The title of his practice is the Renzo Piano Building Workshop: a name that emphasises the intimacy of craftsmanship, materials, and making. Yet Renzo Piano and his firm have designed billion-pound ventures, defining capital cities at historical junctures. The Potsdamer Platz redevelopment (2000), located on the former border between East and West Berlin, covers 68,000 sq m, contains 19 new buildings and ten new streets. One half was office space, the other included 600 apartments, two cinema complexes, a theatre, a casino, 120 shops, and over 20 restaurants and bars. He delivered similar, huge plans in his native Genoa and the bay of Osaka. Is it possible for a single architect to design at that scale and to govern the quality and craft?

Renzo Piano: the man behind the studio

Piano has a highly rare set of skills and understandings that make this apparently impossible contradiction of contemporary architecture possible. Famously, his father was a builder (Piano was born in 1937 in Genoa), but as he himself has added, 'everyone was – and is – a builder in my family.' His understanding of materials, traditional ones like wood and stone, is exceptional; his sympathy for how steel and glass can be engineered over wide expanses in subtle rhythms is unparalleled. Nor is it innate.

Wishing to distance himself from the heavy stone structures his father built, he visited London as a student in the 1960s to learn from the Polish innovator of lightweight steel space frame structures, Zygmunt Makowski. From 1965 to 1970, he worked for Louis Kahn, a maker of monumental work in brick and concrete that also managed to be human-scale. He sought out the best.

Renzo Piano's modernist roots

Piano’s pupilage is almost a who’s who of modernist architecture giants. He worked under Jean Prouvé, who once said, 'I am not an architect, I am not an engineer. I am a factory worker.' It is perhaps from the French modernist that Piano learned how to adapt industrial processes towards high-end construction; to find the craft in building. Tellingly, Prouvé, as well as an early employer, was a key juror for the Centre Pompidou competition, which Piano won alongside Richard Rogers, producing a building that radically overthrew the established hierarchies in architecture: service shafts streaming over the façade, the inside overtook the outside. We look at Pompidou and see the tics of Rogers’ later work, but if we look closer, we see one of the key aspects of Piano’s work: the importance of what is variously called the piece or the module.

Piano's signature use of modules and light

It is a repeated component – industrially made but to a high specification – which distils the structural and architectural intention of the building into a simple form. (Piano is clearly a fan of the sculptor Brancusi, who reduced his subjects to essential gestures or figures.) At Pompidou (1977), it is the gerberette and pin joint detail: a device that carries the floorplate and connects it both to a column and the external frame, dispersing the load. The module is a leitmotif, and often modulates light. For the Hermès store (2006) in Tokyo, it is the glass block, 13,000 of them that sheath the building, producing at night a magic lantern effect that glows warmly across Ginza. Less well heralded is the beautiful natural interior light that the store enjoys during the day, striking a contrast to the heavily lit neighbouring stores, soothing the eyes of visitors. Piano, a Mediterranean man, understands the humanising qualities of just the right amount and quality of light.

In other places, particularly highly specialised art museums, like the Beyeler Foundation Museum (1997) in Switzerland or The Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas (2003), the components are more complex, but still the means of diffusing natural light, often from above. In Beyeler, the module is a vertical armature that at its base and its head holds angled panes of glass. In Dallas, the component is a small die-cast aluminium scallop (repeated 223,020 times) which only allows a diffused northern light to filter through to the space below. For The New York Times Tower (2007), the module is the horizontal ceramic tubes that wrap the building, giving it a tactile quality and reconciling the transparent steel and glass building to its masonry context. The module reconciles the engineering of the building with its character, its structure with its surface.

A balanced architecture of contradiction

These are the means by which the contradictions inherent in the name Renzo Piano Building Workshop don’t collapse: how he can build at scale and retain the craft of building making. In Kansai International Airport (1994), we see best how Piano can make the megastructure an exercise in craft. The form of the terminal is created with his long-term engineer collaborator Peter Rice, from asymmetrically arched trusses that span a massive 80m, rising forward to face the airside, and rolling down to the landside. Cleverly, these arched trusses gradually decrease in height toward the building’s outer edges. The subtle inflexion in the structure means that as you move through it, you can sense the difference, feel where you are in the building. Whereas his contemporary Norman Foster celebrates homogeneous space – big volumes that are epic, belittling – Piano is always trying to humanise it with scale, make it changeable.

Perhaps Piano’s greatest capacity for craft, though, is the hardest for the contemporary architect: scale. One of the issues of building in the modern world is that while we can produce detailed renderings so we have a good idea of what a building will look like. We can only guess, though, at the impression that a truly massive building will have on a city. The Shard (2012) in London is the tallest building in Western Europe, rising up from a largely Victorian city. During the planning stages, Piano spoke of Canaletto’s paintings of London and how The Shard would seem like a spire of gold. It sounded like moonshine, and yet there it is. It is a testament to Piano’s singular understanding that the craft of conceiving architecture is only a prelude to the building.

Renzo Piano: 9 key projects

Centre Georges Pompidou (with Richard Rogers)

When: 1971-1977
Where: Paris, France

The Centre Pompidou – affectionately often also known as Beaubourg – was inaugurated in 1977 to architecture plans by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, who envisioned it as a 'living organism'.

The Menil Collection

When: 1981-1987
Where: Houston, USA

One of Piano's earliest works, the Menil Collection in Houston showcases his experimentations with natural light and modular elements – in this case, repeating panels and sunscreens.

Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre

When: 1991-1998
Where: Nouméa, New Caledonia

The important cultural and community centre in the island country of the Pacific Ocean expertly blends traditional Kanak architecture with modern design. It was one of Piano's first few, big international commissions, and started bringing his star to the global spotlight.

California Academy of Sciences

When: 2000-2008
Where: San Francisco, USA

Hardy flora has taken root on a sloping science academy roof. The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park is semi-concealed in the landscape, covered in leafy greens and was designed by Piano and his team to mimic the rolling hills and slopes of its city.

The Shard

When: 2000-2012
Where: London, UK

It's impossible to visit London and not notice the Shard, one of the most well-known schemes by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The tallest building in the UK and the fourth tallest in Europe at 95 floors, this tower is also incredibly light and elegant – while still boasting the highest inhabitable floor in the country.

Whitney Museum of American Art

When: 2005-2015
Where: New York City, USA

The current home for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York's vibrant Meatpacking District is also a building by Italian Piano. The whole collection moved there from its old HQ in 2015 – leaving the iconic, Marcel Breuer-designed building it has occupied since 1966 on Madison Avenue behind.

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center

When: 2008-2016
Where: Athens, Greece

Renzo Piano transformed an Athenian parking lot into a green cultural complex – the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre. The 170-acre park is now brimming with life, comprising the National Library of Greece and the Greek National Opera. It was a commission from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), the philanthropic organisation set up by Greek shipping magnate Stavros Spyros Niarchos (1909-1996), and it is now a vital part of the city.

Science Gateway, CERN

When: 2018-2023
Where: Geneva, Switzerland

The CERN Science Gateway in Geneva, was designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with Brodbeck Roulet Architectes Associés, and opened in October 2023. The facility, part of the CERN campus in Switzerland, is entirely dedicated to learning, outreach and science education, set to act as a beacon that celebrates research and innovation, as well as deep knowledge in the field.

Paddington Square

When: 2024
Where: London, UK

Paddington Square is defined by a transparent, cube-shaped, mixed-use building, containing office, food and beverage offerings, retail and a public square, as well as a new Bakerloo Line entrance and ticket hall. Piano and his team's smart design ensures not 'just the looks, but also the permeability and accessibility of the public realm on the site’.

rpbw.com

For design-loving renters, living in London can pose a challenge. But a new development in London Bridge is revising that assumption. Shard Place – a 27-storey glass tower – has just launched to the rental market.

Located adjacent to The Shard and designed by the same architect, Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), Shard Place completes the trio of buildings in Shard Quarter, joining The Shard and The News Building, headquarters of News UK.

Shard Place houses 176 apartments ranging from studios to three-bed units. There are 20 layout options, which can be furnished down to the linen and kitchenware (a necessity for some of the the clientele, who are often moving from abroad – one tenant moved in with only a rucksack of their belongings).

RPBW’s architectural prowess can be felt in the faceted façade, naturally ventilated winter gardens in many of the apartments, and two intersecting volumes that appear to 'float' 16m above the ground.

Interiors, designed by State of Craft, offer two palette options – Bermondsey and Borough, named for the local neighbourhoods – in light or dark colourways. Bermondsey Light features off-white walls, limed oak and white lacquered furniture; its Dark counterpart sets the natural texture of fibre rugs against taupe walls, tan leather and pops of green. The Borough collection offers either natural oak and taupe furniture with aubergine tones, or black oak and gold accents against cooler tones of grey and blue.

Natural light is a defining feature, especially in the apartments cast in the light colourway. This is achieved through floor-to-ceiling windows and triple-aspect vistas which comprise the Thames in the foreground and St Paul’s, Westminster and the London Eye in the distant plane.

Furnishings include handmade pieces by State of Craft, complemented by designs from icons like Børge Mogensen, B&B Italia and Fredericia. Art is also a big deal: over 1,000 curated works, selected by Richeldis Fine Art, are displayed in Shard Place.

There are 12,000 sq ft of amenity spaces here, positioned across three levels. Usually, these are concentrated in the basement of such developments; that they’re not makes a huge difference to the gym (complete with private studio, sauna and steam room), which has views over the King’s College quad.

London’s highest outdoor swimming pool and its landscaped sun deck are on the 27th floor. Elsewhere, find a double-height orangery; a library with a south-facing terrace and views to St Paul’s; a private dining room with a kitchen; and a 15-seat cinema.

And if that’s not enough for appreciators of design, landmarks such as White Cube, Tate Modern and Borough Market are just a stone’s throw away.

Rental prices start from £700 per week for studios, £825 per week for one-bedroom apartments, £1,340 per week for two-bedroom apartments, and £1,875 per week for three-bedroom apartments, the-shard.com

‘A rich bouillabaisse,’ is how Italian architect Renzo Piano described his design for New York’s Whitney Museum – an asymmetric assemblage of steel, concrete and glass between the Hudson River and the High Line designed to reflect the neighbourhood’s industrial roots. But Piano, who is best known for the postmodern Pompidou Centre in Paris (co-created with Richard Rogers) and London’s towering Shard, also saw in the building’s stacked terraces and jutting metal walkways a symbol of a liberated, creatively charged America.

‘The Whitney’s collection is about the liberty and freedom of American art, and the building should reflect that,’ he said when the museum opened, replacing the Marcel Breuer-designed former location on Madison Avenue and 75th Street. ‘None of these artists were very polite, after all. So why should we be?’

Max Mara’s Renzo Piano-designed ‘Whitney’ bag turns ten

Yesterday evening (21 May 2025), the Whitney celebrated a decade in the Meatpacking District address with a typically starry gala (attendees spanned artists, curators, socialites and plenty of celebrities, from The White Lotus’ Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb to Claire Danes, Andie Macdowell and Laura Harrier). Also in attendance: the night’s most ubiquitous accessory, Max Mara’s ‘Whitney’ bag, which was designed in a collaboration between Renzo Piano Building Workshop and the Italian fashion house to celebrate the building’s opening in 2015.

So, what does a Renzo Piano-designed handbag look like? The ‘Whitney’ – perhaps unsurprisingly – finds its inspiration in the building’s architectural contours. Namely, the blue-grey steel panels which line the Whitney’s façade, and are perhaps its most recognisable design feature. ‘Our aim was to apply one of the most characteristic elements of the museum project to the bag,’ said Piano when the bag was released. ‘Hence the idea of the modular strips enveloping the exterior.’

In the years since, the bag’s ‘ribbed’ exterior has made it one of Max Mara’s most distinctive accessories. Such is its influence, the ‘Whitney’ is now part of the collections at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. The original version came in an ‘aluminium’ shade of leather to reflect the colour of the Whitney’s façade (it has been reimagined in various hues in the time since).

Piano, who said it would be the only time undertaking such a fashion project, wanted to place reduction at the heart of the handbag’s design: ‘We tried to maintain [something] simple and pure, working only on the details by applying a creative use of technology and placing the accent on respect for the materials,’ he said. As such, the only branding is a subtle embossed Max Mara logo and ‘Designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop’ on the bag’s interior.

To celebrate the anniversary, Max Mara has created a new ‘edition’ of the bag spanning 13 new colours – from blush pink and ’lichen’ green to classic shades of brown and black – across five sizes, as well as a new ‘five-ribbed’ version. Meanwhile, a reedition of the original aluminium-hued ‘Whitney’ bag will be reissued in a limited edition of 125 pieces.

The Max Mara ‘Whitney’ bag is available from Max Mara stores and the brand’s website.

maxmara.com

Monaco is celebrating the opening of its new coastal neighbourhood named Mareterra, located between Larvotto Beach and the Fairmont Hairpin, first announced in 2013. The new eight-hectare enclave, which we visited while still under construction, is built upon a land extension and marked by its flagship super-prime residential building designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW). There are other more humble, yet perhaps equally as powerful, highlights to discover: a generous new coastal pathway, the planting of over 1000 mature trees, and the return of a large outdoor Alexander Calder sculpture to the public realm.

Explore the new Monaco neighbourhood of Mareterra

The prominent Le Renzo certainly steals the spotlight as a welcomed characterful addition to the skyline. It rests on piloti above a stepped podium of public space, a small port lined with shops and restaurants (most yet to open) and the minimalist residents’ sea pool that absorbs the energy of the waves (a design first for RPBW, experts in coastal architecture). The building’s nautical volumes were ‘fragmented’ to frame views of the sea line from the city, says Erik Volz, associate and project director at RPBW who has been working at the firm for nearly 29 years.

Its elegant exoskeleton hosts three-metre-deep balconies with reflective glass ‘papillon’ panels, which together shade the building from the sun and dazzle any prying eyes. The spacious apartments (ranging from 400 to 1,900 sq m) all have both city and sea views, and the interiors (which haven’t been outsourced by off-plan buyers) are ‘very zen’ with white kitchens and oak flooring creating a ‘museum atmosphere’ to magnify the abundance of light, views and space, says Volz.

The rest of the development evokes a softer, blended and more ‘natural perspective’ says Denis Valode, of Valode & Pistre Architectes, designers of the wider masterplan and the ‘Jardins d’Eau’ residential buildings clad in wood and stone. These buildings, some reserved for rental, are settled between the coast and the new hill modelled to ‘look like it has always been there’, which also cleverly hides Mareterra’s most exclusive villas (some designed by Tadao Ando, Stefano Boeri, Foster + Partners).

Landscape designer Michel Desvigne has layered this land with pine trees and Mediterranean species, a palette consistent across public and private areas of green space that together cover nearly 50 per cent of the masterplan (an extreme rarity, he says, compared to the usual 10-15 per cent). Desvigne has extended his minimalist urban design from the neighbouring Larvotto beach development (also by RPBW), so now there’s a flowing, 4.1km pale limestone coastal pathway, which on its opening morning is busy already with runners, tiny dogs, elderly couples, solo millennials with headphones, parents with strollers and construction workers on their breaks.

Another pathway intersects the micro-forest of pine trees running alongside a stream of water. As the canopy develops, it will become a shaded ‘vault’ that then peels off up the hill into a zig-zagging trail, or onwards to the piazza. Here, one can find the ‘smallest museum’ Renzo Piano has ever designed, a walled courtyard for Calder’s kinetic aluminium and stainless steel sculpture ‘Quartres Lances’ balancing above a square pool of water. When the sun is high and bright, the colours of white, yellow, red and orange emerge on the water’s surface and a breeze generates its motion into ‘total activation’ explains Sandy Rower, president of the Calder Foundation, and grandson of the artist.

Originally designed as a site-specific work for the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the sculpture was purchased by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco in 1966. It had been installed close by, yet removed when the Grimaldi Forum, inaugurated in 2000, was built. The Principality and Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (NMNM) have been searching for a worthy new site ever since, in collaboration with the Calder Foundation. When the Mareterra project began to materialise, Rower called up Piano, who had designed a landmark Calder show in Turin in 1983, and amicably designed a dedicated courtyard (with an integrated rope system to tie it down during windy weather and a bench designed by Prince Albert II).

The Calder Foundation and NMNM are now hatching ideas for a future exhibition, and Björn Dahlström, director of NMNM, says that the Calder’s return to public space was a catalyst for a Monaco-wide sculpture trail launched last year to guide visitors through the extensive collection of outdoor public art, including works by Vasarely, Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne, Fernand Leger, Anish Kapoor, Jean Amado and a recently restored series of Roger Capron ceramic tiles.

Another piece of public art at Mareterra is Vietnamese artist Tia-Thuy Nguyen’s immersive and meditative room clad in natural formations and bubbles of pink stone beneath an oculus titled ‘Drops of the Sun’, found behind a small doorway along the promenade. Another door opens to the Blue Grotto, an enigmatic concrete cave that reveals the belly of Mareterra, the five-storey-tall caissons that this whole neighbourhood rests upon. It’s pure sculpture, framing the power of manmade materials and engineering to defy and control nature.

It’s a reminder that despite the transparency and lightness of Piano’s architecture and the natural modelling of the hills, this artificial land is not really floating yet very firmly grounded into the seabed on a foundation carved with the initials of Prince Albert II. Underwater, experimental structures cling to the concrete, with the hope that eventually sea life, the endemic posidonia seagrass, urchins and fish here might learn to thrive alongside modernity, just like we have done in our concrete and steel apartment blocks.

At the launch of Mareterra, Guy Thomas Levy-Soussan, chief administrator of the project, talked passionately about its legacy of underwater research and design stretching back to 2016 in collaboration with marine biologists, open about both successes and failures along the way. Celine Caron-Dagioni, Monaco’s Minister of Equipment, Environment and Urban Planning, hopes that the resources and quality of design that have been invested into the land reclamation project will serve as a prototype for future coastal cities battling rising sea levels.

mareterra.com

In her latest commission, Brooklyn-based interior designer Holly Waterfield was faced with a unique challenge: having to compete with perfectly framed, sweeping views of the surrounding landscape – or cityscape, as is the case with this Manhattan pied-à-terre, located in architect Renzo Piano's first residential building in New York, the 30-storey residential tower 565 Broome Soho.

Step inside this Holly Waterfield interior

The apartment was designed by Waterfield and her team, who specialise in creating perfect layouts and happy, welcoming spaces, for entrepreneurs John Finn and Sara Sandler, and his two daughters. Apart from letting the views take centre stage, the very specific brief involved turning the brand-new 15th-floor condo into a luxurious yet low-maintenance space, but without using any wood or wood-tone furniture.

To do so, Waterfield kept the interiors neutral with earthy tones, natural materials and soft textures, and furnished the home with low-slung pieces to avoid impeding the floor-to-ceiling views. She also used layers of fabrics – including mohair velvet, wool flannel and cashmere drapery – to soften the rooms and add a sense of warmth similar to that traditionally created by wooden elements.

Known for her talent for creating warm yet polished interiors, Waterfield was inspired by her visit to the Renzo Piano-designed wing in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the architect’s ability to connect the old with the new. Her intuitive approach to the design has resulted in a light-filled space offering a sense of calm and openness despite being located in the heart of the city.

The choice of fixtures and finishes is often connected to the surrounding cityscape: for example, a sculptural ‘Gaia’ pendant light in the dining room features a blackened nickel that recalls the cast-iron buildings of SoHo. Meanwhile, a large round mirror in the entrance actually reflects the skyline view from across the room, and cleverly brings more light into the hall.

One of Waterfield’s favourite pieces in this project is an oversized sheepskin rug from Australian label Tigmi Trading, which links the entryway to the kitchen and dining areas with its asymmetrical curved shape. Other finds include black leather ‘Caribou’ stools from Ochre that add an edginess to the minimalist kitchen, and velvet olive armchairs by Soho Home that bring a touch of hotel luxury to the home.

In contrast to the rest of the home, one of the daughters’ bedrooms embraces pops of colour with a golden yellow chair and floral-patterned bedding. The room is also full of more playful pieces, such as a rattan bed and scallop wall sconces by Nickey Kehoe.

hollywaterfield.com

rpbw.com

565broomesoho.com

The CERN Science Gateway in Geneva, designed by master architect Renzo Piano and his Building Workshop in collaboration with Brodbeck Roulet Architectes Associés, has been announced to open officially on 8 October 2023. The new facility, part of the CERN campus in Switzerland, is entirely dedicated to learning, outreach and science education, set to act as a beacon that celebrates research and innovation, as well as deep knowledge in the field. 

CERN Science Gateway: a place for learning

The beauty of science is meant to be front and centre in the function and displays of the new centre. This is a structure conceived as a symbol, advertising its use and hoping to inspire younger generations towards the incredible scope and unparalleled opportunities within the scientific fields. As a result, parts of the new complex have been paying tribute to CERN’s unique, well known facilities, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator.  

Piano's signature combination of surfaces in glass and metal, shaped in high tech aesthetics using 21st century technology, was enlisted to craft a series of spaces: exhibition areas, laboratories for visitors of all ages to experiment in, and a 900-people strong auditorium for large scale events for both specialists and the wider public. 

CERN Science Gateway's architecture was conceived to be as open and approachable as the programming inside it – transparency being a key part of the concept, alongside its cutting-edge systems. 

The project's expansive 'village' of volumes comprises the 'Bridge', an elevated route connecting all different pavilions; the 'Photovoltaic collectors', an energy-producing roof system hovering above the three main pavilions in the complex; the 'Tunnels', two raised tubes containing exhibition space; and the 'Forest', a layer of nature overlaid across the entire venue, bringing everything together in a sea of greenery that unifies nature and human science.

sciencegateway.cern 

rpbw.com 

Smeg has unveiled a special edition of the classic Piano Hob, launching 1,000 pieces of the design classic originally conceived with Italian architect Renzo Piano in 1995.

The new collection encompasses the slick fundamentals and industrial aesthetic of the original. The four or five burner kitchen hob is crafted entirely from polished stainless steel and comes coated with a plasma technology to prevent tarnishing, with faithful Italian design details including an absence of welding on the burner pan.

Renzo Piano built on both his Italian roots and fascination for technology in architecture, encapsulating his vision in buildings such as the Centre Pompidou (with Richard Rogers) in Paris and London’s the Shard. This high-tech aesthetic is carried through here, as 35 years since the original Piano Hob was released in Milan coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Shard, interlinking the industrial design codes both share.

‘Smeg is thrilled to have worked with the iconic Renzo Piano as part of our ever-growing portfolio,’ said Richard Mackey, product manager at Smeg UK. ‘We believe that all products found in the kitchen should not only perform perfectly, but they should be striking with a design story behind them too. Piano is an inspiring designer and visionary, and we are humbled to have his designs and legacy immortalised in our product.’

Two sizes of the hob – the Renzo Piano P705ES at 71cm wide, and the P64ES at 65cm wide – are both created from EverShine stainless steel across the pan stands and burners, making this a sharply modern piece of kitchen design. Piano was originally drawn to the reflection and the refraction the surface created, its polished coating reminiscent of a piece of glass – a vision which later took shape in the Shard. 

INFORMATION

smeg.com

V-A-C Foundation’s GES-2 House of Culture opened on 3 December 2021 in Moscow, adjacent to the Kremlin. Designed by Renzo Piano and over a decade in the making, the reworked former power station – known as GES-2 – is free of charge and includes space for workshops, performance and exhibitions. It opens with the season ‘Santa Barbara: How Not to be Colonised’, which includes a site-specific performance work and exhibition from Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson and a group show, ‘When Gondola Engines Were Taken to Bits: A Carnival in Four Acts’, alongside a programme of workshops and performances. 

‘It is conceptual, philosophical… To make a place that is accessible to everybody,’ says Piano. ‘It’s fundamentally this concept philosophically that is the House of Culture. Moscow badly needs this sort of place.’

An addition to the foundation’s Venice space, the 41,000 sq m building on the bank of the Moscow River is the brainchild of V-A-C founders Teresa Iarocci Mavica and Leonid Mikhelson, who is also its billionaire backer. Based on the idea of a Soviet House of Culture, GES-2 aims to provide space for cultural production and for people to gather and exchange ideas. Costs remain undisclosed but are rumoured to far exceed £300 million. 

The building houses communal space, a cinema and an adaptable performance area that is able to cater to many uses. Piano kept the integrity of the building, replacing only the roof with glass, flooding the knave with natural light. The structure was also lifted to add ceiling height to the spacious subterranean exhibition area, which opens out into a double-height space that spans up to the roof. By using small cells on the roof to disperse the light, he created a kind of diffused, dappled effect.

‘Light is essential, but it’s not the only thing. There is also transparency, the sense of openness and accessibility, and to do this in Moscow is especially important,’ says Piano. The original chimneys have been replaced with 70m-high pipes that bring in clean air in an ecologically conscious air-conditioning system, by drawing in fresh air from above Moscow’s pollution. 

The space is entirely white and grey, echoing the wintery Muscovite palette outside – save for the Matisse blue of the pipes and the original green of the cherry picker, a hangover from the building’s previous life, left in situ in the entrance hall. These elements combine to create an open and welcoming building, a place that aims to bring together the people who use it – whether to sit, think, enjoy the art and entertainment on view or contribute to it. ‘When you’re experiencing culture with a small “c”, where you meet people, you know you’ve built something really beautiful, a sense of community and conviviality,’ Piano concludes. 

INFORMATION

rpbw.com

v-a-c.org

Turin is now host to Europe’s largest hanging garden, set high above the concrete modernist curves of the Fiat company’s Lingotto Factory. A collaboration between Turinese architect Benedetto Camerana and the botanist Cristiana Ruspa, La Pista 500 is a new public space and urban garden for Turin. It’s joined by Casa 500, a dedicated exhibition space within the Pinacoteca Agnelli, the Fiat family foundation housed in the Renzo Piano-designed structure built atop the Lingotto complex in 2003.

Casa 500 is dedicated to Fiat’s most celebrated model, the Fiat 500, both in its original 1957 incarnation and its hugely successful 20th century revival. Featuring original artwork, models and ephemera from the company’s collection, Casa 500 was designed by the Italian firm LAB71 Architetti, led by Massimiliano Gotti Porcinari.

La Pista 500 is a linear park in the sky, enhancing the city’s biodiversity with 40,000 plants comprising of 300 species, housed in 28 island planters set within the factory’s original concrete test track. Giacomo Mattè Trucco (1869 –1934) originally conceived the Lingotto complex as a temple of manufacturing, a five-floor production line that eschewed the sprawling facilities of Fiat’s American counterparts in favour of a more vertical solution.

Components and raw materials went in on the ground floor and production snaked its way up towards the roof, complete with dramatic spiralling concrete ramps at each end of the 1.5 million sq m complex. On the summit was the company’s crowning glory, a test track with steep concrete banking. Over the next half century, some 80 models of Fiat were built here, including the original Topolino city car of the 1930s. 

Piano and his team spent 20 years working on the renovation of the structure after the factory closed in 1982, transforming the former production lines into offices, two hotels, a conference centre, and retail space.

The transparent ‘bubble’ structure on the roof is the most obviously high-tech addition to the study of concrete modernism, counterbalanced by the exhibition space at the opposite end of the long, slender structure. 

Urban oasis for Turin

The La Pista 500 celebrates this enduring structure, saved from industrial oblivion by Piano’s interventions. The 7,000 sq m of new planting runs the 1.2km length of the test track, which has been given a new lease of life as a place to drive electric only vehicles, including bikes and scooters.

The new vegetation has been designed to maximise biodiversity, avoiding the need for excessive water consumption, and there’s an education space, a kitchen garden, and even zones dedicated to contemplation and meditation. Stellantis, Fiat’s parent company, acknowledges that the transformation of a concrete factory into a verdant public space is a ‘deeply symbolic’ act, and hopes it’ll be seen as a physical representation of its ongoing sustainable ambitions. 

INFORMATION

Pinacoteca Agnelli

Miami is a heady swirl of art deco architecture and luxury condos, tropical climes and pristine beaches, glitzy nightclubs and well-worn divebars. More recently, however, it has embraced a series of trophy buildings designed by the Who’s Who in architecture, from Rafael Viñoly to Frank Gehry, Foster + Partners, Bjarke Ingels, and Herzog & de Meuron. Here, we look at the architectural projects and real estate developments shaping Miami today.

Park Grove, OMA

Rem Koolhaas’ firm has already made its mark on a significant swathe of Miami, with the completion of a trio of buildings in Faena District in 2016. Now, it’s full steam ahead with a multi-tower residential enclave in Coconut Grove, backed by powerhouse developers The Related Group and Terra Group. Drawing inspiration from Biscayne Bay, OMA partner and project lead Shohei Shigematsu has imagined the towers as linked barrier islands. Each residence features open floor plans, 12ft ceilings with floor-to-ceiling windows, kitchens and bathrooms by designer William Sofield, Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances, expansive terraces, and private elevator access. Over 50,000 sq ft of the development has been parcelled for luxury lifestyle amenities, ensuring residents will almost certainly never want to leave Park Grove. Read more here.

LOCATION: Coconut Grove, Miami
YEAR: 2013 – ongoing
KEY FEATURES: Wine tasting rooms with private storage, five acres of private gardens by Enzo Enea, art collection, mind-body wellness lounge and bio-sauna, Meyer Davis-designed interiors, restaurant by James Beard Award winner Michael Schwartz

One Thousand Museum, Zaha Hadid Architects

Described astutely in a PBS documentary as ‘one of the most complex skyscrapers ever to make it off the drawing board’, One Thousand Museum was Zaha Hadid’s final undertaking before her death in 2016. Completed at the end of last year, the 62-storey tower has already cemented its status as an architectural icon of Downtown Miami’s skyline, thanks to its bold exoskeleton design. The 84 museum-quality units have been realised as half-floor, full-floor and duplex residences, fitted with Gatto Cucine kitchens, Gaggenau and Sub-Zero appliances, Molteni & C custom closets, integrated smart technology, and a choice of luxurious finishes chosen by Hadid herself. Potential buyers can also choose from curated collection of turnkey residences by design houses Artefacto, B&B Italia, Roche Bobois, Meridiani, and Luxury Living Group. Read more here.

LOCATION: Biscayne Boulevard, Miami
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: Exoskeleton design, aquatic centre, rooftop helipad, bank-quality vault, indoor/outdoor spa, private beach club, on-demand house car, multimedia theatre, specialised security and valet personnel

El Espacio 23, Jorge M Pérez

Forty years in the making, El Espacio 23 is a private museum dedicated to philanthropist and entrepreneur Jorge M Pérez’s vast art collection and first opened to the public during Art Basel Miami Beach last year. A passion project of the billionaire real estate developer, the space is housed in a repurposed 28,000 sq ft warehouse in Miami’s Allapattah neighbourhood and designed by Pérez himself who sees it as an extension of his home (amenities include a library, living room and bar area to entertain guests). The year-round programming includes a series of residencies for artists and curators representing a range of diverse range of disciplines and ethnic backgrounds, as well as activations inspired by the surrounding neighbourhood of Allapattah.

LOCATION: Allapattah, Miami
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: Artist apartments reserved for residency programmes, shared workspace, library, bar and lounge area

Rubell Museum, Selldorf Architects

When Mera and Don Rubell were looking for an architect to convert a former industrial complex into a museum-worthy setting for their family’s collection, the Miami mega-collectors turned to art world favourite Annabelle Selldorf. Located in Miami’s emerging Allapattah neighbourhood, the museum will draw on the Rubells’ extensive holdings of over 7,200 works by more than 1,000 artists. Selldorf Architects gutted and transformed six warehouse units into a cohesive 100,000 sq ft campus – tripling the exhibition capacity of the collection’s previous space. The Rubell Museum now unfolds across a single level, comprising 40 galleries, a flexible events and performance space, a richly stocked research library, a bookstore, an outdoor bar and restaurant serving Basque cuisine. Read more here.

LOCATION: Allapattah, Miami
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: Refinished concrete floors, single-storey complex, courtyard garden featuring rare plants native to the Everglades and Florida

Eighty Seven Park, Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Flanked by a 35-acre public park to the south and a private park to the north, few condominium projects in Miami – if any – can boast the green credentials of Renzo Piano’s Eighty Seven Park. ‘What we’re expressing is that this building belongs to nature,’ said the Italian architect when we first checked on the development’s progress in 2017. The 70 residences, spread over 18 elliptical floors, emphasise outdoor living – each comes with a generously sized wraparound terrace ranging from 15-25ft wide. Paris-based design firm RDAI notes the interior design was built around natural materials collected at the site: the Venetian terrazzo flooring that recalls Miami’s white sand beaches, for example. Read more here.

LOCATION: North Shore, Miami Beach
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: 24-hour concierge and butler service, enoteca (wine shop), onsite botanist, oceanfront swimming pools, spa, state-of-the-art fitness centre, outdoor juice bar, private elevator access to all units

Monad Terrace, Ateliers Jean Nouvel

‘From the beginning – and always – it has been important to me to put the spirit of place in all my work,’ says Jean Nouvel. ‘Here in Miami, I wanted to create a building that is like the reflection of the sun on the water.’ Comprising 59 luxury waterfront residences nestled around a shimmering lagoon, Monad Terrace in South Beach is the Pritzker Prize winner’s first and only residential project in Florida. The striking sawtooth façade is made up of honeycomb glass screens, which diffuse sunlight and provide privacy to residents while maintaining unobstructed views of Biscayne Bay. Vertical gardens on the north and south façades offer additional shade.

LOCATION: South Beach, Miami Beach
YEAR: 2020 (under construction)
KEY FEATURES: Honeycomb sawtooth façade, 116ft swimming pool and hot tub, climbing gardens, private or semi-private elevator access, wellness centre, residents’ lounge

Residences by Armani/Casa, César Pelli

This sleek, monolithic oceanfront tower was the last project designed by venerable architect César Pelli before his death in July last year. The 56-storey structure is composed of ‘two intertwined sail-like shapes, billowing and expanding as they rise’, says Gregg Jones, principal of Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, while its blue-hued glass was designed to flow seamlessly into the water below. Giorgio Armani has stepped in personally to deliver Armani/Casa’s first residential project in the US, envisioning elegantly understated interiors fitted materials like white gold leaf, onyx and bronzed mirrors. Imagined as ‘homes in the sky’, the residences feature expansive terraces, master suites with his-and-hers bathrooms, and are wired with smart technology to access select building amenities.

LOCATION: Sunny Isles Beach
YEAR: Q4 2019
KEY FEATURES: Ocean-view yoga studio with Pilates equipment, Armani/Privé lounge, museum-quality art collection, 24-hour multilingual concierge service, cigar room, wine cellar, two-storey revitalisation spa, exclusive beach amenities, classic Hollywood-inspired movie theatre

Mr C Residences, Arquitectonica

Fourth-generation members of the storied Cipriani family, Maggio and Ignazio Cipriani are the forces behind Mr C, a hospitality and residential brand for luxury modern living. Following projects in Los Angeles and New York, the brothers are now making waves with Miami, teaming up with Terra’s David Martin, architect Ray Fort of Arquitectonica, and interior design firm Meyer Davis to bring a taste of old world Europe to a bayside residential tower in Coconut Grove. The 118 residences in the 21-storey building will feature 11ft ceilings, open floor plan layouts, private outdoor terraces, custom-designed Italian kitchens by ITALKRAFT with terrazzo and quartz countertops, European porcelain tile floors, and spa-like bathrooms.

LOCATION: Coconut Grove, Miami
YEAR: Expected Q3 2022
KEY FEATURES: Sail-inspired design, private Bellini bar on the pool deck, speciality gourmet market, lifestyle and nautical concierge, Bayshore owners’ club, peloton studio, indoor yoga studio, in-home delivery from on-site café

‘Good vodka! That was the beginning,’ says Renzo Piano. The 82-year-old Italian architect is dressed in a dapper suit under a high-vis jacket. We are in the atrium of what was once the GES-2 power station, built in 1907 and used to keep government officials warm as they ran the Soviet Union from the nearby Kremlin. Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) is converting the 20,000 sq m plant into a leading art venue for Russian billionaire Leonid Mikhelson’s V-A-C Foundation (named after his daughter, Victoria, a graduate of London’s Courtauld Institute).

Mikhelson approached Piano in 2015 with the idea of transforming the derelict power station into a world-class space for contemporary art in the heart of Moscow. When the project was first announced, many voices in the architectural world suggested the building was unusable, and that Piano would be better off starting from scratch. But to do so would have erased a sizeable slice of Moscow’s history: the plant was once used to power Moscow’s first tram system, and the site also encompasses a former vodka warehouse.

Renovating the space, Piano admits, has been painstaking: ‘Architecture of this kind is a dangerous job; you can make big mistakes,’ he says. ‘But I believe a well-crafted public building is a serious gesture of civic pride.’ And Piano is already proving his doubters wrong: ‘When we started this job, people were saying to me: “Are you really doing this?”. Now they understand. It is a building built by lucid madness.’ As Piano shows us where the Soviet generators once stood, the grey Russian sky breaks and light streams into the construction site. The sudden presence of the sun delights him. ‘This is Moscow,’ he exclaims. ‘Cloud and then suddenly sun. The building will constantly be like this – vibrant light, vibrant shadow. And the Moscow light will be the poetry of this building. It will hold everything together. A great cathedral of light.’ He leads us through the building and into what will be a new public park. Around 90 birch trees are already planted here, but there are hundreds more on the blueprints. ‘It will be a real forest,’ Piano says. ‘Birch trees are beautiful when full in the summer, and beautiful when naked in the winter.’ 

The V-A-C Foundation has an ambitious programme planned for GES-2, including a new exhibition by Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. It will also be a key stop on Moscow’s new Museum Mile, which will link the gallery to Dasha Zhukova’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the State Tretyakov Gallery, and the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

Mikhelson was inspired to build the gallery after visiting Piano’s iconic Centre Pompidou in Paris, as well as the Tate Modern in London (itself a former power plant). ‘I wished to have such a public space for Moscow,’ he says. ‘I wanted to create a unique place, right in the centre of the city, in a historic building.’

The gallery is due to open in September 2020, but this depends on the Russian winter, and how fast it will allow works to progress on site. Not that delays, or the project’s spiralling costs, it seems, dampen Piano’s idealism and his belief in the ability of architecture to bring people together. ‘This will be a free space,’ he says. ’A place to meet people under the sky.’

INFORMATION

v-a-c.ru
rpbw.com

Even though the newly completed 565 Broome counts as SoHo’s tallest residential building – at 30 floors – it’s not that easily observable from the street. ‘We are part of the city,' says Elisabetta Trezzani, a partner at Renzo Piano Building Workshop, who worked with the Italian architect on the design. ‘Renzo says we don’t want to touch the ground in a possessive way,' she adds.

It’s Renzo Piano’s very first residential project in the United States, and NYC’s first luxury residential Zero Waste Building, but Trezzani, who also oversaw the RPBW-designed Whitney Museum, emphasizes that the methodology was similar. 

‘We started doing studies and making massing models as we always do,' she says. ‘The first thing that came to mind was that due to the size of the site and the height limitations, we needed a break in the mass to achieve a sense of proportion.' The firm devised a design of two conjoined towers that translates ideas of transparency as well as a continuous connection to the city.

A low-iron glass façade links a double-height lobby seamlessly to the street, creating a light-filled entrance made of Spanish limestone, white oak plank floors and pre-cast concrete panels – a muted interior, but for a couple of bright red Fritz Hansen Egg Chairs. 

Above, thanks to the towers’ twin shape and the unit arrangement of studios, one-bedroom and multi-room apartments, most corridors became redundant, maximizing floor space and enhancing a sense of home in the RDAI-designed interiors. The quietly distinctive curved corners of the condominiums, made of that same low-iron glass, allow for crystal-clear views of the surrounding city.

True to Piano form, this residential project boasts a glass-encased robotic parking of which the machinery is visible from street-level. The amenities, too, hold a number of features that reveal the RPBW signature. The Paris- and Genoa-based firm’s commitment to brightness and breathability ensured the presence of a courtyard with live green walls, a 92-foot tall indoor conservatory with three black olive trees that gives access to two communal spaces that house a library curated by Aaron Hicklin of Narrowsburg ( New York’s One Grand bookstore), a 55-foot long saltwater pool bathed in natural light, an above-ground gym, spa, and a playroom for children.

It all adds up to the project’s overall refinement and conceptual coherence. ‘The quality and quantity of detail in every little element, from outside to inside, is something that represents our methodology,' Trezzani concludes.

INFORMATION

rpbw.com

Italian architect Renzo Piano has designed his first school: a 57,000 sq m campus on reclaimed land in Shenzhen’s Qianhai district, the first of 36 interconnected Whittle School & Studios campuses planned to open in 15 countries over the next decade. The eight-storey campus for 2,000 students is based on an architectural concept that can be adapted to other sites, conditions and building codes.

The Pritzker-prize-winning architect’s inspiration came from traditional Italian urban planning. However instead of the customary piazza where people meet, the ground floor is open-plan with a café for parents, and a large staircase and skylight at the centre of the building around which classrooms, a state-of-the-art gymnasium, theatre and spaces for specialized learning such as music and coding rooms are arranged. There is an early learning centre with its own entrance and professional canteen facilities.

A cable-supported glass façade means there are fewer internal structural columns and infuses the interiors with natural daylight. Piano believes this transparency and activity encourages a vital sense of connection within the local community. ‘A school is not separated from life,' he explains.

The design reveals the school’s innovative focus on creativity and emotional capacity as well as learning with a 4,650 sq m workshop space for interdisciplinary project-based work and flexible classrooms that can be made larger and smaller depending on needs. Tables can be placed in a circle and walls are designed as pin-up areas - like Piano’s signature architectural studio displays in Genoa, Paris and New York. There are also plenty of communal spaces for students and smaller, more intimate breakaway areas. Walls are simple concrete and bright orange furniture provides a pop of colour.

The whole campus demonstrates Piano’s trademark focus on creating buildings that are simple and intuitive to navigate with seamless connections to outdoor gardens and play areas, colour coded areas and bright graphics. The perennial problem of school traffic is elegantly resolved by a dedicated basement drop off and collection zone. Vehicles need bar codes to make pick-ups safer and easier.

The new campus is part of an impressive master plan for the whole district, which will include luxury high-rise apartments, retail, cultural and sports facilities and a new train line.

INFORMATION

rpbw.com

Around 1946, Frank Lloyd Wright invited Alexander Calder to produce a colossal mobile that would become a permanent focal point of the Guggenheim’s central skylight, while the New York museum was still under construction. The caveat, however, was that the sculpture would have to be made from gold. Calder, who insisted on working with industrial materials, balked at the idea of using a precious metal (black, he said, would create a starker profile against the sky). When Wright threatened to withdraw the commission, Calder conceded: he would make the work in gold – but paint it black.

Although the mobile ultimately never came to fruition, Calder would later create The Spiral (1966), a motorised standing mobile with a spiralling top element made of industrial brass, that was exhibited at the Guggenheim in 1967. The work’s alternate title was No! to Frank Lloyd Wright. Calder enjoyed a close – and typically more friendly – association with nearly every great architect of the 20th century, from Mies van der Rohe to Eero Saarinen (surely an exhibition in itself). As a result, the fate of many of his public commissions was intrinsically tied to the completion of their projects.

Unlike unrealised architectural projects, however, unrealised artworks are rarely disclosed. Instead they belong to ‘a strange species of art’ that curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has actively been investigating and publishing since 1990. At Centro Botín, Obrist has applied his methodology to a late, great titan of 20th-century art for the first time. A major new exhibition, ‘Calder Stories’, considers the little-known aspects of the American artist’s oeuvre, from shelved or partially completed commissions, to anecdotes that trace the genesis of Calder’s celebrated projects.

The Renzo Piano-designed museum in Santander, Spain, with a spectacular south-facing view of the Cantabrian Sea, sets the stage for mobiles, bronze works, maquettes and Calder’s BMW Art Car – though the cavernous, light-filled space might not necessarily have appealed to the artist. ‘Calder is about intimacy – he really wants you to be close to his work and have a direct personal experience,’ says Alexander SC Rower, president of the Calder Foundation and the artist’s grandson, quipping, ‘Because Renzo Piano caused this problem, he had to solve the problem.’ And so the Pritzker Prize winner stepped in to design the exhibition in his very own museum, forming a ‘village’ of exhibits that each tell a story.

Among the unrealised projects is a series of sculptures originally destined for a new African habitat that architect Oscar Nitzchke was working on for New York’s Bronx Zoo in 1939. ‘The main idea was to put the tough guys (lions, etc) behind a moat,’ Calder once recalled. ‘We even had the visitors walking through an armoured tube. My objects, I felt, could replace trees, being iron they would be immune to animals’ claws.’ (Upon rediscovering the models in his garage 30 years later, Calder exhibited them for the first time at Perls Galleries, New York, in October 1970 to critical acclaim.)

Elsewhere, drawings related to Calder’s ‘ballet objects’ – including set designs for a proposed ballet with music by Harrison Kerr – come to life in digital animations specially commissioned for the exhibition. Keeping things in the family, Calder’s great-grandson Gryphon Rue has assembled a selection of modern and contemporary music that correspond sonically to the artist’s notations and animatic ballets. Calder’s interest in the kinetic potential of art manifested in other ways: he was invited to produce a fountain for the pool in front of the Consolidated Edison pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair that would comprise a performance of jets of water choreographed as determinedly ‘as the movements of living dancers’. Although the jets were installed at the pavilion, the ballet was never executed.

The exhibition, too, sheds light on the scale of Calder’s ambition. Concurrent with the New York Water Ballet commission, the artist worked on a series of maquettes to be adapted for an immersive kinetic sculptural environment that would tower over visitors as they interacted with the work. Although the project fell through, one of the maquettes was used in 1961 as the model for a commission from Stockholm’s Moderna Museet in Stockholm and realised as a permanent outdoor installation. Similarly, in 1944 Calder envisioned a series of bronze monuments measuring up to 40ft tall that were bound for an International Style architectural project (the modestly sized maquettes on display at Santander belie the artist’s intent).

There are few sentiments more compelling than ‘what if?’ – the notion of what could be, or what could have been. As the enigmatic Alexander Calder proves, there is more to the story.

Snake and the Cross, 1936, by Alexander Calder, sheet metal, wood, rod, wire, string, and paint. Following a visit to Piet Mondrian’s studio in Paris, Calder began to explore the frontal formality of painting rendered in three dimensions yet imbued with a kinetic. In Snake and the Cross, multicoloured elements oscillate in front of the defined area of a wooden frame, moved by the caprices of the air. © 2019 Calder Foundation, New York / VEGAP, Santander

INFORMATION

‘Calder Stories’, 29 June – 3 November, Centro Botín. centrobotin.org

ADDRESS

Centro Botín
Muelle de Albareda s/n
Jardines de Pereda
39004 Santander

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Architectural styles and approaches often mix freely on Los Angeles’ sun-drenched boulevards, which are lined both with icons such as Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall, and curiosities including the Chinese Theatre and Chateau Marmont. A case in point is Museum Row on Wilshire Boulevard: just past La Brea Tar Pits’ life-sized models of mammoths come the psychedelic wavy steel ribbons of KPF’s Petersen Automotive Museum, and the slanted skylights of Renzo Piano’s Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).

The latest addition to this urban hodgepodge is a gigantic concrete sphere, also by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, now taking shape next to LACMA – a structure in progess that has scooped the Wallpaper* Design Award for Best Building Site. Set to open in late 2019, under the directorship of Kerry Brougher, the impressive volume – a state-of-the-art movie theatre – is part of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

Piano and his team, with executive architect Gensler, are also renovating an adjacent streamline Moderne building, formerly a May Company department store. Highlights of the Saban Building, as it will be known, include temporary galleries, set to open with a retrospective of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki; the Rolex Gallery, charting the evolution of filmmaking post second World War; and the Hurd Gallery, a 34ft-high project space that will initially host an interactive installation by TeamLab.

‘The two buildings of the museum flirt,’ says Piano. Glass bridges will connect the renovated historical structure to the new sphere, inside which a 1,000-seat theatre will show nitrate, 16mm, 35mm and 70mm films and laser projections. The total 300,000 sq ft complex, which will also feature a more intimate 288-seat theatre, a restaurant, a boutique and an education studio, is destined to be a hub for all manner of film-related activities.

Large glass panels will embrace the sphere’s upper portion, and Piano’s idea to light this ‘lens’ at night will conjure a giant eyeball looking skywards. The reason for the form, he says, is the film-going audience: ‘In here, you sit with 999 other people, sharing the pleasure of the film and each other’s presence. The enormous screen in front is slightly curved. If you simply extend that, you end up with an orb.’

Strategic slices into the orb create one of Piano’s signature piazzas and, above, an open terrace that allows views of the Hollywood Hills. it’s just the place to reflect on movie magic and this new pleasure dome’s resonance within the LA landscape. §

As originally featured in the February 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*239)

See more from the Wallpaper* Design Awards here

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Renzo Piano Building Workshop website

‘As an architect you spend your life fighting against the force of gravity. It is the most stubborn force of nature.’ Renzo Piano’s reflections on his eternal struggle to achieve structural weightlessness are captured in a film by Thomas Riedelsheimer, specially commissioned for the Royal Academy’s new exhibition ‘Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings’.

As if responding directly to Piano’s musings, the Academy’s gallery spaces have been filled with an array of soaring architectural models and design elements, suspended from the ceiling like a collection of prototype flying machines. The largest spans the entire length of one gallery, a bright red model representing one of the principal trusses of the main terminal building at Kansai airport in Osaka, Japan.

The airborne exhibits respond to the work laid out below, grouped into detailed case studies of 16 of Piano’s most significant past and ongoing projects, including the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, currently under construction in Los Angeles.

Each case study features an array of volumetric and massing studies, sketches, and concept models, such as those of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, colour coded to match the programme of functions of the building, collectively demonstrating the progression of each project towards the final design.

Other exhibits drawn from the Renzo Piano Building Works (RPBW) archives offer rare insights into the complexities of building to such scale and ambition. The evaluation reports by the Kansai Airport competition jury, complete with hand written notes by Piano in his trademark green pen, are offered alongside the letter from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that gave approval for The Shard in London following the public enquiry of 2003.

At the centrepiece of the exhibition is The Island, an imaginary model specially designed for the show by RPBW that brings together 102 past and current projects into a complete Renzo Piano landscape. The model is surrounded by a series of black and white images by Gianni Berengo Gardin, a long-term friend and collaborator of Piano.

Gardin’s images capture a range of intimate moments from the architect’s life and career and bring, along with Riedelsheimer’s film, a human face to the series of grand civic gestures represented elsewhere. With Piano’s attentions now turning to assist his native Genoa after the recent tragic events, the exhibition readily demonstrates the Italian’s ability to achieve remarkable architectural forms despite the political and economic complexities that face the modern architect.

See our preview of ‘Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings’

INFORMATION

‘Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings’ is open at the Royal Academy of Arts in Lodon from the 15 September 2018 - 20 January 2019. For more information visit the RA website

Azzedine Alaïa dedicated his life to designing clothes that transcended trends, super-enhanced the female physique and upheld the classical ideal. His designs had an apparent simplicity, hard-won through fearless experimentation and technical complexity. One of the last projects he worked on before he passed away in November 2017 was a solo show at London’s Design Museum that would tie in with a new Maison Alaïa flagship store on Bond Street.

Alaïa had prepared the exhibition with gallerist Carla Sozzani, curator Mark Wilson, and the co-director of the Design Museum Alice Black. Entitled ‘Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier’, it will showcase more than 60 outstanding pieces in front of a series of five monumental screens. ‘There has never been an Alaïa show in London. He did not stage big fashion shows and while he was an icon, he was also quite private,’ says Sozzani, founder of Galleria Carla Sozzani and 10 Corso Como in Milan. ‘People don’t necessarily know about his work so it’s wonderful to have this show – the first fashion exhibition at the Design Museum’s Kensington location.’

‘We saw the show as an installation rather than a retrospective,’ says Wilson, who had masterminded two Alaïa shows in 1997 and 2011 at the Netherlands’ Groninger Museum, where he works as chief curator. He came up with the idea for the screens to highlight the sculptural qualities of Alaïa’s clothes: ‘The architectural interventions allow for a 360-degree take on every piece. And it was obvious as to who would make them, as Alaïa had such great relationships with those designers and collected their work.’

Marc Newson, Konstantin Grcic, Kris Ruhs and the Bouroullec brothers were invited to collaborate. To all, Alaïa was a friend, patron and mentor. The brief was to create screens that would complement Alaïa’s work. All battled with the structural complexities of making vast freestanding pieces that could be assembled on site.

In terms of scale, Newson’s is the most ambitious. ‘It was crucial that the pieces remain about Alaïa rather than those intervening to enhance his work,’ says Newson. ‘That’s what we do as designers. I am always working for clients before working for myself. This project was no different, but there is a personal tinge to it because of our friendship,’ adds Newson, who first met Alaïa, through Sozzani, when living in Paris in the early 1990s.

Alaïa collected numerous Newson pieces, including the first aluminium lounger that he made as part of his graduate collection at art school in Sydney. ‘I’ve no idea of how he got hold of it,’ says Newson.

‘There are qualities in Alaïa’s work which shine through: simplicity mixed with technical complexity, rigour, subtlety, sensuality and transparency,’ he continues. ‘There is transparency in many of his garments and that is also the quality of a screen. It’s not a wall, but it has to have some play of light and movement within the absolute structural parameters.’ Newson chose anodised aluminium for his design, adding ‘the metal contrasts and complements the idea that everything around it is a textile’.

The piece, made by aluminium specialist Neal Feay in California, comprises 64 giant tiles, patterned using machine tools and boasting a soft, velvet-like surface. ‘The panels intersect, creating a random yet orderly pattern – almost like a houndstooth,’ says Newson. ‘The anodising process creates these subtle, profound colours – in this case, a flesh pink hue that Alaïa loved. It doesn’t look like hard metal, but sensual and tactile.’

The mission of giving hard surfaces a soft textile-like appearance is a nod to Alaïa’s own material experiments. If he could not find what he liked, he had it developed. He worked in densely-knit tricot for his famous body-sculpting dresses, in fine leather that he made appear as malleable as silk, in semisheer chiffon, sinuous bias-cut silk jersey and laser-cut lace. ‘He would often combine hard architectural elements, such as studs, with fluid materials, creating a tension,’ says Wilson, who has arranged the garments in themes, including volume, African-inspired outfits, black and bandage dresses.

Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec first met Alaïa in 2002 at the opening of their show at Galerie Kreo. Alaïa bought almost the entire collection. ‘It was a sympathetic meeting of shy people with like minds,’ says Ronan. For the Design Museum show, the duo decided on a glass screen. ‘Alaïa had a very precise understanding of silhouette. His clothes are elegant, refined and precise,’ says Ronan. Their textured glass panels (manufactured by Schott AG in Germany) are embedded with a film that creates a wave of gradating grey tones. ‘The quality is neither transparent nor opaque, but translucent,’ says Ronan.

It will be in sharp contrast to the contribution from sculptor Kris Ruhs, who worked with craftsmen in his Marrakech studio for a highly textural, organic piece. ‘It’s like a piece of jewellery, handmade in aluminium,’ says Ruhs. The artist, who created accessories for Alaïa, as well as store interiors, has also worked on a second screen for the show, to display artworks by Alaïa’s partner Christoph von Weyhe.

Konstantin Grcic’s screen is fashioned from polished stainless steel, manufactured by Ronchetti in Italy. ‘Because of the reflective surface, the material becomes somewhat immaterial, like a mirror,’ says Grcic, who constructed the piece from a grid-like pattern of panels. ‘The metal has an undulating surface and one edge is laser cut in a zigzag, like the cut of a tailor’s pinking shears.’ Alaïa owned several Grcic pieces, including a table and a vitrine from his Galerie Kreo shows.

Alaïa’s extensive collection of design and fashion is meticulously archived and housed in the Marais. ‘It’s a subterranean space that has to be as big as a Parisian block,’ says Newson. Works are also on show in his atelier and in stores. The 6,000 sq ft Maison Alaïa store on Bond Street, which is set over three floors, displays designs by Piero Lissoni, Renzo Piano, Naoto Fukasawa, wall sculptures by Ruhs and paintings by von Weyhe, curated by Alaïa and Sozzani, who will now oversee the studio and collections and head up the Azzedine Alaïa Foundation.

Alaïa’s last couture collection was presented in July 2017 and starred his friend Naomi Campbell in a striking velvet bodice and studded pleated gown. Several pieces from this collection will be on show. The giant-scale outfits are juxtaposed with film footage and Richard Wentworth’s almost forensic photographs of the atelier, which he shot over a period of two years. Legions of devotees, including Charlotte Stockdale, Farida Khelfa, Sofia Coppola, Brigitte Macron and Michelle Obama, worship the liberation (the construction is so meticulous that constrictive underwear is unnecessary) and refined eroticism of Alaïa’s clothes. At the time of his death, he was occupied with rescaling all the looks in the show to work with the epic dimensions of the installation.

Just as there is a sense of beautiful complicity between the couturier and the wearer, with Alaïa’s clothes there is also a union of design and culture. ‘All the designers you speak to have such reverence for Alaïa. Through the show we wanted to underline and appreciate that,’ says Black. Adds Newson, ‘Alaïa’s sphere of appreciation was just so broad – he was far more interested in design in general than fashion specifically.’

That like-mindedness was not simply theoretical. It was in Alaïa’s kitchen during his frequent gatherings that bonds were sealed. ‘His circle of friends was vast and from all walks of life. You could be sitting next to Catherine Deneuve, Lauren Bacall, Tadao Ando or Jack Lang – he had a fervid interest in so many things, a big heart and a really mischievous sense of humour,’ reminisces Newson. Says Wilson, ‘The exhibition will be a vision of the epic and the intimate, and a celebration of a generous genius at the epicentre of 20th- and 21st-century design.

Much of Alaïa’s design collection was purchased from Didier and Clémence Krzentowski, founders of Galerie Kreo in Paris. We talk to Clémence about their relationship...

Wallpaper*: How did you first meet Alaïa?
Clémence Krzentowski: Didier and I did a show with Marc [Newson] in 2000, the year after our gallery opened, which is when we met Azzedine. We have a saying in French – ‘On s’est rencontrés et on est tombés amoureux’ – which means we met and fell in love. It was instant connection. Azzedine often referred to Didier as his brother, and Christoph [von Weyhe] said that, in some ways, they even looked alike.

W*: What was your friendship with him like?
CK: We shared all the important moments of our lives with Azzedine. He came to the gallery to see every show, and we often went to events and design fairs together. Most of our encounters were in his kitchen, which was like a second home to us. We talked about fashion and design, but also art, food and nature. He was fascinated by everything. I once asked one of his assistants what he’d learned from Azzedine and he very earnestly replied, ‘I learned life’.

W*: Who did Alaïa admire?
CK: Azzedine loved Marc’s work from the beginning. Marc barely speaks French, and Azzedine didn’t speak English, but they understood each other completely, and Azzedine had a lot of joy in designing the wedding dress for Marc’s wife, Charlotte [Stockdale]. He also had a deep respect and admiration for Konstantin [Grcic], as they were both radical thinkers who enjoyed discovering new things. As for Ronan and Erwan [Bouroullec], he collected their work from the beginning. And since they lived in Paris, they would sometimes come to his kitchen, too.

W*: Do you see similarities in the ways in which Alaïa designed couture and collected furniture?
CK: He was fantastically open-minded about collecting, just as he was about designing. The only criteria he cared about was the content behind each thing. If a piece was interesting, he would want to have it, whether it was a light, a table, a chair, or a work of fashion, art or photography. But he didn’t collect that many names; it would be many pieces from the same people. His relationship with them ran deep.

W*: How was his design collection displayed?
CK: He lived with his pieces, from the Jean Prouvé petrol station that was in his bedroom to pieces by Konstantin and Ronan and Erwan. He had a lot of respect for his things, but he also believed that they should be enjoyed. Since he had too many pieces to have them all at home, the rest was kept at his Paris studio and workshop on rue de la Verrerie. Sometimes we would go and look at all the big boxes containing pieces that hadn’t yet been installed. I do hope they will find their way to his foundation.

As originally featured in the June 2018 issue of Wallpaper* (W*231)

Related: Jony Ive remembers Azzedine Alaïa

INFORMATION

‘Azzedine Alaïa: The Couturier’ is on view until 7 October. For more information, visit the Design Museum website

ADDRESS

Design Museum
224-238 Kensinton High Street
Kensington
London
W8 6AG

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Revealed earlier this month, a series of recent works by Giuseppe Penone is being exhibited in the Renzo Piano-designed pavilion at Château La Coste, the sumptuous Provençal property that combines vineyards, hospitality and large-scale contemporary art.

But before entering the compact architectural space – located just steps beyond Frank Gehry’s reconstructed Serpentine Pavilion from 2008 – visitors will confront two of Penone’s works that have been placed outside. The first consists of a barren bronze tree rising nearly 13m, into which a massive rock precariously nestles, with a second rock resting safely on the ground. The other is a giant slab of upright Carrara marble sculpted with veined patterning in low and high relief – either mimicking the stone itself or else a vaguely anthropomorphic reference.
 
If it seems obvious that these works are in dialogue with their surroundings – a leafless tree amid a verdant setting, the marble’s irregular peephole offering a picturesque view to an expanse of vines – Penone alternately points out his intention to communicate with the architecture. The slab, by complete coincidence, picks up the exact sloping line of Piano’s exterior concrete wall, while the tree begins another perspective line to his marble and bronze trunk sculpture at the rear side of the sunken building, where a narrow reflecting pool and grassy knoll fill the backdrop.
 
‘You see a link created with the elements of the space,’ notes the artist, who began his tireless career nearly 50 years ago as a young member of the Arte Povera movement. While the two Italian talents have known each other for some time, they have never directly collaborated; for the exhibition programme, the architect volunteered a sketch of the project.

Installation view of ‘Giuseppe Penone: Des Corps de Pierre’

Speaking with Wallpaper* from the lobby of the Villa La Coste hotel, perched above the pavilion, Penone explains how this presentation of eight works, including five recent drawings, furthers his expression of identity via elemental materials both large (one sculpture weighs nearly a tonne) and small (a natural grain of sand accompanied by a sculpted counterpart). Within the title Des Corps de Pierre (‘The Bodies of Stone’) is the notion that no two bodies – not natural river stones, not even pencil dots on paper – can be considered identical.
 
‘There is not a grain of sand that is identical to another. To try and make two identical grains, you introduce a system in the world that is completely artificial,’ he says, adding how this one – ostensibly identical to the human eye – involved the assistance of a nanotechnology expert in Grenoble and that future versions will be even more indistinguishable. ‘In language, there aren’t actually that many possibilities to recognise the visual characteristics [of stone] like with humans or animals. So we always try to understand these things with our own bodies and our thoughts.’
 
This sentiment accounts for his drawing of four coloured marks at the centre of a pointillist eye, as part of a series called Identità (‘Identity’). Arguably, however, within the context of Piano’s gallery, where natural light fills the space indirectly, Penone’s ideas need not be fully grasped to be appreciated. What registers most is how the compositions feel deeply grounded – or else penned to the walls – making his presence felt in ways both substantial and metaphysical.
 
His recurring depiction of trees confirms as much: ‘It’s a living form that memorises its entire existence in its structure. It’s a perfect sculpture that is able to show the necessity of its life. It’s this perfection that allows it to function anywhere – whether placed in a desert or a forest.’
 
On that note, once the exhibition ends and his trees have been uprooted, does Penone feel he will have left a trace on the property? ‘Of course,’ he replies enthusiastically. ‘I have been walking on the soil of the vines many times. That soil will remember that I have been there.’

INFORMATION

‘Giuseppe Penone: Des Corps de Pierre’ is on view until 26 November. The next exhibition at Château La Coste, ‘Your Way’ by Jeppen Hein, opens on 30 September. For more information, visit the Château La Coste website and the Marian Goodman Gallery website

ADDRESS

Château La Coste
2750 Route De La Cride
13610 Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Just one year on from its opening, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre (SNFCC, previewed in W*199) in Athens has seen 1.3 million visitors exploring its site, tracing routes, unrolling yoga mats and discovering the best spot to watch the sun set.

Designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW), the SNFCC rises out of Athens’ suburban coastal landscape at Kallithea like a longstanding landmark. It erases memories of the vacant car park left over from the 2004 Summer Olympics, now a 32m-high artificial hill that might be as old as the Acropolis. It opens up the ‘beautiful view’, which the ancient port of Kallithea was originally named after, making you forget that it had once been obstructed by a busy highway. It is here, in this former void, that activity has since organically thrived at the core of a community in need of normality, space and nature.

‘They didn’t have anything before,’ says Giorgio Bianchi, partner at RPBW and lead architect on the SNFCC project. He knows Athens well and is familiar with the city’s dense architecture and narrow streets. ‘There is another big park in Athens, but it is very claustrophobic. This one generates activities and the desire to go there. You see the Aegean Sea, then turn 180 degrees and you see the Acropolis and the city. You can spend your day there.’

A year on, experiences such as riding a bike along the long, smooth pathways, catching the sea breeze and the notes of the National Orchestra performing outdoors are starting to feel like part of the fabric of daily life for local Athenians, who return and return again. Bianchi, too, has returned frequently to the SNFCC: ‘We never abandon our projects,’ he says (RPBW is even still involved with the management of public space at the Pompidou). ‘What is very impressive is that, even though the park receives a lot of people, they are respectful because they see the space is well designed.’

The design arose from the need to combine new facilities for the Greek National Opera, National Library of Greece and the new Stavros Niarchos Park on the site. ‘We thought that, if we raise the land up in a very simplistic way, just like you would take a piece of paper from one side and lift it up, the park becomes the building, and the building is under the park,’ says Bianchi. Totally unique to its geographical context, the ingenious design allowed for 90,000 sq m of facilities and 175,000 sq m for the Stavros Niarchos Park to be combined without compromise.

Responding to the brief for a park that would host events and performances and be fully accessible to the disabled, RPBW worked closely with New York-based landscape designer Deborah Nevins and local practice H Pangalou & Associates, planning gridded gardens of local fauna and long connective pathways.

‘The park is artificially made but it is slowly creating an ecosystem of its own,’ says Miyon Yoo, park and landscaping manager at the SNFCC. She witnesses children participating daily in sailing classes on the 400m-long seawater canal, gardening workshops, or simply just spending time there watching and being with others. ‘By itself, it is an educational tool for the locals – children will grow and evolve as the park matures and evolves over time,’ she says.

The SNFCC public educational programme has been designed to cater to all ages, races and physical differences; inside the lobby area of the National Library, computer classes for the over-65s have been a big hit – and doubled in frequency to meet demand, seeing loyal attendees returning each week to follow the course.

Reflecting the daily rituals of the park, the architecture of the centre allows the community to find the space they need, even during the unforgiving afternoon heat of the summer. The central ‘Agora’ space connects the three main buildings, with the long, cool canal completing the square. A wide pavilion at the summit of the park provides shade, and collects solar energy through its roof lined with 10,000 sq m of photovoltaic cells.

So will the SNFCC stand the test of time? While its remarkable architecture might attract curious new visitors, it also provides a space for the community to return to each day, from early morning dog walks to evening strolls as the sun sets over the Aegean. These regulars should be the judge of that.

As originally featured in the September 2017 issue of Wallpaper* (W*222)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the SNFCC website and the RPBW website

ADDRESS

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre
364 Syggrou Avenue
176 74 Kallithea

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

It was the summer solstice. Renzo Piano stood on the glass and steel platform cantilevering 20m into the Bay of Santander from the Centro Botín, the latest project to be completed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. ‘Water is my natural habitat, salty water,’ he said, looking out into the sea towards the vague definition of the landscape on the other side of the bay.

The platform is not a terrace or a balcony, but an intimate viewing platform for one to become suspended in the horizon. Over the course of the day, it is the best place to watch the colours of the sea and sky change from a bright morning blue, to a pale cloudy afternoon haze, and then intensify into a midnight blue as the sun sets behind the clouds.

‘He was a man in love with the water. In another life he was a fisherman, even though I know he was a banker,’ Piano says quite fondly of Emilio Botín, who commissioned the building in 2011 and unfortunately passed away in 2014 before seeing it realised.

The two leaders, from very different professions and backgrounds, struck up an easy relationship that began with their mutual love of the sea – and even though they discussed their ideas for the project in different languages (Botín in Spanish, Piano in Italian), each always understood the other’s sentiment.

Piano describes Botín as a ‘man with imagination’, who was ‘in love with the city of Santander’. Someone who understood the ‘metaphysical’ nature of what he was trying to achieve, through the architecture of the Centro Botín on the edge of the bay.

Botín had been resolute that it was Piano, without competition, who was to design the building that would represent the cultural legacy of the Botín Foundation, which promotes social development through education and creative enterprises in Spain and Latin America.

Before national alliances or borders, Piano identifies as a southern European, which comes with a sensitive understanding of the cultural spirit of Spain. And, quite remarkably, the Centro Botín is Piano’s first building in Spain, which has been realised in collaboration with Madrid-based Luis Vidal + Architects.

The Centro Botín is located in a strategic part of the city, placed on a corner of land that curves around the historic centre of Santander connecting the Paseo de Pereda that extends down the bay to the beach, to the ferry port that extends in the other direction towards the commercial district.

The bulky tank shaped building is covered in the 280,000 pearly, circular ceramic tiles. Like the scales of a fish, the surface effervesces in the sunlight, absorbing reflections from the sea. The volume of the building has been sliced neatly down the centre, and opened up to reveal two façades of glass (which allow floods of light into the gallery and auditorium spaces inside).

These two volumes have been hoisted up onto slim stilts and a fully glazed ground floor restaurant, café and shop. Quite characteristically, Piano moved the circulation to the exterior, so the volumes are accessible and connected by light walkways and staircases of steel and glass. The architecture encourages visitors to enjoy the salty breeze and the sea views as they pass from the auditorium to the gallery or explore the viewing platforms.

‘I have never seen a square fish, and we wanted it to come up out of the water,’ Piano says of the curved shape and the elevation of the building. One of the main motivations to curve the edges of the building was to shave off volume to allow more light to reach the public space beneath the building, and also to allow for uninterrupted views of the sea.

The building is certainly not elegant. It’s more of a tin of sardines, than a tropical Blue Gourami. It does not smoothly rise up out of the waterfront like AL_A’s MAAT. Nor does it swirl up like Niemeyer’s MAC in Niterói, Brazil. Or indeed is it quite as iconic looking as Gehry’s Guggenheim in neighbouring Bilbao. Yet, its bulky and awkward form does not look totally out of place.

The submarine-style building quotes the industrial waterfront economy of the city, which originated as a Roman port settlement, and now is a major cruise ship terminal. Driving down the S-10 road into the city, from the rocky and green countryside of Cantabria, Santander’s urban identity is defined by the warehouses, tanks and containers of the fishing and ship building industries that line the waterfront.

The S-10 soon merges into the city, passing through the Barrio Pescquero, past the ferry port, and just beyond there, when the Centro Botín looms, the road that carries 13 million vehicles a year, sinks beneath the surface of the land to smoothly underpass the new piece of completely public land – an urban intervention designed by RPBW. Originally reclaimed from the sea in the 1800s, this land was previously a disused loading bay, an expanse of sunburnt grey concrete.

‘Cities are full of black holes that have been left from industrialisation. This wasn’t the case here, but we are resolving a part of the city that was doing something else – it’s about transformation,’ says Piano, whose design encompassed a mini-masterplan that reconnected the centre of the city to the waterfront, extended the Paseo de Pereda and doubled the existing Jardins de Pereda from 20,000 sq m to 48,000 sq m.

‘The most important thing of our time is the transformation of cities. And instead of making them bigger and adding more peripheries, it is to intensify and give quality to the city by implosion,’ says Piano.

The public space around the building is just as important, if not more important, than the building itself. Designed with landscape designer Fernando Caruncho, the Jardins de Pereda, which date back to 1905, have been modernised and redesigned. Historical monuments have been retained, while contemporary updates include a new urban sculpture by Spanish artist Cristina Iglesias.

‘The fundamental thing was to leave everything open and accessible,’ says Piano of the space surrounding the Centro Botín. Here, concrete paths, stained blue with copper and iron sulphate, connect the Alfonso XII Square to the new playground (already populated with shouting children, café pavilion – that was redeveloped from a former petrol station, and to the Centro Botín. A blue stepped amphitheatre, already clipped by skateboards, blends into the plaza that runs beneath the Centro Botín, which rolls out to the bay.

While the Centro Botín is a monument to the foundation and the family that have funded it, it is also a new public space that has been carved out for the public to enjoy. Walking across the blue concrete plaza beneath the steel platforms, from the gardens to the bay, colours intensified as the sun set on the solstice – life feels more amplified when framed by Renzo Piano.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Centro Botín website and Renzo Piano Building Workshop website

ADDRESS

Muelle de Albareda s/n
Jardines de Pereda
39004 Santander
Spain

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Pritzker Prize-winning Italian architect Renzo Piano (known for his collaboration with Richard Rogers on The Centre Georges Pompidou, and later, The Shard, and the Whitney Museum in New York, to name just a few) is soon to unveil his highly anticipated cultural building: the Centro Botín in Santander.

Remarkably, given Piano’s prevalence around the world, it is the architect’s first ever building in Spain, and it’s hardly a humble debut: the 10,285 sq m site took six years to construct (after a three year delay) and will be a landmark on Santander’s waterfront, looking out across the bay, with a raised walkway over the sea, and epic curving windows to frame the surrounding views.

Now finally complete and set to open its doors on 23 June, fans of Piano’s high-tech, postmodernist style will appreciate the Centro’s raised, spaceship-like building, standing on stilts, with its grey-hued metal staircases and two D-shaped blocks covered with 270,000 scintillating ceramic discs, reflecting the abundant light that shines on Spain’s northern coast.

As ever, in both design and aesthetic, Piano strikes a balance between the natural environment and functionality, between industrial materials and natural qualities. The historic Pereda Gardens, in which the museum is set, for example, have been extended to double their previous size by Piano in collaboration with landscape designer Fernando Caruncho, emphasising Piano’s interest in connecting spaces with the outdoors, and providing an arena for public arts, such as newly commissioned sculpture with flowing water by Cristina Iglesias.

Centro Botín is the home of the Fundación Botín, one of the country’s largest collections of international contemporary art, but alongside the display of its permanent collection, a programme of special temporary exhibitions will be staged across the 2,500 sq ft at Centro Botín. 

The inaugural shows look at the local past and the global present: artist Carsten Höller (who also presents his work to the Spanish public for the first time) presents a parallel with Piano’s own elevated approach with Elevator Bed, a fully-equipped room with a rotating bed that visitors can book in advance to view the exhibition from a different perspective, while a major Goya exhibit offers a more static experience of 80 drawings, mining Spain’s cultural history.

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Renzo Piano Building Workshop website

The recent sales launch of 565 Broome SoHo marks the first opportunity to live inside one of celebrated architect Renzo Piano’s buildings in New York. The 30-storey, two-tower condominium, with its impressive glass exterior set within a light cast iron grid, is set to become an iconic addition to New York’s booming residential scene upon completion come 2018.

Piano was drawn to the SoHo site because of its natural and relatively low-level surroundings, that open up 360-degree views of Manhattan, Tribeca and the Hudson River. Reaching 290 ft tall from a half-acre footprint, the high-rise scheme provides plenty of surface area as well as external views, which Piano prioritised for 565 Broome Street’s lucky residents-to-be.

Designing the building, the architect relished ‘the ability to create a building that actually breathes air and light’. Curved glass windows skim corners for uninterrupted views and master bathrooms are positioned on perimetre glass walls for skyline gazing from freestanding tubs.

The design team also specified low-iron glass; this transmits light at a higher rate for optimum clarity, as well as improving interior light levels. Piano’s desire was to ‘make you feel like you are flying’. Extending living beyond the glass to the outdoors, some homes feature private outdoor terraces with 25-ft saltwater pools.

The building accommodates 115 residencies ranging from studios to four-bedroom homes, which have been decked out by Paris-based design firm RDAI. Luxury surfaces are built into the interior with six-inch white oak plank flooring in the living spaces and white Calacatta Caldia with maple-coloured Eramosa marble in the bathrooms.

All residents will be able to use amenities including a pool, fitness centre, yoga studio, media room and playroom, along with a circular driveway at ground level for ease of access. 

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Renzo Piano Building Workshop website

Images: Noë & Associates with The Boundary

Financially troubled Athens may not seem like the obvious place for the next big public building opening. Even so, the Greek capital has just seen a grand new cultural complex open its doors for the first time, courtesy of the non-profit Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and architect Renzo Piano.

The project has been a long time in the making. Located in the southern Athenian district of Kallithea, it includes the National Library of Greece, the Greek National Opera and a 210,000 sq m landscaped park. It was kick-started in the 1990s by the library and opera authorities and the SNF – the philanthropic organisation set up by the eponymous Greek shipping magnate – and commissioned to the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in 2008.

The area is one of the capital’s most densely populated municipalities and this injection of green space is a much-needed addition. Piano’s design also aims to restore the long-lost connection between Kallithea and the sea, through its carefully picked orientation and raised vistas.

The architect's proposal includes an artificial hill on the site’s southernmost tip, under the highest point of which are nestled the two buildings, and on which the large public park unfolds. The two-auditorium opera house and the library are topped by a glass-enclosed multifunctional space called the Lighthouse. A public piazza, called the Agora, links the two main functions together.

Offering great views of the sea (enhanced by the presence of a 30m-wide esplanade running along the site’s main north-south pedestrian axis) the park, designed by Deborah Nevins & Associates, is also packed with eco-friendly elements. These include solar panels, water recycling and flood defence mechanisms; sustainability and a green element for the neighbourhood were both key to the team’s overall approach.

The complex was built using foundation funds, but upon completion it will be donated to the Greek state. The coming weekend will be marked by a series of events, artworks and performances, called 'Metamorphosis: The SNFCC to the World', to celebrate the new Cultural Centre’s first viewing.

INFORMATION

'Metamorphosis: The SNFCC to the World' will be on view until 26 June. For more information, visit the SNFCC website and Renzo Piano’s website

Photography: Yiorgis Yerolymbos

ADDRESS

SNFCC Visitors Center
Evripidou & Doiranis Streets
Kallithea, Athens
Greece

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

After the Renzo Piano Building Workshop's landmark collaboration with the Sellar Property Group on London's Shard tower, the Italian starchitect has just released plans for one more venture with the British property developers in the capital. 

Paddington Place, a mixed use complex set to sit adjacent to Paddington Station, has been launched by Sellar in collaboration with the Great Western Developments Ltd, who submitted this week a planning application for the redevelopment of a former Royal Mail sorting office that will be part of the complex.

The scheme involves 1.3 acres of public realm, a centrepiece 254-metre tall slender tower, 330 new homes, as well as office space for business of varied sizes; but public infrastructure is set to benefit from the project too. The plans include a new and enlarged ticket hall and step-free access to the Bakerloo Line platforms, as well as enhanced connections between the station's other lines. Retail and leisure space will host cafes and restaurants, spilling out to an accessible roof garden. 

The team behind the development aims to transform the area around Paddington Station with this project – improving connectivity, streamlining circulation and breathing new life to the neighbourhood with its public space, which includes a large piazza, and street-level café and restaurant scene.

INFORMATION

For more information on RPBW visit the website

Images: courtesy of Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Enter into the gallery space dedicated to Renzo Piano Building Workshop; 'La Méthode Piano' at the Cité de l’Architecture  et du Patrimoine in Paris, and you will be confronted with an impressive model of the Centre Pompidou—made from Lego bricks. Built around the same time as its full-size counterpart, it offers a playful introduction to a richly detailed show, while also representing RPBW’s raison d’être: the art of construction, piece by piece.

Timed to the architect’s 50 years in practice, and adapted from an exhibition conceived by the Renzo Piano Foundation, 'La Méthode Piano' plays out not as a retrospective, but rather a survey of 15 major projects, including the Kimbell Art Museum expansion, the Tijbaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia, the new Whitney Museum of American Art, and yes, The Shard. Consistent with the “workshop” framework, each is laid out as a case study of photos, renderings, models, catalogues and text within identical white tables surrounded by folding chairs. As you linger at each station pouring over the materials, certain insights and themes start to emerge between such vastly different projects, cumulatively achieved over several decades.

To wit: Piano’s loyalty to a humble green felt-tip pen. If this isn’t obvious enough from all his personal sketches, one of many videos catches the side of his hand covered in green smudges. More substantially, visitors will come away from the show understanding his commitment to environmentally conscious, sustainable construction—from the sample of shredded denim used as an insulation alternative at the California Academy of Sciences, to the frequent use of photovoltaic cells, ventilating facades, light sensitive glass roofs and fully integrated green spaces. With at least six of the featured works still in process—from the Children’s Surgery Centre made from compacted earth in Entebbe Uganda to the sprawling Columbia University Campus—they reveal how RPBW’s team of 150 people is constantly rising to any number of enormous challenges, and how every solution must endure for the long term.

A few days before the exhibition opened, the Genoa-born architect addressed this subject in front of a small audience consisting of students and a contemporary or two (i.e. Jean Nouvel). He explained how his family’s construction business exposed him early on to the idea of building things as a collective, and how Genoa’s seaport allowed him to appreciate that such massive vessels possessed the lightness to float on water. Sounding more like a humanist than someone who recently completed a 72-storey gleaming glass tower, he also emphasised the importance of modesty as an essential, levelling characteristic of any good architect. His takeaway message—and one that resonates throughout the show – 'We don't change the world, but we confirm change.'

INFORMATION

’Renzo Piano Building Workshop: La méthode Piano’ is on show till 29 February 2016. For more information visit the Renzo Piano Building Workshop website

ADDRESS

Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine
Palais de Chaillot
1 place du Trocadéro
75116 Paris

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Taking its name from its Mediterranean vistas, the Athenian district of Kallithea (‘beautiful view’) is strategically situated at the southern edge of the Greek capital, looking out towards Faliro Bay and Piraeus. Great sea views might once have been one of its key assets, but for the better part of the last half-century, they have been obstructed by a wave of urbanization, with polykatoikies (the typical local apartment blocks) taking up much of the free space. Having sacrificed green and open areas, as well as those coveted sea views, Kallithea is now one of the most densely populated municipalities in Greece.

Renzo Piano’s ambitious scheme for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre is set to change this. Comprising the National Library of Greece and the Greek National Opera in a 170,000 sq m landscaped park, this new complex is located some 4km south of the city centre and aims to restore the long lost connection between Kallithea, and consequently Athens, and the sea.

The project was born in the late 1990s, when first the National Library and then the Greek National Opera approached the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), the philanthropic organization set up by Greek shipping magnate Stavros Spyros Niarchos (1909-1996), for financial help in order to upgrade their facilities. The foundation decided to combine the two requests, add a public park and launch an international competition for the project – the largest and most complex of its kind for them. The chosen site was an area of 211,000 sq m in southern Kallithea that served as a parking lot during the 2004 Athens Olympics. The Renzo Piano Building Workshop won the commission in 2008.

Piano’s clever proposal revolves around an artificial hill looking out towards the sea. It reaches a height of 32m and partly becomes the cultural complex’s accessible green roof. The centre sits at the site’s southernmost point and includes the project’s two main functions, placed within two wings. It marks the culmination of the park’s gentle slope and offers great views of the sea. The connection to the sea is further underlined by the presence of the esplanade, a brand new, 30m-wide canal that will run along the site’s main north-south pedestrian axis.

The opera comprises two auditoriums of 400 and 1,400 seats, while the library will be a valuable public resource. A striking, glass-enclosed, multifunctional space, called the Lighthouse, will offer 360-degree views of Athens and the sea. The two wings are united by a central open-air public space, the Agora, as well as several shared exhibition and conference rooms, a café and a bookstore.

The complex was built using the foundation’s funds, but upon completion, it will be donated to the Greek state. Not only will it add an important cultural and educational dimension to the area, but the design is also packed with eco-friendly elements, from solar panels and water recycling, to the canal, which can be used as an anti-flooding measure for the whole site. ‘We would like the project to become a beacon of sustainability,’ explains SNF’s chief technical officer Theodore Maravelias. ‘We wanted that right from the start and we chose the architects with that in mind. And this decision is not about winning awards – it was an integral part that defined the project from its very birth.’

The centre promises a new, important green hub for Athens – one of its largest – and the densely built city desperately needs it. A striking 85 per cent of the site is devoted to the park, designed by landscape firm Deborah Nevins & Associates. ‘It is important to not think of the park as simply the main building’s outside space,’ says Maravelias. ‘It is more like a park that accommodates a complex of buildings in one of its corners.’

The complex may not be ready for delivery until spring 2016 (with the official opening planned for the following year), but its positive ripple effect is already being felt in the wider area. Extra care has been taken for the construction to be respectful of the residential areas around it, and a programme of events on site draws in the locals. ‘It is such a big and complex project, but we had no complaints whatsoever,’ says Maravelias. ‘The state and local municipalities embraced it and saw it as a central landmark to the wider development of this part of Athens.’ Indeed, a few years after Piano’s appointment, his office was commissioned for a masterplan study that involves the future redevelopment of the nearby Faliro Bay seafront – possibly the next stage in the area’s transformation.

As originally featured in the October 2015 issue of Wallpaper* (W*199)

INFORMATION

For more information, visit the Renzo Piano Building Workshop website, or the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre website

Moscow's iconic red-brick Red October district has been slowly transforming into a vibrant neighbourhood of art, food and culture ever since its well known chocolate factory moved out, leaving a rich collection of industrial buildings behind, ripe for redevelopment. 

The area's latest ambitious project is the revival of the nearby disused GES2 power station (originally built between 1904 and 1907), which is set to be redesigned for the contemporary arts foundation V-A-C - an organisation dedicated to the growth and promotion of Russian contemporary art, across different media and channels. Heading the architectural scheme is Italian architect Renzo Piano and his Building Workshop.

The project is designed to comprise ample public space - an extensive free access area with a sculptural garden and piazza, library, bookshop, café, restaurant and auditorium. The foundation's exhibition halls will form a separate key part of the building, while there will also be a dedicated section in the complex for education programs. 

The plant's existing, dramatic chimneys - a landmark for the area - are slated to remain, also becoming, after this revamp, an indispensable part of the site' sustainability strategy, which also includes solar cells and geothermal sources. Completion is planned after the end of 2018.

One of the architect’s section sketches for the new V-A-C foundation space in Moscow

INFORMATION

Images: Courtesy of RPBW, 2015

Architects have long turned their hand to product design – from David Adjaye to David Chipperfield and Zaha Hadid – these A-listers have all occasionally thought small in scale and occasionally wiggly. (Yes, Frank Gehry, we’re looking at you!)

To mark our 200th issue, we decided to double our Power 100 into a meaty, two-ton Power 200; an upscaled calibration of design achievement. Or rather 100+100 (normal disservice will be resumed next year) – including the top 20 architects to turn their pencils to product design.

Rising in the ranks are the likes of master multi-tasker Antonio Citterio, great British minimalist John Pawson and the monochromatically stylish Richard Meier. Daniel Libeskind, Isay Weinfeld, Shigeru Ban and Toyo Ito feature prominently as well, pushing the boundaries of product and material ever further. There are also illuminaries like Nigel Coates, Jean Nouvel, Mario Bellini, Renzo Piano and Rem Koolhaas/OMA who have and pretty much done it all. While collaboration isn’t a requirement, many have turned their talents to similar brands, including legendary Italian brand Alessi which counts Peter Zumthor, SANAA, Norman Foster, Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas among their stylish ranks. 

Let the debate begin...

See the Power 200 in full here

INFORMATION
See the Power 200 in full

Erling Kagge's exhibition 'Love Story,' a contemporary art collection that emphasises youthful anarchy, pop euphoria, and probing post-conceptual artists. Pictured here is 'Rolls Royce Adaptives' by Franz West. He made six hood ornaments, one for each day of the working week.

Around the waterfront in Oslo, you can experience what the director of Norway's Institute for Contemporary Art has called the city's 'dynamic moment'. Scaffolding signals a new wave of cultural destinations that will join existing gems such as the Opera House, the ambitious Ekeberg sculpture park, and a high concentration of artist-run spaces.

Beside the Oslofjord is the sweeping glass roof of the Renzo Piano-designed Astrup Fearnley Museum, which now houses an intriguing collection of contemporary art, titled Love Story. It belongs to Arctic explorer, lawyer, publisher, and all-round thrill-seeker Erling Kagge.

Having sailed repeatedly across the Atlantic, conquered the 'Three Poles' - North, South, and the summit of Everest - and reached the cover of Time magazine,  Kagge began to seek challenges from the world of art. The result is a collection that emphasises youthful anarchy, pop euphoria, and probing post-conceptual artists.

Kagge's collection includes comprehensive bodies of Raymond Pettibon, Franz West, Tauba Auerbach, Trisha Donnelly, Sergej Jenson, Klara Lidén and Wolfgang Tillmans. In a book he has published for the exhibition, A Poor Collector's Guide to Buying Great Art, Kagge compares collecting to his exploits as an explorer. He likes to gamble on artists early in their careers, buying them in big quantities, and moving on when they become established.

The main theme of Kagge's collection is not a theme at all, but an unresolved quality. 'I find it difficult to love what I understand. Great art to me is strange', he says, 'I strongly believe you sometimes have to break rules to feel free'. He likes artists who embody their work, and has a special affinity for Trisha Donnelly: 'It is as though her personality has taken form'.

While most people who turn to collecting because they've done everything else have terrible taste, Kagge's boldness and curiosity have served him well.

The collection is on show at the Astrup Fearnley museum, designed by Renzo Piano and situated beside the Oslofjord in Norway. courtesy of Astrup Fearnley Museum

The sloping roof of the museum which was completed in 2012. courtesy of Astrup Fearnley Museum

Kagge has a special affinity for artist Trisha Donnelly. Pictured here is 'Untitled' (2007), 'Enamel on fabric,' and 'Portikus, Frankfurt am Main' installation (2010).

A room devoted to Swedish artist Klara Lidén. Kagge says, ‘as an urban explorer, I identify with Klara’s projects and the idea of having access to locked houses, tunnels and bridges.

Work by Wolfgang Tillmans, 'Freischwimmer 118' (2005), and 'Venus Transit, second contact' (2004).

'Yellow Door Semicircle' (2008), by Olafur Eliasson, the artwork is made up of a spotlight, tripod, mirror and colour projection foil.

Works by Raymond Pettibon, Kagge says, ‘I have lived with his art for fifteen years, and somehow it never bores me.'

This sculpture is called 'Kaleidoscope City' (2004) by Olafur Eliasson. Pictured in the background are paintings by Tauba Auerbach.

ADDRESS

Strandpromenaden 2
0252 Oslo
Norway

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Teresa Iarocci Mavica has the looks of a 20th-century movie star and the drive to match. Neapolitan by birth, she has lived in Moscow since 1989, and from the early Noughties has carved out a place in its art world. In 2003, she helped to establish the city’s first contemporary art foundation, Stella, and under its aegis brought Basquiats and Warhols to Russia. Then she played a part in setting up the city’s first private contemporary gallery. By 2009, she was working closely with Leonid Mikhelson. Mr Mikhelson, as he is generally known, is the richest man in Russia. Teresa calls him Leonid.

Mikhelson, whose fortune was made in oil and gas, started collecting modern and contemporary art in 2008, only has made rapid headway in a decade. He assembled a blue chip set, including Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois and even a Francis Bacon. In 2009, he also decided to start a foundation.

V-A-C ( it stands for Victoria, the Art of being Contemporary) is named for Mikhelson’s daughter, an art history graduate who may or may not take over the reigns in the fullness of time. But for now, it is Mikhelson and Mavica who are on a mission to bring international contemporary art to Russia, and Russian art to the world. ‘The most important thing, though, is to provide a genuine training ground for curators and technicians as well as artists,’ says Mavica. ‘We need homegrown theorists and writers. We need to build an audience. There’s nothing you can’t do in Russia, but it will take time and Leonid won’t let me go until we’ve made it happen.’

We are standing outside a decommissioned power station in central Moscow, a surprisingly fancy early 20th-century edifice on an island in the Moscow river. It used to provide electricity to the nearby Kremlin, but now only its outer walls remain. Inside is a building site that would make British health and safety types turn pale with horror, where gangs of workers from the outlying parts of the former Soviet Union carry heavy pipes up slippery mud slopes.

In charge of its transformation into exhibition space (possibly up to 20,000 square metres), cafes and offices is the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, and particularly the project architect Antonio Belvedere. The overriding ideal is to make a space with the welcoming power of the early-era Pompidou in Paris and democratise access to contemporary art.

The power station was switched off at the end of 2015, and Mikhelson was quick to win the bid to take it on. Mavica was initially dismayed. In 2012, V-A-C had also successfully bid for the Palazzo delle Zattere in Venice, as an out-of-Russia operational HQ. ‘The others competing for the palazzo, they all wanted to turn it into a hotel,’ shrugs Mavica. ‘There was no question that our bid had more substance and would add more cultural value to the city.’

She was rather assuming that following its dazzling opening in 2017 – the launch show was a co-production with the Art Institute of Chicago, with over a 100 Soviet artworks from the 1920s and 30s rubbing up against new works from the likes of Wolfgang Tillmans and Tania Bruguera – her life would gradually gravitate back to the country of her birth. ‘I thought, Venice, it’s not so far from Naples,’ she says. But Mikhelson had other ideas.

Now Mavica is in charge of seeing GES2, as the Moscow project is called, through to completion, which she believes will happen in the spring of 2019. ‘Things occur differently here,’ she assures me on several occasions. ‘The men work in three shifts around the clock. You’ll see. Moscow moves at a different speed altogether.’

That much is true, but there is much to do. Apart from the heroic main building, another unremarkable one already on the site, which once contained a brewery, will be converted into a fully-equipped production centre, where art works can be made. Yet another will contain seven apartments where artists-in-residence will spend extended periods, researching and developing new projects.

Once GES2 is open, visitors will be lured to it in various ways. The local audience for contemporary art is in a fledgling state (the Garage in Gorky Park is just three years old) so it is hoped that Muscovites will at least be attracted by the piazza in front of GES2, a bright new piece of public realm that Renzo Piano has designed into the campus, from where they will have an uninterrupted view into the building’s interior through a fully glazed front facade. ‘Then perhaps they’ll decide to go inside, to the café,’ says Mavica. ‘And who knows, one day they’ll actually come back just for the art.’

Meanwhile, a crew of the city’s young curators are having a practice run at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, housed in a building which is said to have sheltered Napoleon as Moscow burnt to the ground around him in 1812. Here an exhibition opened at the weekend featuring works from the V-A-C foundation, the museum’s own collection, and KADIST, a Paris-based organisation with its own holding of international contemporary art and an interdisciplinary programme. On the museum’s uppermost floor over a hundred artworks occupy rooms on two sides of a long corridor, arranged thematically, as though stored in a well-planned attic. From these, the curators have selected exhibits (leaving ‘body outlines’ where works have been removed) and put together a narrative show on the floors below derived from the characters and preoccupations of Chekhov’s The Seagull.

They have clearly had a lot of fun doing this – imagine those passionate conversations about which artworks best represented Nina! (It’s a Tauba Auerbach illusory 3D painting and a Lisa Duchesne marble surf board, apparently). But visitors might do better to switch off the curatorial light, and just trawl through the work, much of which speaks quite eloquently for itself. From Christopher Williams’ practically pornographic camera series to the exquisite scultpures of Vadim Sidur and Philippe Parreno’s adorably kitsch helium fish, there is much to love. Meanwhile, the building has been stripped off its municipal misery by the eau-de-nil furniture and display interventions by Koenraad Debobbeleer. Enjoy that too.

The exhibition is called General Rehearsal – a rather Europeanised way to say Dress Rehearsal (it is Repetition Generale in French). Still, we get the message. Let’s hope that when the full performance opens at GES2 in the spring (fingers firmly crossed behind back) Russia will confidently start down its contemporary art road. One wonders what Mikhelson will come up with next to keep Mavica in Moscow.

INFORMATION

‘General Rehearsal’ is on from 26 Apr–16 Sep 2018 at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art

ADDRESS

Petrovka Ulitsa 25
Moscow
Russia
125009

For more information visit the website.

The new V-A-C Foundation museum is slated to open in spring 2019

ADDRESS

25 Pestroska Street
Moscow
For more information visit the V-A-C Foundation website

If architecture is the poetry of construction, Renzo Piano's latest creation, the new Whitney Museum of American Art, opening to the public on the 1st May, is a metaphor in concrete and steel. Piano has more than proved he knows how to showcase art with projects like the Menil Collection in Houston and the Beyeler Foundation Museum in Basel.

Here he has seized his chance to frame a different type of view: stand on the terraces stacked along the eastern edge of the building and take in the expansive vistas of the city that has been the Whitney's home for 85 years and has fuelled its drive for innovation. Turn around and gaze through the column-free galleries to windows that look out over the Hudson River and westward to the nation beyond, the Whitney's self-assigned jurisdiction. It's not just breathtaking; it's a 360-degree view of the Whitney's mission.

There are those who will miss the old uptown Whitney, designed by Marcel Breuer. They need not mourn. When cosmetics mogul and Whitney chairman emeritus Leonard Lauder gifted the museum $131m in 2008, he did so with the proviso that it not sell the Breuer building. Now, it is being leased to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for at least eight years. 

While the Breuer building was heavy and brooding, its form representing the 'purity of the art', Piano's Whitney, by contrast, recognises that 'art is embedded in the life of the culture,' says Director Adam Weinberg. 'This building is about being connected to the world, not cut of from it.' The ground floor is encased in glass at one end, nearly erasing any delineation between inside and out. There is also 13,000 sq ft of outdoor exhibition space on the facade's stacked terraces, which take the cityscape as their backdrop.

The museum was in need of more space for a while. After different attempts to expand the Breuer site by his predecessors, Weinberg turned to Piano, who also attempted to devise an expansion using a cluster of townhouses adjoining the Whitney. 'When the board decided the expansion would not meet our goals,' recalls Scott Resnick, a collector and real estate developer who chaired the building committee, 'Dia [Art Foundation] was backing out of a project they had on Gansevoort Street. It was a big shift to contemplate leaving the Breuer,' but the realisation that there was not a practical way to stay set in, and the Whitney was able to swoop in and do a deal.

Now the Whitney is in one of the city's most dynamic neighbourhoods, the Meatpacking District, just blocks away from Greenwich Village, where the Whitney was born. Granted, the quarter has changed a bit since then, but, says Weinberg, the return is about 'reconnecting to history.'

Of course, the Breuer is part of that history, and there are echoes of it here. Most obviously, the stepped-back, arrangement of Piano's $422m Whitney is the inverse of Breuer's upside-down staircase silhouette. The lifts open directly onto the galleries, as in the Breuer building. There's also a stairwell that bears what Weinberg calls a 'kinship' with the one in the old Whitney, as well as another one inviting visitors to climb the building outdoors. And, after two years of angst debating the crucial issue of ceiling heights, the design team finally chose 15.5 ft and 17.5 ft, the same height as the third and fourth floor of the Breuer building.

Now, in it's brand new home, the Whitney is very close to raising the $760m it says it needs to complete the immediate funding requirements. And at least this move comes with a ready-made expansion plan, says Resnick: first dibs on the plot of land to the north of the museum when the lease, still held by a meatpacking cooperative, runs out in about a decade. And don't rule out a return uptown. Says Resnick, 'It's the key reason we kept the Breuer.' 

For more information on the project and the history of the Whitney Museum, read the full article in the May 2015 issue of Wallpaper* - out now

ADDRESS

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014

VIEW GOOGLE MAPS

Passers-by on the Avenue des Gobelins in Paris' 13th arrondissement may notice an organic-shaped 'creature' peeking above Auguste Rodin's sculptures on the façade of No 73. Snuggled within an old city block, its rounded body is covered in aluminium scales, reflecting the grey colour of Parisian rooftops. A grey roof was one thing that Sophie Seydoux, president of the Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé Foundation, insisted upon when discussing the design of the Foundation's new headquarters with its architect, Renzo Piano. 

Impressed by Piano's 2006 Morgan Library extension - an elegant addition to the dense fabric of Midtown Manhattan - Jérôme and Sophie Seydoux went directly to the Italian architect for the Foundation's new home. Piano had worked with Pathé before; his firm converted the 1920 Lingotto Factory building in Turin, home to one of its multiplexes. 

Built in 1869 as a theatre and transformed into one of Paris' very first cinemas in the early 1900s, 'Le Rodin' - the existing building on No 73, which was gutted and rebuilt internally - was the perfect match for the Foundation. Pathé is not only a major player in the film industry today, but its history developed in parallel with the history of the movie industry. 

A cinematographic empire born in 1896 from Charles Pathé's interest in the technical innovations of his time (notably Edison's phonograph and kinetoscope), Pathé had released over 9000 films by 1927. Its US branch reportedly produced a movie a day. All of them have been catalogued (although not all survived) in Pathé's vast archives, which comprise everything from business correspondence to photos from movie sets, a first-hand account of the beginnings of cinema as an art and an industry.

The new building - a highly anticipated new project by one of the most iconic contemporary architects - was an ideal choice of setting for our 2014 Architects Directory photo shoot. While it was in the late stages of completion earlier this year, we brought together 12 practices from the Directory's 20 emerging firms for a group portrait under its soaring glass roof.

When the Foundation's new headquarters are officially inaugurated in September, the building will host two key functions: a screening room for silent movies and a resource centre. 'Showing and explaining are the two things I'd like to do here,' says Sophie Seydoux, who plans to organise workshops for children to discover the materiality of movie making. Screening and exhibition rooms are housed in the lower floors, while staff and researchers will occupy the two upper levels, generously lit through the glass dome and clad in a warm, all-wood interior. The archives are sandwiched in the two floors in-between, at the building's heart. 

Having the entire demolition and construction process pass through the existing building's 5m-wide listed front façade gate was among the project's major challenges. Architect Thorsten Sahlmann, who worked on both the Morgan Library and the Foundation, explains that the building's new glass entrance facilitates the transition between the historic frontage and 'the creature'.

The project's reduced footprint (the theatre previously on site covered a larger volume) offers additional breathing space for the neighbours and even secures a courtyard garden, while the glass dome improves natural lighting in the adjacent apartment blocks. At Piano's firm, they are convinced that a project should not only react to the client brief, but also contribute to the city that surrounds it, and the new Pathé Foundation is a thoughtful response to both.

When the Kimbell Art Museum embarked on commissioning an extension to its existing home designed by Louis Kahn in Texas, it was clear that the new architect would have a tough act to follow. Located in Fort Worth and inaugurated in 1972, the museum is an architecture classic made out of silky smooth concrete, a barrel vaulted roof and travertine and cork details, where (in its creator's words) 'light is the theme'. It is well known, of course for its iconic architecture, but also for its small yet carefully curated collection of some 350 artworks that span continents and ages, from antiquity to the 20th century. 

By the early noughties however, its need for new space was pressing. 'Every time a temporary exhibition was on, we had to put into storage a big part of the collection', says the Kimbell Art Museum director Eric Lee. And while displays are a key part of the museum for obvious reasons, the project was not just about that. The library, previously snugly set across two of the old building's levels (the top, mezzanine level reaching right up to the iconic concrete vault), was bursting at the seams and new education and function rooms were needed. 

The commission went to leading architect and museum design heavyweight Renzo Piano, who - as well as having a number of finished cultural projects under his belt (including the nearby Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas) - has several museums currently in progress in the States; his design for the new Whitney in New York has been slowly taking shape next to the High Line, while his film museum at LACMA on the West Coast is also in development. By comparison, the Kimbell appears modest, set across some 101,130 sq ft (even smaller than Kahn's 120,000 sq ft). This, however, was part of the plan. 'It's becoming much larger, but we wanted it to still feel like a small museum,' explains Lee. 

The new Pavilion contains in its light, low and deceptively spacious volume, three new galleries, education and multi-purpose rooms, a small café, a shop, a new library and archive space. An underground garage is located below the lawn that links the old and the new structures, while a generous auditorium at the back seats up to 298 guests. Made out of light-coloured concrete - it includes titanium in its blend, which adds a whiteness and shimmer, contrasting Kahn's darker concrete mix - wood beams and a swathe of glass, the pavilion is distinctly different to its older sibling. 

At the same time, the new structure clearly pays respect to the Kahn masterpiece by discretely echoing its structure and proportions, albeit with a contemporary twist. Composed around two parallel wings connected by glass passageways and spanning two levels, the new structure delicately mirrors Kahn's design in several of its elements: its double stairs leading up from the underground car park; its clerestory side windows that bring subtle natural light into the displays; its roof structure that resembles vaults (a form also reminiscent of the Nasher Sculpture Center's galleries); its strategically placed courtyards and lightwells; and its twin galleries flanking the entrance lobby.

Above all, light is still a key protagonist, flooding the interior. 'You do feel like you are in the same museum,' says Lee. 'It speaks its own language but still complements the old very much.'

Clever technology has also been incorporated. A 'breathing' floor, for example, provides a smart way to allow fresh air to circulate without compromising the seamless timber flooring. A green roof covers part of the building, while its energy efficient design is expected to use about half the energy per sq ft of the Kahn Building. 

Gearing up for its official inauguration on the 27 November, the Kimbell is preparing for an exciting year ahead, with temporary exhibitions on show at the Renzo Piano Pavilion's southeast gallery and pieces from its permanent collection in the other exhibition rooms (although for the opening only, the Pavilion will feature its permanent colection in all galleries).

Another big plus for the museum is that the pavilion offers dedicated space for the museum's valuable Asian, Precolombian and African and Oceanic art collections, which up until now were often confined to the museum's storage. 'The non-western pieces actually look better in the new building,' says Lee. 'These works of art have never looked better.'

Construction is well underway on the new home for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York's vibrant Meatpacking District. The new building, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano, will become the museum's main base from spring 2015, when the whole collection will move from its existing HQ - the iconic, Marcel Breuer-designed building it has occupied since 1966 on Madison Avenue. 

The new Whitney will offer 'unprecedented space for the museum's exhibitions and programs', say the institution's representatives. The structure spans 220,000sq ft and nine stories that will include the city's largest column-free art gallery spaces, an education centre, theatre, a conservation lab and a library and reading rooms. Two of the floors will be fully devoted to the Whitney's permanent collection (a vast 20,000 works). 

In his design for the museum, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect put an emphasis on the outside spaces and the building's connection with the local community. Its strong, asymmetrical form generates a wealth of terraces, looking towards Manhattan, which will be used as outdoor galleries. 

At the same time, the whole ground level will be glass-enclosed and visually transparent, to merge with its immediate surroundings and welcome in passers-by. A tilt upwards on the building's main volume on the ground level's ceiling was another strategic move to ensure the ground floor also gets plenty of natural light. 'We are creating an environment in which visitors will be encouraged to connect deeply with art through an irreplaceable first-hand experience', says Adam D, Weinberg, the museum's Alice Pratt Brown Director. 

With construction more than half way complete at the new Whitney, plans have also been hatched for its old premises. The Breuer Building will be leased to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a period of eight years, once the Whitney has moved to its new state-of-the-art home. 

Somehow, despite being responsible for London's Shard - the tallest, sharpest, shiniest tower in Europe - Renzo Piano has escaped the tag of the ego-architect. Famous instead for an approach that prioritises people and places over statements and grandeur, burying and blending even the most significant, vast buildings into their surroundings, Piano was the perfect choice for Oslo’s newest architectural attraction.

Spacious yet low-lying, solid yet exploiting every inch of light available, understated in its materials yet meticulously detailed throughout, the new buildings set to house the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Contemporary Art are a reflection of the city’s psyche - indeed the wider Norwegian one, which is also typically informal and modest.

Swiftly taking shape at the up-and-coming new waterfront district, Tjuvholmen, the museum is set to open at the end of September this year. The Museum, which first opened in Dronningensgate in 1993 to house and display the Astrup Fearnley Collection, closed its current premises on 1 January in preparation for the move.

The new space has cost some 650 million NOK (around 80 million euros), and covers an area of 7,000 sq m at the end of the Tjuvholmen strip, already lined with high end restaurants and private galleries. In contrast, the Astrup Fearnley is designed to attract a wider audience, and unlike many landmark contemporary new museums whose architecture competes with the content, here the focus is very much on the art displayed and engendering a lightness of experience within the space.  

The most striking views of the building itself are from the water, from which the double curved roof construction in glass slopes elegantly upwards. Filtering daylight into the main exhibition space for temporary exhibitions, the art on display is lit exceptionally well - something that can be really appreciated when standing on the mezzanine in the main exhibition space.

Concentrated on individual works and artists, rather than on movements or historical periods, over the years the Astrup Fearnley Collection has amassed some major pieces, including Jeff Koons' sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles (bought in 2002 for $5.1m), and works by Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Doug Aitken, Olafur Eliasson and Cai Guo-Qiang among many others. Like many buildings by Piano, this is architecture with a beauty that creeps up on you - something that should comply well with the museum’s aim 'to present international contemporary artists in illuminating depth' while still communing happily with Norwegian art scene and the city of Oslo.