Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano's visionary contributions to architecture are recognized internationally. His sensitivity to materials and craftsmanship have earned him worldwide acclaim including thirty-five awards, fellowships, and honorary degrees. Jay A. Pritzker, upon awarding him the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998, praised Piano's work as a “rare melding of art, architecture, and engineering in a truly remarkable synthesis.”

Renzo Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1937. Since his graduation in 1964 from the School of Architecture of the Milan Polytechnic, Piano’s career has taken him to worksites around the world. The focus of his design work was established with his early key commission for the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1971, for which he worked in partnership with noted architect Richard Rogers. A spirit of adventure pervades each project by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, whererever it might be, whether small or large in scale. A sense of constant exploration, pushing existing traditional architectural boundaries, is demonstrated in each structure.

“I believe the architect must lead a double life," Piano says. "On one hand is a taste for exploration, for being on the edge, an unwillingness to accept things for what they appear to be: a disobedient, transgressive, even rather insolent approach. On the other is a genuine, and not formal, gratitude to history and nature, the two contexts in which architecture has its roots.”

Renzo’s design portfolio encompasses award-winning museums, including the Fondation Beyeler in Switzerland (1991–97), the Menil Collection in Houston (1982–87), and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (1999–2003). He has been commissioned to design expansions of the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Morgan Library in New York City, and, in the world beyond museums, a new building for the New York Times and the London Bridge Tower, the tallest building in Europe.

Piano is celebrated in particular for his extensive work on the natural illumination of exhibition spaces. All of his museum projects provide unique and often multilayered roof structures that were designed and built with the help of museum experts and light engineers. While Piano projects can vary greatly in concept and scope, what binds them together is the theme of lightness, the alliances between art and technology, attention to detail, and the relationship between architecture and the natural environment.

“What interests me is shaping form and product together: forcefully sculpting the land, leaving a deep mark on the pre-existing nature or urban structure but, at the same time, making the architecture an accomplice, a partner, imbued with the characteristics of its surroundings.”

All photos © Rpbw, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Italy.

Image, top:
BP Grand Entrance
Entrance Hall Elevation Looking West (detail)
© Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Fondation Beyeler

Nasher Sculpture Center

Menil Collection

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Campus Map

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