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Dissertation submitted to Birmingham School of Architecture in partial fulfilment of Post Graduate Diploma in Architecture. September 1998
Citation preview
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
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 !
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
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 !
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
24
T h e C o m p e t i t i o n
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
25
T h e C o m p e t i t i o n
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
26
T h e C o m p e t i t i o n
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
27
T h e C o m p e t i t i o n
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
28
T h e C o m p e t i t i o n
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 B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
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,
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e d e s i g n p r o c e s s
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e d e s i g n p r o c e s s
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e d e s i g n p r o c e s s
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e d e s i g n p r o c e s s
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e d e s i g n p r o c e s s
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e d e s i g n p r o c e s s
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t
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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
T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
'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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
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.
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
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
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g e x p e r i m e n t
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B e a u b o u r g e f f e c t i v e ?
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 E x p e r i m e n t
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
T h e B e a u b o u r g L e g a c y
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
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
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,
Encarta interactive Encyclopedia, Microsoft Corporation, 1995.
7 Reliance Controls, Swindon. 1966.Team 4 Architects
The Architecture of Richard Rogers. Sudjic, D. (1994)
Blueprint Monograph,
8 Whaam!, Roy Liechtenstein, 1963.
Encarta interactive Encyclopedia, Microsoft Corporation, 1995.
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.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
61
L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t i o n s .
25 Rue Renard, Darren Staples.
12 Les Halles. Paris.
Architectural Competitions 1950-today, de Jong, C . (1994)
Benedikt Taschen, Koln, Germany.
13 Beaubourg competition Entries.
Architectural Competitions 1950-today, de Jong, C . (1994)
Benedikt Taschen, Koln, Germany.
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)
Thames and Hudson, London.
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
The Architecture of Richard Rogers. Sudjic, D. (1994)
Blueprint Monograph.
29 Tokyo Forum, Richard Rogers Partnership, 1989.
Cities for a small planet. Rogers, R. (1997)
Faber and Faber, London.
T h e B e a u b o u r g E x p e r i m e n t
62
L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t i o n s .
30 Atelier Brancusi, Renzo Piano Building Workshop. 1992
The Renzo Piano Logbook, Piano R. (1997)
Thames and Hudson, London.
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.
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
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
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
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.)
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Academy Editions, London.
Papadakis, A. (ed.)(1994) Deconstruction II.
Academy Editions, London.
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
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
L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t i o n s .
18
Front Cover Jewish Museum, model from
New Architecture, The New Moderns
and The Super Moderns. Papadakis, A. (ed.)(1990)
Academy Editions, London.
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)
Academy Editions, London.
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.)
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
L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t i o n s .
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
From. 'Jean Nouvel, Concept plus
Context.' Gouret, P. Architecture and Urbanism.
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.
From. 'Jean Nouvel, Concept plus
Context.' Gouret, P. Architecture and Urbanism.
Vol. 214, July 1988.
Japan.
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
L i s t o f I l l u s t r a t i o n s .
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.
From. 'Jean Nouvel, Concept plus
Context.' Gouret, P. Architecture and Urbanism.
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.)