Pom! Pom! Pompidou Centre(Paris, France)

Key Architects: #RichardRogers(British) and #RenzoPiano(French).

Duration: 1971-1977

• The Centre Georges Pompidou is considered a ‘High-tech’ architectural project. The paramount reason for this entitlement was the perfect collaborative approach between the key architects and the Irish structural engineer– Peter Rice(1935-92).
• The ‘inside out’ creativity in the building got influenced by an architectural style once introduced by Le-Corbusier, and Antonio Gaudi called– Bowellism.

• The winning entry for a multicultural complex included the world’s largest modern-art collections on one side and an extensive public library on the other.

• What’s on the exterior? A gigantic machine feeling which features an iron and steel exoskeleton of columns supporting the interlaced diagonal struts and horizontal beams with large, colored ducts.

• What’s in the interior? Simplistic and spacious open galleries with large windows. Although, a linkage in internal and external space is provided through exposed bright colored networking of tubes and ducts on ceilings.

• Fa?ade treatment is not only famous all over the world due to its structural members but also to the escalators enveloped in acrylic tubes and deliberately exposing services with bold and colorful play.

Fun fact: The ‘High Tech’ approach was initiated in the 1970s by Foster, Rogers, Piano, and several others by avoiding modernistic concrete, steel, and glass ‘boxes’ and focusing on modern technology and materials honestly and openly.

Other works:

-Lloyd’s building(London, UK) by Richard Rogers between 1978-86

- HSBC building(Hong Kong, China) by Foster and Partners between 1983-6

-875 North Michigan Avenue(Chicago, USA) by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill between 1965-9.