ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1971, Ove Arup & Partners and Piano+Rogers Architects presented to the French government what they called a “3-dimensional wall” as part of their project bid for the Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris. This would resolve structural and expressive questions and unite three elements in a spatial sequence. The architects imagined the 3-dimensional wall as a 3D sequence of screens that would create original and interactive effects. The engineers saw it as a structure that, described as “brut,” aspired to become a manifesto for a new metal structure in cast steel. Through recourse to a systematic analysis of published and unpublished sources and of interviews with the architects, engineers and administrators involved in the project, this paper reconstructs the evolution of the Centre Pompidou’s 3-dimensional wall from its initial conception to the gradual loss of its original layered structure.
