107th ACSA Annual Meeting Proceedings, Black Box

Flexibility and its Discontents:Colquhoun’s Critique of the Pompidou Center

Annual Meeting Proceedings

Author(s): Jonathan Ochshorn

All buildings change or, as Stewart Brand argues, they “learn”—often badly—over time. In fact, a time-based understanding of the life cycle of different building systems is a key component of building flexibility, preventing relatively short-lived ducts and conduit, for example, from being embedded in relatively long-lived structural elements. Yet even taking such advice to heart, making buildings truly flexible is not easy, since both culture and technology change in ways that simply cannot be predicted. This paper focuses on Alan Colquhoun’s critique of the Pompidou Center in Paris (1977)—the competition-winning museum designed by Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and Gianfranco Franchini (along with Peter Rice of Ove Arup & Partners)—in order to dig a bit deeper into both objective and subjective aspects of flexibility that relate primarily to size and geometry.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.107.120

Volume Editors
Amy Kulper, Grace La & Jeremy Ficca

ISBN
978-1-944214-21-0