Renzo Piano OMRI OMCA is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The Shard in London, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens. He won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998

1. HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE AP -224
BY – SHUBHAM RAI, B.ARCH 2ND YR
“Architecture is art, but art vastly contaminated by
many other things. Contaminated in the best sense
of the word—fed, fertilized by many things.”
– Renzo Piano

2. CONTENTS
 ARCHITECT RENZO PIANO
 HIS BIOGRAPHY
 PHILOSOPHIES
 IDEOLOGIES AND QUOTES
 PROJECTSANDWORKDONE
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

3. ARCHITECT RENZO PIANO
 Italian architect Renzo Piano (born 14 September 1937) is known for
his delicate and refined approach to building, deployed in museums and
other buildings around the world.
 Born in Genoa, Piano was originally expected to follow the family
tradition and become a builder but instead chose design, studying
architecture in Milan.
 Following his university studies, he gained experience in Philadelphia
and London, and the London experience in particular became a
determining factor in his professional development,as Jean Prouvé
assigned him the role of president of the project commission for the
Centre Georges Pompidou
 Piano's work is famous for how he uses space and elements of design
to promote the public and the public's interest.

4. ARCHITECT RENZO PIANO
 From his early work on the Pompideau Centre in Paris to his design
of theWhitney Museum in NewYork or the enormous Church of
Padre Pio in Italy, the architect has focused on innovative ways to
promote public space and democratic values.
 After working for Louis Kahn between 1965 and 1970, personal
success came early in Piano's career:at the age of 34, he and
Richard Rogers won the design competition for the Centre
Pompidou in Paris.
 After the completion of the building, Piano spent four years working
alongside Peter Rice, the engineer of the Pompidou, before founding
his firm Renzo Piano Building Workshop in 1981.
 The ground-breaking success of the Pompidou led Piano to a
number of other museum commissions, including another of his
most widely-praised works, the Menil Collection in Houston which
opened in 1987.

5. BIOGRAPHY
 Renzo Piano was born in 1937 to a family of builders
and has always seen himself as an architect with a
builder's roots.The young Piano was deeply involved
in the mechanics of buildings and, from an early age,
learned to think about the use of space. He went to
Milan Polytechnic to study Architecture and graduated
in 1964 and worked with famed architects Louis I,
Kahn, and Z.S. Makowsky until 1970. In 1977, Piano's
first masterpiece the Pompideau Centre opened in
Paris and Piano achieved international acclaim for his
work. He has since then designed buildings worldwide
and added to or renovated buildings to promote
more light and open spaces.

6. PHILOSOPHIES, IDEOLOGIES AND QUOTES
 His architecture is defined as solid construction made by excellent materials.
 Renzo Piano designed a building capable of integrating with nature, in tribute to one of the most prolific and
profound artists of modern times.
 “Architecture is an artistic craft, but at the same time it is also a scientific profession, it is precisely its
distinctiveness.”
 “When style gets to become a brand, a personal seal, this becomes a cage.”
 The architect is first and foremost a builder, but also should be a poet, and about all a humanist.”

7. PROJECTS ANDWORKDONE
CENTRE POMPIDOU (1973-77)
 In 1971 the thirty-four-year old Piano and Richard Rogers, thirty-
eight, in collaboration with the Italian architect Gianfranco Franchini,
competed with the major architectural firms in the United States
and Europe, and were awarded the commission for the most
prestigious project in Paris, the Centre Georges Pompidou,the new
French national museum of 20th century art.
 The award came a surprise, to the architectural world, since the
two were little-known, and had no experience with museums or
other major structures.The NewYork Times declared that their
design "turned the architecture world upside down". More literally it
turned architecture inside-out,since in the new museum, the
apparent structural frame of the building and the heating and air
conditioning ducts were on the exterior, painted in bright colors.
 The escalator, in a transparent tube, crossed the facade of the
building at a diagonal.The building was an astonishing success,
entirely transforming the character of a run-down commercial
section near the Marais in Paris, and made Piano one of the best-
known architects in the world

8. PROJECTS ANDWORKDONE
MENIL COLLECTION (1981 – 87)
 In 1977 Piano ended his collaboration with Rogers and
began a new collaboration with engineer Peter Rice, who
had assisted in the design of the Pompidou Center. They
established their offices in Genoa. One of their first projects
was a plan for the rehabilitation of the old port of Otranto
from an industrial site into a commercial and tourist
attraction (1977).
 Their first major building was the Menil Collection, in art
museum for the art collector Dominique de Menil.The chief
requirements of the owner for this building was to make the
maximum use of natural light in the interiors. Piano wrote,
"Paradoxically, the Menil Collection, with its serenity, its calm,
its discretion, is much more modern, scientifically speaking,
than the Beaubourg.
 The Menil Collection building,with its simple gray and white
cubic forms, is the stylistic opposite of the Pompidou Center.
The technological innovations were not expressed on the
facade, but in the high-tech but discreet systems of shutters
and screens and air conditioning which allowed maximum
illumination while protecting against the intenseTexas heat
and sunlight.

9. PROJECTS ANDWORKDONE
SHARD LONDON BRIDGE, LONDON, UK (2012)
 The Shard, also referred to as the Shard of Glass, Shard London Bridge and
formerly London BridgeTower, is a 95-storey super tall skyscraper, designed by
the Italian architect Renzo Piano, in Southwark, London, that forms part of the
Shard Quarter development.
 Standing 309.6 metres (1,016 ft) high, the Shard is the tallest building in the
United Kingdom, and the sixth-tallest building in Europe. It is also the second-
tallest free-standing structure in the United Kingdom, after the concrete tower
of the Emley Moor transmitting station. It replaced SouthwarkTowers, a 24-
storey office block built on the site in 1975.
 Renzo Piano, the project's architect, designed The Shard as a spire-like
sculpture emerging from the River Thames. He was inspired by the railway lines
next to the site, the London spires depicted by the 18th-centuryVenetian
painter Canaletto, and the masts of sailing ships. Piano's design met criticism
from English Heritage, who claimed the building would be "a shard of glass
through the heart of historic London", giving the building its name,The Shard.

10. PROJECTS ANDWORKDONE
THE NEWYORK TIMES BUILDING,NEWYORK CITY
(2007)
 Piano's design for the New York Times Building was chosen after
competition whose entrants included projects by Norman Foster, Frank
Gehry and Cesar Pelli.The competition rules asked for a building that be
as open and transparent as possible, to symbolize the connection
between the newspaper and the city.
 The first six floors are occupied by an atrium with restaurants, shops
and a conference center.The distinctive Piano feature of the tower is the
clear glass curtain wall outside the facade, and rising higher than the
facade itself.
 The curtain is composed of clear glass and a frame of ceramic tubes
suspended 61 cm from the facade; it serves as a sunscreen, eliminating
the need for tinted or sintered glass.

11. PROJECTS ANDWORKDONE
ZENTRUM PAUL KLEE
 The Zentrum Paul Klee is a museum dedicated to the artist
Paul Klee, located in Bern, Switzerland and designed by the
Italian architectural practice of Renzo Piano. It features
about 40 percent of Paul Klee’s entire pictorial oeuvre.
 The decision to build the museum in the Schöngrün site on
the eastern outskirts of the city was made in 1998,and
renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano was contracted the
same year.A preliminary project was elaborated in 2000.The
building was completed in 2005. It takes the form of three
undulations blending into the landscape.

12. BIBLIOGRAPHY
 WIKIPEDIA
 ARCHDAILY.COM
 ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
 https://architettura.unige.it/
THANKS