Centre Georges Pompidou - Paris, France
Posted by: Metro2
N 48° 51.630 E 002° 21.128
31U E 452481 N 5412150
The Pompidou Center is the home of the French National Museum of Modern Art...the largest modern art museum in Europe.
Waymark Code: WMD5AJ
Location: Île-de-France, France
Date Posted: 11/20/2011
Views: 73
The Place:
Construction of the Centre Georges Pompidou was completed in 1977. In addition to being the home of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, the complex also houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information, a vast public library and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research.
Wikipedia (
visit link) further informs us:
"The Centre was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano, the British architect couple Richard Rogers and Su Rogers, Gianfranco Franchini, the British structural engineer Edmund Happold (who would later found Buro Happold), and Irish structural engineer Peter Rice. The project was awarded to this team in an architectural design competition, whose results were announced in 1971. Reporting on Rogers' winning the Pritzker Prize in 2007, The New York Times noted that the design of the Centre "turned the architecture world upside down" and that "Mr. Rogers earned a reputation as a high-tech iconoclast with the completion of the 1977 Pompidou Centre, with its exposed skeleton of brightly colored tubes for mechanical systems. The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou "revolutionized museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city."
The Person:
The Center is named after Georges Pompidou, the French President from 1969 to 1974. Pompidou had made the decision to have the complex built. He had previously served as Prime Minister from 1962-1968. originally a colleague of President de Gaulle, they had a falling out and Pompidou became President after de gaulle lost a vote of confidence.
Wikipedia (
visit link) adds:
"Pompidou's time in office was marked by a constant effort to modernise France's capital city. This can be seen through his construction of a modern art museum, the Centre Beaubourg (renamed Centre Pompidou after his death), on the edge of the Marais area of Paris. Other attempts at modernisation included tearing down the open air markets at Les Halles and replacing it with the shopping mall of the same name, building the Montparnasse Tower, and constructing an expressway on the right bank of the Seine."