8/10/2005

Museum or China peasant’s hat?
8 August, PARIS—….The Pompidou Center Metz in eastern France, due to open in 2008… Japanese award-winning architect Shigeru Ban, who drew inspiration from a conical bamboo hat. “I bought the hat six years ago in a Chinese clothes shop in Paris when I was already thinking about ideas for roofs,” Ban told The Associated Press. Playing off the conical theme but to a softer effect, the roof of the Metz museum will rise to a rounded peak at the top and have a gently rippled brim….

I dare say that this new Pompidou museum by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban does better drawing his inspiration out of a hat than the old Pompidou Center which was inspired by the sorry mating of bad plumbling and Lego blocks. Ban is famous for using cheap and lightweight cardboard tubes for construction such as the recyclable Hannover 2000 pavilion which had a structure’s truss roof is composed of cardboard tubes covered by a membrane of treated paper—sort of wheatgerm version of Buckmaster Fuller’s geodesic dome. However this museum will only have small amount of paper for ceiling acoustics– It’s still damn pretty.