The "high tech" style in architecture is easily identifiable from its images: revealed structure, exposed ducts and aesthetics of mechanical precision. These ways of exposing the hardware and refining the details of the connections have made other new explorations necessary. As long as ducts and diagonal braces were covered in smooth finish materials or buried in basements and floor-ceiling layers, architects were primarily concerned with their physical space needs. But as these elements became glamorous parts of occupied rooms and public street elevations, more attention was paid to how they functioned, what they did, how they were distributed, and what potential for architectural achievement lay in their essential features. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay One of the first examples of high-tech style was the Center Pompidou, a museum and cultural center in Paris designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Pianoforte. The center is located on a five-acre (two hectare) square between the Louvre and Notre Dame. In 1971, French President Georges Pompidou announced an architectural competition for the center. The project was awarded to the newly formed Piano+Rogers partnership and Ove Arup & Partners was hired as engineer. The competition notice envisaged an "architectural and urban complex that will mark our century". The team's architectural intention was to provide a large degree of flexibility, an open area as a vital extension of internal functions, and long building facades that would be "information surfaces". The street side would display traffic data and the plaza side would present entertainment and information to pedestrians. The building would be turned upside down, thus freeing the internal spaces from the permanent arrangement of circulation and services. And it would estrange itself from the historical character of its urban context in every way imaginable: scale, height, form and expression. Reintegration with the urban landscape would be based on attractive differences rather than fuzzy harmony. The building portrays its own given: spreading vertical circulation components along the entire length of a pedestrian plaza on the west side and its mechanical mechanisms on the long east side elevation of the street. This public display of components is framed by an exposed steel skeleton and diagonal bracing. The external exposure of the structure and services is actually generated by programmatic flexibility requirements of the internal spaces. These mechanical infrastructures were moved outside the glass skin to leave free and adaptable internal volumes. The outer zone of the structural frame is there to provide tension forces on the outside of the external columns of the main volume, pulling down the horizontal cantilever elements to reduce bending forces on the floor span. This complementary structural strategy eliminates the need for support columns across the 157-foot (53.3-meter) clear interior span. The mechanical and air conditioning services are then placed in the exoskeletal structure, leaving the interior open and adaptable. Inside the PompidouPublic access to the museum areas is not via escalator tubes, as the exterior of the building, but by doors placed centrally at the lower edge of the square. A double-height internal forum connects the street level with that of the square in a single volume. This room contains the general reception area, commercial facilities and temporary exhibitions at,.