Renzo Piano is not the first modern architect to see his work as, to some degree, a reincarnation of Renaissance ideals--indeed, he cites the great Florentine architect Filippo Brunelleschi as his most potent source of inspiration. Yet, in Piano's case, the idea is not so fanciful.
Piano is, of course, an Italian, born in Genoa in 1937. Although he is now designing major projects all around the world, his Italian roots are strong and it is in his native city that he spends most of his time. Every Italian looks back with pride to the Cinquecento. But Piano's architecture--frequently highly innovative, even experimental, yet rooted in a strong sense of and respect for history--displays qualities that a Brunelleschi would respect. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that Piano is the greatest artist/architect of the present day.
A strong practical sense, accompanied by a love of sound construction and craftsmanship, is not infrequently identified as an abiding characteristic of Renzo Piano's work. He speaks with pride of his family background. The son of a builder, he formed his view of architecture early. Architecture is not, he says, a matter of academic approaches to composition. Rather, it is about "the miracle of lots of extra light pieces that succeeded in staying together." He continues: "Since I was a child, I have loved building--making things with my hands… I'm not much of a theorist."
A Perfect Marriage
Graduating from Milan's School of Architecture, Piano headed off to the United States and Britain for six years (1964-70). In America, he worked with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia. His best-known project to date, the Pompidou Centre (Beaubourg) in Paris, was designed with the British (Italian-born) architect Richard Rogers and won a competition, against 680 other entries, in 1971. (Piano recalls the partnership today as "like a perfect marriage.")
The jury that selected Rogers and Piano for Beaubourg included both senior European cultural figures and leading world architects like Philip Johnson and Oscar Niemeyer. A particularly significant member, as far as the winning team was concerned, was the great French engineer (and president of the jury) Jean Prouve. Piano regards Prouve as one of the great heroes of twentieth-century architecture, going so far as to call him "my chief inspiration." It was the support of Prouve that brought Piano and Rogers' striking concept to realization.
The idea behind Beaubourg--seen again in later Rogers buildings like Lloyd's of London--is that the mechanical services and means of access (in this case, principally escalators) are slung around the outside of the structure, leaving huge, unimpeded internal spaces. The building is, of course, an enormous public success--the most-visited building in France, a powerhouse of popular culture.
Machine Aesthetic
Richard Rogers likes to talk about the machine aesthetic as a force in twentieth-century architecture, linking it to the pioneering iron and glass structures of the nineteenth century. Piano, however, concedes that the Pompidou Centre is not a model for machine-made buildings, but rather a costly piece of one-off
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