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Building review
The Pompidou Centre: or the hidden
kernel of dematerialisation

Francesco Proto School of the Built Environment, Department of

Critical Theory, University of Nottingham,
Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

Already in the mid-1960s, with the first warnings of juvenile arraignments, an open critique
of the naive enthusiasm with which the former generation had absorbed the myth of
technology and communication came to the fore. So that Archigram members themselves,
in proposing a cardboard megastructure for the ARCHIGRAM VII special issue (‘everybody’s
got their own mega-structure, do it yourself’ they wrote), kept an ironic distance from the
modernistic belief in the linear evolution of society (Fig. 1).
Nevertheless, the dramatic decrease in the utopian mainstream that had characterised
the ‘Year of Megastructures’, as Banham called it (1963), succeeded in producing an unrepea-
table architectural gesture for the celebration of individual freedom and social equality. As
one of the best-known contemporary icons, the Pompidou Centre was also responsible for
turning the modernistic interest in functionality into the de-materialised aspects of urban
fetishism. The hyper-objectification of its form and the consequent ‘transparency’ of its
content led in fact to a new type of architectural fruition: that in which the ideological
perception of the building exceeded the real possibilities suggested by its hyper-flexibility.
Thus, the Pompidou also inaugurated a new era for the dogmatic myth of self-
empowerment by means of self-learning (auto-didacticism) and mass jouissance.

1. The simulated display developed into a highly iconic structure intended to

Conceived soon after the student rebellion of the late epitomise an ‘apparent’ symbolic exchange between
1960s, the Pompidou Centre in Paris became a power and the masses. Apparent because not only
privileged place where culture was offered to did the building prove itself to be the heir of unsolved
the masses as a proof of democratisation. By means design and conceptual contradictions, but also
of de-materialisation—ie, the display not only of the because its stardom unexpectedly derived exactly
building’s interiors, but by the act of displaying in from these contradictions; or, better, by the way in
itself (display of culture, of fluxes and most of all of which, in interacting one with the other, they made
the masses in the act of perennially enjoying culture of it a fascinating ideological riddle in the way in
as a means of both conscious entertainment and which it came to be both sensed and perceived.
self-empowerment)—the Pompidou offered itself as Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers,1 who won the
a mythical object capable of either representing or mir- Plateau Beaubourg Centre Paris Competition in
roring the mass obsession for ‘liberty’; liberty of both 1971 (its full title), clearly expressed the intention
being and desiring. As a consequence, the building of creating a populist dimension for culture by

# 2005 The Journal of Architecture 1360–2365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360500463156

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Figure 1. Archigram,
Do-it-yourself
Megastructure, (paper
kit), Archigram VII,
1967.

Figure 2. Renzo Piano,

Richard Rogers,
Pompidou Centre, main
façade, Paris, 1977.

abolishing the idea of a closed main façade. They

opted for a huge, transparent one in order to
new era of freedom from the enslavement of work,
make clear that no barrier was interposed for acces-
should be regarded as the starting point for the
sing culture. All of a sudden, this solution not only
megastructuralist movement, whose fatal connec-
became a metaphor of this process of cultural
tion with the emergence of pop culture (and the
appropriation by the masses, but also developed
concept of ‘happening’), free-time’s mass consump-
the building into a monument to ‘the ritual of trans-
tion, the fame of psycho-sociological theories on the
parency’ and the free circulation of information. The
importance of play, as well as the influence of a post-
huge escalator, working as a sign, and its prodigious
Marxist interpretation of the so-called ‘Society of
transparent façade, working as a metaphor (not to
Spectacle’ by the Situationist movement, reinforced
mention its emblematic, technological structure,
the application of the idea of interactive involvement
which increased its metaphysical appeal) conspired
in both urbanism and architecture.
to make a fetish of it, whereas culture assumed
the dimension of a gift whose value would other-
Figure 3. Electric Ironer wise have never been redeemed (Fig. 2).
Democratized (Sears
Roebuck Catalogue,
1941 – 2).
2. An architectural fossil
The increasing faith in both consumption and tech-
nology, a decade after World War Two, and the
idea that standardised production and the diffusion
of domestic appliances (Fig. 3), as a consequence of
the supposed increase of free-time, would produce a
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A number of unrealised megastructures—like In this respect, although the Pompidou became

Michael Webb’s academic work Sin Centre (1958– one of the most hated, discussed and visited build-
62) (Fig. 4), Peter Cook’s Entertainment Tower for ings in the world (almost 25,000 daily presences as
the 1967 Montreal Expo (1963) (Fig. 5), the so- opposed to a maximum of 10,000 foreseen in the
called New Babylon (1963) by the Situationist archi- planning stage), public success did not prevent the
tect Constant Niewenhuis and Cedric Price’s Fun
Palace (1965)—aimed at satisfying an unchallenged
belief in the logic of free-time, preceded the Pompi- Figure 4. Michael
Webb, Sin Centre,
dou in exploring a field in between the pop-happen-
1958 – 62.
ing, the urban event and large-scale consumerism,
also identified in Yona Friedman’s L’Architecture Figure 5. Peter Cook,
mobile manifesto (Fig. 6, and footnote 12). Entertainment Tower,
So that, even before the building was completed, 1963.
in December, 1977, it was perceived as an architec-
tural fossil. The culmination of more than ten years
of architectural ideals, its apparent structural com-
plexity was the result of the application of such
obsolete technologies that the greatest achieve-
ment, during the building phase, was accomplishing
the transport of the building’s parts (most of which
were hand-crafted) to the plateau.
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Figure 6. Yona internationally recognised public monument the

Friedman, Architecture 1970s have ever produced’:
Mobile, 1962.
The Centre reflects – the supreme moment of
technological euphoria in Western society: the
moment when it was genuinely believed that
‘freedom’ was to be got by providing ourselves
with endless power-supplied facility: with servi-
cing which would be so elaborate and so heavily
duplicated that you could do anything you
want, anywhere, at any time.3
critics from censuring it. If Tafuri spoke in terms of In this sense, by assembling the nostalgic leftovers of
‘superfluous metaphors [and] images become cano- a missed revolution, the Pompidou proved subver-
nical in the new natural environment’, Colquhoun sive through a series of understated aspects that its
accused it of populism and megalomania. Only ambiguous appearance (and this was one of them)
Frampton, in pointing to the Pompidou as a typical did not reveal at first glance. The innovative solution
‘example of a lack of built surfaces and an excess of tying the Centre to the quartier’s life by means of
of flexibility’, accidentally underlined the building’s a huge square, or its highly iconic shape, where the
most innovative aspects.2 impressive graphic sign of the escalator emerged
Piano and Rogers—who had beaten 681 compe- from a complex entwining of structural nodes,
titors and were judged by a panel which included stressed new directions in architecture, especially in
Philip Johnson, a notorious follower of fashion, its tendency to cross over into the commodity-form.
and Jean Prouvé, engineer, inventor and exper-
imenter with new technologies—claimed to have 3. The return of the ‘Homo Ludens’
been inspired by megastructures and the notion of Hyper-technological and hyper-functional—almost a
flexibility they were supposed to embody. To most magniloquent monument to human progress—the
people, however, the Pompidou appeared to be Pompidou aimed to embody the latest notion of a
the excessive, burlesque expression of the modernist do-it-yourself structure after the supposed end of
ideal of the building-as-a-machine. So that, if it was capitalist supremacy signalled by the student revolt.
identified as a monument, strictu sensu modernists If many critics, impressed by the imposing
gave this a funereal resonance. machine-like apparatus, mistook the building for
Utilising the tiredest commonplaces from moder- the umpteenth futurist-derived hymn to special
nist imagery (Russian Constructivism to French Struc- effects, the final purpose, far from resuscitating
tural Rationalism), and proposing itself as part of the the machine-a-habiter logic, aspired to exalt the
newly born myth of individual freedom, the building idea of indeterminacy: a building-in-progress, in
was finally celebrated by Reyner Banham as ‘the only which lightness and flexibility could improve the
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audience’s involvement. As Renzo Piano himself Figure 7. Peter Cook,

claimed: Plug-in City, 1964.

The Pompidou’s aim was to define a different

relationship with culture. No longer elitist,
culture was now meant to get off its pedestal
and enter the flux of life. Instead of being secluded
in a temple or mausoleum, it had to be spread in a
new kind of public forum, in a bazaar derived from
a strong interaction between art and science.
This [the Pompidou] was supposed to be only
the main node4 of a series of similar cultural
exchanges, which were also supposed to be
disseminated all around the country. In order to
accomplish such a goal, the project was aimed
at combining and carrying to extremes a certain
number of architectural ideals.5
For this reason, with regard to the ‘archigram-matic’
initial project (Fig. 7)6—an open and variable struc-
ture derived from the superimposition of round-
edged modules as in a state of perennial transform-
ation—Banham noted:
They [Piano and Rogers] put on stage a world
made of bright colours, sharp shapes, hanging
devices, inflatable appliances, gigantic projecting
screens and all of the old good imagery of enter- Intended to open itself to the triumphant rise of
tainment and flexibility very well designed and the working class, the Bastille of contemporary
represented by means of photographic collages culture, with its moving floors and panels, had
realised by the members of the Archigram-edu- been conceived as if literally turned inside-out:8
cated Crysalis group, which came on purpose this was not only in order to make visible, readable
from Los Angeles in order to work on the and immediately identifiable by the audience the
project in the Paris office.7 main access and the distributing systems (and thus
In this respect, the age of the machine finally make itself more easily ‘assailable’), but also to
appeared capable of promoting not only the demo- leave the internal surfaces completely clear from
cratisation of culture, but also the idea of democra- any kind of obstacles. So that even the psychedelic
tisation itself by means of culture. effect of the colours of the pipes on the rear
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Francesco Proto

Figure 8. Pompidou façade, which positions the structure half way

Centre, transversal between the ‘yellow submarine’ and an oil refinery,
section.
had been envisaged as communicating, through the
specific use of a visual code, the contents of the
ducts.
The structural mechanism upon which the entire
building was based, freely reinterpreting Dennis
Crompton’s Computer City,9 was thus finally found
in ‘a spectacular version of the trilitic element’: a
48-metre overhanging reticular beam, supported
by pylons, cantilevered 6 metres out from both the
building’s front and rear façades, and allowing the
suspension of the external escalator, the main
Figure 9. Pompidou
facilities and the entire distributing apparatus. This
Centre, side façade. combined system of pylons and janerettes (the reti-
cular beams inventor’s name) was repeated for the
total number of bays, permitting the suspension of
5 substantial floors, each equal to two football
pitches (170  50 metres, 7 metres high) (Figs 8, 9).
The use of glass panels for the external surfaces
made it clear what the architects were interested in:
The fundamental concept of the building is to
eliminate the traditional closed façade. By fading
away, the envelope helps to realise the prime
objective of the Centre, which is to disseminate
culture. It becomes transparent. Thanks to the
escalators suspended from the west façade, like
a gangway thrown on the hull of a ship, visitors
may comprehend both the building and the city.
This aerial route is a very powerful invitation to
discovery and initiation.10
Thus, the building’s permeability, together with its
sensoriality and multimediality (ie, its capability not
only to interact with the environment, but to do so
by the spreading of sounds, lights and colours)
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became the essential characteristic of the Pompidou December, 1956, a nomad camp together with his
and embodied, maybe for the first time in the history fellow painter (and founder-member of the movement)
of architecture, links and relationships existing in a Pinot Gallizio, he was suddenly hit by a stroke of genius:
society made of fluxes, many of which de-materia- That was the day I conceived the scheme for a
lised like information. permanent encampment for the gypsies of Alba
As Archigram declared a propos of Instant City at and that project is the origin of the series of
the Utopia and/or Revolution conference held at the maquettes of New Babylon. Of a New Babylon
Polytechnic in Turin: ‘Today’s revolution is intended where, under one roof, with the aid of moveable
to allow self-determination through either acknowl- elements, a shared residence is built; a temporary,
edged or shared information.’11 In spreading pure constantly remodelled living area; a camp for
generalised information, Instant City was intended nomads on a planetary scale.14
to highlight the idea of democratisation as a conse- The project, needless to say, took the form of a
quence of information’s direct control by the users. megastructure,15and made its appearance during
So that, in professing entertainment as a new a conference, published in 1964. New Babylon, a
medium, the importance of Game became a never-ending metropolitan happening for experien-
central issue to the ongoing revolution. cing a subversive approach to urban life, was
It comes as no surprise, then, that the Pompidou meant to turn upside down the dominant logic:
itself, like the projects that preceded it, signalled the instead of functional space, aspirations to game,
necessity of a ludic structure that, by means of play, freedom and activity sought to impose their rules
was tailored to educating the masses in self-learning. on architecture (Figs 10, 11, 12).
Precursor by a few years of the more fortunate
4. Some eminent ancestors proposals from Archigram and Cedric Price, New
In the McLuhanian outlook of the architect-as- Babylon was meant to reduce apparently incompati-
intellectual (or the architect as an information ble concepts to the same denominator: on the one
technician), the (pop) megastructuralists’ interest in hand, as opposed to the workshops and factories
‘mobility and mutability’12 was soon linked—by the rationalists were interested in, there were the
the rediscovery of Huizinga’s theories on free-time, aesthetics of fairground attractions and entertain-
game and entertainment by the Situationist move- ment places; on the other, was the more abstract
ment—to the emerging figure of the homo ludens and conceptual aesthetic of architectural flexibility,
as the new social subject devoted to the cause of ie, the aesthetic of dematerialisation that, according
cultural appropriation. to the precepts of open work which Umberto Eco
It is not by accident that the first to conceive the was theorising around the same time (1962), abdi-
new habitat for the homo ludens was the Dutch cates a finished form in favour of an open structure.
painter and architect Constant Niewenhuis, untiring However, as Prestinenza Puglisi notes, if the
activist of the Situationist movement.13 In visiting, in aesthetic of fairground attractions ‘postulates a
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Figure 10. Constant images), the aesthetic of dematerialisation imposes

Niewenhuis, New instead ‘the opposite attitude of ascetics, ie, of
Babylon, 1963, plan.
such an open form as to annihilate itself and, as a
non-form, to disappear.’16 In this respect, New
Babylon remained for many both a too-ambitious
and a failed project.
Making the most of the experience of the Fun
Palace, where the extreme flexibility of the structure
– with its ‘minimum ties along the three dimensions’
(Banham) – does not require abdication from an
extremely detailed and pragmatic level of planning,
the Pompidou re-elaborated the Situationist experi-
ence to the point of fusing, successfully this time,
immateriality and jocularity in the same structure
(Fig. 13).

5. Pop and pop-ular

disruptive and vital architectural intervention’, The ‘planning’ of the Pompidou on the plateau
forcing the planner to think of space in terms of Beaubourg supplied Paris with a new monument
flows (flows of movements, perceptive feelings, for its collection. Strangely, because the building

Figure 11. Constant

Niewenhuis, New
Babylon, model.
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available—which also made impossible realisation Figure 12. Constant

of the mobile floors—appeared to be the major Niewenhuis, New
Babylon, model.
cause for the disappearance of one of the most
innovative and interesting of the project’s features.
In truth, the uncertainty of the ruling class towards
the uncontrollable use of a building open to the con-
sumers’ manipulation, made the screen immediately
appear as a dangerous tool for radical propaganda,
and it was eliminated.
Denuded of a screen that was meant to conceal
more or less one quarter of the main façade, the
had been conceived as an autonomous symbol of project, broadly revisited thanks to the contribution
anti-monumentalism. of Peter Rice and Ove Arup & Partners17—by freely
At a point where the spectacularisation of culture reinterpreting Dennis Crompton’s Computer City
matched the spectacularisation of politics, the (Fig. 14), of which it is reminiscent due to the
Centre’s allure could be partly attributed to a series dense network of connecting rods of bracing—
of contradictions innate in its hybrid functionalism, finally became nearer to the idea of the factory of
amongst which was the elimination of the mega- information. Above all, the disappearance of the
screen on the front façade that, present in the screen pushed the planners to extend the use of
1971 contest-winning project, was supposed to glass-curtains all over the external surfaces, increas-
display, by means of electronic messages, either ing the effect of transparency and accessibility.
events at the centre or current cultural and political
developments.
The death of President Pompidou and the Figure 13. Cedric Price,
consequent, drastic reduction of the subsidies Fun Palace, 1961.

Figure 14. Dennis

Crompton, Computer
City, 1964.
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However, because of the high number of joints exacerbated not only by the unintended Dadaist
necessary to the maintenance of the structure trick to appear—like Duchamp’s Bottle-rack—
between the knots of the connecting rods and the completely out-of-context (the building was set in
joints beam-pillar, Marinelli could not help drastically Paris’s historical centre: Fig. 16), but also by the
defining the system as ‘an n-times repeated joint application of the pop principle of ‘happening’,
equal to itself’ (Fig. 15): which made of it a sci-fi, out-of-scale home
In this grid the key point is represented by the gra- appliance. As a ‘“strange object” capable of
phicised joint that, in never deriving from the tec- [. . .] arousing a sense of stupefaction [. . .] [which]
tonic value of the structure, but from the static fails in being supported by more articulated feel-
one, mechanically repeats itself without assuming ings’, it was nevertheless supposed to break ‘the tra-
a final shape. And this lack of a final shape in the ditional barriers existing between culture and
Pompidou is unbearable. And not in the sense of a people’.20
stylistic lack, as it is already out of any architectural So that, in writing that ‘although [t]he large
category; because for this very reason, its being square in front of the building [and] the open
‘out of’ also means out of any language. Node ground floor are amazing since they illustrate the
by node, level by level, it unfolds itself as if the confluence of two codes—that of function’s
only possible message to spread would be the flexibility and that of prestige’, Peter Cook also
impossibility for architecture to be.18 stressed the dichotomy at the very heart of the
Incidentally, this ‘being out of’ was also part of the structure’s conceptual presuppositions: ‘[o]ne of
fascination the Pompidou was able to exert. the problems in the Pompidou is that the building
Treated as a pre-assembled ready-made,19 the
building’s technological self-referring quality was

Figure 15. Pompidou

Centre, wind-frame
node.

Figure 16. Plateau

Beaubourg, aerial view.
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tries to be cool in a certain way, but it is necessarily Figure 17. Pompidou

heroic.’21 Centre, ground floor,
main hall.
The winner of the Plateau Beaubourg compe-
tition, the only one to envisage a two-storey building
instead of the one-storey platform expressly
required by the rules, was intended to leave free
half of the area of the so-called plateau. Johnson,
although not yet entirely convinced by the project’s
proposal—which was in effect modified until it
reached a more regular and compact front
façade—was nevertheless positively impressed by
the building’s volume and the idea of a plaza in
front of it. So that, from the very beginning, he
identified the project as the successful proposal.
The idea of the plaza, with its tilted plane
that directly entered the pulsating heart of the
structure—a solution later adopted for the new
Tate in London—was advanced: doubling the
height of the building, which was supposed to by experiences and design techniques that
occupy the whole plateau, allowed, first, Paris’s his- approached, for the cold effect of visual trance
torical centre to be equipped with a new area for that its vision produced, the results achieved
spontaneous happenings and events; secondly, the by Andy Warhol in his successful attempts at de-
building was to be endowed with a monumentality humanising figurative art. The absolute lack of any
that would have been denied by the existing per- element that might betray craftsmanship; the insis-
spectival vision, crushed as it would have been by tent repetition of identical joints over the entire
the adjacent streets; finally, the external square façade, which provided the Centre with a flat and
was visually projected into the mediatheque’s hall, neutral background on which, as a pure graphic
creating an internal-external continuum for never- sign, the escalator—assuming the dimension of a
ending, osmotic flows (Fig. 17). self-advertising logo—rides (Fig. 18); the perceptive
Such a monumentality, or ‘heroism’, as Cook hesitation between the tri-dimensional volume of
defined it, was however part of a more complicated the building and the bi-dimensionality of its
and sophisticated ‘trick’ of perception that façade, which could not be overlooked from
somehow its own inventors did not expect. anywhere in the square; the lack of any stylistic refer-
Treated as ‘a static and frozen body’,22 the ence that places it ‘outside any language—a
Pompidou stormed onto the urban scene overloaded diffused de-personalisation that stresses more the
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Figure 18. Pompidou clarifying once and for all the building’s design
Centre, night view: status, which fearfully oscillates between the monu-
front façade and mentality of its form and the informality of its
escalator.
content (masses rather than art), made it the
fulcrum of a diffused populism.
For this reason, the immensely fascinating power
of the Pompidou Centre rested on this simple
basis: as a fetish, as a mythology, as a metaphor
and, eventually, as a distorted abstraction of social
demand—in other words, as a Simulacrum—the
Pompidou, and every concept it symbolised
(‘freedom’, ‘entertainment’, ‘culture’, etc.), worked
as a semantic sublimation for an apparent urban
event, almost in the way that the Situationists had
making process than the conceptual design syn- conceived it.
thesis’ (Marinelli)—perhaps made of the Pompidou As Barthes points out in Mythologies: ‘with signif-
the first example of architecture in which the ication [myth] we have, of course, encountered an
mighty presence of the building, like the Campbell’s extremely powerful, because covert, producer of
Soup Can by Warhol, does not transmit any other meaning at a level where an impression of “God-
message but that—elusive—of its own immanence. given” or “natural” prevails, largely because we
In subsuming the characteristics of a standardised are not normally able to perceive the process by
object, exactly like the endless series of products which it has been manufactured.’23And this is
available on the market, the Pompidou also inaugu- precisely the impact that the ‘application’ to the
rated a sour polemic on the meaning that the whole building of the ‘high-tech effect’ produced.
cultural operation was soon to signify. Conceived in order to represent the unbelievable
The ideological representation of display and opportunities offered by standardisation in architec-
consumption, a perceptual trance of which the ture (among others, flexibility and low cost), its
hi-tech stylisation was also a part, was in effect able supposed prefabricated parts, moulded one by one
to create a stylised plus-value between the building’s in special laboratories, exhausted the available
supposed informality and its depthless monumental- budget.24 And since nothing multiplies reality
ity. The building’s ability not only to impose itself as better than its own representation, this effect
a ready-made object for immediate consumption, resulted in its being all the more powerful because
but also as a structure whose symbolic value was it derived from a mise-en-scene.
successfully expressed by the arrogant graphic sign In turning the unrealisable illusion of a self-
of the escalator; or rather, the impossibility of learning mediatic prothesis into the more affordable
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illusion of a communicational-economy based Rogers the building implied a new paradigm of

society, the Pompiodu also realised the intangible informality in architecture; a kind of informality
dream of a place where, by means of a connected that, exactly like the fragmented composing of
isolation, an ‘instantaneous reversal of reality’25 jazz music—organised around a mosaic structure
was to be accomplished. The impossibility of in which execution and composition merge—could
distinguishing any longer the use-value of the represent a constant search for discontinuity, partici-
Pompidou from its exchange-value (its symbolic pation and spontaneity. He stated:
meaning) thus formed the basis for the building to It is my belief that exciting things happen when a
enter the dimension in which the ‘physiological’ variety of overlapping activities designed for all
need for the Pompidou-as-a-product was largely people [. . .] meet in a flexible environment,
exceeded by its psychological aspects. opening up the possibility of interaction outside
Built soon after a period of great faith in technol- the confines of institutional limits. When this
ogy and its utopian use, the democratisation of takes place, deprived areas become dynamic
free-time—by means of concepts like flexibility, places for those who live, work and visit; places
low-cost, nomadism and mass mobility—matched where all can participate, rather than less or
that of architecture as a place for never-ending more beautiful ghettos.
cultural performances. No matter whether the build- An ‘open work’ like the Pompidou was therefore
ing finally became a technological counterfeit (no aimed at providing a place where a flight from
one of its components was truly standardised): as reality (work, production and class division)—by
a hyper-objectual gift, its novelty lay not only in its means of sociability and creativity—was possible.
‘high-tech effect’—which ideologically increased ‘Creativity’—Constant Niewenhuis wrote in the
the idea of a super-flexible structure for the manipu- introduction to New Babylon—‘is the realisation of
lation of the masses—but in the fact that such a freedom.’27 And this simple but effective principle,
gift was offered unwrapped. What became which Constant Niewenhuis derived from Johan
de-materialised in the building’s ‘body’, in the end, Huizinga’s book Ludic Society: a Study of the
was therefore not only its structural shell, but the Element of Play in Culture (first published in 1938),
very same concepts from which it was born. was incorporated in the Pompidou on an involuntary
ideological basis.
6. The transparency of Game Therefore, if the notion of play was subsumed
Linked to the idea of jazz improvisation—‘perfect in by the technological apparatus of the building
all its parts, but open and flexible at the same time’ (‘technology cannot be an end in itself, but must
(Richard Rogers)—the building’s main façade rep- aim at solving long term social and ecological pro-
resented a manifesto for a new era. blems’)28 immateriality also was expressed through
As for jazz musicians, ‘recorded jazz is as stale as the evanescence of a structure in which the tra-
the newspaper of the day before’,26 so for Richard ditional problems of architectural design were
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Francesco Proto

overturned (if not even denied) by the total exposure means of the glass coating, the artificial light
of plant on the building’s exoskeleton. The choice to emitted by the inside lets this same volume dissolve
show pipes, ie, to reveal the machine operating, itself like an organic body exposed to X-rays
drove Zevi in fact to compare the Pompidou to one (Fig. 20).
of Calvino’s Invisible Cities—‘it does not have A magic lantern, a transparent casket that exhibits
walls, nor ceilings, nor floors: nothing that makes its more precious content on the outside: an escala-
it look like a city except the piping [. . .]’ (Fig. 19). tor that, in diagonally cutting the façade in an ideally
In this respect, the Pompidou ended up being never-ending ascension, is in truth optically as
more ‘invisible’ since its building work was replaced ‘castrated’ at its extremes as an ancient technologi-
by an ‘electronic-impulse nervous system that gains cal fragment.
the environmental changes and records individual As if suspended in nothingness, this ‘snake of iron
needs.’ (Rogers). and glass’29 (exactly as Antonio da Sant’Elia wished
Both opaque and transparent, the building’s the vertical connections of futurist architecture to
immateriality changes according to the differing be), is an enigmatic silhouette overloaded by mean-
light-sources—either natural or artificial—with ings: the true content of the Pompidou is, just as
which the structure is invested. In the morning, the the whole ‘thinking’ apparatus of the building,
thin but dense network of principal and secondary hung on its outside. Obsolete as a technological
beams on the front façade, illuminated by the exter- heritage—a reminiscent leftover from a lost civilis-
nal natural light, lets the opaque building’s volume ation—this escalator is the true masterpiece of the
disappear in a chiaroscuro of lights and shades (so Pompidou-museum. Out of the sacred reliquary of
that what really emerges from the entire structure art, where it was supposed to be, the escalator rep-
is this metallic bi-dimensional layer that evaporates, resents both the symbol and the symptom of the
in the upper band, against the sky). At night, by de-sacralisation of art accomplished by the Pompidou
and the cultural operation it was intended to put in
motion. No longer secluded in the sacred enclosure
Figure 19. Pompidou
of silence and isolation, art—exactly like this
Centre, rear façade.
escalator—is ‘out’, visible and enjoyable. And this
Figure 20. Pompidou
Centre, night view.
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Figure 21. Pompidou

Centre, the escalator.

Figure 22. Pompidou

Centre, perspective.

operation of the cultural de-legitimising of something

communicational, technologic and cybernetic
that, for centuries, has been supposed to hold its
factors as innocent ingredients for the establishment
value by natural law is exactly the reason why, by
of a self-managing community based on individuals’
inverting the principle, the Pompidou gained its own
willingness and personal communication skills.
legitimacy.
Interestingly, as McLuhan might have put it, the
By turning architecture into an irreplaceable medium
escalator was the message (Figs 21, 22).
for the uncontrollable ascent of culture as a market
product, the Pompidou also inaugurated a period of
pompous rebirth for exhibiting spaces. In this case, Notes
the weakening of the utopian megastructural main- Francesco Proto is the author of MASS. IDENTITY.
stream, a decade before the advent of postmodernism, ARCHITECTURE: Architecture Writings of Jean Baudrillard
is to be found in the Pompidou with its capability to (forthcoming 2nd revised edition 2006).
turn and amplify the late 1950s concept of ‘mass 1. Gianfranco Franchini, the third member, left the group
utopia’ into the late 1960s ‘individualist utopia’. soon after completion of the competition’s first stages.
2. Even Leonardo Benevolo gave the building only a brief
Destined to survive longer, the latter also shaped
note in the History of Modern Architecture.
the Pompidou Centre’s ambition to stress the shift
3. R. Banham (1976), p. 272 (It. ed.).
from the ‘dream of a never-ending urban continuum’
4. In this context, note the recent competition for the
(mass utopia) to that of a discrete space where a de-centralisation of the Pompidou to Mertz (France)
‘direct exchange among individuals’ could take won by Shigeru Ban.
place (individualist utopia).The conceptualisation of 5. R. Piano, in P. Buchanan (1993), p.49.
an either visible or invisible network for global com- 6. The original proposal had much in common with Instant
munication thus informed the conceptualisation of City (with its mega-terminals for the distant-audience’s
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Building review
The Pompidou Centre
Francesco Proto

involvement) and Plug-in City (with its capsules hanging and Rogers to verify the feasibility of the project. Its
from a load-bearing framework), both by Peter Cook. contribution proved on all counts fundamental, as
7. R. Banham, (1976), p. 238 (It. ed.). was Rice, who, having already participated in the con-
8. To this end, Banham’s The Architecture of the Well- struction of the Sydney Opera House, provided the
Tempered Environment (1969), a volume on the aes- necessary strategic competence without which the
thetic values inherent in the exhibition of a building’s Pompidou could not have been realised. Up to his
technical equipment, exercised its influence on an death (1992), Rice participated in Piano’s most import-
entire generation of designers. By producing a detailed ant workshops, while Arup continued his collaboration
history of building’s heating and ventilation systems with Rogers.
from the Industrial Revolution onwards, he partly 18. G. Marinelli (1978), p. 20.
continued Giedion’s analysis in Mechanisation takes 19. ‘Technique, flexibility, functionality appear to be at the
Command, the Independent Group’s cult book. very heart of the design strategy. All in all, [what the
9. Here, different kinds of information on several levels— spectator gets is] a feeling of indifference, always on
and relevant to a number of activities—are supposed the verge of skimming a collective psychological
to be engaged simultaneously. mood (more in touch with the English attitude than
10. R. Piano, R. Rogers, Le Bulletin (January, 1977), quoted the French) emphasised by a diffused de-personalisa-
in R. Banham (1977). tion that stresses more the making process than the
11. B. Orlandoni, G. Vallino (1977), p. 102. conceptual design synthesis.’ (G. Marinelli, op. cit.,
12. See also Yona Friedman’s theoretic system, published pp. 201 –1).
in L’Architecture mobile in 1958, in which he 20. Ibid.
rejected the idea of a static city, influenced by 21. Peter Cook, in G. Marinelli, op. cit., p. 89.
attendance at CIAM X in Dubrovnik, 1956 (Grove 22. ‘It is possible to trace [. . .] in [the building’s] irresolution
Dictionary of Art). between bi-dimensionality and tri-dimensionality—
13. The Situationists, opposed to the age of consumption, even if expressed by means of remarkable, sometimes
averse to any form of homologation and in favour of a refined design standards and despite the considerable
freed society in which to accomplish a work-of-art-like use of up-to-date technological appliances—the key
life, used to profess themselves against functional that condemns the Pompidou as a static and frozen
urbanism. The Urbanisme Unitaire, proposed by the body.’ (Marinelli. op. cit., p. 20).
movement, was supposed to provide ‘a suitable 23. R. Barthes, Myth Today, in T. Hawkes (1977), p. 133.
environment’ where the homo ludens could live. 24. Even the supposed flexibility of the building was finally
14. Constant Niewenhuis, New Babylon, 1974. reduced by the last renovation which definitively
15. Niewenhuis spent about twenty years of his life blocked its moving walls.
working on New Babylon. During this period, he pro- 25. P. V. Aureli (2003), p. 3.
duced a large amount of drawings and models, some- 26. L. Prestinenza Puglisi, op. cit., p. 7.
times very different one from the other. 27. ‘The liberation of Man’s ludic potential is directly linked
16. L. Prestinenza Puglisi (1998), p. 66. to his liberation as a social being.’ (Constant Niewen-
17. The engineering office, which had also taken part in huis, New Babylon, op. cit., p. 1).
the competition, was subsequently engaged by Piano 28. B. Lacy (1991), p. 190.
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29. Antonio da Sant’Elia (Manifesto for a Futurist Architec- Calvino, I., Invisible Cities, trans. William Weaver
ture, 1914), in, P. Goessel, G. Leuthauser (1997), (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1974).
p. 319: ‘The house of the future must be like a gigantic Eco, U., The Open Work (Cambridge, MA, Harvard
machine. The lift is not supposed to hide itself in the University Press, 1989).
stairwell like a taenia; the stairs, now superfluous, Giedion, S., Mechanization Takes Command (New York,
have to disappear and the lifts must emerge like a Norton & Company, 1948).
snake of iron and glass [. . .] The value of futurist Goessel, P., Leuthauser, G., Architettura del XX secolo
architecture depends upon the original use of either (Cologne, Taschen, 1997).
raw or uncovered lively coloured material.’ (It. ed.) Grove Dictionary of Art (Macmillan, 2000).
Hawke, T., Structuralism and Semiotics (London, Routle-
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Archigram. Archigram (London, Studio Vista, 1972). Lacy, B., ‘Richard Rogers’, in, 100 Contemporary Architects:
Aureli, P. V. ‘Oltre il Fascino Discreto dell’Utopia’, (2003). Drawings and Sketches (London, Thames & Hudson,
www.architettura.supereva.it/books/2003 1991).
Banham, R., The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Marinelli, G., II Centro Beaubourg a Parigi: ‘Macchina’ e
Environment (London, The Architectural Press, 1969). Segno Architettonico (Bari, Dedalo, 1978).
—— Megastructure: Urban Future of the Recent Past Niewenhuis, Constant, New Babylon (1974), www.
(London, Thames and Hudson, 1976). norbored.org/new-Babylon.
—— ‘The Centre Pompidou’s Role’, in ‘The Pompidolium’, Orlandoni, B., Vallino, G., Dalla città al cucchiaio (Torino,
R. Banham, et al., Architectural Review (London, May, Cooperativa Edizioni Studio Forma, 1977).
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Buchanan, P., Renzo Piano (Turin, Allemandi & Co., 1993). Birckauser, 1999).
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1995). 1998).