In the heart of the most active Paris, not far from the large Westfield Forum des Halles shopping mall, stands the unmistakable and whimsical silhouette of the Pompidou centre, where art, culture, creativity and nonconformity meet.
The building is named after President Georges Pompidou who, at the end of the 1960s, wanted to give the French capital a cultural centre where the many manifestations of contemporary art production could meet. Thus, alongside the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe, there is a public library, cinemas and theatres, spaces for educational activities, a music research centre, bookshops, a restaurant and a bar. In short, images, sounds and words find free expression inside a large and spacious building and outside it, in a large square crowded with artists of all kinds at all times.
The building that houses the Pompidou Centre was built in the 1970s to a design by Italian architect Renzo Piano and English architect Richard Rogers. It is a decidedly original work in which the art of building is expressed in an unconventional way: the load-bearing structure and the elements intended to connect the different areas of the building are arranged outside, thus leaving a large space inside to be used for exhibitions and the various activities that characterize the center. The result is a building on the facade of which there are escalators and large coloured tubes. The colours used are red, blue, yellow and green, each with a different sheathing content: blue for air, green for liquids, yellow for electrical cables and red for communication routes.
