Impression of the Pompidou Metz

While poorly situated for the location of its program, the new Pompidou Center in Metz, France designed by Japanese architects Shigeru Ban, the project dose do an excellent job of responding to the positives of the site that it does have, and in creating a monumental and memorable space, with clear and functional spaces within the project. Before visiting the project I had not known anything about the city of Metz outside of what I had seen from project photos online and because of the position of the project within the city I thought that Metz would be a small and isolated town. The part of the city that is separated from the Pompidou center is dense and historical and would have been a much more interesting site for a new large modern art museum than its current position on the opposite side of the train tracks of the main station, surrounded by other contemporary projects and further developments of this historic city. As soon as this project was built it became one of the most important sites in the city, and instead it serves to further divide the city between a historical center and outward expansion.

                The thing that made this project most successful for me was way in which it was able to create a monumental and memorable space using a completely unique architectural language. When I see architecture I usually consider two different main aspects that are given varying levels of attention by an architect. The first consideration is the most obvious, the functionality of the building and the buildings ability to serve the users who will occupy it, and the second consideration is the impact, memorability, and emotional response that a project can create, most of the time that means coming up with a new and unique idea that has more of a goal to impress. There are many projects, and architects that focus more on one consideration than the other, but as with most things the best solutions is usually a balance between function and unique and hard to create kind of visual interest.

What impressed me most about Shiguru Ban’s Winning proposal for this project is the fact that the emotional response has clearly become the focus and yet the functionality of the project being mealy adequate does not seem to take away from the power of the project. When you walk into the large interior/exterior lobby space, which is covered by an amazing and fascinating and curved ceiling made up of bent wood set in a pattern, it is clear that the large box volumes that are stacked in the middle of this volume are secondary to the effect created by this roof.