The whole concept was that it could be changed as life continued. In fact last year the Centre Pompidou went through massive change and was reorganised to adapt to 25 years of use. The Centre Pompidou has been a great success. It is the most visited building in Europe, with about 7 million visitors per year. This building was designed by Renzo Piano, myself and the engineer Peter Rice.
Architecture is all about teamwork.
The importance of the building is not so much its height or width but rather its scale and grain. It is the details that give you the humanism. If we had built the Pompidou Center as a simple, solid structure it would look twice as big, so instead we broke it down into small sections of tubes. It is the play of light and shadow on the small parts that gives the building the quality of humanism. The Centre Pompidou reflects very much the 1968 revolt of students and intellectuals.