Renzo Piano could be categorized as an architect of a culture of tension, though his buildings are not to be strictly temporary, despite their modern materials. Tight tension (as in his early GRP and steel roofs in Genoa, or those of Schlumberger in Paris) or relaxed suspension (as in the Lowara offices in Vicenza), may not predominate over the compression structures of his 'oeuvre'. But arched trusses or sloping arches (for both the IBM pavilions and the Kansai airport) seem to sag like leaf springs; and slender trusses and three-dimensional structures open up to the elements (as in the B&B Italia offices and the Pompidou Center), or at least to the light that floods everything from above (as in Piano's own studio in Genoa and in the Menil collection museum). Even if you can only sometimes see or feel how a Piano structure flows, you can always read and personally feel the movement and the absorption of the efforts. Such structures almost seem like organic beings, destined not to defy nature, but to emulate it and receive it inside, or even to let it flow through the building (as in the Kansai airport)...[+]