Piano, Renzo( 1937 )
Elevation sketch, 1991 , Cultural Center Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Nouméa, New Caledonia,
8. 3 11. 7 in., Felt pen on paperEver since his partnership with Richard Rogers and the unveiling of the celebrated Centre Pompidou in
Paris ( 1977 ), Renzo Piano has been a major figure in contemporary architecture. Born in Genoa, Italy,
in 1937 , he graduated from the school of architecture of the Milan Polytechnic. While a student, he
worked under the design guidance of Franco Albini. Between 1965 and 1970 , he met and began a
friendship with Jean Prouvé, who had a deep influence on his professional life.
In 1971 , with Rogers, he founded the Piano & Rogers agency and in 1977 joined with the engineer
Peter Rice in the firm of l’Atelier Piano & Rice. Recently, Piano founded Renzo Piano Workshop with
offices in Paris and Genoa. A few of his best known projects include: office building for Olivetti,
Naples ( 1984 ); Menil Collection Museum, Houston ( 1986 ); S. Nicola Football Stadium, Bari ( 1990 );
Kensai International Airport Terminal, Osaka ( 1994 ); the Debis Building (Headquarters of Daimler
Benz), Berlin ( 1997 ); Lodi Bank Headquarters, Lodi ( 1998 ); and the Aurora Place, high-rise offices
and apartment blocks, Sydney ( 2000 ).^24
The winner of the 1998 Pritzker Prize, Piano has received many awards and honors from founda-
tions around the world. He has been widely published in numerous catalogues, articles, and books
about his work including the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Complete Works, Phaidon Press in 1997.
One of his most celebrated recent projects is the Cultural Center Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Nouméa, New
Caledonia, completed in 1998.
This sketch (Figure 8. 20 ) is an exploration for the Center. Piano has used a narrow, green felt pen
to render a section cut through one of the exhibit spaces. The ground plane has been sketched more
slowly, showing a heavier, controlled line. Wavy to the left and straighter to the right, it expresses his
understanding of the natural site as it transforms into the building. The instrument has given him a
bold mark that can be somewhat varied, thick or thin. The trees behind the building and the lattice
of the back wall have been treated with similar horizontal strokes showing his concern for integration
of the site. The lines of the building and the section cut are substantially heavier than the marks he
used for proportioning and dimensioning. These lines are firm and decisive, with little hesitation
except for the roof of the pavilion. Here Piano appears to be studying the beginning and ending of
the roof and its angle.
This sketch also represents the concept of profile.^25 A profile is an outline of an object but it can
also reveal the relationship between inside and outside. This relationship allows architects to compre-
hend how the building meets the sky and how it meets the ground, and the solid/void relationships
between the two. Piano’s section sketch began a dialogue about how far the humans needed to step
up into this building and what that meant for the experience of the space. He has included scale fig-
ures to further understand the height of the roof and the volume of the space.
The tall, fast strokes may represent Piano’s thinking on the contextual aspects of the project. Since
they may have been less defined as architectural elements, he could sketch them in tall, fast gestures.
In the project as built, they became structural elements that define space.H5719-Ch08.qxd 7/15/05 3:53 PM Page 249