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Death Star

The Death Star is a fictional space station and superweapon featured in the Star Wars space-opera franchise. Constructed by the autocratic Galactic Empire, the Death Star is capable of obliterating entire planets, and serves to enforce the Empire's reign of terror. Appearing in the original 1977 film Star Wars, the Death Star serves as the central plot point and setting for the movie, and is destroyed in an assault by the Rebel Alliance during the climax of the film, with the 2016 prequel film Rogue One and the 2022 television series Andor exploring its construction. A larger second Death Star is being built in the events of the 1983 film Return of the Jedi, featuring substantially improved capabilities compared to its predecessor, before it is destroyed by the Rebel Alliance while under construction.

Since its first appearance, the Death Star has become a cultural icon and a widely recognized element of the Star Wars franchise. It inspired numerous similar superweapons in fiction as well as in other Star Wars works. The 2015 film The Force Awakens introduces Starkiller Base, a planet (Ilum) converted by the First Order into a Death Star-like superweapon. While more powerful and technologically advanced than both Death Stars, it is also destroyed by the Resistance. The 2019 film The Rise of Skywalker introduces the Final Order, a massive fleet of Xyston-class Star Destroyers built by the Sith Eternal, individual warships each carrying "planet-killing" weapons; the film also features the remains of the second Death Star, on the ocean moon of Kef Bir.

Origin and design
According to franchise creator George Lucas, his initial outline for the Star Wars saga did not feature the Death Star in the portion that would be adapted as the first film. When he set to creating the first act of this outline as a feature, he borrowed the Death Star concept from the third act.

Although details, such as the superlaser's location, shifted between different concept models during the production of Star Wars (1977), the notion of the Death Star being a large, spherical space station over 100 km in diameter was consistent in all of them. George Lucas gave the original task of designing a "Death Star" to concept artist and spaceship modeler Colin Cantwell, who had collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Empire of Dreams, a documentary about the filming and production of Star Wars, Cantwell revealed that the Death Star was originally supposed to be a perfect sphere. The model was constructed in two separate pieces, however, and wasn't fitting together as planned. It was then decided that there could be a trench going around the equator of the space station. Lucas liked the idea, and the Death Star model was created by John Stears. The buzzing sound counting down to the Death Star firing its superlaser comes from the Flash Gordon serials. Portraying an incomplete yet powerful space station posed a problem for Industrial Light & Magic's modelmakers for Return of the Jedi. Only the front side of the 137 cm model was completed, and the image was flipped horizontally for the final film. Both Death Stars were depicted by a combination of complete and sectional models and matte paintings.

Special effects
The grid plan animation shown during the Rebel briefing before the Death Star attack in A New Hope was an actual computer-graphics simulation developed by Larry Cuba at the University of Illinois Chicago alongside computer graphics researcher Tom DeFanti. George Lucas had recruited Cuba for the project after becoming familiar with his and Gary Imhoff's work with CalArts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

After filming was complete, the original model, as well as one of the surface setpieces, were to be thrown out, but they were eventually salvaged.

The Death Star explosions featured in the Special Edition of A New Hope and in Return of the Jedi are rendered with a Praxis Effect, wherein a flat ring of matter erupts from the explosion.

Depiction
The original Death Star was introduced in the original Star Wars film, which later had elements of its backstory explored in the prequel films Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels, and the 2016 anthology film Rogue One. The second Death Star appears in Return of the Jedi, and a similar superweapon, Starkiller Base, appears in The Force Awakens. Both the original and second Death Star were moon-sized and designed for massive power-projection capabilities, capable of destroying an entire planet with a 6.2x1032 J/s power output blast from their superlasers.

Original Death Star
The original Death Star's completed form appears in the original Star Wars film, known as the DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, or Project Stardust in Rogue One; before learning the true name of the weapon, the Rebel Alliance referred to it as the "Planet Killer". Commanded by Governor Tarkin, it is the Galactic Empire's "ultimate weapon", a huge spherical battle station 160 km in diameter capable of destroying a planet with one shot of its superlaser.

The film opens with Princess Leia transporting the station's schematics to the Rebel Alliance to aid them in destroying the Death Star. To mark the Death Star being fully operational, Tarkin orders the Death Star to destroy Leia's home world of Alderaan in an attempt to press her into giving him the location of the secret Rebel headquarters; she gives them the location of Dantooine, which housed a now-deserted Rebel base, but Tarkin has Alderaan destroyed anyway as a demonstration of the Empire's resolve. Later, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, C-3PO, and R2-D2 (who were intended to arrive at Alderaan on board the Millennium Falcon) are pulled aboard the station by a tractor beam, where they discover and manage to rescue Princess Leia. As they make their escape, Obi-Wan sacrifices himself whilst dueling Darth Vader, enabling the others to flee the station. Later, Luke returns as part of a fighter force to attack its only weak point: a ray-shielded particle exhaust vent leading straight from the surface directly into its reactor core, discovered previously from the stolen schematics. Luke is able to successfully launch his X-wing fighter's torpedoes into the vent, impacting the core and triggering a catastrophic explosion, which destroys the station before it can annihilate the Rebel base on Yavin 4.

The Death Star's schematics are visible in the scenes on Geonosis in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, evidently designed by Geonosians led by Archduke Poggle the Lesser, a member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and is shown early in construction at the end of Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. The Clone Wars Legacy story reel from the unfinished Crystal Crisis on Utapau episodes reveals that General Grievous went to Utapau prior to Revenge of the Sith in order to acquire an enormous kyber crystal to power the Death Star's superlaser.

As depicted in Rogue One and Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel (2016), the Death Star was worked on by a team of scientists sequestered on the rainswept world of Eadu, overseen by Orson Krennic, the Director of Advanced Weapons Research for the Imperial Military. Under Krennic's supervision, the project was beset by constant delays, and he forcibly recruited weapons designer Galen Erso (the father of Jyn Erso, the film's protagonist) to complete the design. The Death Star scientists sought to fuse kyber crystal shards into larger structures and used those crystals to amplify energy into a stable beam powerful enough to destroy an entire planet. In the Disney+ series, Andor, set after the novel but before the film, prisoners of the Imperial Prison Complex in Narkina 5, including Cassian Andor, who got sent to the prison during his time as Keef Girgo, worked on Imperial equipment during their shifts, which was revealed in the post-credits scene of the series' final episode, Rix Road, to be parts built for the superlaser.

The 2014 book Star Wars: Tarkin details the life of Grand Moff Tarkin and prominently features the Death Star. Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel tells the story of the development of the Death Star's superweapon by Galen Erso and Krennic's deception of him. It also reveals how Poggle worked with Krennic on the project but then turned on him. In the animated series Star Wars Rebels, the two-part episode "Ghosts of Geonosis" hints that the Geonosians were nearly wiped out to extinction out of the Empire's need for secrecy. Saw Gerrera, having been sent to Geonosis to investigate, deduces that the Empire possesses a superweapon and resolves to discover the Death Star as depicted in the two-part episode "In the Name of the Rebellion". Though it is a dead end, Saw learns that the weapon is powered by kyber crystals taken from the Jedha system.

Rogue One focuses on a band of Rebels stealing the Death Star plans just prior to the events of A New Hope. The Death Star is first used to destroy Jedha City, both as a response to a violent insurgency on the planet and as a display of the Death Star's operational status. Tarkin assumes control over the Death Star while Krennic investigates security breaches in the design project. It is subsequently revealed that Galen discreetly sabotaged the design by building a vulnerability into the reactor. After the Death Star plans are stolen from the Scarif vault, Tarkin fires the Death Star's superlaser on the base, killing Krennic, as well as Jyn Erso and her small band of rebels. Rogue One also reveals that the Death Star's superlaser is powered by multiple reactors, allowing it to vary its destructive power depending on the target; both the attack on Jedha City and the Scarif base used a single reactor.

According to Star Wars reference books, the population of the Death Star was 1.7 million military personnel, 400,000 maintenance droids, and 250,000 civilians, associated contractors and catering staff. The Death Star was defended by thousands of turbolasers, ion cannons and laser cannons, plus a complement of seven to nine thousand TIE fighters, along with tens of thousands of support craft. It also had several massive docking bays, including dry docks capable of accommodating Star Destroyers.

A hologram of the original Death Star is briefly visible in a scene at the Resistance base in The Force Awakens and used as a means of comparison with one from the First Order's own superweapon, Starkiller Base.

Second Death Star

The 1983 film Return of the Jedi features the DS-2 Orbital Battle Station under construction as it orbits the forest moon Endor, which houses a shield generator protecting the station. The second Death Star is substantially more advanced and more powerful than its predecessor, and the critical weakness found in the first Death Star has been removed—the Rebel Alliance's only hope is to destroy it prior to its completion. Darth Sidious and Darth Vader send the Rebels false information that the station's weapons systems are not yet complete in order to lure the Alliance fleet into a trap, resulting in the decisive Battle of Endor. In fact, the station's superlaser is fully operational, and it begins firing on and destroying Rebel capital ships during the battle.

A ground assault team led by Han Solo with the help of the Endor-native Ewoks successfully manages to disable the shield generator, allowing Rebel pilots Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian to fly into the station (using Han's Millennium Falcon) and fire on its reactor, destroying the station in another catastrophic explosion.

An early draft of Return of the Jedi features two Death Stars at various stages of completion. According to the Star Wars Encyclopedia, the second Death Star had at its "north pole ... a heavily armored 100-story tower topped by the Emperor's private observation chamber." The size of the second Death Star has not remained consistent among the various writers for the Star Wars franchise, with some stating it shared the first Death Star's 160 km radius and others claiming it was much more massive with a 900 km radius. The most recent figure established in 2017 by Ryder Windham gives the second Death Star a radius of 200 km.

The second Death Star is featured on the cover of the book Star Wars: Aftermath (2015), which also features many flashbacks to the destruction of the second Death Star, as well as the events directly after its destruction. One of the main characters in the story personally escaped the explosion of the Death Star. The destruction of the second Death Star was also shown in holograms in the book. The 2015 comic book Star Wars: Shattered Empire also explores the days following the destruction of the second Death Star from the perspective of Poe Dameron's parents, who were pilots during the event. The video game Star Wars: Uprising also takes place during the aftermath of the second Death Star's destruction, and features a hologram of its description on multiple occasions in and out of cutscenes.

Part of the wreckage of the second Death Star appears in The Rise of Skywalker (2019), on the ocean moon Kef Bir. Rey visits the wreckage to obtain the Emperor's wayfinder, a device that points the way to his hidden lair on Exegol.

Similar superweapons
The 2019 comic Star Wars #68 reveals that the Rebels considered creating their own version of a Death Star by luring Star Destroyers to a tectonically unstable planet and setting it off with proton detonators.

Starkiller Base
The Force Awakens features Starkiller Base, a Death Star-like superweapon built by the First Order, an autocratic regime considered to be the successor of the Empire. Significantly larger than both previous Death Stars, the superweapon was constructed out of an existing planet called Ilum instead of being assembled in deep space. The base draws its raw firepower by harnessing energy directly from a nearby star. Unlike its predecessors, Starkiller Base is capable of firing on and destroying multiple planets at once from extreme range—in the film, the First Order obliterates the five planets in the Hosnian Prime system, at that time the capital of the New Republic. Starkiller Base is protected by a defensive shield that blocks all objects traveling at slower-than-light speeds; Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Finn exploit a vulnerability by bypassing the shield at faster-than-light speeds, successfully infiltrating the base and sabotaging its shields. Subsequently, an X-wing assault led by Poe Dameron and Nien Nunb destroys the superweapon by damaging the base's thermal oscillator and fuel cells, resulting in a catastrophic release of energy from the planet's core. As Resistance forces flee, the planet implodes and forms a star.

The name Starkiller Base pays homage to the early drafts of the original Star Wars film, referring to Luke Skywalker's original surname. Coincidentally, the name "Starkiller" is an alias given to Galen Marek by Darth Vader in the 2008 game, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. During early concept development, artist Doug Chiang envisioned the superweapon's gun as set inside a volcano, which X-wings would have to enter in a maneuver similar to the trench run on the Death Star in the original film.

Sith Star Destroyers
In The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth installment in the series, the resurrected Darth Sidious is revealed to have constructed the Sith Eternal's fleet of Xyston-class Star Destroyers, the Final Order, over the Sith planet Exegol. Each warship is armed with an axial superlaser capable of destroying planets; Sidious uses one of the Star Destroyers to destroy the planet Kijimi as a show of force. At the end of the film, the Resistance launches an offensive against the Sith Eternal forces, including the Sith fleet. Aided by reinforcements from across the galaxy, the Resistance defeats the remaining Sith forces by destroying the onboard superlasers, which ignited the ships reactors and destroyed them one by one. The Resistance also destroyed the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer Steadfast and the navigation signal that the fleet needed to exit the planet due to the unstable nature of the atmosphere.

Expanded Universe
Both Death Stars and similar superweapons appear throughout the non-canonical Star Wars Legends continuity. National Public Radio's Star Wars adaptation (1981) portrays Leia (Ann Sachs) and Bail Organa's (Stephen Elliott) discovery of the Death Star's existence and how Leia obtained its schematics. The 1983 Star Wars arcade game and numerous LucasArts titles recreate the movies' attacks on the Death Stars.

Kevin J. Anderson's Jedi Academy trilogy (1994) introduces the Maw Cluster of black holes that protect a laboratory where the Death Star prototype was built (consisting of the superstructure, power core, and superlaser). The first level of LucasArts' Dark Forces (1995) gives mercenary Kyle Katarn the role of stealing the plans that are subsequently given to Leia. Steve Perry's novel Shadows of the Empire (1996) describes a mission that leads to the Rebels learning of the second Death Star's existence, and that mission is playable in LucasArts' X-Wing Alliance space flight simulator (1999). The Death Star itself is a controllable weapon for the Empire in the Rebellion (1998) and Empire at War (2006) strategy game. In Battlefront II (2005), the player participates in a mission to secure crystals used in the Death Star's superlaser. Another mission in the game tasks the player with acting as a stormtrooper or Darth Vader in an attempt to recover the plans and capture Leia. The first Death Star under construction acts as the final stage in the video game The Force Unleashed (2008).

The first Death Star's construction is the subject of Michael Reaves and Steve Perry's novel Death Star (2007), which depicts the many politics and hidden agendas behind the massive project, from its construction up until its final destruction.

The first Death Star's hangars contain assault shuttles, blastboats, Strike cruisers, land vehicles, support ships, and 7,293 TIE fighters. It is also protected by 10,000 turbolaser batteries, 2,600 ion cannons, and at least 768 tractor beam projectors. Various sources state that the first Death Star has a diameter of between 140 and 160 kilometers. There is a broader range of figures for the second Death Star's diameter, ranging from 160 to 900 kilometers.

DS-X Prototype Battle Station
In the Legends works Death Star (2007), Dark Empire II, Jedi Search and Champions of the Force, an experimental Death Star prototype, DS-X (a durasteel frame surrounding a reactor core, superlaser, engines and a control room) was conceived by Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin as a test bed for the first Death Star. It was constructed by Bevel Lemelisk and his engineers at the Empire's secret Maw Installation. The prototype measured 120 kilometers in diameter. Its superlaser was only powerful enough to destroy a planet's core, rendering it an uninhabitable "dead planet". The targeting system on the prototype was never calibrated and the superlaser was inefficient, leaving the weapon's batteries drained. The prototype had no interior except a slave-linked control room, hyperdrive engines and other components; the station operated with skeleton-crew of 75 personnel.

Death Star III
In the Disney attraction Star Tours – The Adventures Continue, guests can travel inside an incomplete Death Star during one of the randomized ride sequences. In the original Star Tours, a Death Star III is seen and destroyed during the ride sequence by the New Republic. Leland Chee originally created the third Death Star to explain why a Death Star is present on the Star Tours ride when both of the stations in the movies were destroyed. The station being built near the Forest Moon of Endor like the second Death Star before. It is similar to an original concept for Return of the Jedi, where two Death Stars would have been built near Had Abbadon (then the Imperial capital world). The Habitation spheres, based on the Imperials' suspicious claims that they were designed strictly for peaceful purposes, were suggested by some fans to have been the origin for the Death Star III. This was later revealed to be the case in Part 2 of the StarWars.com Blog series The Imperial Warlords: Despoilers of an Empire. In the Expanded Universe game Star Wars: Tiny Death Star, a random HoloNet entry states that one of the residents of the Death Star is simply staying there until he can afford to stay at the third Death Star.

Other superweapons
A prototype version of the Death Star can be found in Kevin J. Anderson's novel Jedi Search (1994). It was kept at the Maw Installation, an Imperial research institute in a cluster of black holes, and later deployed by Tol Sivron after the Maw Installation was invaded by the New Republic. The prototype was ineffective, missing its target and instead destroying an Imperial garrison moon the sole time it was fired in combat. After this, the prototype was later destroyed when it was led into the black holes of the cluster.

In the original Marvel Star Wars comic series (1977–1986), a superweapon called "The Tarkin" is built. It is described as being similar to the Death Star but with more energy. Darth Vader commands it and Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and R2-D2 sabotage it with Lando's help. It is finally destroyed by an Imperial officer attempting to use an ionic weapon to both attack the escaping Rebels and assassinate Vader. Later in the series, a nihilistic group attempts to use a weapon to dislodge a planet from its orbit and cause others to do the same in a chain reaction, thereby destroying the entire universe.

In the Dark Empire comic series (1991–95), the reborn Emperor Palpatine's flagships Eclipse and Eclipse II Super Star Destroyers (Star Dreadnoughts) have a miniaturized version of the Death Star superlaser. The first Eclipse was under construction at the time of the Emperor's death at Endor; shortly thereafter, it was briefly captured by pirates, who quickly abandoned it as an obvious target for the Rebels. The vessel was retrieved by remnants of the Empire and completed, and later served as the flagship of the resurrected Palpatine. It was destroyed by a Force storm enhanced by Luke and Leia, who had been brought aboard by the Emperor in hopes that they could be converted to the dark side. The Eclipse II was mostly identical to its predecessor save for a handful of visual changes, and fulfilled the same purpose. It was later destroyed when an errant projectile from the destroyed Galaxy Gun, another superweapon developed under the returned Palpatine, fell onto the ship and caused a massive explosion that destroyed not only the ship and its accompanying fleet, but also the nearby Imperial citadel of Byss.

In Kevin J. Anderson's novel Darksaber (1995), Death Star designer Bevel Lemelisk is recruited by the Hutts to build a superlaser weapon. Due to their refusal to sufficiently fund and supply the project, the resultant 'superweapon' is quickly destroyed by a combination of the tumultuous Hoth asteroid field in which it was built and the efforts of the New Republic. Lemelisk is captured and incarcerated by the Republic, and is later executed for his hand in the design and construction of Imperial superweapons.

The novel Children of the Jedi (1995) involves the return of Eye of Palpatine, a "colossal, asteroid-shaped" super dreadnaught constructed at the behest of Emperor Palpatine during the second year of the Galactic Civil War. The Imperials lose control of the Eye when a Jedi uses the Force to hijack the main computer with their spirits.

Cultural influence
The Death Star placed ninth in a 2008 20th Century Fox poll of the most popular movie weapons.

It has been referred to outside of the Star Wars context in such examples as:

 * AT&T Corporation's logo, designed by Saul Bass and introduced in 1982, is informally referred to as the "Death Star". Ars Technica referred to "the AT&T Death Star" in an article criticizing a company data policy. Competitor T-Mobile mocked AT&T's "Death Star" logo and "Empire-like reputation" in a press release.
 * In Kevin Smith's first feature film, Clerks (1994), Randal Graves points out that many independent contractors would have been killed in the second Death Star's destruction. In the DVD audio commentary for Attack of the Clones, George Lucas says that the inclusion of the holographic Death Star in the film implies that the Geonosians were the contractors discussed by "Jay and Silent Bob".
 * KTCK (SportsRadio 1310 The Ticket) in Dallas were the first to use the term "Death Star" to describe the new mammoth Cowboys Stadium, now AT&T Stadium, in Arlington, Texas. The term has since spread to local media and is generally accepted as a nickname for the stadium.
 * The Death Star strategy was the name Enron gave to one of their fraudulent business practices for manipulating California's energy market.
 * In the novels of the Bridge Trilogy, the San Francisco Police Department admonishes its officers to stop referring to their surveillance satellite as the "Death Star".
 * In the 1987 Star Wars parody film Spaceballs, the Spaceballs use a spacecraft called "Spaceball I", which can change shape into "Mega Maid", resembling a woman with a vacuum cleaner. A reference to the Death Star destroying Alderaan, the Mega Maid is used to drain Druidia's atmosphere of fresh air.
 * While mostly ground based, the Technodrome from the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and 1988 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comics is based on the Death Star.
 * The Sonic the Hedgehog video game series features a parody of the Death Star known as the "Death Egg", a battle station created by Dr. Eggman that serves as a level in multiple games, as well as in the web series Super Mario Bros. Z.
 * Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign was nicknamed the "Death Star" by some of its members.
 * Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis dubbed the nickname of the team's new Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada as the "Death Star".
 * The Social Sciences and Humanities Building at the University of California, Davis is referred to by students as the "Death Star", due to its shiny metallic exterior and maze-like architecture.

Astronomy
In 1981, following the Voyager spacecraft's flight past Saturn, scientists noticed a resemblance between one of the planet's moons, Mimas, and the Death Star. Additionally, some media outlets used the term "Death Star" to describe Nemesis, a hypothetical star postulated in 1984 to be responsible for gravitationally forcing comets and asteroids from the Oort cloud toward Earth.

Merchandise
Kenner and AMT created a playset and a model, respectively, of the first Death Star. In 2005 and 2008, Lego released models of Death Star II and Death Star I, respectively. In 1979, Palitoy created a heavy card version of the Death Star as a playset for the vintage range of action figures in the UK, Australia and Canada. Both Death Stars are part of different Micro Machines three-packs. The Death Stars and locations in them are cards in Decipher, Inc.'s and Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Customizable Card Game and Star Wars Trading Card Game, respectively. Hasbro released a Death Star model that transforms into a Darth Vader mech. Estes Industries released a flying model rocket version.

A Death Star trinket box was also released by Royal Selangor in 2015, in conjunction with the December screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens that year, and in 2016, Plox released the official levitating Death Star Speaker in anticipation of that year's screening of Rogue One.

Political campaigns
In 2012–13, a (satirical) proposal on the White House's website urging the United States government to build a real Death Star as an economic stimulus and job creation measure gained more than 30,000 signatures, enough to qualify for an official response. The official (tongue-in-cheek) response was released in January 2013: the cost of building a real Death Star has been estimated in 2012 by a Centives economics blog of Lehigh University to $850 quadrillion, or about 13,000 times the gross domestic product on Earth, as well as at current rates of steel production, the Death Star would not be ready for more than 833,000 years. The White House response also stated that "the Administration does not support blowing up planets," and questioned funding a weapon "with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship" as reasons for denying the petition.

The Luxembourgish magician Christian Lavey (born as Christian Kies) submitted a petition for the construction of a Death Star to the Luxembourgish parliament. In an interview with a local radio station, however Lavey admitted that this petition was just a joke and some kind of protest against the space plans of the government.

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Centre Pompidou

The Centre Pompidou, more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou (lit. 'National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture'), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil, and the Marais. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of Richard Rogers, Su Rogers, Renzo Piano, along with Gianfranco Franchini.

It houses the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Public Information Library), a vast public library; the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe; and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the centre is known locally as Beaubourg. It is named after Georges Pompidou, the President of France from 1969 to 1974 who commissioned the building, and was officially opened on 31 January 1977 by President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

The centre had 3.1 million visitors in 2022, a large increase from 2021 but still below 2019 levels, due to closings caused by the COVID pandemic. It has had more than 180 million visitors since 1977 and more than 5,209,678 visitors in 2013, including 3,746,899 for the museum.

The sculpture Horizontal by Alexander Calder, a free-standing mobile that is 7.6 m tall, was placed in front of the Centre Pompidou in 2012.

History
The idea for a multicultural complex, bringing together different forms of art and literature in one place, developed, in part, from the ideas of France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs, André Malraux, a proponent of the decentralisation of art and culture by impulse of the political power. In the 1960s, city planners decided to move the food markets of Les Halles, historically significant structures long prized by Parisians, with the idea that some of the cultural institutes be built in the former market area. Hoping to renew the idea of Paris as a leading city of culture and art, it was proposed to move the Musée d'Art Moderne to this new location. Paris also needed a large, free public library, as one did not exist at this time. At first the debate concerned Les Halles, but as the controversy settled, in 1968, President Charles de Gaulle announced the Plateau Beaubourg as the new site for the library. A year later in 1969, Georges Pompidou, the new president, adopted the Beaubourg project and decided it to be the location of both the new library and a centre for the contemporary arts. In the process of developing the project, the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) was also housed in the complex.

The Rogers and Piano design was chosen among 681 competition entries. World-renowned architects Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Prouvé and Philip Johnson made up the jury. It was the first time in France that international architects were allowed to participate. The selection was announced in 1971 at a "memorable press conference" where the contrast between the sharply-dressed Pompidou and "hairy young crew" of architects represented a "grand bargain between radical architecture and establishment politics."

Design

It was the first major example of an 'inside-out' building with its structural system, mechanical systems, and circulation exposed on the exterior of the building. Initially, all of the functional structural elements of the building were colour-coded: green pipes are plumbing, blue ducts are for climate control, electrical wires are encased in yellow, and circulation elements and devices for safety (e.g., fire extinguishers) are red. According to Piano, the design was meant to be "not a building but a town where you find everything – lunch, great art, a library, great music".

National Geographic described the reaction to the design as "love at second sight." An article in Le Figaro declared: "Paris has its own monster, just like the one in Loch Ness." But two decades later, while reporting on Rogers' winning the Pritzker Prize in 2007, The New York Times noted that the design of the Centre "turned the architecture world upside down" and that "Mr. Rogers earned a reputation as a high-tech iconoclast with the completion of the 1977 Pompidou Centre, with its exposed skeleton of brightly coloured tubes for mechanical systems". The Pritzker jury said the Pompidou "revolutionised museums, transforming what had once been elite monuments into popular places of social and cultural exchange, woven into the heart of the city."

Construction
The centre was built by GTM and completed in 1977. The building cost 993 million French francs. Renovation work conducted from October 1996 to January 2000 was completed on a budget of 576 million francs. The principal engineer was the renowned Peter Rice, responsible for, amongst other things, the Gerberette. During the renovation, the centre was closed to the public for 27 months, re-opening on 1 January 2000.

In September 2020, it was announced that the Centre Pompidou would begin renovations in 2023, which will require either a partial closure for seven years or a full closure for three years. The projected cost for the upcoming renovations is $235 million. In January 2021 Roselyne Bachelot, France's culture minister, announced that the centre would close completely in 2023 for four years.

Stravinsky Fountain
The nearby Stravinsky Fountain (also called the Fontaine des automates), on Place Stravinsky, features 16 whimsical moving and water-spraying sculptures by Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint-Phalle, which represent themes and works by composer Igor Stravinsky. The black-painted mechanical sculptures are by Tinguely, the coloured works by de Saint-Phalle. The fountain opened in 1983.

Video footage of the fountain appeared frequently throughout the French language telecourse, French in Action.

Place Georges Pompidou
The Place Georges Pompidou in front of the museum is noted for the presence of street performers, such as mimes and jugglers. In the spring, miniature carnivals are installed temporarily into the place in front with a wide variety of attractions: bands, caricature and sketch artists, tables set up for evening dining, and even skateboarding competitions.

In 2021 artists duo Arotin & Serghei realized for the re-inaugaration of the Place Georges Pompidou after years of works, and in the context of IRCAM's festival Manifeste the intermedial large-scale installation Infinite Light Columns / Constellations of The Future 1-4, Tribute to Constantin Brancusi, installed along Renzo Piano's IRCAM Tower, on the opposite site of Brancusi's studio, visible from both, the Place Igor Stravinsky and Place Georges Pompidou. The president of the Centre Pompidou, Serge Lasvignes, highlighted in his inauguration speech: "The installation symbolizes what the Centre Pompidou wants to be, ... a multidisciplinary ensemble, ... it is the resurrection of the initial spirit of the Centre Pompidou with the Piazza, the living heart of creation".

Attendance
By the mid-1980s, the Centre Pompidou was becoming the victim of its huge and unexpected popularity, its many activities, and a complex administrative structure. When Dominique Bozo returned to the Centre in 1981 as Director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, he re-installed the museum, bringing out the full range of its collections and displaying the many major acquisitions that had been made. By 1992, the Centre de Création Industrielle was incorporated into the Musée National d'Art Moderne, henceforth called "MNAM/CCI". The CCI, as an organisation with its own design-oriented programme, ceased to exist, while the MNAM started to develop a design and architecture collection in addition to its modern and contemporary art collection.

The Centre Pompidou was intended to handle 8,000 visitors a day. In its first two decades it attracted more than 145 million visitors, more than five times the number first predicted. , more than 180 million people have visited the centre since its opening in 1977. However, until the 1997–2000 renovation, 20 percent of the centre's eight million annual visitors—predominantly foreign tourists—rode the escalators up the outside of the building to the platform for the sights.

Since re-opening in 2000 after a three-year renovation, the Centre Pompidou has improved accessibility for visitors. Now they can only access the escalators if they enter, though entrance to the building is free.

Since 2006, the global attendance of the centre is no longer calculated at the main entrance, but only the one of the Musée National d'Art Moderne and of the public library (5,209,678 visitors for both in 2013), but without the other visitors of the building (929,431 in 2004 or 928,380 in 2006, for only the panorama tickets or cinemas, festivals, lectures, bookshops, workshops, restaurants, etc.). In 2017, the museum had 3.37 million visitors. The public library had 1.37 million.

The Musée National d'Art Moderne itself saw an increase in attendance from 3.1 million (2010) to 3.6 million visitors in 2011 and 3.75 million in 2013.

The 2013 retrospective "Dalí" broke the museum's daily attendance record: 7,364 people a day went to see the artist's work (790,000 in total).

Exhibitions
Several major exhibitions are organised each year on either the first or sixth floors. Among them, many monographs:

 * Marcel Duchamp (1977)
 * Paul Davis (1977)
 * Henri Michaux (1978)
 * Dalí (1979)
 * Pollock (1982)
 * Bonnard (1984)
 * Kandinsky (1984)
 * Étienne Martin (1984)
 * Paul Klee (1985)
 * Cy Twombly (1988)
 * Frank Stella (1988)
 * Andy Warhol (1990)
 * Max Ernst (1991)
 * Matisse (1993)
 * Joseph Beuys (1994)
 * Kurt Schwitters (1994)
 * Gerard Gasiorowski (1995)
 * Brâncuși (1995)
 * Sanejouand (1995)
 * Bob Morris (1995)
 * Francis Bacon (1996)
 * Fernand Léger (1997)
 * David Hockney (1998)
 * Philip Guston (2000)
 * Picasso (2000)
 * Jean Dubuffet (2001)
 * Roland Barthes (2002)
 * Max Beckmann (2002)
 * Nicolas de Staël (2003)
 * Sophie Calle (2003)
 * Cocteau (2003)
 * Philippe Starck (2003)
 * Miró (2004)
 * Aurelie Nemours (2004)
 * Charlotte Perriand (2005)
 * Robert Rauschenberg (2006)
 * Claude Closky (2006)
 * Jean-Luc Godard (2006)
 * Yves Klein (2006)
 * Hergé (2006)
 * Annette Messager (2007)
 * Richard Rogers (2007)
 * Samuel Beckett (2007)
 * David Claerbout (2007)
 * Julio González (2007)
 * Alberto Giacometti (2007)
 * Louise Bourgeois (2008)
 * Pol Abraham (2008)
 * Tatiana Trouvé (2008)
 * Miroslav Tichy (2008)
 * Dominique Perrault (2008)
 * Jean Gourmelin (2008)
 * Jacques Villeglé (2008)
 * Ron Arad (2008)
 * Alexander Calder (2009)
 * Philippe Parreno (2009)
 * Kandinski (2009)
 * Pierre Soulages (2009)
 * Étienne Martin (2010)
 * Lucian Freud (2010)
 * Arman (2010)
 * François Morellet (2011)
 * Edvard Munch (2011)
 * Gerhard Richter (2012)
 * Salvador Dalí (2013)
 * Roy Lichtenstein (2013)
 * Mike Kelley (2013)
 * Pierre Huyghe (2013)
 * Henri Cartier-Bresson (2014)
 * Simon Hantaï (2014)
 * Jeff Koons (2014)
 * Mona Hatoum (2015)
 * Wifredo Lam (2015)
 * Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (2015)
 * André Derain (2017)
 * Latiff Mohidin (2018)
 * Richard Linklater (2019)
 * Vasarely (2019)
 * Christo and Jeanne-Claude (2020)
 * Hito Steyerl (2020)
 * Alice Neel (2020)
 * Matisse (2020)
 * Catherine Meurisse (2020–21)

 * Group exhibitions
 * Photography as a weapon of class (2018 Group Exhibition)
 * Coder le monde (2018 Group Exhibition)
 * La Fabrique Du Vivant (2019 Group Exhibition)
 * Jo-Ey Tang & Thomas Fougeirol – Dust. The Plates Of The Present (2020 Group Exhibition)
 * Les Moyens Du Bord (2020 Group Exhibition)
 * Global(e) Resistance – Pour une histoire engagée de la collection contemporaine de Jonathas de Andrade à Billie Zangewa (2020 Group Exhibition)
 * NEURONS Simulated intelligence (2020 Group Exhibition)
 * L'écologie des images (2021 Group Exhibition)

Regional branches
In 2010, the Centre Georges Pompidou opened a regional branch, the Centre Pompidou-Metz, in Metz a city 250 kilometres east of Paris. The new museum is part of an effort to expand the display of contemporary arts beyond Paris's large museums. The new museum's building was designed by the architect Shigeru Ban with a curving and asymmetrical pagoda-like roof topped by a spire and punctured by upper galleries. The 77-metre central spire is a nod to the year the Centre Georges Pompidou of Paris was built – 1977. The Centre Pompidou-Metz displays unique, temporary exhibitions from the collection of the Musée National d'Art Moderne, which is not on display at the main Parisian museum. Since its inauguration, the institution has become the most visited cultural venue in France outside Paris, accommodating 550,000 visitors/year.

Launched in 2011 in Chaumont, the museum for the first time went on the road to the French regions with a selection of works from the permanent collection. To do this, it designed and constructed a mobile gallery, which, in the spirit of a circus, will make camp for a few months at a time in towns throughout the country. However, in 2013, the Centre Pompidou halted its mobile-museum project because of the cost.

In 2014, plans were released for a temporary satellite of the Centre Pompidou in the northern French town of Maubeuge close to the Belgian border. The 3,000-square-metre outpost, to be designed by the architects Pierre Hebbelinck and Pierre de Wit, is said to be located at the 17th-century Maubeuge Arsenal for four years. The cost of the project is €5.8 million.

In 2015, the city authorities in Libourne, a town in south-western France, proposed a Pompidou branch housed in a former military base called Esog.

In 2019, the Centre Pompidou announced plans to open a 22000 m2 conservation, exhibition and storage space in Massy (Essonne) by 2025. Project backers include the Région Ile-de-France and the French state.

Europe
Málaga

In 2015, approximately 70 works from the Centre Pompidou's collection went on show in a 2000 m2 subterranean glass-and-steel structure called The Cube (El Cubo) in Málaga. According to the Spanish newspaper El País, the annual €1 million cost of the five-year project were funded by the city council. The partnership with Málaga was announced by the city's mayor but was not confirmed by Pompidou Centre president Alain Seban until 24 April 2014.

Under the agreement, approximately 100 works from the Pompidou's 20th and 21st century collection were put on display, while a smaller area is being used for temporary exhibitions. Portraiture and the influence of Picasso will be among the subjects explored in the permanent display, organised by the Pompidou's deputy director Brigitte Leal. Highlights will include works by Alberto Giacometti, René Magritte, Alexander Calder and Constantin Brâncuși, and contemporary works by Sophie Calle, Bruce Nauman and Orlan. The city of Málaga also commissioned Daniel Buren to create a large-scale installation within El Cubo.

Following the original five-year agreeement that was signed in September 2014, the terms were renewed early 2018 and again in 2024. Under the most recent renewal, Málaga city council agreed to pay the Centre Pompidou an annual fee of €2.7 million over five years (2025-29), rising to €3.1 million in the latter period (2030-34).

Brussels

In March 2018, the Centre Pompidou announced plans to open an offshoot branch in Brussels, under the name KANAL - Centre Pompidou. Housed in a former Citroën garage which was transformed by a team comprising ces noAarchitecten (Brussels), EM2N (Zurich) and Sergison Bates architects (London), the new centre brings together the 12200 sqft Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, an architecture centre (CIVA Foundation) and public spaces devoted to culture, education and leisure. The Brussels-Capital region — which acquired the 16000 sqft Art Deco-style building in October 2015 — is the main funder project, with the conversion costing €122 million.

Asia
In a joint proposal with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented in 2005, the Centre Pompidou planned to build a museum of modern and contemporary art, design and the media arts in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District.

In 2007, the then president Bruno Racine announced plans to open a museum carrying the Pompidou's name in Shanghai, with its programming to be determined by the Pompidou. The location chosen for the new museum was a former fire station in the Luwan district's Huaihai Park. However, the scheme did not materialize for several years, reportedly due to the lack of a legal framework for a non-profit foreign institution to operate in China. In 2019, the Centre Pompidou x West Bund Museum opened to the public, based in a wing of the 25000 sqft West Bund Art Museum designed by David Chipperfield. The inaugural exhibitions The Shape of Time, Highlights of the Centre Pompidou Collection and Observations, Highlights of the New Media Collection were curated by Marcella Lista.

Other projects include the Pompidou's joint venture with the King Abdulaziz Centre for World Culture, an arts complex incorporating a museum in Dhahran, the building of which has stalled.

North America
In April 2014, Pompidou president Alain Seban confirmed that after Malaga (Spain), Mexico will be the next site for a pop-up Pompidou Centre. A 58,000-square-foot satellite museum Centre Pompidou x Jersey City in Jersey City, New Jersey, was scheduled to open in 2024, which would have made it the Pompidou's first satellite museum in North America; by 2024, however, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and the Jersey City Redevelopment Authority decided they would no longer fund the museum.

South America
There have been rumours of a pop-up Pompidou satellite museum in Brazil since Alain Seban announced the plan for these temporary locations back in 2012. At a talk on satellite museums at the Guggenheim on 24 April 2014, Alain Seban suggested that Brazil may be the third country to host a temporary satellite museum, after Spain and Mexico.

Presidents

 * since 2021 : Laurent Le Bon
 * 2015 – 2021 : Serge Lasvignes
 * 2007 – 2015: Alain Seban
 * 2002 – 2007: Bruno Racine
 * 1996 – 2002: Jean-Jacques Aillagon
 * 1993 – 1996: François Barré
 * 1991 – 1993: Dominique Bozo
 * 1989 – 1991: Hélène Ahrweiler
 * 1983 – 1989: Jean Maheu
 * 1980 – 1983: Jean-Claude Groshens
 * 1977 – 1980: Jean Millier
 * 1976 – 1977: Robert Bordaz
 * 1969 – 1977: Georges Pompidou

Funding
As a national museum, the Centre Pompidou is government-owned and subsidised by the Ministry of Culture (64.2% of its budget in 2012 : 82.8 on 129 million €), essentially for its staff. The Culture Ministry appoints its directors and controls its gestion, which is nevertheless independent, as Etablissement public à caractère administratif since its creation. In 2011, the museum earned $1.9 million from travelling exhibitions.

Established in 1977 as the institution's US philanthropic arm, the Georges Pompidou Art and Culture Foundation acquires and encourages major gifts of art and design for exhibition at the museum. Since 2006, the non-profit support group has brought in donations of 28 works, collectively valued at more than $14 million, and purchased many others. In 2013, New York-based art collectors Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner announced their intention to donate about 300 works by 27 European and international artists to the Centre Pompidou, thereby making one of the largest gifts in the institution's history.

Nazi-looted art
In 1999, the heirs of Alphonse Kann requested the return of Georges Braque's The Guitar Player, which the Centre Pompidou had acquired from Heinz Berggruen in 1981.

In 2011, Centre Pompidou admitted that it held three paintings, Les Peupliers (Poplars), Arbres (Trees), and Composition by the artist Fédor Löwenstein that had been looted during the Nazi occupation of France.

In 2021, after the French government restituted a looted Max Pechtstein painting to the heirs of Hugo Simon, the Centre Pompidou held an exhibition in a tribute to the persecuted art collector.

Use in film and television
Touche pas à la Femme Blanche Catherine Deneuve (Actor), Marcello Mastroianni (Actor), Marco Ferreri (Director)
 * Gordon Matta-Clark Conical Intersect, 1975. Matta-Clark's contribution to the Paris Biennale 1975.
 * Roberto Rossellini, Beaubourg, centre d'art et de culture, 1977. A documentary about the Centre which explores the building and its surroundings on its opening day. It was Rossellini's final film.
 * Lewis Gilbert, Moonraker, 1979. A fifth-floor room of the building featured as the office of Holly Goodhead (played by Lois Chiles), in the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker, which in the film was scripted as being part of the space complex of the villainous Hugo Drax (Michael Lonsdale).
 * Electric Light Orchestra, "Calling America" music video, 1986. ELO is shown performing the song in front of the centre.
 * Claude Pinoteau, L'Étudiante, 1988.
 * Richard Berry, L'Art (délicat) de la séduction, 2001.
 * James Ivory, Le Divorce, 2003.
 * Laurent Tirard, Mensonges et trahisons, 2004.
 * Éric et Ramzy, Seuls Two, 2008.
 * JJ Burnel Euroman Cometh, 1979. The album cover shows JJ Burnel standing in front of the centre.

Public transport

 * Nearby Métro stations: Rambuteau, Les Halles
 * RER: Châtelet – Les Halles

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Centre Pompidou


text:
Talk:Column

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 29 August 2018 and 22 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jeremyseti. Peer reviewers: Nwolz, Lil Beastea.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:05, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Equations 2 & 3
I moved the phrase "where Et = tangent modulus at the stress Fcr" from equation 3 to equation two, as it appeared to reference 2 & not 3. I also question the accuracy of equation 3, as the units appear inconsistent. Perhaps I'm missing something. 173.30.66.55 (talk) 00:48, 24 September 2018 (UTC)

Comments
who on earth would spell the word column. with two ll's for instance collumn. are they stupid?

It might be an idea to briefly mention the expression "5th Column". I did know at one time which war engendered this, but it's slipped my mind. -- Tarquin

 * I'm not so sure, but I remember something about Spain and a Madrid's siege: there should have been 4 columns outside and a 5th one inside the town in which some false soldiers had infiltrated. Was it Spanish civil war (36-39)? --Gianfranco

I did a google, and what I've found says the same. There's also a bizarre tale of freemasons on the same page... -- user:Tarquin

 * http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/DisplayAnswers.go;jsessionid=aaa_uhL-U14Aohyk-Z9sK?question_id=5311&category_id=12&index=15
 * http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/Prelude07.html

The grammar is poor in these sentences: "Column elements are considered to be massive if minimal side dimension is equal or more than 400 mm. Massive columns have ability to increase concrete strength during long time period (even during exploitation period). Taking into account possible loads onto structure increase in future (and even threat of progressive failure, terroristic attacks, explosions etc.) massive columns have advantage comparing with not ones. A little economy today has no sense as usual for future. Moreover relatively small sections are not technological for reinforced structures during their production. Balance between economy, mass of structures and so called "sustainable" construction is necessary." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.167.202.198 (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

The Classical orders
There more anicent classical orders that not Greco-Roman, Egyptains used many different coloumns. Persians used horses, & bulls are their pillars. Capitals in Isreal where common with a triangle in center, two flower like arms, resembling a lily, with two dots above the triange. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.38.211.144 (talk) 04:12, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

"The Roman author Vitruvius, relying on the writings (now lost) of Greek authors, tells us that the ancient Greeks believed that their Doric order developed from techniques for building in wood in which the earlier smoothed tree trunk was replaced by a dead antelope." - what the fuck?? is that vandalism, or is that a really badly worded sentence? did the greeks really stop making their columns out of wood and start making them out of bovine skeletons? sure that wasn't the goths?? -- naught101 11:56, 19 October 2006 (UTC), like a kindergarten chield... STUPID! I think they are stupid, spell the word collumn

Eurocentrism
Last I checked, the Mediterraneans weren't the only people to independently develop columns.. perhaps some mention of American columns (Canadian totems, Toltec temples, etc..), Asian columns (Buddhist temples, etc..), and Austronesian columns (Easter island?) is called for? - Eric 19:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Equilibrium, instability, and loads
The formulas are messed up. The first load formula does not even have units of force. Also, below is a reference to I (the second moment of inertia) which is absent from the formula. Finally, that formula seems to contradict a similar formula on the buckling page. --CelestialfireAlex 06:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Circular cross-section
Is the current definition given at Pillar correct? It (is trying to) suggest that columns are generally circular in cross-section, and that pillars are anything else. Thanks. --Quiddity 17:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Deflection
Does anyone know how to find the horizontal deflection as a function of axial load and shear stress?? an equation I think might be right is

Delta = (2S/W)( (sqrt(EI/W))*tan( (sqrt(W/EI))*(L/2) ) -  L/2 )

where Delta is horizontal deflection at the top of the beam, S = shear force applied at top, W = axial load, L = column length, EI = Flexural rigidity, and the beam is constrained to no rotation at the top or bottom, (only horizontal deflection at the top)

help anyone? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.169.10.56 (talk) 7 February 2008

Image Available
Perhaps of some use to an involved editor. Cheers. Saffron Blaze (talk) 22:27, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Strange first image
The first sentence of the article states: "Column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member.", and the first image shows columns that have no structure above...--Superzoulou (talk) 11:18, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * The image shows what very little remains of the structure above, all between the columns. Peter Horn User talk 03:55, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

transport
You need to talk about transporting columns. For example, Mary Beard glibly talks of "loading them [the solid ones in front of the Pantheon] onto camels and donkeys" Oops, no! Mons Porphyrites in Egypt, where the Romans got their porphyry, still has the ruts from the column carts, a more modern example of which, I'm told, can be seen in a museum in Lisbon. Wheels 16 feet in diameter, track (i.e. width) 8 feet - column maybe 6 feet in diameter slung beneath the axles.Vince Calegon 10:30, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Modern columns?
It seems the article focuses mainly on columns of the classical orders which make me think of it more as a history article then a civil engineering article, so i'm just wondering why there isn't a section for modern columns of the type you still see in plenty of places (usually with a square cross section) and a lack of pictures of modern columns aswell.

OGWFP (talk) 18:57, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

 * A new section should also mention the use of structural steel H-beams as columns. Peter Horn User talk 03:42, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * See comments above. Peter Horn User talk 03:46, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Not to mention the reinforced concrete columns of modern buildings.Peter Horn User talk 14:41, 14 December 2021 (UTC) Peter Horn User talk 02:44, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Bookkeeping
Tribal balance 41.138.72.11 (talk) 10:59, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Column


text:
Noir (TV series)

Noir (ノワール) is a 26-episode Japanese anime television series created and written by Ryōe Tsukimura and produced by Victor Entertainment and Bee Train. The series was directed by Kōichi Mashimo, with Yoko Kikuchi, Minako Shiba and Satoko Miyachi in charge of character designs, Kenji Teraoka in charge of mechanical design, and Yuki Kajiura composing the music. The DVD version was released by ADV Films in North America and the United Kingdom and by Madman Entertainment in Australia and New Zealand.

Noir was followed by two spiritual successors, Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja. Together, these series constitute a trilogy exploring the "girls-with-guns" genre.

Plot
Opening introduction, Kirika's (later with Mireille) voice-over towards the audience:

NOIR...It is the name of an ancient fate, two maidens govern death. The peace of the newly born, their black hands protect.

The series follows the story of two young female assassins, the Corsican Mireille Bouquet and the Japanese amnesiac Kirika Yuumura, who embark together on a personal journey to seek answers about mysteries concerning their past. At first, they seem to be only vaguely related to each other, but there are clues and hints given throughout the series that there is more going on behind the scenes than at first glance.

In their journey to learn more about Kirika's lost memories and her connection to Mireille, the two form an alliance and begin performing assassinations under the code name "Noir." During the course of the series, they are lured into more and more traps by a secret organization named Les Soldats ("The Soldiers" in French). Les Soldats are a secret organization that has been a part, yet separate group of humanity. It is this hidden group that created and once completely controlled the deadly duo "Noir". Each time that Les Soldats soldiers are sent to kill Mireille and Kirika, it is considered a test as to whether or not the young women are suitable to carry the title "Noir".

Characters

 * Yūmura Kirika (夕叢 霧香)
 * Kirika is a teenage high school girl with amnesia who lives in Japan, however during her journey she goes to stay with Mireille in her apartment which resides in Paris; the only things she remembers are the word Noir and her instinctual killing abilities. When creating the characters for Noir, producer Shigeru Kitayama wanted the image of Kirika to be "sweet and fragile".
 * Kirika is a teenage high school girl with amnesia who lives in Japan, however during her journey she goes to stay with Mireille in her apartment which resides in Paris; the only things she remembers are the word Noir and her instinctual killing abilities. When creating the characters for Noir, producer Shigeru Kitayama wanted the image of Kirika to be "sweet and fragile".

 * Mireiyu Būke (ミレイユ・ブーケ)
 * Mireille is a Corsican woman born into a powerful crime family. Mireille and her uncle are the sole survivors of a brutal attack on her family, whereafter he trained her to become an assassin. When creating the character for Noir, Shigeru Kitayama imagined Mireille as "a lithe female panther". Mitsuishi, the Japanese voice of Mireille, previously worked with Kitayama on Excel Saga, where she voiced the protagonist Excel; the first thing she was told was that Excel and Mireille are completely opposite characters. In the English dub, ADV Films decided against giving Mireille a Corsican accent so as to avoid confusion among viewers unfamiliar with the language.
 * Mireille is a Corsican woman born into a powerful crime family. Mireille and her uncle are the sole survivors of a brutal attack on her family, whereafter he trained her to become an assassin. When creating the character for Noir, Shigeru Kitayama imagined Mireille as "a lithe female panther". Mitsuishi, the Japanese voice of Mireille, previously worked with Kitayama on Excel Saga, where she voiced the protagonist Excel; the first thing she was told was that Excel and Mireille are completely opposite characters. In the English dub, ADV Films decided against giving Mireille a Corsican accent so as to avoid confusion among viewers unfamiliar with the language.

 * Kuroe (クロエ)
 * Chloe is a skilled assassin who uses throwing and handheld knives instead of guns. Like Kirika and Mireille, Chloe is a candidate to become Noir. Chloe idolizes Kirika for her exceptional killing skills, and she believes that she and Kirika are destined to become Noir together. She is the personal favorite character of Noir's composer Yuki Kajiura.
 * Chloe is a skilled assassin who uses throwing and handheld knives instead of guns. Like Kirika and Mireille, Chloe is a candidate to become Noir. Chloe idolizes Kirika for her exceptional killing skills, and she believes that she and Kirika are destined to become Noir together. She is the personal favorite character of Noir's composer Yuki Kajiura.

 * Arutena (アルテナ)
 * Altena is the high priestess of the Soldats. She believes that the Soldats have been corrupted by power and greed, and she attempts to return the Soldats to its "original state" by reviving Noir. She lives a medieval lifestyle in a place the Soldats consider as their holy site called "The Manor", located somewhere on the border between France and Spain, where she raised and trained Chloe.
 * Altena is the high priestess of the Soldats. She believes that the Soldats have been corrupted by power and greed, and she attempts to return the Soldats to its "original state" by reviving Noir. She lives a medieval lifestyle in a place the Soldats consider as their holy site called "The Manor", located somewhere on the border between France and Spain, where she raised and trained Chloe.

Setting
Unlike its spiritual successors Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja, Noir is mainly about reality's criminal underworld while the later two are about supernatural events. Mireille and Kirika, in episode four, check the profile of a fifteen-year-old student named Rosaly Hammond, discovering that she was born on August 2, 1994. As Rosaly would be turning sixteen, Noir thus takes place approximately between 2010 and 2011.

Les Soldats
Les Soldats (ソルダ) ("The Soldiers" in French) is a mysterious organization in Noir. According to Altena, a thousand years ago, a group of people who had survived a bloody war that cost numerous lives, formed a group called Les Soldats to protect the weak and take revenge on the world. When Kirika travels to a Soldats' village, she finds out that during the late tenth century, Les Soldats has taken place in every social part of humankind. For example, Soldats were witnessed at the birth of the Greone's mafia family, which was created 200 years ago from the time the series began. Near the end of the series, Altena states that "Les Soldats" have been consumed by the very greed they once swore to undo, and thus had become like the world itself.

Although the Soldats were founded by a united group, in Noir its members were separated into two groups: Altena's followers and her opposers, the Soldats' Council members. For easy identification, Altena's most loyal followers are include people who dress up as nuns and common villagers who are skilled at fighting These nuns and priestesses often appear to be ordinary, petite women, they are capable of using guns and other lethal weapons. Altena lives in a manor not located on any map but is near the border of France and Spain. It is known by name "the place which has been forgotten by time". The manor's structure is similar to those of Ancient Greece and Rome. Separated from the manor by mountains, there is a village which belongs to Altena, and their ancient task is to guard her manor.

The Soldats' Council are the people who disagreed with Altena's decision to bring back the True Noir by means of a ritual called the Grand Retour. The Council contains five members, and one of them, Remy Brefford, invites Mireille to join their ranks, and he has an office in a building in Paris.

Men in black suits are often sent by the Soldats to try to kill the Noir candidates, but the faction affiliate of these men is unclear. Altena successfully manipulates everyone in the group, and she particularly targets the three Noir candidates Chloe, Kirika, and Mireille. She hides her true agenda from the Soldats, even her most trusted advisers, until the end. Altena led the Soldats to believe that she wanted Chloe and Kirika to be the True Noir, to enforce the will of the Soldats. However, she believed that Mireille and Kirika would enact her true plan, to destroy the Soldats. Altena's plan was not fully successful because Mireille did not target the Council at the end of the series.

Noir
Noir is the French word for "black". In Noir, it is known as the name of the two maidens who govern death. Pictures and sculptures of the two maidens can be seen on Mireille's father's watch and on Soldats' churches. To the underworld, it is known as the "One Thousand Year" darkness of Europe. According to Altena's story, when the Soldats went under, two hands were left on the surface, so their ancient task is to retrieve the two maidens known as "Noir". The ritual to become Noir takes place under Altena's manor, an underground temple in the style of ancient Greek ruins.

Throughout the series, the only three candidates for "Noir" are Mireille Bouquet, Kirika Yuumura and Chloe. Of all the three, Mireille was the only who was predicted to be neglected, and Kirika probably is the only who can turn into True Noir. When one has fallen, the remaining two shall become Noir.

Production
According to the director Kōichi Mashimo, he envisioned Noir and Madlax as part of a trilogy exploring the girls-with-guns genre, and soon after the release of the latter, he confirmed having plans to produce the third installment, which would later become El Cazador de la Bruja.

For Mireille's personal sidearm, Mashimo wanted a gun with "a more modern image", therefore the production staff decided on the Walther P99. After considering several compact pistols, including the Walther PPK and the Glock 26, for Kirika's personal sidearm, the Beretta M1934 became the weapon of choice, because of its "classic, European feel" that suited the premise of the series' story. Because of the organization's premise, European guns were chosen for the members of Les Soldats. The assassins in black suits that are sent after the protagonists throughout the series all carry the SIG Pro 2340, which at the time of production was the newest model of its line, while other members were given increasingly older weapons, depending on the member's rank.

According to producer Shigeru Kitayama, Kotono Mitsuishi's voicing of Mireille was a continuation of the working relationship they had from creating Excel Saga, where Mitsuishi voiced the protagonist Excel.

TV airings and home video
The 26 episodes of the Noir anime series initially ran from April 6 through September 28, 2001 on TV Tokyo in Japan and was released on DVD and VHS in 13 compilations, each containing two episodes, by Victor Entertainment between July 25, 2001 and March 21, 2002. After giving hints, announcements, and retractions for almost a year, ADV Films released the series in English in seven DVD compilations, the first containing five episodes, the others containing three or four episodes, between February 18 and October 28, 2003. Prior to that, the first episode was included on the DVD insert of the January 2003 issue of Newtype USA. As of November 1, 2010, the series is now licensed by Funimation Entertainment., and re-released the series as a part of their Anime Classics line on August 9, 2011.

Victor Entertainment has remastered the series from its original 35mm elements and released a Blu-ray Disc version on February 19, 2014 in Japan. Funimation released the series on Blu-ray on April 15, 2015 in North America. Following Sony's acquisition of Crunchyroll, the dub was moved over to Crunchyroll.

Soundtrack
Like many of studio Bee Train's other works, the Noir soundtrack was composed by Yuki Kajiura, accompanied by primary vocalist Yuriko Kaida, secondary vocalist Yuri Kasahara, and Kajiura's band See-Saw.

The series makes use of two pieces of theme music. by Ali Project is used as opening theme, while by Akino Arai serves as ending theme.

Victor Entertainment published a single and three original soundtrack albums for the series. "Coppelia no Hitsugi" was released as a single on May 23, 2001. The first and second soundtracks, called Noir: Original Soundtrack I and Noir: Original Soundtrack II, were released on June 21 and October 3, 2001, respectively. The third soundtrack, called Blanc dans Noir (〜黒の中の白〜), was released on November 7, 2001.

Potential live-action remake
A possible live action feature based on the anime series has been planned for development by the cable television network Starz. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert (Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Xena: Warrior Princess, Legend of the Seeker) are the executive producers for the project. Stephen Lightfoot was serving as executive producer and writer but was replaced by Sean Jablonski.

In March 2012, Starz CEO Chris Albrecht commented that production has been put on hiatus as he states in an interview, "We're in a bit of holding pattern with Noir." Then in December of that year, two new writers, Cyrus Voris and Ethan Reiff, were announced to have joined the project and were undertaking re-writes of Jablonski's scripts. By January 2013, Starz CEO Chris Albrecht announced that the project remained at a standstill citing difficulty to get the project creatively to a good place.

Reception
Critical reception of Noir has been positive. Newtype ranked Noir second in its top 10 list of anime of the year 2001. Noir also made a top three place in the top 20 anime in Japan chart by Anihabara! in October 2001. In the June 2002 issue of Animage, Noir was voted by the magazine's readers onto a shared 10th place in the best 20 new anime of 2001 in Japan. Josh Mohs of Active Anime commented that "Noir doesn't fail to deliver mystery, action, and drama." Though he lamented "some pacing problems, especially towards the beginning of the series," he lauded the character interactions as well as the series' "job of tying together all its inherent sub-plots" and the director's "bold move" in leaving "the ending open to viewer interpretation." In a review of the first DVD compilation by ADV Films, Jeremy Conrad of IGN lauded the series for being "stylistic", stating that "It oozes style", and for its "extremely cool" fight choreography and "great" shootouts, saying that "What Noir does right is its action." He also noted the series' character design as being "solid" and the series' soundtrack as being "excellent", reminiscent of "Éric Serra's stuff in movies such as La Femme Nikita, but lamented about the slowed pace at the end of the volume, stating that "some of the story stuff they were trying to do [in the fourth and fifth episodes] was snooze inducing." Josh Mohs of Active Anime commentEd that Noir's "strong character interactions are usually enough to pull you through" the pacing problems he saw with the series and further states that, along with the series' "unique twists", the "intriguing character dynamic definitely elevate[s] it above the rest of the competition." Kirika had been voted with Mireille as two of the top ten female anime characters by Newtype in 2001.

Anime News Network's Theron Martin, ten years after the show's original run, gave the series a rating of B+, and commented that Noir "was at least to some degree an influential title" and "is still recognized as one of the preeminent titles of its type because it redefined what a 'girls with guns' title could be." He went on to praise the show for its "sleek, elegant story" and called it "anime's most pronounced homage to classic film noir". He named Mireille and Kirika "one of anime's most iconic female teams" along with the Dirty Pair and credited Kirika as "a precursor of the moe craze that came along later in the decade." He named "The Lost Kitten" as the series' episode with the best story content, and the double episode "The Intoccabile" as having the worst, noting its "hackneyed look into the Cosa Nostra". He lamented repetitiveness in action sequences and excessive reuse of scenes especially in early episodes as well as the absence of blood in light of the show's high body count. He showed himself unimpressed with the animation quality, but lauded the show's good looks, in particular those of the environments. He named the "tendency for repetitiveness" of its first half as the soundtrack's "only real flaw" and praised the pieces "Salva Nos" and "Canta Per Me" as "stand[ing] among the all-time great anime themes". About the English version, he commented that the "casting choices fit and match up well against the original performances" and that the "script stays tight enough to avoid garnering any accuracy complaints". In conclusion, he said "the series works in the ways that it is supposed to work and should keep viewers thoroughly involved through to the end."

Diane Tiu of THEM Anime Reviews gave Noir a rating of 4 out of 5 stars, praising the story, characters, soundtrack, and the relationship between Mireille and Kirika, but questioned the lack of blood and how the main characters always seem to take out their opposition single-handedly. Overall, Tiu concludes that "Noir oozes style. It is an original anime that stands out - the perfect anime if you've had too much fluff." Enoch Lau, also of THEM Anime Reviews, also gave the series a 4 out of 5 star rating, handing out praise to the animation, visuals, story, soundtrack, action scenes, and the chemistry between Mireille and Kirika. Lau's only criticisms was the lack of blood, as well as the slow pacing of the series, but concluded overall that "The cream of action-drama anime has just gotten sweeter and creamier with Noir. The slow pace and sombre mood of the plot might turn off some people, but those who stick with it will be rewarded with brilliant action scenes and awesome chicks with guns."

title: Noir (TV series)


text:
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht

The Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (abbreviated OKW ; Armed Forces High Command) was the supreme military command and control office of Nazi Germany during World War II. Created in 1938, the OKW replaced the Reich Ministry of War and had oversight over the individual high commands of the country's armed forces: the army (Heer), navy (Kriegsmarine), and air force (Luftwaffe).

Rivalry with the different services' commands, mainly with the Army High Command (OKH), prevented the OKW from becoming a unified German General Staff in an effective chain of command, though it did help coordinate operations among the three services. During the war, the OKW acquired more and more operational powers. By 1942, the OKW had responsibility for all theatres except for the Eastern Front. However, Adolf Hitler manipulated the system in order to prevent any one command from taking a dominant role in decision making. This "divide and conquer" method helped put most military decisions in Hitler's own hands, which at times included even those affecting engagements at the battalion level, a practice which, due to bureaucratic delays and Hitler's worsening indecision as the war progressed, would eventually contribute to Germany's defeat.

Genesis
The OKW was established by executive decree on 4 February 1938, in the aftermath of the Blomberg-Fritsch affair, which had led to the dismissal of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and head of the Reich Ministry of War, Werner von Blomberg, as well as the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Werner von Fritsch.

Adolf Hitler, who had been waiting for an opportunity to gain personal control over the German military, quickly took advantage of the scandal, using the powers granted to him by the Enabling Act to do so. The decree dissolved the ministry and replaced it with the OKW. The OKW was directly subordinate to Hitler in his position as Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht (Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces), to the detriment of the existing military structure.

The OKW was led by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as Chief of the OKW with the rank of a Reich Minister, which essentially made him the second most powerful person in the armed forces' hierarchy after Hitler. The next officer after Keitel was Lieutenant General Alfred Jodl, who served as the OKW's Chief of Operations Staff. However, despite this seemingly powerful hierarchy, the German military's officers mostly disregarded Keitel's position, deeming him nothing more than Hitler's lackey. Other officers often had direct access to the Führer, such as officers with the rank of field marshal, while other officers even outranked Keitel, an example being the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, Hermann Göring. This position ideally meant Göring was subordinate to Keitel, but his alternate rank of Reichsmarschall made him the second most powerful person in Germany after Hitler, and he used this alternate power to circumvent Keitel and access Hitler directly whenever he wished.

By June 1938, the OKW comprised four departments:
 * Wehrmacht-Führungsamt (WFA; initially Amtsgruppe Führungsstab bezeichnet, renamed Wehrmachtführungsstab (Wfst) in August 1940) – operations staff. Chief: Colonel General Alfred Jodl, 1 September 1939 – 8 May 1945
 * Abteilung Landesverteidigungsführungsamt (WFA/L) a subdepartment through which all details of operational planning were worked out, and from which all operational orders were communicated to the OKW. Chief: Major General Walter Warlimont, 1 September 1939 – 6 September 1944; Major General Horst Freiherr Treusch von Buttlar-Brandenfels, 6 September 1944 – 30 November 1944; General August Winter, 1 December 1944 – 23 April 1945
 * Wehrmacht Propaganda Troops: its function was to produce and disseminate propaganda materials aimed at the German troops and the population. Commanded by General Hasso von Wedel (1 September 1939 – 8 May 1945), the department oversaw the numerous propaganda companies (Propagandakompanie) of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, attached to the fighting troops. At its peak in 1942, the propaganda troops included 15,000 men. Among the propaganda materials produced was the Wehrmachtbericht, the official news communiqué about the military situation of Germany and was intended for both domestic and foreign consumption.
 * Heeresstab – army staff. Chief: General Walther Buhle, 15 February 1942 – 8 May 1945
 * Inspekteur der Wehrmachtnachrichtenverbände – Chief of Staff, Wehrmacht signal corps
 * Amt Außland/Abwehr – foreign intelligence
 * Zentralabteilung – central department. Chief: Major General Hans Oster, 1 September 1939 – January 1944
 * Abteilung Außland – foreign. Chief: Admiral Leopold Bürkner, 15 June 1938 –
 * Abteilung I, Nachrichtenbeschaffung – intelligence. Chief: Colonel Hans Piekenbrock, 1 September 1939 – March 1943; Colonel Georg Hansen, March 1943 – February 1944
 * Abteilung II, Sonderdienst – special service. Chief: Colonel Erwin von Lahousen, 1 September 1939 – July 1943; Colonel Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven, July 1943 – June 1944
 * Abteilung III, Abwehr – counter-intelligence. Chief: Colonel Franz Eccard von Bentivegni, 1 March 1941 –
 * Außlands(telegramm)prüfstelle – foreign communications
 * Wirtschafts und Rüstungsamt – supply matters
 * Amtsgruppe Allgemeine Wehrmachtsangelegenheiten – miscellaneous matters
 * Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) – information centre for war casualties and prisoners of war

The WFA replaced the Wehrmachtsamt (Armed Forces Office) which had existed between 1935 and 1938 within the Reich War Ministry, headed by Keitel. Hitler promoted Keitel to Chief of the OKW (Chef des OKW), i.e. Chief of the Armed Forces High Command. As head of the WFA, Keitel appointed Max von Viebahn although after two months he was removed from command, and this post was not refilled until the promotion of Alfred Jodl. To replace Jodl at the Abteilung Landesverteidigungsführungsamt (WFA/L), Walther Warlimont was appointed. In December 1941 further changes took place with the Abteilung Landesverteidigungsführungsamt (WFA/L) being merged into the Wehrmacht-Führungsamt and losing its role as a subordinate organization. These changes were largely cosmetic however as key staff remained in post and continued to fulfill the same duties.

List of commanders
Commander-in-Chief of the OKW

Chief of Operations Staff of the OKW

Operations
Officially, the OKW served as the military general staff for the Third Reich, coordinating the efforts of the army, navy, and air Force. In practice, however, Hitler used OKW as his personal military staff, translating his ideas into military orders, such as the Führer Directives, and issuing them to the three services while having little control over them. However, as the war progressed, the OKW found itself exercising increasing amounts of direct command authority over military units, particularly in the west. This created a situation such that by 1942, the OKW held the de facto command of western forces while the Army High Command directly controlled the Eastern Front. It was not until 28 April 1945 (two days before his suicide) that Hitler placed the OKH directly under the OKW, finally giving the latter full command of Germany's armed forces.

True to his strategy of setting different parts of the Nazi bureaucracy to compete for his favor in areas where their administration overlapped, Hitler ensured there was a rivalry between the OKW and the OKH. Since most German operations during World War II were army-controlled (with Luftwaffe support), the OKH demanded control over German military forces. Nevertheless, Hitler decided against the OKH in favor of the OKW overseeing operations in many land theaters, despite being the head of the OKH. As the war progressed, more and more influence moved from the OKH to the OKW, with Norway being the first "OKW war theater". More and more areas came under complete control of the OKW. Finally, only the Eastern Front remained the domain of the OKH. However, as the Eastern Front was by far the primary battlefield of the German military, the OKH was still influential.

The OKW ran military operations on the Western front, in North Africa, and in Italy. In the west, operations were further split between the OKW and Oberbefehlshaber West (OBW, Commander in Chief West), who was Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt (succeeded by Field Marshal Günther von Kluge).

There was even more fragmentation since the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe operations had their own commands (the Oberkommando der Marine (OKM) and the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL)) which, while theoretically subordinate, were largely independent from the OKW or the OBW. Further complications in OKW operations also arose in circumstances such as when, on 19 December 1941, Hitler dismissed Walther von Brauchitsch as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, after the failure of the Battle of Moscow, and assumed von Brauchitsch's former position, in essence reporting directly to himself, since the Commander-in-Chief of the Army reported to the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.

In Berlin and Königsberg, the German Army had large Fernschreibstelle (teleprinter offices) which collected morning messages each day from regional or local centres. They also had a Geheimschreibstube or cipher room where plaintext messages could be encrypted on Lorenz SZ40/42 machines. If sent by radio rather than landline they were intercepted and decrypted at Bletchley Park in England, where they were known as Fish. Some messages were daily returns, and some were between Hitler and his generals; both were valuable to Allied intelligence.

International Military Tribunal
During the Nuremberg trials, the OKW was indicted but acquitted of being a criminal organization because of Article 9 of the charter of the International Military Tribunal.

Despite this, both Keitel and Jodl were convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death by hanging.

During the subsequent High Command Trial in 1947–48, fourteen Wehrmacht officers were charged with war crimes, especially for the Commissar Order to execute Soviet political commissars in occupied territories in the east, the killing of POWs, and participation in the Holocaust. Eleven defendants received prison sentences ranging from three years, including time served, to lifetime imprisonment; two were acquitted on all counts and one committed suicide during the trial.

title: Oberkommando der Wehrmacht


text:
Academia Operosorum Labacensium

The Academia Operosorum Labacensium (Academy of the Industrious Residents of Ljubljana)—a forerunner of the modern Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts—was founded in Ljubljana in 1693 as an association of 23 scholars. Most of the members, which included 13 lawyers, six theologians, and four medical doctors, were ethnically Slovene. The newly founded library became an important centre of activity for its members. The Operosi were very influential in the development of the arts in Ljubljana and throughout the Slovene cultural area.

The members of the academy adopted the Latin name apes (bees) and the academic tag Nobis atque aliis – operosi. Every year they held an annual meeting, as well as four other academic meetings, where they discussed their research. Its purpose from the beginning was to promote scholarship in law, medicine, philosophy, and theology.

In 1701, the academy merged with the Academia incoltorum (Academy of Fine Arts) and Academia philharmonicorum (Academy of Music). At the time of its greatest activity, around 1714, it was an international association of 42 members from Carniola and the counties of central Austria assembled under the patronage of Bishop Franz Karl von Kaunitz. It fell into decline in the summer of 1725, but was revived in 1781, thanks to the efforts of Slovene Enlightenment figures. It was only active for another 20 years or so and thereafter declined again because the members' outlooks and expectations were too much at variance.

Presidents

 * Janez Krstnik Prešeren (1656–1704), the first president of the academy.
 * Marko Gerbec, president from 1712 to 1713.

title: Academia Operosorum Labacensium