An intimate tour with Renzo Piano himself around his key buildings.

Renzo Piano (Genoa, 1937) studied architecture at the Polytechnic in Milan. Since winning the competition to design the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1971) along with Richard Rogers, Piano has become a prominent figure on the international architectural scene, with more works constructed outside Italy than in his own country. Piano brings a similar approach to both the small and the large scale. He has directed projects of very varying sizes: small buildings like the travelling IBN Pavilion and the Brancusi Museum; and great megastructures like Kansai's International Airport Terminal built on a man-made island in the Bay of Tokyo, and the remodeling of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz where work is scheduled to be completed in 2002.

This monograph focuses on Piano's most remarkable buildings, such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris, which he co-designed with Richard Rogers, and the Beyeler building in Switzerland. TRADE

Overview of Italian architecture, (1937-).

Creating space for the display of works of art has intrigued Renzo Piano throughout his thirty-five years of architectural practice. Today he is acknowledged the pre-eminent designer in this field, entrusted with the collections of the most distinguished art institutions in the world. Renzo Piano Museums presents a portfolio of eighteen museum projects, beginning with the revolutionary Pompidou Center in Paris and continuing to the most current designs for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo. Featured are the Menil Collection in Houston, the Beyeler Foundation on the outskirts of Basel, Switzerland, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, and the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Lush color photographs and handsome presentation drawings and plans convey the form and detail of these extraordinary buildings. Complementing the visual presentation is an essay by Victoria Newhouse, which surveys Piano's museum work and places it in a historical context. In particular, she focuses on the key elements of Piano's aesthetic: natural light, transparency, and the piazza or gathering space. All were introduced at the Pompidou Center and continue to inform the designs.

As Peter Buchanan has shown in the first three volumes of Renzo Piano's (b.1937) complete works, Piano follows no fashions of form or theory, nor is he limited to a personal idiom. Instead he concerns himself with the specifics and potential of a particular situation and moment, meeting the challenges of the programme, pushing the limits of technology, but always responding sensitively to the topography or urban fabric of the building's site. This fourth volume on Renzo Piano provides an illuminating study of the architect's working method, in particular his regard for context, followed by a presentation of his projects from 1989 to 2000. These range from urban works such as the Potsdamer Platz masterplan in Berlin, a science museum in Amsterdam and high-rise towers in Rotterdam and Sydney, to the acclaimed Beyeler Foundation, and the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia, which exemplifies the architect's sensitivity to site and local tradition, combining traditional materials and techniques with those from the cutting edge of technology.