Big name UK architects miss out in race for Brussels Pompidou

A host of big name architects from the UK including Foster + Partners and Zaha Hadid Architects have failed to make the shortlist to design a Pompidou Centre in Belgium.

Also missing out on the €125m (£112m) project are David Chipperfield, Amanda Levete’s firm AL_A, which recently completed the V&A extension in London earlier this month, and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners – the practice of Richard Rogers who, along with Renzo Piano, was the designer of the original ground-breaking Pompidou Centre in Paris which opened in 1977.

But three British firms have made teams which make up the seven-strong shortlist with last year’s Stirling Prize winner Caruso St John joined by 6a and Sergison Bates. Other firms on the shortlist include OMA, which is designing a £110m arts complex in Manchester called the Factory, and New York firm Diller Scofidio & Renfro.

More than 90 teams entered the competition to convert the historic modernist Citroën Yser garage (pictured) in the centre of Brussels into a 15,000sq m art gallery and a 10,000sq m architecture centre.

To be built next to the city’s canal, it will have a further 10,000sq m of public spaces intended for cultural, educational and recreational use.

It will be called the Citroen Cultural Centre but is already better known as the Brussels outpost of Paris’ Pompidou Centre.

A winner will be chosen next spring.