The Pompidou, Paris's center for Post Modern art and culture, is a work of contemporary architecture itself.
The concept was broached in 1969 by French President Georges Pompidou who wanted Paris to have a multi-disciplinary cultural center that was both a museum and creative center ,
"where the visual arts would rub shoulders with music, film, books and audio-visual studies"....

This ambitious project was won in an international competition by the Italian architect Renzo Piano and British architect Richard Rogers.
Their plan was an architectural revolution creating a structure whose details included huge snaking transparent escalators pushed to the outside of the building ,
as well as the utility ducts color- coded in primary colors, blue for air ducts, green for pipeworks for liquids, yellow for electrical shafts, and red for people movers, lifts, etc.
This concept left the entire interior space available for exhibits.

Opened in 1977, the Pompidou Center has become Paris's most visited monument outside of Notre Dame.