The Pompidou Plateau

Press release

Re-drawn and re-colorized illustration of the cover of the July 1973 issue of L’Architecture
d’Aujourd’hui, conceived by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers.

Although Centre Pompidou is undertaking a major transformation of its iconic building, it has chosen to make this project much more than architectural. Via the Pompidou Plateau, it is demonstrating the desire to remain open, creative and deeply rooted in its neighbourhood by turning this period of transition into a collective cultural adventure.

With its location between Les Halles and Le Marais, Centre Pompidou is launching a series of artistic and cultural projects with its neighbouring partners. These are aimed at all audiences, including residents, those who are simply curious, art lovers and passing tourists.

Since its opening in 1977, Centre Pompidou has played a key role in reshaping the cultural landscape of its neighbourhood. Over the past 40 years, galleries, cultural institutions and art venues have sprung up around it, creating a veritable creative ecosystem. The renovation project is now offering an opportunity to broaden this dialogue and strengthen existing partnerships.

The Pompidou Plateau embodies this ambition to share through its venues showing joint programmes, in situ commissions, an open participatory approach and events which tour the neighbourhood.

In this way, the Pompidou Plateau takes over multiple iconic sites around the Centre, in close collaboration with many cultural institutions such as Ircam, Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, Lafayette Anticipation, the Gaîté Lyrique, the Forum des Images and the new Maison Pompidou.

Maison Pompidou
The former Pavillon Brancusi is becoming Maison Pompidou, a reception and resource centre for the future Centre Pompidou project, hosting exhibitions, talks, screenings and workshops. The aim is to bring life to the plateau during the renovation, open the site up to the city, and offer a preview of the future Centre Pompidou through a permanent and temporary exhibitions, all throughout the period of renovation.

“The Battle of Colours” - inaugural exhibition
The image of Centre Pompidou remains indissociable from the bright colours that make this building so unique within the Parisian landscape, designed between 1971 and 1977 by architects Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Gianfranco Franchini and engineers Ove Arup & Partners.

Colours were assigned to each network in the building, providing an explicit reading of its architectural design: red for goods and visitor circulation, blue for air conditioning, green for water and yellow for electricity. However, these definitive colours were born out of a series of events and controversies during which President Georges Pompidou, the architects, the museum curators and several artists composed and recomposed the building’s palette, between 1971 and 1977.

Through testimonies from protagonists involved in the creation of Centre Pompidou, and thanks to a series of drawings, photographs, never-before-seen documents and a materials library, the exhibition revisits its tumultuous origin story. In it, colour is a key issue, the subject of passionate debate and conflict.

The exhibition is structured into two sections, with one room dedicated to learning about the building’s chromatic history featuring this 'battle'. The second room presents a collection of everyday objects (table, lights, buckets, cables, etc.), illustrating how the architects carried this palette through to the design of details and interior fittings.

Curation of “The Battle of Colours”
Musée national d’art moderne – Architecture Department
Boris Hamzeian