CENTRE GEORGES POMPIDOU, 1972-1975

Paris, France Piano+Rogers

Description

Centre Pompidou is a museum and cultural center in cen­tral Paris situated on a five acre plaza between the Louvre and Notre Dame. This location, known as Plateau Beaubourg, gave the complex its original name, “Centre Beaubourg.” In relation to modern buildings, it is just east of I. M. Pei’s Pyramid at the Louvre and northwest of Jean Nouvel’s Arab World Institute. The Pompidou’s strategic location had previously languished as a parking lot for the nearby food markets of Les Halles.

Originally, Centre Pompidou was to be a “live center of information” with dynamic video displays of cultural

events on the plaza side and traffic information on the street side. This concept was gradually squashed by politi­cal, budget, and time constraints. Instead, the building portrays its own datum—spreading vertical circulation components across the length of a pedestrian plaza on the west side and its mechanical workings across the long east street side elevation. This public display of components is framed by an external structure. The pedestrian escalators to the west and the mechanical fittings to the east are both contained within 25 ft (7.6 m) deep zones of exposed steel skeleton and diagonal bracing. To ensure legibility of the technical vocabulary and its visual articulation, external systems are color coded by function. To do honor to the original intent, huge banners are frequently hung from the structural frame, announcing current events at the center.

The external display of structure and services is actu­ally generated by programmatic requirements for flexibil­ity of the interior spaces. These machine infrastructures were moved outside the glass skin to leave unobstructed and adaptable interior volumes. The exterior zone of the structural frame is there to provide tension forces outside the main volume’s external columns, pulling the can – tilevered horizontal members downward to reduce the bending forces on the floor span. This complementary structural strategy eliminates the need for supporting columns across the unencumbered interior span of 157 ft (53.3 m). The mechanical and air-conditioning services are then placed in the exoskeletal frame, leaving the inte­rior open and adaptable.

TABLE 10.1 Fact Sheet
Project	Building Name Client City Lat/Long/Elev	Centre Georges Pompidou French Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Education Paris, France 48.85N 2.36E, 550 ft (168 m)
Team	Architect Engineer Other Team Members	Piano+Rogers Ove Arup & Partners Gianni Franchini
General	Time Line Floor Area Occupants Cost Cost in 1995 US$ Stories Plan	1972-1975. 692,117 ft2 (64,300 m2) of occupied space and 1,076,388 ft2 (99,950 m2) of total planned area. 10,000 visitors per day. FF 345 million or 1973 US$ 75.9 million. $260.8 million or $377/ft2. Six stories of 23 ft (7 m) height. 557 ft X 157.5 ft (170 m X 48 m).
Site	Site Description Parking, Cars	Originally a parking lot for the food markets at Les Halles, 4.9 acres (20,000 m2) between Rue du Renard and Rue St. Martin, "Plateau Beaubourg." Rue St. Martin was closed to create a piazza on the vertical cir­culation side west of the building. 700 cars below grade
Structure	Foundation Vertical Members Horizontal Spans	Main columns carrying vertical loads of 4,000 tons and moment loads of 18,000 tons are supported on wall piles 29.5 ft long by 3.3 ft wide by 45.9 ft deep (9 m x 1 m x 14 m). 26 centrifugally cast steel tube compressive columns of 33.5 in. (850 mm) outside diameter (each carry­ing 3000 tons), 26 solid steel round bar tension ties of 8 in. (200 mm) diameter located 19.7 ft (6 m) out­side the compressive columns 147 ft (44.8 m) main truss girders. Gerberette beams of monolithic cast steel, each weighing 9.6 tons, cantilevered inward approximately 6.6 ft (2 m) and supporting main truss girder.
Envelope	Glass and Glazing Skylights Cladding Roof	Various clear, single, double, and fire-resistant glazings. None. Insulated metal panel. Not determined.
HVAC	Equipment Cooling Type Distribution Duct Type Vertical Chases	47,000 cfm of air supply (80,000 m3/hr), high-velocity dual-duct variable air volume distribution located in structural frame on east elevation. Centrifugal refrigeration, double bundle condensers. High-velocity variable air volume, dual duct. Color coding of ducts. External distribution on west facade.
Interior	Partitions Finishes Vertical Circulation Lighting	Movable dry construction. Various, as there are several different uses of the building. Escalators and four elevators located on west facade, eight fire escapes on each floor, with four on east and four on west elevation. Modular lighting tracks at 4.5 to 7.5 W/ft2 (50 to 80 W/m2).

Six stories of 23-ft (7-m) height and 557-ft x 157.5-ft (170-m x 48-m) in plan.

Main columns carrying vertical load of 4.000 tons and moment loads of 18.000 ton meters are supported on wall piles 29.5-ft long by 3.3-ft wide by 45.9-ft deep (9-m x 1­m x 14-m).

Escalators and four elevators located on west facade, eight fire escapes on each floor with four on east and four on west elevation.

47,000 cfm of air supply (80,000 m3/hr), high velocity dual duct variable air volume distribution located in structural frame on east elevation. Various clear, single, double, and fire resistant glazings. Insulated metal panel at opaque Figure 10.2 Anatomical section. areas.

Program

Client

In 1971, French president Georges Pompidou announced an architectural competition for the center. The jury included Philip Johnson, Oscar Niemeyer, and its chair­man, Jean Prouve, among others. The design was awarded to the newly formed partnership Piano+Rogers on July 18 of the same year. Ove Arup & Partners was brought on as the engineering consultant. Arup’s Peter Rice, whose first major project was the Sydney Opera House, was an inte­gral member of the team. The state client was represented by senior representatives from the ministries of culture, education, and finance.

Brief

The competition brief called for an “architectural and urban complex which will mark our century” and be vis­ited by some 10,000 people per day. It included spaces for a museum of modern art, a reference library of one mil­lion volumes, an industrial design center, an acoustical and music research facility called IRCAM, multipurpose performance halls, plus a restaurant and parking. The budget was set at FF 280 million or about 1971 US $50,778,000 (the equivalent of 1995 US $190,894,736). Completion was scheduled for December 1975. Although the IRCAM acoustical research center was dropped from the first phase of construction, the final cost still totaled some FF 345 million (in 1973 equivalents) or about 1973 US $75,900,000 (the equivalent of 1995 US $ 260,824,742). IRCAM, with its 400-seat variable acoustics auditorium, was completed separately beneath the south­ern end of the plaza in 1977.

Centre Beaubourg was seen as a focal French cultural center. It would house the existing Centre Nationale d’Art Contemporain (CNAC) and a poorly provided for

TABLE 10.2 Outline of Space Inventory ft2 m2 Public Reception and Retail 57,049 5,300 Museum and Library 402,569 37,400 Auditoriums and Temporary Exhibits 78,576 7,300 Administration, Storage, and Workspace 153,923 14,300 Open Space 75,347 7,000 Total Built Space 692,117 64,300 Total Program Space 767,464 71,300 Parking for 700 Cars (located below plaza) Site Area 215,277 20,000

National Museum of Modern Art. In addition to its muse­um collections, the cultural center would house the Public Information Library and an industrial design center. The industrial design agency, Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs, was responsible for the 1925 Paris World’s Fair, Arts Decoratifs et Industriels. Above all, the program called for a novel and modern solution to house novel and modern culture. The brief contains several references to reexamination of the past and speculation about the future. The character suggested is that of a landmark state­ment about contemporary twentieth-century culture and its “service for the diffusion of knowledge.” Centre Pompidou was a predecessor of later president Francois Mitterand’s mammoth Great Works projects that were to reclaim French mastery of culture and art by the end of the millennium (see case study #15).

Site

A critical aspect of the Plateau Beaubourg location, apart from its proximity to other sites of historical and modern architecture, is its relationship to the neighboring market of Les Halles. From Roman times until its 1969 redevelop­ment, Les Halles had been the largest of the Parisian mar­kets. Plateau Beaubourg had been used merely as a parking lot for the market since the 1930s. Having out­grown the space available in the heart of Paris, the market and its food stalls were moved to the southern suburbs of the city. A large retail mall and transit center were devel­oped in their place. Of equal historical note, the sur­rounding Les Marais quarter had been rescued from the swamps during the reign of Henry IV (1589-1610) and had been home to French aristocracy in the seventeenth century. But the neighborhood of pre-Revolutionary medieval streets and stone buildings was in steep decline, and several projects were sited to revitalize it. Centre Pompidou was at the focus. Les Marais is now a heavily populated residential district.

Climate

Paris (48.85 N latitude, 2.36 E longitude) is part of the large “temperate, mid-latitude, no dry season, warm sum­mer” region of northern Europe. This is the world’s largest zone of what Koppen classified as cfb climates. It stretch­es from central Spain and northern Greece to eastern Bulgaria and the central coast of Norway. Of all the cli­mates discussed in this text, however, that of Paris most closely resembles the patterns of Seattle, Washington, at about the same latitude (47.50 N, 122.29 W). Nearby London and Amsterdam are also close matches to Paris, but both have somewhat cooler climates.

Rain falls in Paris on 50 percent of all days and is fair­ly constant from month to month, both in frequency and

		Jan.	Feb.	Mar.	Apr.	May	June	July	Aug.	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Year
	Degree-Days Heating	819	714	615	464	260	128	47	43	144	378	617	752	5028
Temperature	Degree-Days Cooling	0	0	0	0	10	41	93	93	23	2	0	0	253
Extreme High	59	68	75	79	87	95	95	99	90	85	79	63	99
Normal High	43	45	51	57	64	70	75	75	69	59	49	45	59
Normal Average	39	40	45	50	57	62	67	67	61	53	44	41	52
Normal Low	34	34	38	42	49	54	58	57	52	46	39	36	45
	Extreme Low	1	10	21	26	32	39	41	43	41	28	21	14	1
	Dew Point	34	33	37	39	47	52	55	54	52	47	40	36	44
Humidity	Max % RH	89	87	87	86	86	86	85	87	91	92	91	89	88
Min % RH	79	71	65	58	57	58	54	51	59	69	76	81	65
% Days with Rain	60	46	56	53	53	46	43	40	46	56	53	60	51
	Rain Inches	2	2	2	2	3	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	26
Sky	% Overcast Days	39	32	27	19	19	16	11	9	14	23	29	36	23
% Clear Days	8	14	12	13	10	8	13	14	14	10	11	8	11
Wind	Prevailing Direction	SW	E	W	NE	NE	W	W	W	W	W	SW	SW	W
Speed, Knots	12	6	10	9	9	9	9	8	9	9	11	11	9
Percent Calm	2	3	2	2	2	2	2	2	3	3	2	2	2
	Rain	18	14	17	16	16	14	13	12	14	17	16	18	185
Days Observed	Fog	13	14	10	8	7	6	5	7	10	13	14	13	120
Haze	0	0	0	#	#	#	#	0	#	0	#	#	1
Snow	4	4	2	1	#	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	14
Hail	#	0	#	#	#	#	#	0	0	#	#	#	1
Freezing Rain	1	1	#	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	#	1	3
	Blowing Sand	0	#	0	0	0	0	0	0	#	#	0	0	#

table 10.3 Normal Climate Data for Paris

precipitation amounts. The total annual rainfall of only 26 in. indicates light showers more than torrential down­pours. Nonetheless, a scant 11 percent of Paris days have clear skies. The generally gray skies are complemented by cool temperatures—less than 5 percent of annual hours are above 75°F. Temperature ranges from daily low to daily high are kept narrow by constant humidity and cloud cover. Overall, Paris is 59 percent cold, 25 percent cool, 14 percent comfortable, 14 percent warm, and 0 percent hot.

Art collections and libraries in this climate have to plan for humidity control. Even in winter there is some need to cool air to below its dew point by mechanical air – conditioning, so as to drive off the excess moisture before reheating it to serve occupant temperature comfort. With the large number of visitors expected, ventilation by pro­vision of outdoor air means a constant introduction of additional humidity loads. [tab. 10.3; Figs 10.4-5]

Intention

Design Team and Their philosophy

Piano+Rogers was formed expressly to enter the Pompidou competition. The team consisted of the remnants of Team 4, which had formerly included Norman Foster. Renzo Piano had previously joined forces with Rogers to collabo­rate on other projects. As a group of young architects, they were quite inexperienced for a project of this scale. The evo­lution of this group is a story in its own right.

Richard Rogers (b. July 23,1933, in Florence) returned to his family’s native England with his parents in 1938 to escape the early rumblings of war in Mussolini’s Italy. After an adventurous and frequently turbulent youth dur­ing the war years and an early education troubled by mild but undiagnosed dyslexia, he entered the army in November 1951. He was immediately stationed back in

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Figure 10.4 Climate analysis graphics.

Italy, where he met up with his cousin, Ernesto Rogers, also dyslexic and an architect. Ernesto became the editor of Domus in 1945 and, in 1954, of Casabella. It was in Ernesto’s studio with partners Ludovico Belgiojoso and Enrico Peressuti that Richard Rogers first decided to become an architect and, on the advice of his cousin, tar­geted an education at London University’s Architectural Association (the AA). In the autumn of 1953, done with military service and avowed against discipline and author­ity in general, he returned to England.

The early 1950s was the era of several Modernist tran­sitions. Alison and Peter Smithson were teaching at AA. Giedion had published Mechanization Takes Command in 1948, and its message was taken to heart. By 1952, Le Corbusier’s Unite d’Habitation was nearing completion in Marseilles. Reyner Banham (1966) called it all, collective­ly, the New Brutalism.

Rogers entered the Epsom College of Art for two terms to take foundation courses in preparation for the AA. Here he met fellow students Georgie Cheeseman and Brian Taylor, and another series of adventures began. Georgie, coincidentally the daughter of a wealthy Lloyd’s of London underwriter, became his first true love and his total obsession. Her father forbade her to travel with Rogers on summer outings, and so he struck out on his own. An excursion to Milan in the summer of 1957 led to Rogers’s meeting and romance with Su Brumwell. In the time that followed, Rogers’s parents, Dada and Nino, as well as Su’s parents, Marcus and Rene, seemed to bond around the young couple.

Despite his intellectual interest in architecture and his efforts to work in professional practices, Rogers seems to have suffered a lack of drawing skills that threatened his academic progress. Peter Smithson apparently saw

Rogers’s real potential and fostered his academic growth. Meanwhile, Su Brumwell was studying sociology nearby at the London School of Economics (LSE). Rogers eventual­ly won the fifth year prize at AA for a school design proj­ect set in Wales and constructed of local materials. On August 27, 1960, Richard and Su were married. They flew to the south of France for their honeymoon and stayed with Georgie Cheeseman before traveling on.

After Su’s last year at LSE, both she and Richard were accepted at Yale. Rogers had to decline an offer to study under Louis Kahn at the University of Pennsylvania to do so, but he preferred to study at Yale with his wife. She took up urban planning and he was awarded a Fulbright schol­arship in architecture. Paul Rudolph, then dean at Yale, had an authoritarian character that did not sit well with Richard Rogers. Vincent Scully’s history lessons had more appeal to Rogers’s intellect.

Norman Foster was attending Yale at the same time. He and Rogers worked on several projects in school together, including a science laboratory inspired by Louis Kahn’s design for the Richards Medical Research Building.

Philip Johnson, a juror for the young team’s project, is said to have flattened its towers with his bare fists. The trio of Su, Richard, and Norman were also exposed to the Yale teachings of James Stirling and met Craig Ellwood of Case Study House fame and the avant-garde California design scene. The three traveled to Chicago, visiting the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe. Sometime in 1962 they visited the Eames House together. After gradu­ating, Rogers and Su remained in California to do drafting and model making for the firm of SOM. Along the way they visited works of Rudolf Schindler, including the 1953 Lovell Beach House on which Rogers had written an essay for Vincent Scully.

Paris (De Gaulle), France

20 30 40 50 60 70 Dry-Bulb Temperature, °F

Figure 10.5 Bin data distribution for Paris. Concentric areas of graph indicate the number of hours per year that weather conditions normally occur in this climate. Similar to elevation readings on topographic maps, highest frequency occurrences of weather are at the center peaks of the graph. (Data sources: Engineering Weather Data, typical meteorological year (TMY) data from the National Climatic Data Center, and the ASHRAE Weather Data Viewer from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.)

60 UL <3> 5 50 g Ф CL Є P с "o 40 Q_ 3 Ф Q 30

20

By 1963, Su and Richard Rogers had returned to England to pursue their own prospects, designing a house for her parents, the Brumwells. They contacted Georgie and Wendy Cheeseman, who were now qualified archi­tects, and set up an office in a corner of Wendy’s apart­ment. When Norman Foster joined them later, the Team 4 group was complete. Rogers was 30 years old, Foster was 28. After settling into the relationship of four architects in partnership, the group balance was disturbed by Georgie’s withdrawal. Eventually, in 1964, Norman Foster and Wendy Cheeseman were married. In 1967, Rogers and Foster decided to close Team 4 after the success of the Reliance Controls Factory failed to bring in new work. Wendy and Norman Foster established their own inde­pendent office that same year.

Another important collaborator was structural engi­neer Anthony Hunt. He had been associated with Wendy Cheeseman on some domestic projects, and she intro­duced him into the group. Together, Team 4 and Anthony Hunt finally completed the project for the Brumwell home and a few other small domestic designs. The Michael Jaffe house in Radlett, Hertfordshire was later used as a film set for A Clockwork Orange.

Other more successful projects followed, most notably the bold steel frame Reliance Controls Factory, a job that James Stirling had them short-listed for. Anthony Hunt again provided the engineering and stretched the materi­als to their economical and functional limits. In spite of awards and recognition, Reliance brought no new work, and the cooperative forces of Team 4, especially between the powerful personalities of Rogers and Foster, began to disintegrate. In June 1967, Rogers and Su left the firm’s projects to Norman Foster and Wendy Cheeseman. John Young, chief assistant, stayed with the Fosters to finish his term at the Architecture Association, but Rogers later worked a deal for Young to complete his education in his office, where he has remained to this day.

Eventually, the work of the Rogers caught the atten­tion of Renzo Piano, who was practicing in Genoa.

Following some correspondence, Piano came to London and began working with Richard and Su. In 1969, Marco Goldschmied joined the firm at the urging of John Young, and by 1970, Piano was an official team member.

Su and Richard had their third child, Ab, in July 1968. Meanwhile, Rogers had started a romance with Ruth Elias, a New Yorker whom he had met through an introduction from Georgie Cheeseman. By mid-1970, Richard Rogers organized a lecture tour in the United States to spend three months with Ruth and meet her family.

After returning to London to find the firm plodding along without him, Rogers eventually met an engineer from Ove Arup & Partners by the name of Ted Happold (see case study #3 for more on Happold and his work with Michael Hopkins and Frei Otto). Arup & Partners had recently finished the Sydney Opera House, and despite that project’s political difficulties and cost overruns, the firm was determined to do another international project. In early 1971, Happold contacted Piano+Rogers to enter a competition in Paris. Rogers was against it, but Piano and Su outvoted him. Gianfranco Franchini was persuaded by Piano to move to London from Genoa and join the effort.

At about 10:30 on a Friday morning in the middle of July, John Young appeared at the office to find Richard and Su Rogers dancing gleefully. They had won the Centre Pompidou competition.

Intent

The team’s architectural intention was defined in its com­petition statement as “A Live Center of Information.” This focus was played out in the design by three media. First, there were the library and museum collections. For these interior functions to remain dynamic, a large degree of flexibility would be required. Originally, the team’s com­petition entry proposed a series of movable floors, unin­terrupted by partitions. Although the moving floors were eventually abandoned, the 157 ft (48 m) clear span across the narrow dimension of the plan was maintained. An interactive component of the interior information systems would include newsrooms, galleries, libraries, cinemas, and documentary services.

Second, the open plaza area was seen as a vital exten­sion of the interior functions. Life would be instilled here by temporary exhibits and outdoor events, promoting continuity between the interior and pedestrian life. To broaden the plaza, a crossroad to the west would be closed and incorporated as pedestrian space. Not coincidentally, the plaza also provides an open place to see the building from.

Finally, the long facades of the building were to become three-dimensional surfaces layered with interest. With the building pushed up against Rue Renard on the east, the building was transformed into two information surfaces. The street side would display traffic-related data, and the plaza side would present entertainment and information to pedestrians. Developmental design sketches from late 1972, after most major elements of the building had been decid­ed, show how images might be projected onto the building from neighboring structures across the plaza. Other images show how digital displays, of the “multivision” blinking screens variety, might have been employed.

The building was also to be a protagonist for Modernist architecture. It would be a flexible container of changing functions rather than a monumental form hous­ing fixed installations. The Pompidou would be a dynam­ic servicing machine. To make this proclamation while still embracing the functional intention of providing live information, a number of bold moves were required. First, the building would be turned inside out, thus liberating the interior spaces from the permanent accommodation of circulation and servicing. This move also implied a strategy of expressively revealed technical systems. Second, the building would estrange itself from the historic char­acter of its urban context in every way imaginable: scale, height, form, and expression. Reintegration with the cityscape would rely on attractive differences rather than soft-edged harmony.