Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano (born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. He is the recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, AIA Gold Medal, Kyoto Prize and the Sonning Prize. One admirer said the “serenity of his best buildings can almost make you believe that we live in a civilised world”.

Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1937 and maintains a home and office (Building Workshop) in the area. He was educated and subsequently taught at the Politecnico di Milano. He graduated from the University in 1964 and began working with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters. From 1965 to 1970 he worked with Louis Kahn and with Makowsky. He worked together with Richard Rogers from 1971 to 1978; their most famous joint project is the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1977). He also had a long collaboration with the engineer Peter Rice.

In 1981, Piano founded the “Renzo Piano Building Workshop”, employing a hundred people with offices in Paris, Genoa, and New York.

On 18 March 2008, he became an honorary citizen of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Piano’s recent expansion of the Art Institute of Chicago includes a 264,000-square-foot (24,500 m2) wing with 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2) of gallery space called the Modern Wing, which opened on 16 May 2009. It includes a “flying carpet”, a sunscreen that hovers above the roof and a 620-foot (190 m) steel bridge connecting Millennium Park to a sculpture terrace that leads into a restaurant on the wing’s third floor.