The entirety of Centre Pompidou in Paris will be closed to the public on September 22.
The date will mark the final stage of a process that started on March 10 with the closing of its fourth and fifth floors, reuniting art collections that have already been transported and exhibited in others of Paris’, France’s and international museums.
The decision, which drew public ire, received lots of media coverage. French art dealer Daniel Templon called it a ‘mistake’ in an op-ed in Le Monde. Surrounding art gallerists and restaurant owners raised fears of an economic downturn.
Behind the closure lies the Projet Pompidou 2030, a five year-long, €400-million renovation work that ambitions ‘to preserve the building’s DNA’, according to its president Laurent Le Bon.
It was greenlighted by Italian Renzo Piano himself, one of the two architects behind ‘Beaubourg’, as it is commonly nicknamed by Parisians.
The initial project was envisioned as both a fun palace and a place where you can learn.
“I think some of it still holds, the idea that it would be a place to meet for all people, the young, the elderly, the rich, the poor, from all ethnicities,” said Richard Rogers, the other British architect who passed away in 2021, in a conference in 2007.
The Connexion looks at the history of Centre Pompidou, its heritage, and what the future holds.
Making Paris contemporary
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“The museum ought to be for contemporary art solely [...]. Creations will be modern, of course, and constantly evolving. The library will attract thousands of readers who will be introduced to the arts,” said George Pompidou to Le Monde on October 17, 1972.
The then president, a contemporary art collector himself, was answering questions on several architectural plans that were transforming Paris. The quote answered a question on ‘plateau Beaubourg’, a gigantic car park in the district of Beaubourg, where the building was to soon be erected.
Pompidou, the modern version of a techno-solutionist enthusiast, was looking to put Paris on the map of contemporary arts cities to rival New York and London, the two that were at the forefront of this new market.
The project of Piano and Rogers – two relatively unknown, and stubborn, architects in their 30s with little experience – was chosen among the 680 others studied by a commission of nine experts, over 10 days between July 5 and 15 in 1971.
“We lived in the urban-planning utopia of Ville nouvelle. We did not believe that culture was to remain monumental, enclosed behind stone and marble walls. We were looking for a new way to communicate with people,” said Piano in 2007.
“Culture is an exploit, a wonder, a miracle, something magic. We knew it was to be designed that way. It was about envisioning a tool, a machine for it,” he added.
It was meant to be “a cross between Times Square and the British Museum,” the architects wrote in their application. “There was behind our popular – populist even – vision of culture, the idea of creating a new type of building,” said Rogers.
And it certainly became one.
Inside-out architecture
Centre Pompidou is considered one of the greatest examples of inside-out architecture. It means that many of the elements maintaining the building are left to the world to see rather than ‘in the flesh’, as if outsourced to the exterior.
Two of the greatest examples of that approach are the colourful tubes and the escalator, which takes viewers to upper floors and offers spectacular views over Paris.
Colours illuminate the Paris Pompidou centre at nightDelpixel/Shutterstock
Tubes run through, encircle and surround the building, a thin rectangular six-story high warehouse-like shoebox, with each floor the size of a football field.
Their colours are not random. They are meant to correspond with a core function of the building. The blues run the air systems, the yellows the electricity, the greens the water. Finally, the reds indicate flow circulation, the people.
The building was unveiled on January 31, 1977 in a ceremony where it was announced that it would be named after Mr Pompidou, who had died on April 2, 1974 at the start of construction.
Dividing critics
Poet and writer Francis Ponge called it a ‘moviment’, a made-up word mixing mouvement (movement) and monument, because it conveys openness, transparency and a sense of flow toward society.
That was not how philosopher Jean Baudrillard saw it, equating that what Beaubourg was to culture, supermarkets was to merchandise. Le Monde, in a 1978 article with a superbly arrogant style, rhetorically questioned whether it was a malédifice (misedifice), siding with Baudrillard.
Asked for comments on TV, Parisians used many unflattering words to describe it. Its most notoriously nickname became the mean ‘Notre-Dame de la Tuyauterie’ (Notre-Dame of Tubes).
However, it stood the test of time and proved a popular success. The free and open-to-all library attracts thousands of people every day, its exhibitions are packed and display contemporary arts crossing genres and artists, the cinema thrives, the rooftop restaurant is crowded with people enjoying a fine view over Paris and Beaubourg’s big piazza remains a quintessential experience of flânerie and sit-in.
Centre Pompidou became the focus of a government goal to decentralise culture and export it outside of Paris. It got its extension in Metz (Moselle), the Centre Pompidou-Metz, which is the largest temporary exhibition space outside Paris.
Pompidou centre in MetzYu Xichao/Shutterstock
Centre Pompidou now awaits new architects for its second renovation effort after a first in the late 90s. The Piano/Rogers duo always favoured them every 25 years.
“Its conception was centred around notions which symbolised progress; speed, space and open information,” said Nicolas Moreau and Hiroko Kusunoki, the directors of Project Beaubourg 2030.
“The paradigm has shifted 180 degrees today. The renovation will offer a space where mediation, social interaction and physical contact, all the more notions contradicting information overload, fragmented attention-span and the isolation of the current period,” they added.
All areas will be affected, from the piazza and ground-floor ‘Forum’ and ‘Agora’ to the library and rooftop restaurant Le Georges.
“George Pompidou told us the building would last for the next 500 years,” said Piano.
