Renzo Piano: The Latest Architecture and News

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago had roughly 200 inhabitants. Four years later, in 1837, it was upgraded to The City of Chicago – an interesting fact given that there are still 19 incorporated towns in Illinois. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 killed 300 people, destroyed about 3.3 square miles (9 km2), and left more than 100,000 residents homeless. However, by that time Chicago had become the world’s fastest-growing city and its population had risen over 300,000 inhabitants. The fire meant these ambitious citizens had to start again.

With admirable strength, the city was reborn from the ashes and some of Chicago’s best architecture was constructed immediately after. Structures like the Rookery Building (1888, Frank Lloyd Wright), the Auditorium Building (1889, Louis Sullivan) and the Monadnock Building (1893, Burnham & Root, Holabird & Roche) are a few examples of the high standards the city was aiming for.

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The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France, known also as Beaubourg, is set to undergo major renovation works. Designed in the 1970s by architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, and inaugurated in 1977, one of the capital’s leading cultural attractions is scheduled to be closed completely as of the end of 2023 until 2027. Showing signs of aging, especially when it comes to the heating and cooling system, escalators and elevator malfunctions, and asbestos that must be removed, this is not the inside-out museum's first revamp, in fact, it was closed down once before in 1997, during its 20th anniversary, for a couple of years.

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This year, architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, has been granted to Grafton Architects, a Dublin-based architectural firm mainly ran by female partners Yvonne Farrell and Shelley McNamara. For the first time ever in its 42-year history, due to the constraints set by Covid-19 global pandemic, the organizers of the Pritzker Prize decided to use Livestream the award ceremony. Having reached the end of 2020, ArchDaily has summed up what current and previous Pritzker Prize winners have accomplished during this turbulent year.

Design Miami’s latest initiative in partnership with Architects for Beirut, has gathered a collection of 100+ original architectural drawings and artworks donated by 90+ renowned architects from around the world. With proceeds going to aid on-the-ground restoration efforts in Beirut, works offered include exclusive pieces from Zaha Hadid, David Chipperfield, Toyo Ito, Steven Holl, Tatiana Bilbao, Adjaye Associates, and Renzo Piano, to name a few.

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The final piece of the new Morandi Bridge decking in Genoa, Italy has been put in place. Designed by Renzo Piano, the structure is being built to address the tragic collapse of the original bridge that claimed 43 lives. In the aftermath of the disaster, Piano offered to donate the design of a bridge to replace the old one, having been deeply affected by the tragedy. The latest announcement comes from PERGENOVA, the company established to design and build the new bridge.

Just completed, Eighty Seven Park in Miami is Renzo Piano’s first residential commission in the United States. The Pritzker Prize winner, known for his cultural interventions around the globe, imagined an architecture that creates the illusion of a floating building above the ocean and park.

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The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures by Renzo Piano Building Workshop is set to open this December in Los Angeles. Set along the Miracle Mile, the design consists of the renovation of the May Company department store located at the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire, as well as a new glass sphere addition that will house the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater.

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Stefano Boeri Architetti, Metrogramma Milano and Inside Outside have won the competition for the Parco del Ponte in Genoa, Italy. The urban project is located under the new bridge, designed by Renzo Piano to replace the Morandi Bridge that collapsed in August 2018.

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Videos

Renzo Piano Building Workshop has designed a series of ‘floating’ seaside residences for a new eco-district in Monaco. Dubbed Portier Cove, the eco-district will be a new extension of the Principality’s existing coastline from the Grimaldi Forum to the Formula One tunnel. RPBW is working on the construction of the Grand Immeuble and the Port d’Animation, which will occupy the west side of the offshore extension of Monaco. The floating residences will rise above a seaside promenade on caissons along the coast.

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The following is an excerpt from our 1.5-hour conversation at the busy Renzo Piano Building Workshop in New York, right across from Piano’s 2015 Whitney Museum that may not be as inventive as his earlier projects, but still, this battleship of a building pulls you in again and again to discover something new with every visit, both within and in the surrounding city from its open decks and connecting stairs. We discussed some of the architect’s current and earlier projects, while he reflected on beauty, intuition, imagination, and, of course, the necessity of a protest.

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The Academy of Motion Pictures Museum by Renzo Piano Building Workshop is nearing completion along the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles. Piano’s design consists of the renovation of the May Company department store located at the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire, as well as a new glass sphere addition that will house the 1,000-seat David Geffen Theater. Set for opening this year, the project aims to become the world’s premier institution dedicated to movies.

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On the surface, designing a new art museum for Harvard University is a brief so straightforward that it sounds like part of university curriculum itself. The program lends itself to the type of light and airy spaces architects dream of creating; the campus site promises both steady and engaged traffic. But, for all the apparent advantages, the road to realizing Harvard’s Art Museums was a deceptively complex one - one that ultimately took six years to see realized.

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