Camillo Sitte Bautechnik

1316. Mario Campi, Franco Pessina, Niki Piazzoli /// Felder House /// Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland /// 1978

OfHouses presents: Tendenzen: 7 Houses from the 70’s, part X.
(Photos: E. Hueber. Source: K. Frampton, “Mario Campi, Franco Pessina: Architects”, Rizzoli, 1987; ‘Werk, Bauen + Wohnen’ 4/1981; 'Progressive Architecture’ 07/1982.)


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A response to its steeply-sloping lot, the 1964 Waxman House is a striking composition of stacked volumes that climbs upward from the street to overlook the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. The Modernist house, commissioned by a painter and her husband, was designed by architect J. Barry Moffitt, who studied with John Lautner. The Waxman House was recently restored to its original condition and remains in good shape today. (Photo: Julius Shulman, 1964; © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute; restoration by Modernist Collection)

In 1971, an international jury received 681 proposals for a new cultural center in Paris.

They picked the strangest one.

Two young architects, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, working with Gianfranco Franchini, suggested something no one had tried in the middle of historic Paris: a building with its skeleton on the outside.

Every duct, every pipe, every escalator that most buildings hide behind walls got moved to the facade instead. That freed up the entire interior. No columns, no fixed walls, just open floors that could become a library, a gallery, or a research lab depending on what was needed.

To keep the exposed machinery from looking like clutter, the architects color-coded it. Blue for air circulation. Green for water. Yellow for electrical systems. Red for the elements that move people, like escalators and elevators.

When the Centre Pompidou opened on January 31, 1977, Parisians were not charmed. Le Figaro compared it to a monster, calling it Paris's own Loch Ness. Critics said it clashed with the historic Beaubourg neighborhood around it.

Today, it draws an average of 3.5 million visitors a year.