Renzo Piano sums up his attitude and method in the name of the studio. ‘Building Workshop’ refers both to the physical condition of architecture and to its craftsmanship: a contemporary version of the traditional ‘bottega’, it orchestrates the work o
Question: Thank you so much for receiving us in your home here in Punta Nave, near Genoa, your hometown, where you were born almost eighty years ago. You turn 80 in September, and this is perhaps a good moment to go through your biography. An asteroi
Despite their differences, all RPBW works share a profound conception, a rigor, and a measure resulting from a tenacious working method and a professional organization, which represent the not too hidden secret to the decades-long success that has gr
The new headquarters for The New York Times newspaper was commissioned via invited competition in 2000. RPBW’s winning design opens up a neglected corner of Manhattan opposite the Port Authority, with a 52-storey building whose themes of permeability
The motto of the almost centenary California Academy of Sciences, ‘Exploring, explaining, and sustaining life of Earth,’ inspired the design of its new headquarters, built to replace the old ensemble of buildings – severely damaged in the 1989 earthq
The new Modern Wing for the Art Institute of Chicago is not only the most ambitious extension undertaken by the institution, but it also turns this museum into the second largest in the United States. Consisting of two pavilions connected by a large
The London Bridge Tower, also known as the Shard, is a 72-public storey, mixed-use tower located beside London Bridge Station on the south bank of the River Thames. This project was a response to the urban vision of London Mayor Ken Livingstone and t
Colloquially known as The Rookery, London’s St. Giles district was for centuries one of the poorest neighborhoods in central London. The construction in the 1950s of a large government complex was meant to bring positive change, but the opposite happ
The Quartiere delle Albere district in Trento used to be the site of a former Michelin factory. This site shares many characteristics with the urban fabric: the clear hierarchy of the design, its functional stratification, and an overall similarity i
The scope of this project was to fuse the scattered buildings of Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) into a cohesive campus with new public spaces, new exhibition spaces and a strong visual identity for the museum. The first phase introduced the
Located in the vicinity of the Emerald Necklace Park at 280 The Fenway in Boston, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum opened to the public in 1903. Reflecting the architecture of a 15th-century Venetian palace, the four-story masonry building is orga
Located in stunning farmland in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, this private residence, made of wood, steel and glass, is laid out mainly on one level, and comprises a collection of different volumes organized along a central axis. The house structure
Designed by Le Corbusier, the Chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut draws thousands of visitors and religious pilgrims every year. The project focuses on bringing the site back to a more contemplative and spiritual dimension with the settlement of a community
Tjuvholmen is a new cultural quarter located to the south-west of Oslo’s city center. Integrating art and leisure, the complex combines the Astrup Fearnley Museum and an office building with a new public sculpture park, swimming beach and waterside p
Harvard University’s three art museums – the Fogg, the Busch-Reisinger and the Sackler – are being consolidated into one reorganized and upgraded facility, Harvard Art Museums, on the current site of the Fogg Museum on Quincy Street. The restored his
Since the opening of Louis Kahn’s building in 1972, the Kimbell Museum has been enlarging its collection, and with that, its needs have increased. It eventually became necessary to raise a pavilion that would accommodate a spacious gallery for tempor
Since 2006, the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation has strived to preserve and promote the legacy of The Pathé Company, started producing films 120 years ago. With an area of 2,220 square meters, the foundation is located on the former Théàtre des Gobel
Con su estética fabril y sus guiños constructivistas, el Museo Whitney se hace eco de su singular entorno urbano y es quizá la mejor obra de la trayectoria reciente de Piano.
Currently under way, Phase I construction of the Manhattanville Campus of Columbia University involves the triangular area located between 125th Street and 130th in New York. Science, art, communications, or energy are each represented, and they are
Como parte del complejo de la Fundación Stavros Niarchos, la Ópera Nacional de Grecia se organiza siguiendo al pie de la letra los dictados de un ‘teatro a la italiana’ tradicional.
The City Gate project is a complex operation to reconfigure the entrance to the city of Valletta. The project has four parts: the transformation of the Valletta City Gate and the square immediately outside the ramparts, the design of a new theater ‘m
The Auditorium in L’Aquila was built as a temporary substitute to replace the Castello Spagnolo concert hall, gravely damaged in the 2009 earthquake. The structure is an ensemble of three pure volumes – a trio of cubes set at seemingly random angles,
The Botín Centre, a space for art, culture and education, projecting into the Bay of Santander, restores the ties between the historical part of the city and the sea. The freeway separating the park from the sea has now been rung underground through
Since the Middle Ages, Parisian justice has been dispensed from the famous building that surrounds the Sainte-Chapelle on the Île de la Cité. However, over the years an increasing shortage of space has resulted in a good many offices having to be loc
The citadel is a pentagonal defensive fort, built at the beginning of the 17th century. It occupies a key area of the city of Amiens, between the historic city center and the northern quarters. Occupied by the army, who forbade public access until 19
Emergency’s new Center for Pediatric Surgery in Uganda, south of the city of Kampala, on the north shore of Lake Victoria, is not only a hospital of excellence, but a building that enriches the area in a number of ways. Emergency’s hospitals provide
The 64,000 square meter campus project for 3.000 students at Université Paris-Saclay is composed of four architectural units which border a park measuring over a hectare. This garden acts as the vibrant center of the different surrounding buildings,
El objetivo del nuevo museo es proteger y divulgar la historia de la ciudad de Beirut. Se sitúa entre la plaza de los Mártires —un enclave que representa el pasado reciente de la capital libanesa— y el sitio arqueológico del ‘Montículo’ —origen histó
Located in Moscow, the GES-2 is a magnificent historical power station built between 1904 and 1908. The project consists in the reconversion of this building in a space conceived as a very articulated experience going from visual arts to performing a
The seed of the project was the idea of a building rising from the ground to create the picture of children – leading characters here – living in a bright, cheerful space set in mid-air, as if on treetops. The idea of ‘lifting’ is closely associated
The Istanbul Modern Museum in the historic Galata Port district of Istanbul is located on the waterfront of the western bank of the Bosphorus, facing the Sultan Ahmet quarter. A new building will replace the existing one located between the old city
On 17 May 2013 a ship, the Jolly Nero, leaving the harbor knocked down the control tower, killing nine people. Rising on a new spot, the replacement – the Torre Piloti – has two parts. One volume contains the rooms for staff, offices, parking spaces,
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) of the United States, which year after year extols Hollywood movies with its Oscar awards, inaugurates its much awaited Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on 30 September. The institution will in
The Pritzker Prize adds to its artistic roll call the technological, lyrical, and populist work of a master of scale and detail: the Genoese Renzo Piano.
Close to turning seventy, Renzo Piano sails the world’s seas with the courage of a lone sailor. After building on four continents, the Genoese architect keeps on facing each journey as one of discovery, in which the skillful use of rigging, the maste
He gets hundreds of offers a year, but accepts only three or four. “A project lasts an average of five years, and it is impossible to personally tackle more than twenty at a time”. In his Genoa studio at Punta Nave, each one of the twenty works is he
We have arranged to meet in the lobby of the newly completed skyscraper for The New York Times, and I spot him at once in the auditorium, through two glass panes and a garden, being interviewed before television cameras. He waves at me from afar and
Le Corbusier arrives in New York and finds its skyscrapers small. Rem Koolhaas builds a convention center of almost a million cubic meters in Lille and points out that is only an eighth part of the volume of the world’s largest building; and it would
Churches express the spectacular dimension of contemporary faith, made more vigorous by the weakening of confidence in civil reason.
New York remains the capital of the planet. The decline of the dollar and the exodus of corporate headquarters in the wake of 9-11 have somehow debilitated its hold as financial center, threatened moreover as it is by Asia’s rise and the agility of L
Expelled through the door, the sacred now Ereturns through the window. A small convent in Ronchamp and a large museum in Jerusalem illus-trate two opposed ways of resolving the conflict between the sacred and the profane in the contem-porary world. I
The meeting of a fisherman and a sailor has produced a miracle in Santander. Back in 2010, Emilio Botín, banker and fisherman, commissioned Renzo Piano, architect and sailor, to build an art center in Santander. Seven years later, the careening volum
The Minor Planet Center of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory registers the name Renzopiano for asteroid 216241, discovered at the Osservatorio Astronomico Vallemare di Borbona on 14 November 2006 by V.S. Casulli, and I cannot think of a bette
The digital viewer from Arquitectura Viva gives you a new experience browsing our publications in a simpler and agile way in all your devices
Try now
