High-tech: frame and services
After the Centre Pompidou (Piano and Rogers, 1971–77): an exposed steel frame with gerberettes and bracing, an external escalator and colour-coded services outside the walls.
The rules it illustrates
Put the services outside, and show them. Move ducts, pipes, lifts and escalators out of the building’s core onto its exterior, colour-code them, and let them become the architecture, leaving the interior free and making the plant easy to reach and replace.
Column-free floors for any use. Span the whole depth of the building with the structure so that each floor is a single open plate, adaptable to uses that cannot be foreseen.
Where it appears in the book
In the styles High-Tech.
In the chapters The Contemporary.