The pioneering building that scandalised Paris

The daring, radical Pompidou Centre was derided by many when its design was first unveiled – yet it has continued to influence the architecture of public buildings ever since. As the building approaches a major renovation, its co-creator Renzo Piano recalls the furore.

This summer, the Centre Pompidou will close for five years, as Paris's popular polychrome landmark undergoes changes necessitated by current requirements in terms of health, safety and energy efficiency. French studio Moreau Kusunoki Architects, Mexican practice Frida Escobedo Studio and French engineer AIA Life Designers will undertake a major overhaul of the six-storey arts centre, containing Europe's largest museum of modern art. Its renovation will add usable floor space, remove asbestos from all facades, improve fire safety and accessibility for people with reduced mobility, and optimise energy efficiency.

As far as possible, the original building will be conserved as it was before. To do otherwise might be considered cultural sacrilege – after all the Pompidou's identity is indivisible from its original architects, Renzo Piano, and the late Richard Rogers. The duo set up their practice, Rogers + Piano, in 1970, and submitted a design to a prestigious competition instigated in 1971 by Georges Pompidou, France’s President from 1969 until 1974. Its jury was headed up by Jean Prouvé, a metalworker and self-taught architect, and included such stellar architects as Philip Johnson and Oscar Niemeyer. Piano and Rogers' design was chosen from 681 competition entries.

The result caught the duo, then unknowns in their 30s "with Beatles haircuts", as Piano puts it, by surprise: "We didn't think we'd win, we entered the competition for pleasure," the Italian architect, now 87, tells the BBC. "We never planned to create a revolutionary building. Our idea was a museum that would inspire curiosity, not intimidate people, and that would open up culture to all."

In fact, the duo's insouciance may help to explain the building's uninhibited boldness, flamboyance and ludic quality. Its structural elements and services were placed on its facades, allowing it to maximise its internal, open-plan spaces – and prompting the futuristic structure to be dubbed the world’s first "inside-out" building. Its exoskeleton of tubes and periscope-like pipes were playfully colour-coded: blue for air-conditioning, yellow for electricity, green for water and red for pedestrian circulation. Visitors streamed up escalators – encased in transparent tubing affording panoramic views – that were designed to reinforce the museum's connection to the city.

"Our idea was for the building to take up only half the site, allowing for a welcoming outdoor place – a piazza – where people could meet," says Piano, whose other projects include the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco (rebuilt in 2008), the Shard (2012) in London, and the recently completed Paddington Square, also in the UK capital, a mixed-use building and public square. "Our credo was a place for all people – for the poor and rich, the young and old."

The Pompidou's transparency, accessibility and adjacent piazza chimed with new ideas about democratising culture. "Street theatre and concerts in public spaces were rising in popularity at the time," says Piano.

Inside the building, visitors had access to the Bibliothèque Publique d'Information – Paris's first free public library – the Musée National d'Art Moderne and the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/ Musique (IRCAM), dedicated to research of music and sound. 

Piano and Rogers' winning entry provoked consternation and fury when it was announced at a press conference: "The room was packed," remembers Piano. "Richard and I were standing in the middle of the room being heckled. We felt elated yet terrible at the same time," says the architect. "Some people were shouting, 'Why have you designed something so horrible?' 'Why are you are destroying Paris's historic centre?'"

Although surprised to have won the contest, Genoa-born Piano grew up feeling architecture was his destiny – aged 18, he told his father he wanted to be an architect. However in conversation his manner is humble, not entitled. Born into a family of builders in Genoa, he loved watching his father's work take shape. Perhaps his childhood experience of seeing buildings materialise successfully made him feel that architecture is open to all possibilities. "Building is a beautiful gesture," he once told The Financial Times. "It's the opposite of destruction… especially when you are creating buildings for people because they are civically important." In 1981, Piano founded the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), with offices in Genoa and Paris, led today by 11 partners (in the spirit of a collective). In 1998, he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize.  

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The Plateau Beaubourg in central Paris – a stretch of wasteland occupied by a car park – was the site chosen for the new Musée Nationale d'Art Moderne (formerly housed in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris's haut-bourgeois 16th arrondissement). "It was a place waiting for something to happen," says Piano.

France's social and political climate at the time, still rebellious following the tumultuous events of May 1968, was conducive to the creation of a building as disruptive as the Centre Pompidou, acknowledges Piano: "In Britain, society was being revolutionised by [designer] Mary Quant and the Beatles. The same was happening in Paris." The Centre Pompidou was partly inspired by the ultra-pop architecture of experimental London-based architecture collective Archigram.

"The idea that France should have a 'Maison de la Culture', bringing together art, cinema, music and literature in cities was first invented by André Malraux [novelist, art theorist and France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs]. Pompidou was very supportive, too. I really believe that major shifts in architecture are only possible if you have a good client. George's wife, Claude, too, was an excellent lady."

Pompidou, like Claude, was passionate about contemporary art and design. In 1972, they invited Pierre Paulin, a designer known for his space-age era furniture, to create new interiors for the private apartment of the Elysée Palace, the French presidents' official residence. The results were radically modern – the walls of the living room, dining room and smoking room were lined to cocooning effect with wool and polyester panels that obscured the residence's neo-classical splendour. Walls were hung with paintings by Robert Delaunay and other modernist artists.

One impetus behind these efforts to provide Paris with a prestigious museum was that France had lost its reputation as the world's pre-eminent centre of avant-garde art. "It is my passionate wish for Paris to have a cultural centre like the ones they've been creating in the US," Pompidou told Le Monde newspaper in 1972. "It will be both a museum and centre of creation, where the visual arts take up residence with music, film, books and audiovisual research."

Initially, reactions to the Centre Pompidou, frequently compared to an alien spaceship, were often extremely negative. "Taxi drivers used to say to me: 'Regardez!' before launching into a tirade against the building. With so much hostility, I had to keep a low profile among strangers," says Piano. The building, derisively likened by many to an "oil refinery", was the target of countless lawsuits. "We were sued so often – once on the grounds that Prouvé wasn't a qualified architect," he recalls. The French press initially lambasted the building. "Paris has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness," scoffed Le Figaro.

"One day Richard and I were outside the building, as yet unfinished. We saw a woman struggling with an umbrella that had turned inside out in the wind and Richard rushed over to help fix it. When he mentioned that he was one of the building's architects, she jokily mimicked hitting him with the umbrella as if to suggest he was a naughty scoundrel."

Yet after the building's opening in 1977, Parisians soon began to appreciate the museum – now one of Paris's most visited public institutions, that ranks behind only the Louvre and Musée d'Orsay in terms of visitor numbers.

It also inspires architects today. "The Centre Pompidou, radical on completion, has continued to influence the design of public buildings ever since," says Hugh Broughton, founder of London-based Hugh Broughton Architects, who finds qualities in it other than its famously high-tech idiom. "It's an amazingly brave, generous building whose large public space promotes congregation, street theatre and the highest quality people-watching. Its core concept – open-plan floor plates supported by peripheral structure and services – draws upon medieval principles of castle structures, and combines this with an Arts and Crafts approach that makes a virtue of construction as an aesthetic medium. The result is a building which is dynamic, inviting, egalitarian, transparent and has awesome views – all the best attributes of great architecture. It changed the way a whole generation of architects think about buildings – placing their users at centre stage."

Piano is also known for harnessing light in his projects to ethereal effect, as is the case with the Shard, which can seem to disappear in certain light conditions due to its glass skin. Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff has said of his works as a whole: "The serenity of Renzo Piano's best buildings can almost make you believe we live in a civilised world." 

For Piano, what is the main architectural legacy of the Pompidou Centre? "The building is proof that culture doesn't suffer from being more public. It's a place where people gather primarily. It brings together art, life and culture – not culture with a big C but culture with a small c. When it opened, it brought culture to all, and made the city a better place for it."

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