Why the Centre Pompidou, not even fifty years old, must close for five years.
Controversy Surrounds Planned Closure of Centre Pompidou for Extensive Renovations
The prospect of losing a lung is never welcome. Even if told it’s the only way to save the rest of your body, you’d likely resist or try to negotiate if such an operation were recommended. Reactions to announcements made by Laurent Le Bon, president of the Centre Pompidou, in 2023, regarding the closure of the Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers building for five years of major renovations can be interpreted similarly. The strike by staff, the opinion pieces and petitions signed by cultural figures, and the grievances expressed by local residents, shopkeepers, art lovers, and other regulars were all attempts to keep this extraordinary urban energy pump functioning, even partially, during the work.
A Difficult Pill to Swallow
The prospect of its closure is all the more difficult to accept because this icon of 20th-century architecture is not yet fifty years old, Parisians still remember the work in the late 1990s that already deprived them of access to the site for two years, and the projected duration of the new project seems somewhat extravagant.
An Aging Icon?
The problem with the architecture of the second half of the 20th century (and subsequent decades) lies in these assumptions. In reality, according to Boris Hamzeian, architectural historian and author of Centre Pompidou. The Challenge of Total Design, “for a building of this era, fifty years is already quite old.” Modern materials are less durable than those of the past. But the structure of the Centre Pompidou was designed to accommodate this and, more importantly, to guarantee the building, as President Pompidou requested of the young competition winners in 1971, would “last five hundred years.” This light, entirely metallic structure, to which all the building’s technology is attached, embodies the principle of flexibility that underlies the project and guarantees its durability: the ability to replace elements and rearrange them at will. In fact, since its opening in 1977, the site has constantly transformed.
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