Renzo Piano on Classicdesign.it

Renzo Piano is an Italian architect born in Genoa in 1937 from a family of builders. He attended the Faculty of Architecture first at the University of Florence and then at the Politecnico di Milano.

While still a student, he began to study with his Italian mentor Franco Albini and before graduating he went to Paris where he attended the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers with Jean Prouvé.

From the beginning, his style is characterized by constant research and experimentation with regard to materials and structural types and by a strong anti-academic vein both fed, as repeatedly stated, by an all-encompassing passion for technology and construction.

In 1971 he founded the Piano & Rogers studio in London with Richard Rogers, with whom he won the competition for the Pompidou Centre; in 1981 he founded Renzo Piano Building Workshop, with 150 employees and offices in Paris, Genoa and New York.