A 309.6 m pyramid of glass at London Bridge, its facets deliberately left unfinished at the top so they fade into the sky (2012)
Southwark, London
The Shard — tallest building in the United Kingdom; the architect first sketched it on a menu
Architecture · Contemporary
Renzo Piano
born 1937 · Italian
High-tech, then a lighter 'craft' modernism
The Genoese architect who came to fame at 34 by winning the Centre Pompidou competition with Richard Rogers, and then spent half a century building some of the most admired museums, airports and towers in the world. Piano's later work trades high-tech bravado for lightness, daylight and craftsmanship — leaf-like roof louvres, terracotta, timber. He won the Pritzker Prize in 1998 and has been a senator for life in Italy since 2013.
How to spot them
- ▸Roofs engineered as daylight filters — ferro-cement leaves, louvres, fritted glass
- ▸Slender repeated structural elements, often in steel and timber, assembled like a kit
- ▸Quiz clue: 'Genoa', 'Building Workshop', 'Pompidou', 'senator for life'
- ▸A tapering glass sliver in London; an artificial island terminal in Osaka Bay
Key buildings
A 1.7 km airport terminal of 1994 on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, its asymmetric roof curve following the path of air blown through the building (1994)
Osaka Bay, Japan
Kansai International Airport terminal — built on a sinking man-made island
A low grey clapboard museum of 1987 in Houston, roofed by 300 curved ferro-cement 'leaves' that bounce northern daylight onto the paintings (1987)
Houston, Texas
The Menil Collection, for Dominique de Menil
A 2007 newspaper headquarters in Manhattan screened by 186,000 ceramic rods that change colour through the day (2007)
Eighth Avenue, New York City
The New York Times Building — the screen cuts solar gain without blocking the view out
Three lead-clad halls of 2002 in Rome, shaped like beetles or lute-backs, set round an open-air amphitheatre and a Roman villa found during excavation (2002)
Flaminio, Rome
The Auditorium Parco della Musica — the ruins are preserved in the middle of the complex
A 2015 museum moved to the foot of the High Line, an asymmetrical stack of pale blue-grey volumes with outdoor terraces over the Hudson (2015)
Meatpacking District, New York City
The new Whitney Museum building in Gansevoort Street
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Genoa on 14 September 1937 into a family of builders
- •With Richard Rogers he won the 1971 competition for the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which opened in 1977
- •He worked closely with the engineer Peter Rice, first at Ove Arup and then in the partnership Piano & Rice
- •His practice, founded in 1981, is the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, with offices in Genoa, Paris and New York
- •He won the Pritzker Prize in 1998 and the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1989
- •He was appointed a senator for life of the Italian Republic by President Giorgio Napolitano in 2013
- •He designed the replacement for Genoa's collapsed Morandi bridge, the Ponte San Giorgio, opened in 2020, and gave his fee to the city
- •Other works include the Beyeler Foundation near Basel (1997), the California Academy of Sciences with its living roof (2008), and the Centro Botín at Santander (2017)
- •He remains in practice: recent projects include a children's surgical hospital at Entebbe in Uganda
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- The Hyatt Foundation — Pritzker Architecture Prize laureates
- Royal Institute of British Architects — Royal Gold Medal