Centre Pompidou: Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers

The Centre Nationale d'Art et Culture Georges Pompidou (1971-77), also known as the Pompidou Center, makes a stark impression even today. From afar, the scale of the inside-out structure with its vast public plaza retains a monumental status within the densely populated medieval quarter from which it differentiates itself. The building takes up half of its site, with the rest given over to a plaza, known as the Plateau Beaubourg, which remains an animated civic space in its own right. In proximity, the skeletal structure of steel columns, trusses, tension rods and gerberettes that together with the mechanical and circulation systems make up the façades of the building cause the eye to follow the latticework of structure and focus on the connective details. The Pompidou Center continues to present itself as a vision of technologically enabled adaptability that clearly exhibits what became known in architectural discourse as “High Tech.” Effectively, the building has become “a manifesto of late modernism with its commitment to the public realm, the integration of design and technology, and the unflinching belief in total flexibility.”