Renzo Piano & Richard Rogers in conversation with Enrique Walker

Author(s): Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Enrique Walker

Source: AA Files, No. 70 (2015), pp. 46-59
Published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture
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 Renzo Piano

& Richard Rogers

in conversation with
Enrique Walker
The two conversations that follow took place we in still speak all the time, on the phone, or we with the other students. I was not especially
see each other in London, Paris or Genoa,
the autumn of 2014, first in the Paris branch of active intellectually - 1 wasn't developing new
the Renzo Piano Building Workshop on rue des
or go sailing together in our summer holidays. theories of architecture or anything like that
Archives and then, a week later, in the riverside e w Why had you moved to London? - but I was very interested in the technicalities
offices in Hammersmith of what is now Rogers RP I moved because I was fed up. If you of building, in how to put different pieces
Stirk Harbour & Partners. The project, insti- grow up in a city like Genoa there will always together. In Albini's office, which was my real
gated by an invitation to interview 'anyone, come a time when you have to leave, if only for pleasure, I learned how to make things. But by
anywhere', entailed using the interview format
a brief period. I had been working with my the time I went back to the university to protest
to trace the story of a building: the Pompidoufather's building firm, which was not doing very late at night I was just so tired, and therefore
Centre. The plan was to hold separate conversa-
well. My father had retired a few years earlier had to say buonanotte to all the theories and
tions with Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers; and my older brother Ermanno had taken politics because I was only thinking of my bed".
both sessions would follow a common script, over the company. My brother was fantastic, EW But before London , you first went to the us.
but take their own trajectory. - Enrique Walkerextremely generous and loving, but not a great RP Yes, in 1965 1 went to Penn University
businessman, and so there was very little work. to assist the French engineer Robert le Ricolais
I tried to relieve the pressure a little by experi- on a course he was running on cable structures.
menting, working on my own on lightweight I then met Louis Kahn, who was the school's
Renzo Piano
structures, but in Italy in the late 1960s there main professor of architecture, and I worked
was very little scope for experimental architec- briefly with him on a few projects. At the same
e w How did your collaboration with Richard ture. I've got rebellion in my blood. In that sense time I was still in love with the work of Jean
Rogers begin? I'm really quite a primitive person. Remember, Prouvé, especially his lightweight, flexible
RP Oh, I can tell you exactly how it hap- I studied at the Politecnico di Milano under structures, and so when I was back in Genoa
Giuseppe Ciribini during the period of its
pened. I was living in London in 1969 and I'd met with the family firm I would contact all kinds of
a man called Dr Franklin, who at one point student occupation in 1963-64. At that time designers and engineers working in this petit
suggested that I go along with him to see one of I led a kind of double life, working in the office milieu . Among them was Stéphane du Château
his patients - a fellow architect he thought I'd of Franco Albini during the day, and at night in Paris and Z S Makowsky in London, who was
like, who spoke fluent Italian but was laid up returning to the university to occupy the space teaching at the Battersea College of Technology,
with a bout of chickenpox. 'Oh my God, what is
chickenpox?' I said. 'Will I catch this pòx if I meet
him?' 'No, no, if you come with me you'll be fine',
the doctor reassured me. So I went, and we met,
and Richard and I immediately became great
friends. Nine months later we set up Piano and
Rogers. You know, we were just two young people
who shared a kind of chemical rapport. In Italian
we'd say affinità elettiva - an elective affinity.
We had different stories but we shared a similar

background, and had similar obsessions and

desires. We also looked similar - 1 mean in those

days everyone looked like a Beátle, with long

hair and flared trousers. And of course Richard

is Italian, even if he is also English, so we could

communicate with each other very easily.
EW Always in Italian?
RP Of course! Never anything but Italian.
Richard and I have always loved talking. And

Previous: aerial view of the front facade

of the Pompidou Centre, 2012
© Guillaume Baptiste / afp / Getty Images
Right: Robert Le Ricolais, cable study model, c i960
Robert Le Ricolais Collection, The Architectural
Archives, University of Pennsylvania

48 AA FILES 70

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specialising in space frames. Like any self-edu-
cated person at the time I was fascinated with
the idea of fighting against gravity, looking
always for lightness, which of course is a close
relative of the idea of transparency and in many
ways also of beauty. I had done early experi-
ments with these ideas in the lightweight roof
system I developed for the Olivetti factory in
Ivrea, and later the shell structure for my first
office in Genoa and the Italian pavilion for the
Osaka Expo. But following my discussions with
Makowsky it was quite a natural decision to
move to London. I was also making no money
in Italy, and so it seemed logical to put four
bags on the roof of my old car, pick up my wife
and two children, and say 'let's go, we're off to
London'. Two days later we arrived. We rented
a little flat on the top floor of a house in
Netherhall Gardens, a side street in Hampstead.
Soon after arriving I got some additional that rebellion. Everything was so fertile. But in was already exploring the idea of flexibility and
teaching work at the Polytechnic of Central many ways it also related back to my experienceaccessibility. And yet, as I discovered after we
London and at the Architectural Association, working for my father, to basic ideas of con- started working together out of our little office
where I would go in the mornings, leaving the struction, trying always to build something as in Aybrook Street, at the same time he was very
afternoons largely free for my own projects. light as possible, assembling different compo- engaged with the civic value of architecture.
In many ways London saved me. In Italy I was nents. For me architecture has always been For Richard these two things came together very
perceived as a strange kind of guy who was only something done piece by piece. And so the easily. I think the first project we did was the
interested in researching peculiar things. I was shelters we were making in the garden were as aram Module, which was a kind of hospital that
not even seen as an architect - though frankly much part of this as the conversations we were could be air-lifted into any given site. Of course,
this didn't worry me too much. But in London having about beauty, transparency, the fragilityit was never built. With Richard, everything
I was immediately taken seriously. of lightness and dreams of flight. In the end, just came together. We never really divided our
EW What did you teach at the aa? it wasn't just about being a good citizen or a responsibilities - 1 was never in charge of this
rp Teaching is too grand a word for what good builder. It was more than that: it was aboutor that. In fact, in many ways, we learned to do
I was doing. I basically worked with a handful of those things that make architecture magical what the other was expert at - so I learned to
students, helping them build primitive shelters be a good protestor and Richard learned to be
in the Bedford Square garden. I know that space a good builder.
inch by inch, centimetre by centimetre. Every EW How did the decision to take part in the
morning at 10am precisely, when the gardens Pompidou Centre competition come about?
opened, I'd cross the street from the school rp Beaubourg arrived not long after we set
with five or six students, a hammer, nails and up together. I still call it Beaubourg by the way
some planks of wood. We'd then build a simple - for me the empty space in the ground we saw
kind of pavilion. It would take us about two or on our first site visit will always be Beaubourg.
three hours. And then later in the afternoon For the competition, I remember it was all
we'd have to dismantle everything before the discussed very democratically. Of course, it is
gardens closed at exactly 5.30pm. It was really not difficult to be democratic when there are so
an incredible time. The school was filli of the because ultimately, even if it troubles me a littlefew of you. Later, we were joined by John Young,
Archigram guys, and Cedric Price and the to admit this, architecture is an art. Marco Goldschmeid and a couple of secretaries,
genius editor Monica Pidgeon from Architectural EW What common agenda did the new but in the beginning there were just three of us.
Design would always be passing through. practice with Richard entail? We'd sit around a table and talk, although at
Everyone was talking about flexibility, open- rp We were exactly the same, even if I used that time we used to play a kind of game
ness, accessibility, so we were naturally fuelled to call Richard the old man, because he is four - whenever Richard said something, his wife
by rebellion. We were all the ýoung bellhops of years older than me, which when you are in Su and I would say the opposite. It was a typical
your 60s or 70s is nothing, but when you are 30 68 thing. Anyway, Ted Happold from Arup came
it is quite a big age gap. But still, we shared so round one day and said we should all enter the
much. We'd be building and protesting, and in Beaubourg competition. Richard immediately
said it was a very bad idea, because the French
between listening to music, going out for meals,
watching movies, sailing boats - all the things were just looking for a monumental public
that are kind of architecture's third dimension. building that celebrated an official kind of
I knew the work he'd done with Team 4 and culture. Reacting not on the grounds of reason,
more recently his Zip-Up House, in which he but only according to the rules of our little game,
I then argued the opposite, saying we had to
Above: Piano + Rogers, aram (Association
do it, and I listed all the reasons why. I think Su
for Rural Aid in Medicine) Module, 1971
Left: Richard and Su Rogers, had yet another contrary interpretation. Shortly
Zip-Up House, 1968 afterwards Richard wrote a beautifùl little text

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explaining precisely why we should not do the Beaubourg he would not have cast pieces but
competition - but of course we did do it. Maybe bent metal. He always used to say je suis un plieur
one of the reasons was that Arup offered to de tuyaux - 1 am a bender of pipes or tubes.
contribute £5,000, which in those days was a lot In his factory in Nancy he always worked like
of money. Of course, in the end it was not this, manipulating pieces of metal, bending and
about the money; it was about working with Ted, welding. For me this is what architecture is
sketching out our design, and knowing that about. And it's not just architecture. If you talk to
no one ever wins competitions like this. You just a musician about improvisation they will speak
do it for the pleasure of it. Of course, another about it as a mixture of things that you remem-
pleasure, after we'd won, was working with the ber and other things that you have forgotten.
great Irish engineer Peter Rice. But in those competition. Prouvé was my absolute idol. All good art is like this; always somewhere
early days, I also remember lots of discussionsHe was untouchable. I couldn't believe that between memory and oblivion, between what
about what designing culture meant. A number
someone like Prouvé could possibly run a bad you know and what you never knew existed.
of people have said our design came out of competition. Prouvé was also someone I And I think both the design and the building of
Archigram and Cedric Price, but it really encountered long before I met Richard. Immedi-Beaubourg operated exactly like this.
developed out of Richard's famous pronounce-ately after my studies in Milan I went to visit him EW To what extent was the May 68 debate
ment that our building would be somewhere in Paris at L'École des Arts et Métiers on Boule- influentialfor the project?
between Times Square and the British Museum.
vard de Sébastopol. He was my hero, even more RP Winning the competition was one of
That is classic Richard. We then started to
than Buckminster Fuller, and he became a kind those moments in life when all the stars and
challenge the idea that culture had to be madeof father figure. At that time he was still workingplanets seemed to have come into alignment
out of marble, or that it came out of intimida- with Abbé Pierre, for whom he had designed - Pompidou himself and his wife Claude,
tion. Rather, we saw it as a tool, an urban his low-cost housing prototype, the Maison des but also Prouvé, Philip Johnson and Oscar
Jours Meilleurs, and so in addition to his ideas Niemeyer, who were all on the jury - but as you
machine whose floors would move up and down.
But really, the whole thing was totally mad. Notabout lightness and flexibility there was also say, our design and the fact that we actually won
least its size, which was completely dispropor-an extremely strong social dimension. In this was very much a consequence of Mai soixante-
tionate to everything around it. I mean, as built sense he was a very good example of an architecthuit, We were so young then and so completely
it is still out of all proportion, but in the designwho was able to mix the making of something irresponsible. Yet everybody seemed intent
phase it was much worse. It was flying above the with the rationale for that making. Later, when on making something against the academy,
ground! But more than anything, this just shows
we moved the office to Paris, he became a good rejecting the old model of the École des
the fun we were having imagining it. friend. His own office was just across the street Beaux-Arts. In this sense, everything about the
EW But in agreeing to do the competition, from me on rue des Blancs Manteaux. We'd meet competition was a product of 1968. There is
wasn't the fact that Jean Prouvé was president offor lunch on Thursdays, and there'd always be a nice story about when we decided to put the
the jury also an influence? other interesting people with him, like aircraft pavés - the cobblestones - in the piazza.
RP Oh yes. For me that was really engineers or the guy who designed the Citroën Everybody came and said 'No, no, no, no, forget
the number one argument for doing the 2CV. I remember he once said that if he had done it, we've just spent two years clearing up all the
cobblestones after the riots of 68.' One of the
famous slogans used by protestors during these
demonstrations was Sous les pavés , la plage!
It was a lovely poetic idea - that under a piece of
stone you would find a beach. It was also
beautiful because they were right - when you
put down cobblestones you lay them on sand.
Richard and I always loved this sensibility,
and so we made sure the piazza was eventually
surfaced in cobblestones, regardless of the
objections. This became just one small way of
challenging the beaux-arts empire and all those
old traditions of the Grand Prix de Rome and
its closed circle of 24 architects declaring
themselves the best in the world. In fact, we got
the job in the first place precisely because we
were outside of that tradition. But we were

also not alone. After the building was finished

they brought in other outsiders, not just
architects but people like the composer Pierre
Boulez from New York or the curator Pontus
Hultén from Sweden, who ran the museum.
In this sense the whole Beaubourg project was
about reabsorbing the ex communicato - can you

Above: Jean Prouvé lecturing at cnam, Paris, 1964

Photo E Remondino
Left: Jean Prouvé, Maison du Peuple, Clichy, 1939
© Bibliothèque Kandinsky Centre Pompidou

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say ťhat in English? The ex-communicated?
All those people who were not part of the
established church.

EW In retrospect , given this combination

of radicalism and inexperience , what was it that
allowed you to keep control over the project?
RP Beaubourg was built out of obstinacy
and protest. We just never accepted 'no' for an
answer. For example, there is the whole saga
of the large air ducts we designed to ventilate the
underground car park. The préfet de Paris took
one look at them and immediately demanded
that we throw them away. 'I never want to see
them again!' But we didn't destroy them, we just
hid them in a garage for a few months. In Paris
we had become friends with the artist Jean
Tinguely, who at the time was making his vast
Le Cyclope sculpture for Milly-la-Foret. He loved
our funnel ducts so much he integrated one into
his sculpture. Encouraged by Tinguely, we pulled
three of them out of the garage and positioned
them in the piazza. The préfet soon reappeared
and shrieked Ce n'est pas possible I But then, a few
months later, the poor guy died. Of course we
needed help fast. I called a young friend from
were sad about this, but it wasn't really our fault, said it was not consciously designed as a work
and it did mean we could quickly fix the ducts Genoa called Gianfranco Franchini who joined of the Left or the Right. It is a work of innocence.
us, and then other colleagues, former students
into position. They have been breathing perfectly It was just about putting some pieces together to
for 40 years ever since. And actually, thinking and friends from the us. It became a big team form a kind of cultural tool. And in the end

about it now, every aspect of the design was like

- by the end, 40 or 50 people. It was like an people began to appreciate it, not least because
this. We never did what we were told. And the incredible party. Although the size of the design it works really well. I was actually there the day
most important phrase we learned on this team meant we also lost our way a few times. before yesterday with my wife Emilia and with
project - a phrase Richard became expert at - was There was one moment in particular when the Richard and Ruthie. It still looks good, despite
je ne comprends pas trop bien , 'I don't understand'. project turned into a kind of jelly mould, with all the fact that over the last 30 or 40 years it has
We hid behind this ignorance and went through these rounded corners. At some point Richard been changed around a number of times. I also
the whole job constantly saying it .Je m'excuse and I looked at the drawings and said 'What the think its survival comes down to the fact that it is

Madame et Monsieur, mais je ne comprends pas trop hell are we doing? We've lost our sharpness.' fundamentally a public building. It's not about
bien . It became a kind of applied protest. And so we redeveloped the scheme, and triumphalism, or a flexing of muscles, or about
EW I understand that Robert Bordaz, the man returned to the crisper edges of the first design. money or the state, it's about the community and
President Pompidou appointed to oversee the But these kinds of things are inevitable on a big a sense of civic space. And ever since Beaubourg
construction of the building ; was also a decisive ally. project like Beaubourg. Architecture is about I've been in love with civic buildings. If you
RP Bordaz was a genius, very much a exploring. The jury also helped us out at certain look around my office now you'll see that 80 per
commis du temps , a dedicated civil servant, but moments. Philip Johnson came to London and cent of our work is civic - universities, courts,
also a really fantastic man. It took him a year we would also have conversations with Prouvé hospitals, museums, concert halls, libraries.
to fully understand us and what we wanted to and with Oscar Niemeyer. He seemed like the This is what we do. And Beaubourg was the
achieve but then he adopted us and defended oldest man in the world then, but he was prototype of all that. It still amazes me that it was
us at every opportunity. It became a kind of probably younger than I am now. We'd work onever built. Looking at it now always reminds me
love story. I'll never forget one day soon after the section and endlessly sketch out the basic of the moment we stood outside in the piazza for
Pompidou died and Giscard d'Estaing came in, diagram, a box 170m long, 50m wide, with 13 the opening ceremony. There was a huge crowd
there were discussions about removing Bordaz bays and with pipes that move here, and peopleof people but everyone was saying the same thing
and replacing him with someone else. Richard that move there. This was not so much a - Oh, ça finit comme ça? They were astonished
and I flew into a rage, shouting 'if he goes, we strategy as a kind of innocent game. We really that this was it. They thought we hadn't finished
go'. In hindsight, we really were insane. This was weren't very smart or in touch. Bordaz was right,and that the scaffolding was still up. And so
our only job. Without it we would have been we were actually just insupportables. in the end, by pure chance, we became the people
destitute. But we were making declarations like EW During its construction , and immediately who did the dirty job of breaking idols, tearing
this all the time, constantly marking a line in after completion , both Left and Right really took down the old model and making sure that
the sand. As Bordaz himself used to say about against the building. culture really is something for everybody. Of
us, vous êtes gentils mais insupportables - you are RP Beaubourg generated an absolute course, this miracle of Beaubourg was still
really nice but also unbearable. In a way it was mountain of protest. It was attacked by every- sacrilegious for some people, who thought we
all a kind of game. And to me now it is still body. Out of the thousand critics in the world, were contaminating culture by democratising it.
something of a mystery that we ever survived: maybe three of them praised it. But I've always Un supermarché they called it. Others called it
it seems pure luck that it all worked out and the a refinery, but as soon as they said that I roared
building came together. At the beginning we Sous les pavés graffiti, 'Fantastic! BellissimoV because, really, what more
were not more than five or six people, and so we Paris, 1968 could we have possibly hoped for?

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 Piano + Rogers,
•Jelly-moulď Pompidou scheme, 1972

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 sure the decision would be a no: while Ted
Richard Rogers would remain very enthusiastic, Su and I would
resist and Renzo would float. But on the day
EW How did your collaboration with Renzo our baby was sick and Su had to return home,
Piano begin? meaning we had the vote without her and
RR Ah, so this is a kind of 'why did you somehow I lost. But I accepted it, partly
get married?' kind of question. Well, Renzo because Renzo quickly arranged for a young
and I have different recollections of exactly architect called Gianni Franchini to help us
how it all started. Renzo thinks it was our doctor out on the design.
who played matchmaker - Dr Owen Franklin e w I understand that Renzo had been
was the client for the Murray Mews house persuaded by the fact that Jean Prouvé was on
we did with Team 4, and after a bout of mumps the jury , and you were later encouraged by the
or measles or some other illness he apparently presence of another juror, Willem Sandbergfrom
suggested that I should meet another of his the Stedelijk Museum.
patients, a fellow Italian architect in London. RR I wasn't so much encouraged by
I don't remember it quite like that. I just know Sandberg, who I had met before, as I was
that I was familiar with Renzo's work and at worried about Philip Johnson, who with
some point in the late 1960s we met and clicked Prouvé was head of the jury. But I have to say
immediately. This was about two years before that Philip was the one who made it happen
the Pompidou competition. At the time Renzo in the end. Along with Prouvé, he really pushed
mainly lived here, having left Italy and his for our scheme.
home town of Genoa for various social and EW Let's turn to the competition itself which
political reasons. Once in London, though, called for a new building type. people, all ages and creeds, and for both rich'
he couldn't find any work. But nor could I - RR Beaubourg was really the first major and poor'. This established the whole social
I mean, we had one or two very small things European architectural competition in the and political framework for the project, though
going on, but not much, and I thought why postwar period. The only thing comparable in addition to the idea of a democratic space,
be just one unemployed architect when two in terms of scale was the Sydney Opera House the other key component was of course the
unemployed architects working together competition in the mid-1950s. There, the notion of flexibility. Knowing my Banham,
would be more fun. In those early days, engineer Ove Arup was very close to Utzon who and from everything I'd learned at the aa
I remember we talked and talked and talked. of course walked away from the project before and later working with Norman Foster with
At some point we did get around to doing its completion. Badly burned by the whole Team 4, flexibility seemed crucial to architec-
a project together - the competition for the experience and having lost a friend, Arup was tural design. Renzo had been working with
Burrell Collection in Glasgow - but we didn't reticent about working again with other young similar ideas through all those wonderfùl
even make the top ten. Soon after, though, architects who really didn't know what they lightweight studio structures he designed in
we started to take things more seriously, were doing. Of course, those young architects Italy in the 1960s.
working on designs for the aram Module and were us! But Ted - who as a young engineer had EW Your argument for the project, as you once
the pa Technology Centre. also worked on the opera house design - described it, was the meeting of the British Museum
EW What common agenda did the new brought Arup round, as he had Renzo and I. with Times Square.
practice entail? In the end, it became a beautiful and wonderful RR We always perceived our design as
RR It was basically two people thinking thing. But even at the outset, I remember being something that was full of life, by which we
amazed at the scale of the whole competition.
more or less in the same way and getting on very meant it would be largely public and popular,
well, exchanging ideas. I remember even I mean, there were 681 entries, when we were not elitist. In those days we had real difficulty
without any work, we'd wander through London
expecting something closer to six. It was also with the word culture, which seemed like
pointing out various things and discussing clear from the brief - which was immaculately a highfalutin, class-orientated word, very much
how we'd overcome certain problems in the city.
and very thoroughly put together - that the aligned to the high-brow German concept of
EW And how did the Pompidou Centre project had the backing of the French Ministry kultur . It's interesting that now I use it all the
competition come about? of Culture and so nobody was going to get in the time, without any of these reservations. After
RR It came through the engineer Ted way of its realisation. all, I helped persuade Tony Blair to call his
Happold, who was running Arup's Structures 3 EW What were the questions in the brief that Ministry of Culture just that. But at that time
group at the time. I had known him for a couple
instigated your own particular project? the word was just too problematic. We were
of years - when I was working on a design for RR The first thing we did was to look adamant that the architecture we produced
a new stand for Chelsea football club, I had at the site and the surrounding area. It became should not be a sterile monument, and much as
asked Frei Otto to recommend an engineer clear to us almost immediately that the scheme we were drawn to the model of a big shed or
and Frei suggested I speak with Ted. Anyway, -had to be structured around the provision beautiful big barn - like the Reliance Controls
Ted phoned up, asking if Renzo and I would be
of a new public space. In the late-igôos the factory or the Spender House - we also wanted
interested in doing the Beaubourg competition
nearby Les Halles was still a fully functioning this container to be flexible. At the same
with him. My initial response was 'no way'. wholesale market. The market itself was time, we insisted on a more egalitarian social
This was not long after the student protests ofperfectly good, but there was absolutely no model. Again, the reference for this was
May 1968 and I had absolutely no interest in space. The idea of the piazza then became Reliance Controls, which was one of the very
first factories built in Britain where the workers
what I saw as a crudely right-wing concept of fundamental to our design. The first sentence in
a centralised cultural venue. But Ted kept the text accompanying our proposal was in this Team 4, Reliance Controls
encouraging us, and so we decided to be very sense the most important thing we came up electronics factory, Swindon, 1967
democratic and to put the thing to a vote. I waswith - that our scheme would be 'a place for all Courtesy Foster + Partners

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shared the same front door as the bosses. Yale, was also hugely influential, mainly on were working right up to the deadline. With
So Beaubourg maintained multiple agendas account of my exposure to Mies' American work minutes to go, Marco Goldschmied dashed
- about flexibility, about structure and truth and Louis Kahn's Richards Laboratories, but to the all-night post office in Leicester Square
in materials, and also about social integration. on the us West Coast I was also interested in the to send off our drawings and get the package
EW Which converged into a simple concept Case Study Houses, particularly those by date-stamped to show that we'd made it, just.
- an open frame and an open square. Charles and Ray Eames and by Raphael Soriano,I remember it was a very cold January night
RR Yes, although the jury took some who I would later get to know quite well. In this and the post office was surrounded by all these
convincing. I remember after we submitted all sense, all of the modern masters were sitting poor old homeless guys and drug addicts,
our competition materials there was a period heavily on our shoulders. huddling in the doorway to try and keep warm.
when the jury travelled around and visited the e w To what extent was the May 68 debate When Marco got to the head of the queue the
offices of the shortlisted firms to look at their - which was quite suspicious of architecture - also woman behind the counter said that the
work in more detail. One day I got a call at an influence? drawing tube exceeded the maximum dimen-
9.30am to say that Philip Johnson was outside RR May 68 was immensely influential, not sions permitted by the Royal Mail, and so Marco
our office wanting to look around. No one was just on Beaubourg but on all my thinking. It had to borrow a very blunt pair of scissors from
there - probably because we had all worked even affected my home life - 1 mean, I was only one of the homeless guys and hack off the end
till 4am the previous night - and so I dashed able to meet my second wife Ruthie because of the tube, and with it the drawings inside. The
over to let Philip in. He immediately asked she and her us friends were coming to Europe tube was duly dispatched, but a couple of days
to see our plans for Beaubourg. 'We don't have to escape the Vietnam draft. I remember later I got a note saying we'd paid insufficient
any plans', I said, 'only sections'. 'Okay, well imploring my students at Cambridge to march postage and the package would not be delivered
then please show me where you have placed the against Vietnam, and in support of the French until we stumped up the excess. There followed
library and how you have distributed students, intellectualism and the workers. They a flurry of furious phone calls with the post
the various departments.' By then, slightly just replied that they had paid the Brighton office. Then I think the French even briefly
irritated, I said 'I don't know where the library architecture students to march for them - that misplaced all of the British entries. It was quite
will go, and frankly I don't care.' 'But the was their typically condescending position on a saga, but they got there in the end - though
plan drives the form', he argued. 'Not on this class war! As I'm sure you've seen, when we I remember Philip Johnson asked us with a
project it doesn't', I replied, 'it all comes from submitted our boards for the competition a few certain degree of exasperation why a dog had
the section'. years later, we implanted graphic traces of the chewed all our drawings.
e w When I spoke with Renzo he also said student uprisings on our drawings of the facade
there were no plans , but there was one diagram of of Beaubourg, and all those anti-war slogans
the frame, flanked by the circulation and services and projected images. Even after we had won
zones , that you kept repeating. and started making our weekly trips to Paris
RR When I say there were no plans, what there were still rumblings of protest in the city.
I mean is that the spatial division of the We even got ensnared in one battle between
building was only worked out in section. We did police and rioters - Renzo and I were walking
of course have mechanical servicing plans and to a restaurant in our own special way and
structural plans. Actually, I think this vagueness somehow we got scooped up by the police along
worked in our favour. I'm told that when the with all the protestors. It was actually pretty
various museum departments were shown the nasty. But the sense of hope and optimism that
designs, because they couldn't see a precise characterised much of the student ideologies
place where they'd be located, they imagined was fùndamental for us.
their future environment in more idealistic, EW What would you say was the preeminent
optimistic terms. design decision for the project: to divide the site EW If we now turn to the development of the
e w What precedents did you discuss while in two - an open square and a large-span building project and its construction over the next five or six
formulating the project , both in your own work - or to provide a maximum span without columns years , you had to battle an alarming number of
and elsewhere? and the rest of the site open? problems , including ever shorter deadlines, budget
RR One of the first schemes Renzo and RR I don't think we ever saw either as cuts and even the death of President Pompidou.
I worked on was a design for a shopping centre taking precedence. Our proposal was a large RR All of these things were terrible. And
in Cambridge - the Fitzroy Burleigh project pot of simmering concepts, all intermingled such a contrast to the beginning. I mean, when
- which had a number of formal similarities with each other. But if you are looking for the we first heard the result, it was like we'd won
with Beaubourg, being a big shed with an provenance of the open square, it probably the football pools, especially when we found out
escalator running up the facade, but from my came from the Piazza del Campo in Siena, how many other entries there had been. But
side of things (and I realise this sounds so a space that Renzo and I both knew very well. very soon afterwards we encountered nothing
simplistic) the strongest link to Beaubourg is As I said before, we always wanted the scheme but animosity. I think in the whole of the next
the house I built for my parents in Wimbledon- to provide public space, and perhaps our most six years there was just one piece that celebrated
at the end of the 1960s, which like Beaubourg is original idea was therefore not to build in the what we were doing - a review by Ada Louise
a lightweight, flexible structure, but on a much middle of the site - as any other modern Huxtable in The New York Times - everybody else
smaller, domestic, suburban scale. At the movement architect would have done, creating was antagonistic. They just hated it. A group of
same time, of course, we were thinking of more space only around the building's perimeter French architects even started an organisation
common references, like the Japanese metabo- - but to push the building to one side, creating whose sole aim was to put a stop to the building.
lists and the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, a large open square between it and the busy When they discovered that the boundaries of
especially his Larkin Building, which was the rue Saint-Martin. If you look at the competition
first time he really separated out the building's drawings, though, you'll see that the edge Piano + Rogers, model of the
cores. The period I spent in the us, studying at of this site is a bit battered. This is because we competition-winning scheme, 1971

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the site as defined by the city were slightly extended only 24m. In the end this did bring Laurie was one of the real heroes of the build-
different from the local arrondissement' s down the height of the building, and actually ing's design, supervising all the structure and
definition they gleefully took us to court. helped us to manage the budget. Of course, services. Mike Davies also came in, and we
We were constantly under attack. Later on, the other key person who enabled us to resolve brought Alan Stanton back from Los Angeles,
we were even informed that we were not the more technical difficulties was our and then all these Japanese guys turned up
allowed to practise architecture in the country engineer Peter Rice, who was just brilliant. out of the blue, uninvited, and Laurie immedi-
- some antiquated by-law stipulated that only Peter was a classical thinker, in that you didn't ately set them to work. None of them could
French architects could design French cultural really know if he was an engineer or an archi- speak English but they could really draw. And
buildings in Paris. But this is where President tect. In this sense he was like Brunelleschi. it went on and on like this for three or four

Pompidou himself really helped us out, pushing He just sculpted a solution. Peter came in years, working on the project night and day.
through a new act that allowed us to work. when we realised we couldn't possibly build e w I understand that the project was
I remember having to go with Renzo to some dark it without him. He had this wonderful ability developed by six independent teams .
municipal room and swear allegiance to the to explain complicated things in very simple RR Well, yes and no. We did have separate
country and basically promise to be a good boy. terms. And he also believed that any problem teams, but there was also an overriding sense
EW In retrospect , what allowed you to keep could be resolved by going back to first of the whole. Actually most of the meetings and
control over the project? principles, rather than working through discussions involved client relations. Beau-

RR We had a really tremendous client in existing or traditional solutions. bourg more than any other job required a hell of
Robert Bordaz, who the president had appointed e w Peter Rice once suggested that one of a lot of client meetings. Renzo largely did these
to run the competition and construction. the main reasons you succeeded was because none because he spoke French better than the rest of
Without Bordaz, Beaubourg would never have of y ou spoke very good French. us; certainly better than me. And speaking
been built. Bordaz himself was an interesting RR I'm sure he's right. French was key. I remember strained meetings
man, 65 years old, very big, white hair, and with EW Around Rice you also assembled a group of with the contract lawyer trying to make myself
practically no experience in building. He once other very able people , most of whom ended by understood in my own lousy French, because no
admitted to me that his only knowledge being collaborators for many years. one it seemed was able to communicate in any
of construction came from the time he was in RR Yes, we basically phoned up a lot of other language. It was actually a very nationalis-
charge of the French withdrawal from Dien friends and put together a very good team. tic thing. I used to think that the British were
Bien Phu in the First Indochina War. He then People like Gianni Franchini, who became the most nationalistic of people but the French
became a senior judge, and his legal skills a dear friend, and who was perhaps the only are far, far worse. All the consultants insisted we
proved extremely useful in getting us out of one person who could speak both French and only spoke French. A few years after Pompidou
scrape after another, but especially in sorting English (as well as his native Italian). I also got I met up with this same contract lawyer again
out the French steel industry, who were quoting Laurie Abbott involved. He had studied with me and he cheerfully said hello to me and chatted
us prices double what we had first agreed and at Yale and had worked with Norman and me at away in English. 'What, you can speak English?'
being increasingly difficult in terms of all the Team 4. In typical Laurie style, just two days I said. 'Of course', he replied.
regulations we had to satisfy. But as I said, there after I called I saw his old car pull up outside our EW During this whole period didn't your
were so many problems to deal with. Along office, with his wife and kids strapped in, and all
Paris office keep moving ; from the Grand Palais
with the issue of the steel, there was the slashinghis stuff on the roof. 'I'm here!' he shouted. to an inflatable structure?
of our budget, and the belligerent Paris fire RR That's right. The first space was in
brigade, who insisted that we couldn't build Piano + Rogers, elevation of the the Grand Palais, which sounds appropriately
a building higher than their ladders, which competition-winning design, 1971 grand, but with 700 models of all the

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 Piano + Rogers,
cross-section with integrated
projection screens, 1974

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competition schemes laid out it was like water, even after Arup proved that this was
working in a morgue. So we moved out. Twice completely unnecessary, and then they
actually. First to a boat, a barge on the Seine demanded that this water be pumped around
that briefly operated as our floating office, and the whole system. I know that the pumps are
then to an inflatable structure that the archi- no longer there, and I bet the water has been
tects loved but the engineers absolutely hated, drained out too. You just don't need it.
largely because whenever it rained it would EW The second one was having the square
slowly collapse. It also had an incredible echo extend directly underneath the building.
inside, so you could never make yourself RR I think Renzo and I became convinced
properly heard. It was a daft idea, really. In the quite soon after the competition phase that it
end we moved to a space very close to the site would actually be rather good not to have any
on the Boulevard de Sébastopol. be visible. To ensure this visibility, the escalator activity underneath the building, largely because
Ew I would now like to discuss three decisive had to go on the outside, taking up the whole we were worried about how dank and dark it
changes that were made during the project of the main facade. Movement therefore would be. Keeping the place alive, and stopping
development, and correspondingly five ideas that followed the model of services and structure, it from becoming somewhere the homeless
did not materialise. which were also expressed on the outside of would sleep each night would have been a real
RR Sure, let's take them one at a time. the building. problem. And so we turned our attention instead
EW The first one was the use of cast steel for EW The escalator, not unlike a public street, to developing the so-called 'Siena slope'
the structure, rather than standard steel sections , was also the element to activate the building EW The third one was the screens.
as originally imagined. throughout the day ; a central concern in the RR Yes, that was a pity. In the original
RR That came from Peter Rice, who competition brief. competition the whole of the main facade was
developed this idea partly after seeing the RR That's right. The brief had been put presented as a patchwork of projected images.
cast-steel nodes in the vast space-frame together by the local architect François But what we probably hadn't allowed for - ~
designed by Kenzo Tange at the 1970 Osaka Lombard, and it gave us hope that the building and this is a little bit of a post-rationalisation
Expo. We immediately liked it because it gave could be used in this way, with people moving - is that the French are so good at what in Italy
the building structure a grain and a transpar- across the piazza, up the escalators and we'd call the passeggiata , the slow urban stroll,
ency. But it was also another example of Peter's through the building in a kind of perpetual an opportunity to look at other people and
genius for sculpture, as much as his humanism. continuum. The problem was the heads of to be seen yourself. So this whole social ritual
department in the actual museum, who were might have been eroded if the focus had shifted
only concerned about their own domains - away from the street towards these giant
so the library could only be a library, and not screens. But that wasn't the reason we aban-
some other kind of space, synthesised with doned them. We actually had the money in
another. This is why two years after we finished place to install the screens. French electricity
the project they moved everything around, were willing to finance them. It was only when
unable to accept the idea of a sort of 'shopping Pompidou's successor, President Giscard
centre', as someone derisorily called it. At the d'Estaing, came along, that they were dropped.
same time, the museum did initially stick with When we presented the scheme to him he
the idea that the escalators would be free to immediately focused on the screens and said
use, and anyone could enter the building also 'Okay, so who's going to control the facade,
for free, which was very important. And some the Left or the Right?' Rather romantically we
e w The second one was the use of the of the later curators, especially Pontus Hultén, replied, 'Neither. They'd be controlled by
gerberettes. who was fantastically good, really understood culture.' 'Pull the other one', he said, or
RR That took us a hell of a long time to the building. whatever the equivalent French phrase is!
resolve, but again this came from Peter. It's EW Then there are the five ideas that And so we lost that one. But really, these things
basically a bracket, if you like. didn't materialise , the first of which was having are never real losses, they are all just con-
EW And the third one was the implementation movable floors. straints. Building anything means working
of the diagonal escalator across the full building ; RR Personally, I never really thought these within constraints. And on Beaubourg we
rather than the original forking escalator. could work. But Arup believed in them, and Ted had so many. Perhaps more than the animated
RR As you say, in the competition scheme especially was convinced he could do it. But facade, the toughest one was pedestrianising
the escalator divides in two from a central for Renzo and me, the fact that they didn't make the surrounding streets. Remember, a year
point and goes upwards in separate directions. it into the actual building was no real loss. Of before the competition Pompidou had made
But you have to remember that we didn't have course, at the same time, it would have been one of his grand statements in which he said
much experience. When we started to think wonderful, even magical, to have them. Although that 'Paris must make way for the car'. We had
about it more carefully, we soon realised that . imagine the fire problems! Even without movable completely the opposite view. And so we really
two escalators couldn't get you all the way floors we had so many difficulties satisfying the had to fight to remove cars and traffic from
to the top of the building. You can actually see fire regulations - the French kept ratcheting up the surrounding streets. It was only at the very
this on the competition model. So we just every stipulation when we went with a German last moment that traffic adjoining the piazza
extended one escalator all the way across the steel company rather than a French one. They was closed off.

main facade - there, I've drastically simplified insisted that all the columns had to be filled with EW The fourth one was a series of elements
years of really hard work in one sentence. that would programme the square.
Above: Piano + Rogers, model of the
Of these three transformations, the escalator RR The piazza is probably the single most
revised scheme, 1973
was the key one. From the outset we said Left: The structural gerberettes successful aspect of the whole design. Its use is
that movement throughout the building should as delivered to the site, 1975 also a response to the destruction of Les Halles,

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 the insurers move out Lloyd's would make
a very good university. The idea was that
whatever happens - and this was our thesis
continually - the building should not constrain
the user.

e w Lastly , Iwanted to talk about the

building's conceptual legacy , not least the way
it basically defined the cultural centre as a new
architectural type.
RR Well, I think that really started a few
years earlier, with de Gaulle's culture minister,
André Malraux. The imperative to contain and
project culture was really his idea. The fact
that every major city now has a cultural centre
is testament to that idea. For us, what was
interesting is that I'm told that Pompidou
himself originally only wanted a library, not
a museum. His expectations for the project were
much less grand. But later, of course, it grew,
with the addition of the museum and galleries,
and also the ircam music centre, which was
basically a ruse to attract Pierre Boulez back to
Paris from New York, and give him an instru-
which in my opinion was a really terrible EW Then there is also the reception of the ment he could really play with.
mistake. As I said earlier, we designed our building in terms ofuset and the fact that, EW At the same time , the Pompidou Centre
scheme around a public space because the area paradoxically ; some of the departments within became the blueprint for the later grands projets,
was so constricted. But when Les Halles was the Pompidou Centre ended up endorsing and the assumption that a set of buildings can
torn down it suddenly produced a kind of lung a conventional and fixed, organisation. potentially transform a city.
or void space. In the first years of Beaubourg the RR The biggest single change was that RR For me, the legacy of Pompidou is more
pressure for space meant that the piazza was the museum offices moved out, even if for to do with the idea of regeneration - simply,
filled with even more people, more music, more us this wasn't a problem. Much more difficult that it turned a very run-down quarter of Paris,
theatre, more activities, precisely because thereto accept was that the library won the battle full of brothels and prostitution, into a vibrant
was nowhere else to go. with the director of the Pompidou to have new district. What is positive about this is that
EW And the last one was the mezzanines. its own separate entrance. But interestingly, the neighbourhood was revitalised; on the
RR There's not so much to say about the at this very moment we are working again negative side, all the prices were soon pushed
mezzanines. I think they were a nice idea, and with the building, and trying to return the up so high that very few people could afford to
could have been very interesting. They were library entrance to the way it was. Whereas live there. But this is always one of architec-
actually trying to address the issue of storage, before we used to say there is no entrance ture's main dilemmas - you transform part
to the Pompidou, people now always ask,
which only now, partly through my involvement of a city with a building that is fundamentally
with the Tate, do I see as a huge issue for big 'Where is the entrance?' My response is still egalitarian, but in the process you make that
museums and galleries. With our first scheme that it's not really supposed to have one. district exclusive.
we were trying to make this storage accessible At least not one single entrance. It did have e w Not long after you completed the
to the public. two for a while, but the mandate to check Pompidou Centre your collaboration with Renzo
EW I'd like to now turn to the reception of the everyone's bag means they want all visitors came to an end.

building ; which interestingly seemed to have beenpassing through one single point. The other RR We did a few little things afterwards,
misunderstood by both progressives and conserva-great regret about Pompidou after we handed like the b&b Italia offices, but our partnership
tives , Left and Right it over was that in the 1997-2000 renovation basically ended because of a lack of work.
RR Exactly. But I have to tell you, in the they made the escalators private - a tremen- Immediately after Pompidou there was a
days immediately after we finished it, I was not dous mistake - meaning people now queue up two-year period with practically no commis-
terribly worried about the characterisations on the wrong side of the building, presenting sions. I had to almost give up practising and
their tickets at the bottom of the escalator
critics used to attack us, especially by the Right, was making ends meet by teaching in the us,
because of course I liked the idea of it being rather than the top. And yet we still see it as in Los Angeles and in New Haven at Yale, before
perceived as a people's place, a 'cultural being very flexible. It can change into whatever eventually coming back to London. Renzo
supermarket' as one critic called it (even if today.
it wants to be. We used to say something decided to keep an office going in Paris and
I spend my whole life fighting against supermar-
similar about the Lloyd's Building, that after to look for work, but it was tough. We were also
kets in cities). I should also add that a few years so exhausted after all of the stresses of building
after we built Pompidou I worked as an advisor Piano + Rogers, proposal for the Pompidou Pompidou. Frankly, in the end, running
to President Mitterand on his own grands facade as a giant information wall, 1971 a collaborative architectural office is like a love
projets , and I remember the first time I met him Opposite: aerial view of the rear facade of the affair. It's great and wonderful when it's going
Pompidou Centre, 2010
he was with his culture minister Jack Lang, and well, but when things start to go wrong and
© Boris Horvat / AFP / Getty Images
he reminded me that he had supported the when there's no longer that pull - 1 don't just
Pompidou Centre from the beginning (though All images, unless otherwise stated, mean the sex, I mean everything - it becomes
Lang had not). courtesy Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners very hard work.

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/';-=09 )(8* =-0/']

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