Touring the futuristic grounds of Expo 70, the young Piano would have been privy to a range of experimental work from across the globe, including the Mylar-covered, moon-like American pavilion by Davis-Brody and Powell and Moya's suspended steel design for Britain, which featured an open-air pavilion underneath the main structure. While attending the record-breaking event, which drew more than 64 million visitors, he met Richard Rogers, a young architect with whom Piano discovered a mutual interest in material and experimentation. When it was was suggested that they team up to enter a competition to design the Centre Georges Pompidou, the two decided to partner up, even though as Piano says, they were young and perhaps edgy ("we were not very professional - let's say, on the margins of the profession … we were bad boys with bad manners."). Relatively unknown, with a CV consisting of mostly temporary structures, the partnership went on to win the competition with a shocking submission that suggested erecting an arts center with an exoskeleton in the center of Paris