Following on from my previous post on Archigram, this is an account of my first encounter with what could be argued as the legacy of Archigram, some architectural books make reference to being a manifestation of Peter Cook's Plug-in City, having read about the project extensively I would say that it represents far more than that. From the terrace of the Sacre Coeur (Basilica 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. The legendary product of the union of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers.
On the approach 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 arguably, best experience that Paris has to offer for free was unavailable to the public. The ‘building’, ‘Centre Nationale de Arts et de Culture de Georges Pompidou (CNAC)’ 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 rearranged at will.
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 known as gerberettes, 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 of cluster 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. The issue of addressing urban context with such a large building is well resolved, the components give a varied level of interest and incident to all of the 'facades' which address the cafes that sit opposite.
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 dull April sky made for some moody images as the escalator tubes and the skeletal frame become silhouetted against the cloud filtered sunlight, has been an enduring image that completely changed the course of my studies in architecture.
Paris 1995
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