Centre Pompidou: Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and the Making of a Modern Monument

Though simple was the accolade most used by the building’s design jury in 1971 to describe Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano’s winning entry, Dal Co (Figures of Architecture and Thought) looks behind, or rather through, that facade to reveal the complex past and present of that singular structure. It takes quite a lot of effort to make something look simple, or at least that’s the case with the Centre Pompidou, one Paris’s architectural treasures. The book ably synthesizes the cultural, political, and theoretical origins and reception of the structure, paying special attention to the ironies at play in the design. The building was selected by an international jury on the grounds that it “should not be a ‘monument’ ” and should be designed by non-French architect, and it has since become an iconic symbol of Paris. It has been both praised and despised for its mechanical appearance, which is the product of artisanal detail work. Dal Co includes revelations throughout this erudite study, much like the architects themselves, who “consider[ed] the obsolete and the new with the same objective detachment, aiming to surprise and reassure, only to realize during the course of the project that the content of a work and the inadvertent impulses it generates can shed light on and enhance each other.” (Nov.)