Centre Georges Pompidou

Designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers following an international competition in 1971. Inaugurated in 1977, it revolutionized museum design by exposing its structural and mechanical systems on the exterior.

A dynamic spatial organism and democratic machine of culture, celebrating open access, intellectual transparency, and artistic avant-garde.

Early critics in 1977 protested that the building looked like an oil refinery or an interstellar spacecraft dropped into the historic Beaubourg quarter.