Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano was born on 14 September 1937 in Genoa, Italy. An Italian citizen who worked in both Italian and French, he studied architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan, where he received his formal training as an architect.
Over the course of his career, Piano produced a number of significant buildings. The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris brought him early international recognition, and Kansai International Airport in Japan demonstrated his ability to work at a large civic scale. The Shard in London stands as another of his notable works, adding a distinctive presence to that city's built environment.
These three projects — in France, Japan, and the United Kingdom — reflect the geographic range of Piano's practice as an architect. His work, conducted in multiple languages and across different countries, earned him recognition from institutions in several parts of the world.
That recognition took the form of numerous formal honours. Piano received the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the Royal Gold Medal, the AIA Gold Medal, the Praemium Imperiale, the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, the Erasmus Prize, the Officer of the Legion of Honour, and the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Taken together, these awards, granted by bodies in Italy, France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan, represent a sustained acknowledgment of his work as an architect across many decades.
Quotes by Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano's insights on:
There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. It's the art of putting all your energy into one thing; it's the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.
Every year I spend one month just sailing, but I still work when I'm on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island.
Architects have to dream. We have to search for our Atlantises, to be explorers, adventurers, and yet to build responsibly and well.
In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything – from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up – grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.
Architecture is an imposed art in some ways, imposed upon the public, so people must be sure about what you’re doing. You have to be sure about what you’re doing.
If you have total freedom, then you are in trouble. It’s much better when you have some obligation, some discipline, some rules. When you have no rules, then you start to build your own rules.
Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures, culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood.
You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony.
