The art machine: the Centre Pompidou at 40

It was number 493 of the 681 submissions to a 1971 architectural competition set up by the French government for a grand cultural centre on the Plateau Beaubourg in Paris. The design by the young architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers (together, less famously, with Gianfranco Franchini and the engineers Ove Arup), was a radical proposal for the construction of a building for information, fun and culture, a sort of machine, an informative tool, as Piano and Rogers put it.
With glass walls and