notes on the centre pompidou, 2021
Though the Centre Pompidou is heralded as a monument to modernity and the new age, its conflicting approach plays a significant role within a framework of growing sustainability awareness that existed during its design. Praise for its newness and material adaptation of form is eclipsed by the consideration that the structure is so highly energy liable and aesthetically harsh.
In an era where environmentalism had begun to gain traction throughout the previous decade -- with its symbols becoming highly recognized and integrated to much of the popular design styles -- Rogers’s and Piano’s work for the 1971 Centre Pompidou was a misstep along the path of this established ecological trend. This shocking modernist style embraced a harsh industrial facade, in great defiance of the preexisting surroundings. Paris’s built environment, though already quite reliant on concrete, took poorly to such a strictly metallic space, especially one that was intended to be a centre of culture and daily life. The success of any space which intends to function for the people is based on, literally, if the community likes it or not. In absence of this, theorists can speculate on materiality and form to the moon and back but no architectural rhetoric will affect the relationships the structure holds with the community it inhabits.
Beyond this, its lack of energy efficiency can be attributed to simplicity without idealized function; with structural columns that incorporated water providing fire protection, there was an element of functionality that in turn forced the sacrifice of an ideal sustainable state. Though the “scarcity of energy”, as Cantuaria frames it, held weight in France just as it did globally at this time, the Centre Pompidou seemed to contrast with such a notion and prioritize functionalism in a way that was incompatible with environmentalist mindsets.
There is a clear delineation within functionalist design, in which a structure may be functional primarily for the populations that will inhabit it, versus being functional in tandem with the natural spaces which host it, ultimately being the Earth as a whole. Rogers and Piano’s incorporation of modernity to this structure was an exploration of the former that may reconcile with its environment if there had been a certain degree of flexibility with the physical.