Work in focus: the Pompidou Centre

A debate exploring the creation and later transformations of one of the twentieth century’s most significant buildings – the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano were relatively unknown when, in 1971, they saw off competition from 680 other architectural teams to win the high-profile job to design a new cultural centre on a vacant site on Paris’ Plateau Beauborg. Teaming up with engineering firm Ove Arup & Partners, the architects designed ‘a fun palace for the city’ and its construction over the following six years would play out a battle between establishment politics and ideological architecture.

Completed in 1977, the building, which contains gallery spaces, alongside a library, a research centre, an auditorium and cinemas, was designed to be truly flexible with exterior elements that could be detached and replaced. Although received sceptically at first by critics, the building has gone on to become a beloved monument of the modern city of Paris and is today considered an icon of the city, the quintessential modern building, and a model for what a museum can be.

Join us to examine a formative building in Piano’s career. From its genesis as a building to democratise culture, designed through an integral relationship between its architects and engineers to be flexible and adaptable, we look at the ideas that underpinned its creation and how these have played out over time.