50 years of projects by the Genoese architect on exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts in London
The Gabrielle Jungels-Winkler Galleries of London’s Royal Academy of Arts will host until January 20, 2019, the exhibition “The Art of Making Buildings”, a tribute to Renzo Piano’s career. For this occasion, the curators Kate Goodwin and Renzo Piano Building Workshop selected 16 projects by Senator Piano, including: the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1971), the Menil Collection in Houston (1986), the Kansai Airport in Osaka (1994), the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouméa (1998), the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome (2002), the New York Times Building (2007), the Shard in London (2012), the Jérôme Seydoux Pathé Foundation in Paris (2014) and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (2015).
The latest recognition of Piano, in the prestigious context of the celebrations for the 250 years of the Royal Academy.
Renzo Piano: has been very active in political debate after the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa
Renzo Piano has been very active over the last few months in the media and political debate after the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa and he also offered to help design a new bridge, a structure to overcome the tragedy and rebuild the future. A topic that was brought up also during the presentation of the exhibition, when the Genoese architect once again stated that “bridges cannot collapse because bridges are made to connect, while walls are meant to divide”.
During the exhibition, emerges the social role played by Renzo Piano
What emerges is the social role played by Renzo Piano: that of the public architect and the manifesto of his work, which moves through the entire production from the Seventies to today in a consistent way.
In the first case, the architect states in the presentation that his projects are “nearly all public buildings: airports, museums, hospitals, schools, etc. The reason I love designing public buildings is very simple, because they are for people and for them to stay together”. In the second case, the three rooms of the exhibition reveal the key elements of his production and his method (transparency, light and lightness), following the guiding principle of the architect who moves between technique and poetry. The same poetry which according to Piano “disappears like silence when we speak”, much sought-after and equally difficult to achieve, but that can dwell in buildings. This because “buildings tell stories and stories must be told in a poetic way, otherwise they disappear”. Architecture thus becomes a cultural and social narrative.
A narration which unravels in the first room of the exhibition through unpublished documents (technical drawings, sketches, building details and models) presented on tables conceived as working spaces, surrounded by chairs like during a study meeting.
The third room houses the true masterpiece of the entire journey: the RPBW Atlantis made of 102 scale models of the works built by the firm all over the world. A Neverland where you can read and move across the architect’s entire production.
Renzo Piano and his suspended world – like the model of the Island – where “the art of making buildings” becomes the tool to guide us inside it and into the profession of the architect more in general.
