Renzo Piano, the internationally renowned Italian architect, is celebrating his birthday today. His incredible talent earned him, in 1998, the Pritzker Prize, the Nobel Prize for Architecture, awarded to him by the then president of the United States of America Bill Clinton. Inserted by Time, in 2006, in the list of the hundred most influential personalities in the world, Renzo Piano has been a life senator of the Italian Republic since 2013. He donates his salary as a parliamentarian to finance the work of a group of young architects whose task is to recover the suburbs, which Piano considers the city of the future, places where they concentrate energies.
Among the countless and valuable works, he was responsible for the design of the new bridge in Genoa, which occurred after the collapse of the Morandi viaduct, on 14 August 2018.
Renzo Piano, from the periphery to the conquest of the world
Renzo Piano was born in Pegli, on the outskirts of Genoa, on 14 September 1937, by a family of building builders. Since he was a child, he follows his father Carlo to the construction site, where he observes the work of the workers enchanted. It is in that “magical” place, where sand and bricks abound, that the idea that building is an extraordinary art is born in him. After graduating from classical high school, he enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture, first in Florence, then in Milan. Here, while studying, he attended the architect's studio Franco Albini, adhering to Italian rationalism, which he considers his own Italian mentor.
In Paris, however, he follows the lessons of the architect and designer Jean Prouvé. After graduating in 1964, he worked in the studio of Marco Zanuso, one of the founding fathers of Italian industrial design. Travel among the United States and England. In London he taught for two years at the Architectural Association School of Architecture. In 1968 he took part in the Milan Triennale, for which he created a pavilion. His fame grew and, the following year, Piano created the pavilion for Italian industry at the 1970 Universal Exposition in Osaka.
Le Center Pompidou and other museums
In London, he meets Richard Rogers, one of the leading exponents of the hi-tech architectural current, with whom he founded the “Piano & Rogers” studio in 1971. The two win the international competition for the construction of the Georges Pompidou National Center of Art and Culture in Paris, also known as Beaubourg, one of the most visited museums in the world. The partnership with Rogers is interrupted when Piano founds with the English engineer Peter Rice the "Atelier Piano & Rice", followed by the opening in 1981 of the "Renzo Piano Building Workshop", with offices in Genoa, Paris and New York.
Although Piano has designed every type of building, including The Shard (La Scheggia), a skyscraper over 300 meters high, in the Southwark district of London, or in Paris the headquarters of the Jérôme Seydoux Pathé Foundation, dedicated to the promotion and enhancement of cinema, museums have always occupied a special place among his interests. In fact, he has the extension of the Kimbell Art Museum in Kahn (1992-1995) and the High Museum in Atlanta (1999-2003), the Paul Klee Zentrum in Bern (1999-2005), the MUSE in Trento (2003 ), the Whitney Museum of Amarican Art, New York (2015).
Architecture as a contribution to society
In addition to the 1998 Pritzker Prize, the numerous awards received include the 2001 Wexner Prize, the Riba gold medal (Royal Institute of British Architects) in 1989; the 1992 special culture award of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, for the architecture sector in Italy; the gold medal in The Hague (American Institute of Architets), in 2008. For Renzo Piano, architecture is seen as a tool capable of making a positive contribution to today's society and improving people's way of life. A documentary film by the great Spanish director Carlos Saura, entitled "Renzo Piano, the architect of light" .
Close to young people
In 2004, near the studios of the “Renzo Piano Building Workshop”, a non-profit foundation was born, at Villa Nave in Vesima, which in its archives contains the projects of over 50 years of activity. Fifteen architecture students from all over the world arrive here every year seeking to deepen their knowledge. Renzo Piano, very close to young people, has repeatedly urged them to be courageous and humble. "It is given to young people - he said - but it is also taken from young people, because they carry with them the sense of the future".
Happy birthday Renzo Piano!
And from a great teacher like him there is nothing to do but learn and treasure his advice. Today, Renzo Piano turns 83, another important milestone in his life so full of commitments, but also of many great satisfactions. Our wishes and those of all Italians reach him.
(Photo Renzo Piano Official Page Facebook)
