Centre pompidou when was it built

Click here to get your free copy now! Thanks for visiting! Welcome back to the French Moments blog! As this is not the first time you are here, you may be interested in downloading the guide "20 Amazing Offbeat Places in Paris". The Pompidou Centre in Paris : one of the most visited museums in France. The iconic landmark is ideally situated in the 4th arrondissement at the heart of the French capital.

Since its inauguration in , the futuristic building has been the source of many criticisms, some called it an eyesore, others praised its high-tech architecture made up of colourful pipes and massive steel struts.

To better understand why the radical building attracts thousands of visitors each day, here are a few facts and figures that you should know when visiting the Pompidou Centre! The Pompidou Centre in Paris will close at the end of for four years of renovations. Administrators hope to reopen the centre in in time for its 50th anniversary. The location chosen for the cultural centre was a wasteland at the heart of Paris, a place called Beaubourg. The architects wanted to free up space inside the building by placing all service equipment outside.

Now if you face the Pompidou Centre from rue Beaubourg , it will be clear to you. Walls and internal structures were put outside the building, and infrastructure was covered by enormous colourful tubes.

The bright colour codes help distinguishing the various functions of the pipes:. The outside escalator climbs the front of the building like a lighted snake. Enclosed in a transparent Plexiglass tunnel , it gives access to the Modern Art museum, the panoramic terrace and the Georges restaurant. A visit to the National museum of Modern Art will give a complete overview of modern and contemporary art.

The museum displays modern collections from , including 50, works and objects from more than 42, artists. Many Schools represented in the museum include movements such as:. There is so much to see from paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographies, not forgetting other media such as cinema, architecture, design, and visual and sound archives. Also called Place Georges Pompidou , the vast piazza is a pedestrian-only square.

It slopes gently down to the main entrance to the cultural centre. Large crowds of visitors and passers-by gather to watch the street performers: mimes and jugglers.

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The cookie is used to store and identify a users' unique session ID for the purpose of managing user session on the website. The cookie is a session cookies and is deleted when all the browser windows are closed. The building is designed so that the internal spaces can be easily rearranged — made possible by placing the building services, corridors, elevators and structural members on its exterior.

Reflecting on the win at the time, Piano referred to himself and Rogers merely as "teenagers, young boys" whose proposal was just "an exercise in freedom, not guided by any desire to win or compromise".

A key component of Rogers and Piano's proposal was that the building would only occupy half of the site with the other half of the site becoming a public square.

The building's exposed superstructure, which was developed in collaboration with Peter Rice and Edmund "Ted" Happold of Ove Arup and Partners, is constructed from more than 16, tonnes of prefabricated steel parts. Some of the structure's prefabricated components are of a scale rarely seen in the construction industry. One particularly unique element is its tonne gerberettes. Positioned on both sides of the building, these gerberettes connect large trusses supporting the floors to the columns, helping to create the large internal spans.

Alongside the exposed structure, Centre Pompidou's facades are covered with colour-coded building services: blue marking its air-conditioning, yellow is for electrics, green denotes water pipes, and red highlights tubular escalators and elevators. These stand out from a minimal curtain wall backdrop made from steel and a mix of glazed and solid metal panels that were designed to create the feeling of a transparent building envelope.

At ground level the Centre Pompidou has a double-height space that contains all the large publicly-accessible areas. Visitors travel from the ground level up a giant diagonal escalator, on the facade facing the square, to external corridors and viewing platforms. The building was the vision of the man it's named after, France's leader between and President Georges Pompidou had the idea of a space dedicated to the culture of the 20th and 21st centuries, bringing together visual arts, literature, music, cinema and design in one unique multicultural institution.

The building has extensive galleries featuring both visiting exhibitions and selections from its permanent collection of modern and contemporary art, one of the most important in the world. With additional exhibition spaces, a cinema, a large public reading library - and eight million visitors each year - the President's idea now seems as if it was a very safe bet. This present day success masks a highly controversial history, however, both of the idea itself and its audacious design.

There were many problems facing President Pompidou's vision of a national multicultural centre. Not least was that by the s, Paris had lost its place as a leader on the contemporary arts scene to New York. To regain the top spot, the French capital needed an original space that would be instantly recognised around the world. There was another factor. For Georges Pompidou personally, it was critical that all forms of artistic expression should be given prominence in the new centre.

He didn't want it to become yet another exclusive preserve for the Parisian art elite. These populist ambitions sparked intense debate, and a standoff ensued between those who were in favour of a celebration of popular culture, and those of a more traditional mindset, the established cultural elite. Georges Pompidou was passionate about this project, and about his view that the new centre should include music, film, books and even audiovisual research.