Paris’s Centre Pompidou to Close for Five Years Starting in 2025
artnews.com
artnews.com
> That Paris’s Pompidou Centre is to close for four years from 2023 for yet more maintenance comes as no surprise. Weeds have long sprouted from its ultra-finicky superstructure, while the job of keeping it scraped free of pigeon poo and painted in the prescribed infrastructural colour palette – red for people, blue for air, yellow for electricity and green for water – rivals the Forth Bridge for unrelenting laboriousness.
It sounds like the Centre has maintenance problems nearing the coastline-paradox variety...
> ‘There were two options,’ France’s culture minister Roselyne Bachelot told Le Figaro. ‘One involved renovating the centre while keeping it open, the other was closing it completely. I chose the second because it should be shorter and a little bit less expensive.’
It's interesting that this logic somehow misses or skips the weighty symbolic aspect of shutting down a cultural landmark. Presumably this is most of why the news is newsworthy.
Maybe everybody hates the place, but still. Closing down completely sends a pretty big message in the primal sense in which things are alive or dead, usable or not, up or down, and what you typically aim for at worst is a set of circumstances that strike a balance between those aspects.
It's also going to be a slower option in terms of visitor access, which is kind of funny in that it's a near-reversal of the logical benefit one would rationally want. This makes me wonder if the budget gets any benefit at all from visitor payments...(I've worked with cultural sites that flat out told me: We don't want more guests here, and we definitely don't want more membership-holding guests)
https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/outrage/outrage-...
It also has a terrific permanent collection, hosts amazing world-class exhibitions, and features an enormous art resource library for research as well as a huge art bookstore.
It will be a real loss to Paris and to the world to have this closed for any period of time.
I found it exhilarating and the first time I understood the journey of art from impressionism to today, when artists realized that "Most perfect/accurate representations of reality" (the high water mark reached during of the renaissance) was no longer the way to move art forward. And with the imminent arrival of photography, they were right.
I myself spent 3 decades of my life thumbing my nose at "modern art" with the typical criticisms ("If i can't tell if an artist or a toddler did it, is it art"?)
This museum was the first to show me the evolution of art and I got "it".
I do know exactly the journey that you're talking about in art. It actually clicked for me after visiting Florence and seeing the Uffizi museum's collection of Renaissance art - that's when I realized that there was really nothing more to add in terms of faithful representations of humans and nature after the masters of that time. The increasing levels of abstraction in later movements, from impressionism through cubism to things like Pollock or Mondrian or Chagall - those make sense to me and generate similar feelings as the great Renaissance masters. When I visited a few weeks ago, this was mostly the uppermost floor of the Pompidou, which I loved. I was explicitly refering to this when I said modern art - to Modernism, the artistic current.
However, it's the art that comes after that which I think turned more to grift and self-importance - like most other aspects of post-modernism. Large installations, larger than most paintings or sculptures you'd get in any previous eras, with mostly simple ideas to tell (the whole point of that felt room is the warmth and sound dampening, and it only takes ~50m² to tell its point). Repurposing everyday objects, as if the Dadaists haven't done everything that could be done on this. Lots of self-referential questioning of what is art, or shallow shock value references to topics of the day.
The contemporary collection (mostly on the 4th floor in my visit) reinforced my opinion that the plastic arts are almost entirely a grift today. I'm still hopeful some new artistic current will rise again in the future and come back to creating esthetically pleasing art, even while keeping away from simple representations of nature. I don't think everything that could be said in those styles has been said, but sadly attempts to improve on the works of the 1920s have mostly been abandoned.
[1] https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/oeuvre/RqhG4ed
I seem to remember a very similar realization as you, only I thought that was 90% of the museum with only 10% dedicated to "weird spinning abstract structure that is impossible to grok without reading the plaque".
Perhaps I was mistaken!
The one thing I do remember making a shocking impact on me was a massive installation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Klein_Blue. It truly did feel like something imposing and evoked genuine emotion that is impossible to represent on a computer screen.
(The original MoMA was a minor gem and an oasis in midtown. I almost forgave Philip Johnson because of that garden. Now it has lost all its charm.)
I’ve been travelling quite a bit in Europe over the past 5yrs; you’d be surprised how many cultural centres are in a continuous status of renovation. It seems to take forever for any of them to be “done”.
Was it because of this? I can see that causing some issues.
Perhaps it was complicated by aesthetic concerns: when you put these internals on the outside, there's some pressure to arrange them in a nice- looking way rather than in the most functional configuration.
Accessibility is improved, but lifespan is sacrificed. When the systems are on the outside they're subjected to much greater swings in environment (humidity, pressure, temperature, thermal expansion, and so on) that don't happen when they're inside the climate-control envelope of the building.
Don’t buildings like these usually have access panels for maintenance? Plus a lot of “fake” paneling, especially on ceilings, that’s easy to remove to access all the piping it hides?
But when these things are outside, now you need a crane instead of just ladders.
Even without access panels, opening and replacing some segments of drywall sounds pretty easy compared to working on a building’s facade.
Would that approach change the original design? Absolutely. But I'd see that as a positive. Not because I don't like the original design (I do) but because it would make a nice teaching example: if architects don't want their designs to be messed with, they'd better start making "how will it look and perform after x decades of use and weather" much more a factor in their decisions than they do now. I'm so tired of seeing new architecture that makes pristineness (while new) it's central design statement and has absolutely nothing to show for once that new car smell is gone.
https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/pompidou-cann...
Does that all sound familiar to folks building backend systems? That is 'microservices' for architecture, a counter to 'monolithic' structures, using almost precisely the same motivations, and, running into the same exact problems: operational complexity.
For comparison, please see the buildings in the former Soviet Union or Venzeula or Cuba to see how well they're maintained in a workers' paradise.
Let's stay focused on market-oriented countries since that was the claim here - that the "market" could magically figure out how to maintain any given building cheaply. I'm pointing out that it's far more likely that the market would just give up. Why optimize the crazy building instead of replacing it with a boring easy one? Since you want to be snarky, though: ever wonder why there is such a thing as "historical preservation" status for certain buildings? It's because we know that not every building makes economic sense, but sometimes we want to keep them around anyway, even though if wholly under the control of a profit-motivated organization they'd be gone and replaced with something in the name of efficiency.
There is more to life than monetary efficiency.
There is more to life than monetary efficiency.
To be honest the Japanese have it right. Tear down buildings after 50 years and build something new. Ofcourse they had the luck of frequent earthquakes and fires (buildings made of wood when the Netherlands switched to masonry in the 16th century).
Yes it is cute and adorable that the Dutch Parlement is situated in a building complex that can be traced back 1000 years (I wish I was kidding). The tourists love it. The symbolism is marvelous. And it costs hundreds of millions to keep it from falling down.
Edit: Pantheon, not Parthenon...
0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panth%C3%A9on
a mausoleum for the remains of distinguished French citizens, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome which had been used in this way since the 17th century. The first panthéonisé was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, although his remains were removed from the building a few years later.
Buildings deteriorate. They need maintenance. The only question is how well you engineer in the ability to do that maintenance.
Or you can tear it down every so often: See: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-japanese-shri...
Hope you like domes, because that's pretty much the only thing you can build in that fashion. (And even that only works in climates where the temperature never goes below freezing).
More interesting is that many temples in Japan - which are a lot more attractive than the minecraft rectangles that dominate the streetscapes - are completely torn down and rebuilt periodically.
I had a professor that spent a considerable amount of time in France and he said a common joke among the building’s detractors was:
“The best view in Paris is atop the Centre Pompidou, because you cannot see it.”
Aka the box the Eiffel Tower came delivered in
> A 2008 poll of editors on Virtualtourist voted the building the second-ugliest building in the world, behind Boston City Hall in the United States.
‘Pompidou cannot be perceived as anything but a monument’
Reyner Banham discusses the roles of Megastructure, Archigram and modern technology in Pompidou’s design, 1977
"The Centre reflects the supreme moment of technological euphoria in Western society: the moment when we genuinely believed that ‘freedom’ was to be got by providing ourselves with endless power-supplied facility: with servicing which would be so elaborate and so heavily duplicated that you could do anything you want, any where, at any time. We are wiser now; for we know that even if our resources allowed this sort of indulgence, the political machinery we would have to forget to operate it would be so offensive that it would remove true freedom from the face of the earth."
https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/pompidou-cann...
~
(The Walking City - Archigram)
Another case of the architect getting ahead of the materials and engineering available. Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed much more aesthetically pleasing structures than this monstrosity (judging by pictures, can't recall it I saw it the one time I was in Paris), is notorious for leaking roofs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_Pompidou
Original constructions costs (opened 1977): 993 Million Francs > 151 M Euro
Renovation (1996-2000): 576 Million Francs > 88 M Euro
Next renovation (2025-2030): 200 M Euro
I presume that a relevant part of this costly renovation is connected with removing asbestos from the outer shell:
The engineering work done by Arup to make this project work was utterly amazing. I suggest this as a small bit of weekend reading that might kick off further exploration:
https://www.arup.com/perspectives/would-the-pompidou-get-bui...
It's a pity Jean Nouvel wasn't around then - his work* is great imo.
This is a modern French building:
http://www.jeannouvel.com/en/projects/institut-du-monde-arab...
* http://www.jeannouvel.com/en/projets/
A must see if you go to Switzerland - an amazing structure that defies photographic capture - has to be experienced: http://www.jeannouvel.com/projets/centre-de-culture-et-des-c...
They got their own in the form of Lloyd's a few years later.
The museum originally cost 993 million francs (1977). Adjusted for inflation that would be about 4.3 billion francs today. Converting that to euros gives about 655 million.
Inflation calculators and currency converters are easily found online if you want to double check my approximate figures.
Alas, a lot of commenters seem to strongly disagree.
It seems very much: Love it or hate it. But there's not much middle ground.
Anyway, of all the Parisian museums it was the one I enjoyed far the least.
These renovations are expensive yes, but they provide good jobs and economic stimulus. It’s been a while since I’ve been to Paris but when the renovation is complete I’ll be sure to return.
Also, there's IRCAM right next to it where the mix of music nerds with a wide variety of backgrounds produces very interesting and unique research.
If you take a break from doing something, those years don't count. The anniversary for "being a public museum" gets pushed out by just as many years as you're closed.
“phygital” is one of the more ridiculous conjugated neologisms I’ve come across.
Not to say it's sitting well now!
None of us really care about the paintings hung on the walls of museums so much as the space to walk around and suck in history, take time out.
We don't want parks for the flowers but to walk and rest, sip coffee or hear nature. The buildings themselves don't need to preen or be fabulous. They don't need to be markers for the egos of architects or politicians - they need to just be human, be part of the space we are trying to share.
So much of what makes civilisation worthwhile is not greatness, but the act of sharing the greatness with others. Publics space is part of that, as might be facebook or youtube. But public spaces are nicer :-)