These huge, open, loft-like spaces are serviced both from above, and from the
raised floor for maximum flexibility in layout. The corridors, ducts, fire stairs,
escalators, lifts, columns and bracing which would ordinarily interrupt the
floors are exposed on the exterior.
Movement is celebrated throughout the building, and expressed overtly in the
great diagonal stair that runs up its outside and affords spectacular views over
Paris. The transparency of the façade, the galleries and especially the
escalators snaking their way up the side of the building combine to reveal two
captivating sights: the tiled roofs and medieval grain of Paris in one direction,
and the revelation of the building – a flexible, functional, transparent, inside-
out mechanism – in the other.
Construction
The realization of the project was a model for interdisciplinary teamwork and
was undertaken via a series of independent teams – substructure,
superstructure, services, façades, interiors, systems and the piazza – each
under the guidance of a team leader, while overall coordination of the project
was undertaken by Bernard Plattner.
Ove Arup & Partners led by the great engineer Peter Rice, who had been
involved in the project from the beginning, developed the structural concept
for the façades, with a system that hinged on six elegantly tapered, cast-steel
rocker beams known as ferberites.
The main structure – a permanent steel grid – provides a stable framework
into which the moveable parts, including walls and floors, can be inserted,