Since it opened in 1977, the Pompidou has cost more to maintain than build, and is about to be off limits to the public for another four years.

The hidden costs of Centre pompidou

Caring for buildings, the labour, cost and choices and strategising this involves is a lamentably under-discussed aspect of architecture.Over a lifetime, things change and stuff happens. And some varieties of architecture endure better than others.

Caring costs of buildings is overlooked in architecture

<img width="762" height="513" src="https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar.jpg" alt="architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar.jpg" srcset="https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar-300x202.jpg 300w, https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar-1024x690.jpg 1024w, https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar-768x517.jpg 768w, https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar-1536x1035.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar-230x155.jpg 230w, https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/architectural-review-outrage-pompidou-maintenance-catherine-slessor-pascal-aimar-274x185.jpg 274w">The divergent afterlives of buildings are a damning expression of where we lavish our attentionThat Paris’s Pompidou Centre is to close for four years from 2023 for yet more maintenance comes as no surprise. Weeds have long sprouted from its ultra-finicky superstructure, while the job of keeping it scraped free of pigeon poo and painted in the prescribed infrastructural colour palette – red for people, blue for air, yellow for electricity and green for water – rivals the Forth Bridge for unrelenting laboriousness. This latest touch-up, at an anticipated cost of €100 million, follows on from a three-year refurbishment begun in 1997 costing €88 million. A further €19 million project to replace the famous external escalators will also be completed later this year.&nbsp;Since it opened in 1977, the Pompidou has cost more to maintain than build, and is about to be off limits to the public for another four years. ‘There were two options,’ France’s culture minister Roselyne Bachelot told Le Figaro. ‘One involved renovating the centre while keeping it open, the other was closing it completely. I chose the second because it should be shorter and a little bit less expensive.’We talk of people being high maintenance,&nbsp;but buildings can be similarly demanding. The Pompidou is a stellar example. Despite its radical ambitions of modularity and flexibility, nothing quite like it has been built elsewhere. Over time, the French authorities have grappled manfully with maintaining their tottering, High-Tech trophy. Had it been in London, it would probably have been demolished by now, or reduced to a languishing, Ballardian wreck. The French have at least stuck with it, but you can’t help feeling that Paris was sold a pup.Apart from physical wear and tear, the Pompidou has also been subject to the vagaries of organisational, technical and societal change. Interiors have been remodelled and services upgrades rendered its big blue exhaust funnels functionally redundant, yet still retained for show. Perhaps most significantly, the zigzagging escalators, which originally provided the public with an exhilarating free ride while Paris unspooled around them, have, for years, been for the use of paying museum customers only.Should we be shocked by the largesse afforded the Pompidou, or is this the level of maintenance that such a ‘sophisticated’ building entails? It’s easy to see the Pompidou’s predicament as a damning critique of modern architecture, though it can be argued that there’s nothing new here. Traditional architecture claims its share of problems, contradictions and expensive indignities. Inigo Jones’ Banqueting House was completed in 1622, but what you see now is John Soane’s 1829 refacing. Soane’s canon exhibits similar fudging; parts of his Dulwich Picture Gallery were bombed and rebuilt in the 1950s. Back in Paris, each component of the Eiffel Tower has been replaced at least once.&nbsp;Caring for buildings, the labour, cost, choices and strategising this involves, and the frequent unflattering perspectives that the processes of use and passage of time bestow on supposedly cutting-edge design, is a lamentably under-discussed aspect of architecture. Fixated by the grand debut, architectural media tends to ignore the longer term, and the often fluid relationship between space and fabric, use and users.Over a lifetime, things change and stuff happens. And some varieties of architecture endure better than others. Much is made of the supposed grimness of the Modernist canon when its concrete deteriorates – the epithet ‘piss-stained’ is never far away – but ageing High-Tech looks like a particularly terrible cake left out in the rain, a delicious irony as it was once seen as the style du jour for the institutional elite.&nbsp;The lavish pampering conferred on statement architecture finds its predictable obverse in caring for more quotidian buildings, especially mass housing, where lack of maintenance is intrinsically linked to human misery. The bodged ‘upgrade’ of London’s Grenfell Tower exposed catastrophic failings of design, procurement and installation. Inflected by a culture of cost cutting, criminal negligence and barely concealed contempt for residents, this led to 72 deaths in a fire that burned for 24 hours. The inquiry has revealed shameful buck passing and an appalling lack of care at all levels, from council officials to architects, engineers and suppliers. The revelation that ‘construction professionals’ knew what was going on, but either ignored it or assumed they could get away with it, is deeply and chillingly unedifying.&nbsp;Both Grenfell and Pompidou date from the same era, yet their maintenance regimes were hugely divergent, reflecting the perspectives of institutional and municipal clients, and the associated political, practical and financial implications of building stewardship. What they both show is that design, detailing, maintenance and energy requirements all arc into the future, with the potential to detonate down the line.&nbsp;The zero option is to demolish rather than maintain, to euthanise rather than care for, which comes with its own cost benefit rationale, but often is impelled by the ideological as much as the practical. Tearing down also tends to be the most energetically profligate solution, and, now, as the climate emergency concentrates minds, is increasingly seen as a last resort, as architecture pivots towards a long-life, low-maintenance, post-Pompidou future.Lead image:&nbsp;Critics of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’ 1977 Pompidou Centre once slated its facade for appearing to be wrapped in scaffolding. Today, genuine scaffolding has become a more familiar sight, as the centre’s maintenance costs have soared high above its initial cost. Credit:&nbsp;Pascal Aimar<img src="https://cdn.ca.emap.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/02/1479-MAR21-CARE-WAWARDS-xcover.jpg" alt="1479-MAR21-CARE-WAWARDS-xcover.jpg" width="82" height="100"><h3>AR March 2021</h3>Care + W Awards

That Paris’s Pompidou Centre is to close for four years from 2023 for yet more maintenance comes as no surprise. Weeds have long sprouted from its

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

The divergent afterlives of buildings are a damning expression of where we lavish our attention

That Paris’s Pompidou Centre is to close for four years from 2023 for yet more maintenance comes as no surprise. Weeds have long sprouted from its ultra-finicky superstructure, while the job of keeping it scraped free of pigeon poo and painted in the prescribed infrastructural colour palette – red for people, blue for air, yellow for electricity and green for water – rivals the Forth Bridge for unrelenting laboriousness. This latest touch-up, at an anticipated cost of €100 million, follows on from a three-year refurbishment begun in 1997 costing €88 million. A further €19 million project to replace the famous external escalators will also be completed later this year.

Since it opened in 1977, the Pompidou has cost more to maintain than build, and is about to be off limits to the public for another four years. ‘There were two options,’ France’s culture minister Roselyne Bachelot told Le Figaro . ‘One involved renovating the centre while keeping it open, the other was closing it completely. I chose the second because it should be shorter and a little bit less expensive.’

We talk of people being high maintenance, but buildings can be similarly demanding. The Pompidou is a stellar example. Despite its radical ambitions of modularity and flexibility, nothing quite like it has been built elsewhere. Over time, the French authorities have grappled manfully with maintaining their tottering, High-Tech trophy. Had it been in London, it would probably have been demolished by now, or reduced to a languishing, Ballardian wreck. The French have at least stuck with it, but you can’t help feeling that Paris was sold a pup.

Apart from physical wear and tear, the Pompidou has also been subject to the vagaries of organisational, technical and societal change. Interiors have been remodelled and services upgrades rendered its big blue exhaust funnels functionally redundant, yet still retained for show. Perhaps most significantly, the zigzagging escalators, which originally provided the public with an exhilarating free ride while Paris unspooled around them, have, for years, been for the use of paying museum customers only.

Should we be shocked by the largesse afforded the Pompidou, or is this the level of maintenance that such a ‘sophisticated’ building entails? It’s easy to see the Pompidou’s predicament as a damning critique of modern architecture, though it can be argued that there’s nothing new here. Traditional architecture claims its share of problems, contradictions and expensive indignities. Inigo Jones’ Banqueting House was completed in 1622, but what you see now is John Soane’s 1829 refacing. Soane’s canon exhibits similar fudging; parts of his Dulwich Picture Gallery were bombed and rebuilt in the 1950s. Back in Paris, each component of the Eiffel Tower has been replaced at least once.

Caring for buildings, the labour, cost, choices and strategising this involves, and the frequent unflattering perspectives that the processes of use and passage of time bestow on supposedly cutting-edge design, is a lamentably under-discussed aspect of architecture. Fixated by the grand debut, architectural media tends to ignore the longer term, and the often fluid relationship between space and fabric, use and users.

Over a lifetime, things change and stuff happens. And some varieties of architecture endure better than others. Much is made of the supposed grimness of the Modernist canon when its concrete deteriorates – the epithet ‘piss-stained’ is never far away – but ageing High-Tech looks like a particularly terrible cake left out in the rain, a delicious irony as it was once seen as the style du jour for the institutional elite.

The lavish pampering conferred on statement architecture finds its predictable obverse in caring for more quotidian buildings, especially mass housing, where lack of maintenance is intrinsically linked to human misery. The bodged ‘upgrade’ of London’s Grenfell Tower exposed catastrophic failings of design, procurement and installation. Inflected by a culture of cost cutting, criminal negligence and barely concealed contempt for residents, this led to 72 deaths in a fire that burned for 24 hours. The inquiry has revealed shameful buck passing and an appalling lack of care at all levels, from council officials to architects, engineers and suppliers. The revelation that ‘construction professionals’ knew what was going on, but either ignored it or assumed they could get away with it, is deeply and chillingly unedifying.

Both Grenfell and Pompidou date from the same era, yet their maintenance regimes were hugely divergent, reflecting the perspectives of institutional and municipal clients, and the associated political, practical and financial implications of building stewardship. What they both show is that design, detailing, maintenance and energy requirements all arc into the future, with the potential to detonate down the line.

The zero option is to demolish rather than maintain, to euthanise rather than care for, which comes with its own cost benefit rationale, but often is impelled by the ideological as much as the practical. Tearing down also tends to be the most energetically profligate solution, and, now, as the climate emergency concentrates minds, is increasingly seen as a last resort, as architecture pivots towards a long-life, low-maintenance, post-Pompidou future.

Lead image: Critics of Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers’ 1977 Pompidou Centre once slated its facade for appearing to be wrapped in scaffolding. Today, genuine scaffolding has become a more familiar sight, as the centre’s maintenance costs have soared high above its initial cost. Credit: Pascal Aimar

Outrage: the cost of caring for the Pompidou - Architectural Review

The hidden costs of Centre pompidou

Caring costs of buildings is overlooked in architecture

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