The invention of territory

Through 26 drawings and 10 models from a recent donation, the Centre Pompidou pays homage to Vittorio Gregotti and shed light on his most important projects.

The Centre Pompidou is providing a lively presentation of the museum’s collections through a circuit enriched with exhibition-dossiers devoted to figures whose commitment and efforts promoted the viewing and reading of modern works. These artists, critics, thinkers and historians all made a decisive contribution to the history of 20th century art. Designed as study areas, these sequences are a mixture of art works, documents and archives.

L’invenzione del territorio — **Top**: Facade, square-plan building, aSuspended amphitheater with staircase, 1973-1979 Graphite, felt and ink on tracing paper. 37 x 77 cm. © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Georges Meguerditchian / Dist. RMN-GP. © Vittorio Gregotti. **Above**: design for the seat of the Institut Italien de Culture, Tokyo, 1980. Model in wood, cardboard and acetate. 36,4 x 50 x 40,6 cm. © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Georges Meguerditchian / Dist. RMN-GP. © Vittorio Gregotti

Lying at the crossover point of the modern and contemporary collections, at the end of the circuit on level 5 of the museum, a room now pays homage to artists and the people who helped them, encouraging visitors to appreciate the roles they played in the collection’s past and present history. Renewed around every two months, this room highlights works recently acquired by the Centre Pompidou. After Barnett Newman, Gil J. Wolman, Chen Zhen and lately Hubert Damisch, the Centre Pompidou is now presenting “Vittorio Gregotti – The invention of territory”: a tribute to the architect through 26 drawings and 10 models from a recent donation. With axonometric projections, perspective views, volumetric plans and models for the universities of Florence and Calabria, the social housing in Cefalu and the refurbishment of Pirelli’s historic Bicocca district in Milan, this donation has added further to the Centre Pompidou’s architecture collection – the largest in the world, with 13,000 works. It now sheds considerable light on Gregotti’s most important projects.

Vittorio Gregotti Pompidou — Off-shore design, 1987. Model painted wood, plexiglas. 14 x 123,8 x 123,8 cm. © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI / Georges Meguerditchian / Dist. RMN-GP. © Vittorio Gregotti

An outstanding figure in Italian architecture of the second half of the 20th century, Vittorio Gregotti is a well-known teacher, the director of several professional journals and an unrivalled exponent of his art. His career took off with the Via Montegani housing blocks in Milan in 1964: the year he co-directed the 13th Milan Triennial with Umberto Eco. Three projects – the University of Palermo Science Department (1969–78), the University of Calabria in Cosenza (1973–79) and the refurbished social housing project in Cefalu (1976–79) – are typical of his approach, which focuses on the large-scale, together with the relationship between the territory’s morphology and the language of the site. His most recent projects include the Grand Théâtre de Provence in Aix-en-Provence (2003–07) and projects for new cities, including Pujiang, a town for 100,000 inhabitants in Shanghai, 2001–2007.

30 March – 16 May 2016
Vittorio Gregotti – The invention of territory
Curatore: Frédéric Migayrou with Concetta Collura
Centre Pompidou
Place Georges-Pompidou, Paris