The Pompidou Center after years in which Guggenheim was expanding globally decided to create an annex in Metz. Why Metz, well the former minister of Culture, the former president of the Pompidou Center; Jean-Jacques Aillagon is from Metz personally and politically; and just as in the former Soviet Union, in the Fifth Republic this is more than good reason it is Reason d “Etat”.

Weather you prefer to call it decentralisation or franchising, the competition took place and the winner was Shigeru Ban with Jean de Gastines and Philip Gumuchdjian. Needless to say the Chairman of the jury was Lord Richard Rogers himself. The winning entry consists in three large exhibition floors, box like, under an elastic canopy which supposed to offer shadow and mask the volume and shape of the galleries space; Perhaps in this spirit Shigeru Ban, no sooner his contract was signed, established his office on the six floor of Piano and Roger’s building at the hart of Paris. This is essentially a tent with its canvas stretched on semicircle profiles with round windows opening giving the public a tantalizing glimpse of the research into the pattern of bamboo hats in South East Asia. As far as we know there is no statement to explain this stall pitched on the roof of Beaubourg, nor can it be seen from the ground.

Provisional structures have their attractions. They can be far less demanding structurally than those designed to last for longer duration - for ‘ever’. But unlike exhibition pavilions with which we are familiar, in which the interior space, which was the exhibition space, was exemplary and the focus of the effort, here we are left with a military exploration structure, an external envelope and invisible, working interior. Barcelona Pavilion, Esprit Nouveau, where unforgettable moments for their mode of construction, and their task was public and visible. Here, in Paris, the public is presented with a parasitic development on top of the Beaubourg which obstruct, from the inside, the horizon and increases our expectation out of all proportions. Does Shigeru Ban want to increase our curiosity? Does he want to wet our appetite?

We certainly don’t know. The large public which spends hours waiting to enter the exhibitions on the same floor certainly does not have the faintest idea what this provisional structure is supposed to announce. It is one of the enigmas of our time.

Not the building, but the pre-building is promoted as of equal merit. It takes its place as if it is one of the latest acquisitions of Centre Pompidou; a stand to promote its latest item in its collection: “Beaubourg bis”. Seldom has a publicity effort been orchestrated so elegantly and so intelligently. Since nothing was explained we are encouraged to guess, we are encouraged to project our best fantasies on to these stretched canvases up on the top floor of the Beaubourg. We don’t even know if the legendary engineer Cecil Balmond has had his input in this hunger shaped shelter or this is Shigeru Ban alone. I do wish they will work together.

Aus der Ausgabe 04-2006