Italian architect Renzo
Piano first gained
success collaborating
with British
architect Richard
Rogers. The pair spent
the better part of the
1970s designing and
building a cultural
center in Paris,
France—the Centre
Georges Pompidou. It
was career-launching
architecture.
Renzo Piano
Born: September 14, 1937 in Genoa, Italy
Training and Professional Life:
1959-1964: Studied at the Milan Politecnico, where he taught until 1968
1964: Worked in his father's company
1965-1970: Worked in offices of Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia and Zygmunt Stanisław Makowski
in London
1971-1978: Partnership with British architect Richard Rogers
1980-present: Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Architectural Style:
Renzo Piano's work has been called high-tech and bold postmodernism. His 2006 renovation
and expansion of the Morgan Library and Museum shows that he is much more than one style.
The interior is open, light, modern, natural, old and new at the same time. "Unlike most other
architectural stars," writes architecture critic Paul Goldberger, "Piano has no signature style.
Instead, his work is characterized by a genius for balance and context....“
The best two words to explain Renzo Piano’s Architecure are :
ART &SERVICE
Renzo’s work has succeeded in being Humane , intelligent and resourceful
Renzo Piano is often called a "High-Tech" architect because his designs showcase
technological shapes and materials. However, human needs and comfort are at
the center of Piano's designs.
Piano's work is rooted in the classical traditions of his Italian homeland. Piano is
credited Piano with redefining modern and postmodern architecture.
Piano is also celebrated for his landmark examples of energy-efficient green
design. With a living roof and a four-story rainforest, the California Academy of
Sciences claims to be the "world's greenest museum," thanks to the design of
Renzo Piano.
Renzo Piano was born into a family of builders. His grandfather, father, four uncles, and brother
were contractors. Piano honored this tradition when he named his architecture firm Renzo Piano
Building Workshop, as if it were forever to be a small family business.
Famous Buildings by Renzo Piano:
1977: Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (with Richard
Rogers)
1990: San Nicola Stadium, Bari, Italy
1990: IRCAM Extension, Institute for Acoustic Research,
Paris, France
1991: Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Genoa, Italy
1992: Columbus International Exposition, Genoa, Italy
1994: Lingotto Factory Conversion, Turin, Italy
1994: Kansai Airport Terminal, Osaka, Japan
1995: Menil Collection Museum, Houston, Texas
1996: Congress Center and Offices, Lyon, France
1997: Reconstruction of the Atelier Brancusi, Paris
1998: Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Nouméa, New Caledonia
2002: Parco della Musica Auditorium, Rome, Italy
2005: Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland
2007: New York Times Building, New York City
2008: California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco,
California
2010: Central St. Giles Court, London, United Kingdom
2012: The Shard (London Bridge Tower), London, UK
2015: Whitney Museum of American Art, Meatpacking
District, NYC
Kansai International Airport Terminal
Osaka, Japan — 1994
Bercy 2 Shopping
Center
Charenton le Pont
Paris, France — 1990
Tjibaou Cultural
Centre, Nouméa,
New Caledonia —
1998
Environment, Congress Center and Offices
Cité Internationale
Lyon, France —1996
The Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church
San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy — 1991
The Renzo Piano Building Workshop Punta
Nave, Genoa, Italy — 1991
San Nicola Stadium
Bari, Italy — 1990
Lowara Company Offices, Vicenza, Italy — 1985
Potsdamer Platz
Reconstruction, Debis Office
Tower, Berlin, Germany —
1997
Columbus International Exposition, Genoa, Italy — 1992
Photo
POMPIDOU CENTRE
The "High-tech" Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris revolutionized museum design.
Museums of the past had been elite monuments. In contrast, the Pompidou was
designed as a busy center for social activities and cultural exchange.
With support beams, duct work, and other functional elements placed on the exterior of
the building, Centre Pompidou in Paris appears to be turned inside out, revealing its
inner workings. Centre Pompidou is often cited as a landmark example of High-Tech
Architecture
Site
The site designated was the Beaubourg area between the town hall (Hôtel de Ville) and the
area formerly occupied by Les Halles, the food market, which had recently vacated central
Paris. The Beaubourg project is one of a series of major cultural constructions initiated by
French presidents in a 30 year period.
POMPIDOU CENTRE
•Architects Richard Rogers, Renzo Piano
•Location 19 Rue Beaubourg 75004 Paris, France
•Architects Renzo Piano + Richard Rogers
•Structural Engineer Ove Arup & Partners
•Project Year 1971- 1977
•Site area 2 Hectares
•FLOOR AREA : 65000SQM
•HEIGHT : 45.5Mts
•BUILDING TYPE: Cultural LEISURE
•Arch Style: Post modern / High Tech
•Structural System: Steel super structure with reinforced floors
•COST: 363,858,697$
993 million French Francs(Exceeded the budget by 11.7 %)
Pompidou Centre is a multipurpose structure it consists of:
Public Library
France National museum of national art
Theatre and numerous Halls
The Centre is named after the France president Georges Pompidou
Note: The building looks inside out .All pipes and supports are exposed
but colours are used with the purpose
Green Indicates Water (plumbing and fire control)
Blue indicates air conditioning
Yellow & orange for Electricity
Red for vertical circulation (Escalators ) and also for elevator motor
room &shafts
stairs and elevator structures were painted a silver gray
largest ventilation components were painted white,
It demonstrates Modernist Architecture with steel support Beams and
functionally But is a mixture of influences and lack of decoration makes
it post modern
Design Phase:
A 3-level infrastructure
housing the technical
facilities and service
areas,
A vast 7-level glass and
steel superstructure,
including a terrace and
mezzanine floor
The style
revealed structure
exposed ducts
machine-precision
aesthetics
Greater care given on
how they work.
Facilities
Building facilities have a number of colors used to code the visitor knows the function of each
element. The pieces painted red fulfill the role of communication (elevators and stairs), blue is
the air conditioning, green water facilities, electricity is yellow, and white jacks and air
extraction. The stairs outside the front of the plaza has forged inclined painted red. The stairs,
which are mechanical, are covered by a transparent circular tube. They are divided into several
shots, and each section is an area that communicates with a flat floor. Inside the tube there
are many technological elements to hinder the perception of space.
Structure
The frame consists of 14 metal gates that
hold a lamp with 13 sections of 48 m each,
spaced by 12.80 m. On the poles in each
level, articulate elements of cast steel
called GERBERETTES of 8 m long and 10
tons.
The beams of a length of 45 m, are based
on these gerberettes, which carry the
weight and balance poles anchored by
bracing bars. Each plant has a height of 7
m between floor and ceiling. The
superstructure of steel and glass
surrounding the great hidden spaces.
Outer tension in the wall frame act to
reduce the bending moments on the
center of the span
The "Centre Georges Pompidou", or "Pompidou
Center", formerly "Centre Beaubourg". Massive
structural expressionist cast exoskeleton,
"exterior" escalators enclosed in transparent
tube. Designed by the collaboration of Richard
Rogers and Renzo Piano
Steel is the the only element of
structure. The 850mm steel
columns surrounding the exterior of
the concrete cast floor plates to
create the part of industrial looking
exoskeleton which can carry 3000
tons of vertical force .The steel x
bracing controls the lateral forces
applied to the structure enable the
exterior to have thermal movement
because of hinge connections . The
columns create 13 visual bays
which brace and support the
mechanical systems .
The circulation in
the clear shafts
North west wall South west wall
Elevation from North side Upper South east wall
. One of the "movement" elements that the center is most known for is the escalator (painted red
on the bottom) on the west facade, a tube that zigzags up to the top of the building providing
visitors with an astonishing view of the city of Paris.
INTERIORS
Unobstructed and
adaptable interior
volumes
Inside Pompidou :
Public access to the museum areas is not from the escalator tubes, as
the building exterior seems to suggest, but from doors located
centrally at the lower edge of the plaza
Double-height interior forum connects the street level with the plaza
level in a single volume .
Plaza-level reception area also looks down into a performance-level
basement where a theater and meeting rooms are situated.
An interior escalator takes visitors to the street level on the
northwest corner of the building
Small lobby connects to elevators and the exterior escalator.– visitors
can already look down 46 feet– In reality, the escalator serves only the
mezzanine, level four, and level six–
Horizontal circulation platforms occur inside the frame — most of
them restricted to staff access and emergency exits.
Inside out
The steel skeleton of the various floors visibly
seen from outside
As a Building:
Structural exhibitionism
A symbol of process and technology
Turning the building inside out was the most successfully realized
architectural intention.
Static monumentalism is out; dynamic servicing and flexible floor
space is in.
A ceiling isn’t required to shape a space, as many urban spaces. Our
vision is more oriented to the horizontal than to the vertical.
The centre is like a huge spaceship made of glass, steel and coloured
red tubing that lands unexpectedly in the heart of paris and where it
would quickly set deep roots
Piano Quotations:
Quotations:
"There is one theme that is very important for me: lightness....In my
architecture, I try to use immaterial elements like transparency,
lightness, the vibration of the light. I believe that they are as much a
part of the composition as the shapes and volumes."—Piano, 1998
"To be truly creative, the architect has to accept all the contradictions
of his profession: discipline and freedom, memory and invention,
nature and technology. There is no escape. If life is complicated,
then art is even more so. Architecture is all of this: society, science
and art."—Piano, 1998
MENIL MUSEUM
INTRODUCTION
• In 1972 the de Menils engaged noted architect Louis Kahn, who
had recently completed the Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, to
design a museum to house their collection.
• The building site was a 1920s residential enclave, entire blocks of
which they had purchased over the course of several years with
the aim of creating a storage facility and study center for their art.
• Kahn called for removing all of the residential structures and
transforming the entire site into a museum complex with gardens.
• Due to John de Menil’s death in 1973, followed by Kahn’s less than
a year later, the architect’s ambitious plan never came to fruition.
• Dominique de Menil continued to pursue the idea of permanently
housing the family collection in a public museum. Preliminary
schemes were developed with architect Howard Barnstone. Then
in 1980 she met the Italian architect Renzo Piano who she
collaborated with excellently.
INTRODUCTION
• The Menil Collection, located in Houston, Texas,
USA, refers either to a museum that houses the
private art collection of founders John de
Menil and Dominique de Menil.
• The Renzo Piano-designed museum opened to
the public in June 1987, has collection of
twentieth-century art, including over 15,000
paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings,
photographs, and rare books.
DESIGN
• Unlike the Kahn plan, the building envisioned by Piano—his first in the
United States—would not remake the existing neighbourhood but rather
blend in and harmonize with it.
• The exterior—an understated facade of gray cypress siding, wide expanses
of grass, and white-painted steel—echoes the surrounding bungalows, all
of them painted the same shade of what has become known as “Menil
gray.”
• The building’s dark-stained pine floors, low-slung profile, large lawn, and
surrounding portico (which mimics the deep porches typical of early
Houston homes) further recall the neighbouring domestic structures.
• Telling Piano what she wanted in very simple but specific terms—a
museum that would look “small on the outside, but be as big as possible
inside”—de Menil got exactly what she wanted; although the Menil is
large, it sits gently in its residential setting, and its careful proportions and
placement engage easily with the nearby houses.
PLAN OF THE MUSEUM
SECTION
LIGHTING
• De Menil insisted that most of her collection be
displayed in natural light so that visitors could
experience art as she did in her home, enlivened
by the subtle changes that occur at different
times of the day or year.
• It was also critical that the works be protected
from the harmful effects of ultraviolet rays.
• Piano, with engineering consultants from Ove
Arup and Partners, made several trips to Houston
to measure light intensity and atmospheric
conditions.
CAMPUS
• The museum campus has grown to include two
satellite galleries to the main building: Cy
Twombly Gallery and The Dan Flaying Installation at
Richmond Hall, which houses Dominique de Menil's
last commission.
• Two other buildings founded by the de Menils, but now
operating as independent foundations, complete the
campus: The Byzantine Fresco Chapel and the Rothko
Chapel.
• The museum has a library that is open to qualified
researchers by appointment and a bookstore open
during museum hours.
NEIGHBOURHOOD
• The neighborhood as a whole has a coordinated feel.
The Menil Foundation began buying homes in the area
in the 1960s and painting them the same shade of gray
over time.
• When the museum building was constructed, it too
was painted "Menil gray".
• Though subtle, the result is a neighborhood that feels
aesthetically unified.
• Currently the surrounding bungalows are used as
additional office space for museum employees, or
rented to individuals or non-profit organizations.
STRUCTURE
• While technology provided the necessary data, it was a trip to
Israel’s Kibbutz Ein Harod with de Menil that provided Piano with
his first inspiration.
• The kibbutz’s architect, Samuel Bickets, had suspended a screen
beneath the museum building’s skylights that filtered sunlight,
which could fill the gallery without directly striking works of art.
• The second inspiration was Piano’s own sailboat, a model of which
the architect had recently built using ferro-cement.
• Enchanted by the flexibility of this particular material, Piano
designed a wave-shaped “leaf” for the Menil’s roof and ceiling,
which he used along with white steel trusses, both in the gallery
spaces and on the building’s exterior, to unify the structure.
• The leaves function as a method of controlling light levels and also
as a means of returning air flow.
