Renzo Piano

Piano earned his Architectural degree from the Politecnico di Milano in 1964. He then went on to apprentice at Louis Kahn’s office. Although he was born into a family of builder contractors, his international recognition did not come until 1971. The French Ministry of Culture decided to hold a design competition for a new building that would be named after the current president, Georges Pompidou. Piano entered the competition with Richard Rogers, and eventually won. Their design was a ten-floor building with seven above ground and three below ground levels, entirely made of steel. What made their design stick out to the judges, was the idea of the innards of the building, becoming the exterior walls.

Piano and Rogers wanted to achieve maximum flexibility with what was going inside of the building, so the services and circulation pipes all were placed outside. Massive 48-meter warren trusses span the full width of the building, connected to columns at each end by gerberette; a die-cast steel. Another distinction of the Pompidou Center that made it stand out from the rest of the designs, was the vast amounts of color present. Each of the different services and circulation components were signified by a specific color. Blue was for air conditioning, yellow was for electricity, green was for water, and red was for lifts and escalators. This form of transparency of a building’s components is what attracted so many people to its beautiful façade. This entire set up of visible structural components of the building, eliminates the need for internal supports to hold all of this up, allowing huge amounts of free space to work with inside. Inside included a big entrance Forum with galleries and other pieces of art.

Vast libraries of other departments of French foundations, including the Atelier Brancusi and the Institute for music/acoustic research and coordination (IRCAM). The public could not seem to get around to this modern design and many thought it stuck out like a sore thumb from its nineteenth century surroundings. However, after completion, the public could not stay away, as more than 150 million visitors passed through the doors to this day. The overpowering popularity made the center close the building to enlarge spaces for more pedestrian traffic flow and also renovate some of the outdated parts of the building. The Pompidou Center reopened in 2000. Today, more than 3800 people visit the Pompidou Center every day, averaging at 1.1 million each year. This piece of art is what made Renzo Piano, the star architect he is today, and that this building, and his design for the Pompidou Center, was just the beginning of the legacy Renzo Piano wants to leave behind.

Piano’s first major project in New York City, turned out to be the new headquarters for the New York Times. This building was a part of New York City’s 42nd Street development plan and was the last site to be constructed on it. The building is seventeen feet back from Eighth Avenue and eight feet back from 40th Street, allowing for a more breathable pedestrian circulation. To also allow for more circulation, there is open access as a shortcut to get from 40th to 41st streets. Floors zero to four step out behind the tower to fill the plot of land with a four-story podium. The lower section of the building is the newspaper’s newsroom. The newsroom carries the nickname, “The Bakery” because most of the journalists are working overnight, preparing the next day’s paper. 

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