Renzo Piano

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Renzo Piano

Pompidou centre, Paris
Personal information
Name Renzo Piano
Nationality Italian
Birth date 14 September 1937 (1937-09-14) (age 71)
Birth place Genoa
Work
Significant buildings Centre Georges Pompidou

Parco della Musica
Shard London Bridge

Awards and prizes Pritzker Architecture Prize

American Institute of Architects Gold Medal
Sonning Prize

Nemo Science Centre in Amsterdam. The shape reflects the tunnel entrance it is built on
City Tech Tower a skyscraper concept by Renzo Piano in Brooklyn, New York City.
The Living Roof of the California Academy of Sciences, a museum and research facility in San Francisco, California

Renzo Piano (born 14 September, 1937) is a world renowned Italian architect and recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize. His work also has its strong critics, to the point of infamously being called "a hodgepodge of tents, greenhouses and scaffolding".

Contents

[edit] Biography

Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1937 and maintains a home and office (Building Workshop) in the area. He was educated and subsequently taught at the Politecnico di Milano. He graduated from the University in 1964 and began working with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters[1]. From 1965 to 1970 he worked with Louis Kahn and with Makowsky. He worked together with Richard Rogers from 1971 to 1978; their most famous joint project is the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1977). He also had a long collaboration with the extraordinary engineer Peter Rice.

In 1981, Piano founded the "Renzo Piano Building Workshop", employing a hundred people with offices in Paris, Genoa, and New York.[2]

On 18 March, 2008, he became an honorary citizen of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina [3].

Piano’s recent expansion of the Art Institute of Chicago includes a 65,000 square feet of gallery space called the Modern Wing, which will be opened in May 2009. It includes a "flying carpet," a sunscreen that hovers above the roof and a 620-foot steel bridge connecting Millennium Park to a sculpture terrace that leads into a restaurant on the wing’s third floor.[4]

[edit] Select projects

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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