The Centre Pompidou had nothing to do with Madame de Pompadour, Louis XV's mistress. This enthusiastic Muggle prime minister had hoped Paris would have a cultural center that was both a museum and a creative hub.
The Centre Pompidou placed the internal structures normally hidden within walls on the exterior of the building, distinguishing them with different colors. Green represented water pipes, blue air-conditioning ducts, yellow electrical wiring, red escalators, and white underground ventilation shafts.
Ventilation shafts existed in many large buildings, especially enclosed spaces. Underground subway stations, for instance, had air vents that blew fresh air into the station.
Yet when there were already ventilation windows in the ceiling, installing air vents indoors seemed to have no explanation other than heating. After all, nineteenth-century Paris had been very cold, unlike the heat of today. Parisian heating was divided into central heating and private heating. Apartment buildings from the Haussmann era were basically built in this style, with cellars on the lower level where drainage pipes and heating systems were installed.
These were generally residences for the wealthy. When they fell on hard times and sold their houses to others, some landlords continued using those heating systems, while others used electric heaters in each room. The result was that the entire building would trip the moment the heaters were switched on. Even where central heating was available, it was kept so low that one could barely feel any warmth.
A public place like a library would naturally have heating. Perhaps nothing had been found underground when the central stacks were expanded in 1930 not because there was nothing beneath the ground, but because they had dug in the wrong place.
Many people harbored dreams, but turning those dreams into reality required financial and material resources—things a young person with nothing