High-Tech

On this cast

• Curtain wallA skin of glass hung on the frame, with slim mullions. It carries nothing but itself.
• Cross bracingSteel rods in an X stop the frame from racking in the wind. Normally hidden, here proudly on show.
• Exposed trussesFloor beams built as triangulated lattices, so you can read how the load travels.
• Tubular columnsRound steel columns outside the glass. The skeleton is worn on the outside.
• GerberettesCast-steel rocker arms that carry the floor trusses at the Centre Pompidou, named after the engineer Heinrich Gerber.
• Escalator tubeMoving stairs in a glass tube climbing the front: circulation turned into the main ornament.
• Ducts and risersAir, water and power run in huge pipes outside the walls, so the floors inside stay clear and the pipes can be replaced.
• Air intakeA ship-like cowl brings fresh air down to the plant rooms.
• External liftA glass car running on rails outside the building.
• Glass canopyA thin glass roof held by tension rods: weight replaced by wires.

How to spot it from the street

1. Structure on the outside: columns, trusses, cross bracing
2. Pipes, ducts and lifts on the façade
3. Glass curtain walls
4. Precise, factory-made joints

Where it came from

Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano's Centre Pompidou in Paris (1971–77) turned the building inside out: columns, bracing, escalators and colour-coded ducts all on the outside, so the floors inside are open and can change. Norman Foster's Sainsbury Centre (1978) and HSBC in Hong Kong (1986) and Rogers's Lloyd's building in London (1986) followed.

High-Tech celebrates how things are made and joined: cast nodes, tension rods, cross bracing, prefabricated panels. Its descendant is parametricism, a term coined by Patrik Schumacher in 2008 for the computer-generated, flowing forms of Zaha Hadid Architects and others.