dame.

(op. cit.)

Fig. 17 Main building from within patio. (op. cit.)

Fig. 18 Interior of library. (op. cit.)

Fig. 19 View through lift shaft and stairwell towards

south facade. (op. cit.)

Fig. 20 Diaphragm detail. (op. cit.)

the beaubourg experiment

Design

pompidou centre

beaubourg legacy

beaubourg e xp

onthe centre pompidou

t hebeaubourge xp

imen tbeaubourg

georges pompidou

building visible