Pompidou Centre

Designed by the then unknown Italo-British architectrual duo of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers (who also deisgned the Lloyds building in London), the Pompidou Centre is named after Georges Pompidou, who was president of France from 1969 to 1974. The centre took four years to build and was opened in 1977. The Pompidou centre plays host to a modern art museum, a library, exhibition and performance spaces and a repertory cinema.

The style of the Pompidou dramatically clashes with that of the surrounding classical architecture. The service elements such as electricity and water were placed on the exterior of the building giving the centre an inside-out boilerhouse design. Even the steel beams that make up the Pompidou Centre's framework are on the outside. The coloured pipes on the outside play a huge part in the aesthetics of the Pompidou: the air conditioning ducts are blue, water pipes are green, ventilation shafts are white, escalators are red and electricity lines are yellow.