Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano was born in 1937 in Genoa, a maritime city in northern Italy.

“I was born and raised in Genoa, a Mediterranean city, which has influenced my life. Half of my city is water. It’s a large port and everything moves: ships and cranes float, and you have the ceaseless feeling that all things are in perpetual motion” (Renzo Piano on La Stampa, March 13, 2015)

If I had to define Piano, I would call him “a humanist” because he is one of the few contemporary architects capable, like a Renaissance artist, of combining outstanding technical skills, artistic sensibility, and a strong belief in the ethos of architecture and in the possibility for designers to improve people’s life.

Since he entered the big design scene with a bang, winning the competition for the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1971, in a team with Richard Rogers and Gianfranco Franchini, Piano has always pursued a crystal clear idea of architecture as a way to convey a positive approach to society.

Although Piano has conceived almost every possible type of building, including urban icons such as The Shard in London and the New York Times headquarters, museum design has always been a centerpiece of his work, with at least a dozen major galleries built in Europe, Oceania, and the United States.

Since 1981, Piano has operated through the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, with offices in Genoa, Paris, and New York.
He has been awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, the Praemium Imperiale, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, and the AIA Gold Medal.

Cover image: Renzo Piano portrayed in front of the Centro Botín in Santander, photo: Belén de Benito, courtesy of Fundación Botín