"In the design of the Pompidou Centre (Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano and Gianfranco Franchini, 1977) and the Lloyds Building (Richard Rogers, 1984) the buildings were effectively turned ‘inside out’ by placing the services on the outside. One of the architects’ aims in doing this was to maximise internal space, prioritising functional movement and flow, but it also had the effect of revealing the infrastructure to the occupants and passers-by in a way that might be considered analagous to the ‘seamful games‘ of Mathew Chalmers et al. at the University of Glasgow.
Colour-coding used for the ducts on the Pompidou Centre where blue was for air, green for fluids, yellow for electricity cables and red for movement, flow and safety made the services legible both to maintenance engineers and the general public. Accessibility of services when freed from the interior space was a further consideration in the design, with the architects acknowledging the varying rates of obsolescence of different services:
“Whereas the frame of the building has a long life expectancy, the servant areas, filled with mechanical equipment have a relatively short life, especially in this energy-critical period. The servant equipment, mechanical services, lifts, toilets, kitchens, fire stairs, and lobbies, sit loosely in the tower framework, easily accessible for maintenance, and replaceable in the case of obsolescence.”
This is a topic of perhaps even greater importance for technology with its current rate of development and lack of reliability. Which brings us tidily back round to another point in Bell and Dourish’s paper; that perhaps the goal of seamlessness is inhibiting the implementation of technologies in our everyday environment. Certainly this would seem to be the case for responsive/interactive architecture. While there are many great examples of installations, demos and interventions in the urban environment there are relatively few examples of permanent, built responsive or interactive buildings. And I wonder if a large part of this is to do with the implicit risk of embedding technological infrastructure into a building without providing for easy access to it if, and when, it fails."
I love how the building is turned inside out so that people can see what is would look like with out all the fancy over coating, i personally think the idea was very inventive because when you first see the building you are automatically struck in the face and cant stop looking at it, this is also a great sell point for the business or art exertion that is coated in this wire design.
