The challenge set by the architect to himself was to create something as revolutionary for our time as the Paris Center Pompidou by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano for the 1970s. Ban ranked all the museums currently under construction in two main types: "iconic" sculpture buildings and neutral "boxes" for works of art. Both varieties scare off a considerable part of the public. As an alternative, he proposed a permanent building, a "monument" that gives the impression of incompleteness, "temporary" (which corresponds to the main direction of his work). But Shigeru Ban also continued the tradition of the first Center that the key role in the museum will be given to art and the audience: its interior is adapted for any transformations and curatorial experiments, its complex structure will acquire one or another meaning depending on the exposition and the current program of events.
The museum is located in the so-called. Amphitheater area - the former industrial zone, where the amphitheater was located during the Roman rule. Now this area must be built up anew, and the Center Pompidou-Metz is assigned the role of "catalyst" of the reconstruction process. At the same time, the museum is located very close to the city station, which is very convenient for future visitors. The city is located in western France, in Lorraine, near the border with Germany, so it is expected that new exhibitions will come here from the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Rhine region, as well as from Paris: from all these points you can get to Metz by high-speed train in an hour and a half. The city authorities hope for the "Bilbao effect" and predict an influx of 200 - 400 thousand tourists a year (before the opening of the Pompidou Center, Metz did not attract sightseeing lovers, although there is a Gothic cathedral with unique stained-glass windows, medieval buildings and interesting buildings in the mainstream of eclecticism and style have been preserved modern).
The main element of the museum building is its 8000 m2 roof. Shigeru Ban borrowed its design from a braided Chinese hat with brim. This is a complex curvilinear structure (which makes it possible to optimally cope with the sun's rays, snow and rain) on a wooden frame (spruce and larch wood is used), covered with fiberglass and teflon. It is almost independent of the concrete and glass structure of the museum itself; at the same time, its translucent "vault" with a lattice of light wood is visible from many rooms. The first floor of the museum contains, in addition to the lobby with the obligatory cafe and shop, also the "Main nave" (or forum) - a large-scale exhibition space 10 m high, where you can exhibit very large works, which is often a problem even in Paris (for example, on the first the museum exhibition will show a curtain created according to a sketch by Pablo Picasso in 1917 for the ballet "Parade" by Sergei Diaghilev's troupe - a cloth measuring 10 x 16.5 m). From there, an elevator enclosed in a 77-meter tower - the main "mast" of the building - you can go up to three main galleries (with an area of 1150 m2 each) - 80-meter parallelepipeds, set on top of each other with an offset of 45 degrees. There are no windows and additional supports inside them, which should facilitate the placement of the exposition; the ends of each of the blocks are glazed, and the sights of Metz are neatly "inscribed" into these panoramic windows: the cathedral, the pseudo-Romanesque train station and the park on the Seil River. At the very top of the building there is a restaurant, an observation gallery and an auditorium with 144 seats.
An extensive park has been created around the building. The main role is played by the esplanade leading from the museum to the train station. Most of the territory adjacent to the new building has been turned into a cherry orchard, but there is also a "private park" with artificial rocky terraces and a birch grove.
The construction budget is 69 million euros, part of which is allocated by the European Union, and the rest - by French state structures of various levels. The exposition of the Center Pompidou-Metz will be composed of works that are in the storerooms of the capital's Center: they will constitute a variety of temporary exhibitions. The first of these will be "Masterpieces?" - reflections on the evolution of the concept of "masterpiece", covering, which is unexpected for a museum of modern art, the last 500 years; it will show 800 works.
