Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano
Renzo Piano, OMRI, OMCAis an Italian architect and engineer, who won the Pritzker Prize in 1998. Architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff said of Piano's works that the "...serenity of his best buildings can almost make you believe that we live in a civilized world."...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionArchitect
Date of Birth14 September 1937
CityGenoa, Italy
CountryItaly
cities feet tree
When you walk 25-30 feet above ground, it is a miracle, because you are still in the city ... but you are flying above the city. You are in the middle of trees, and that is a moment of beauty.
hands knowing goal
Knowing how to do things not just with the head, but with the hands as well: this might seem a programmatic and ideological goal. It is not. It is a way of safeguarding creative freedom.
art italian lunch
There is something about giving everything to your profession. In Italian, an obsession is not necessarily negative. Its the art of putting all your energy into one thing; its the art of transforming even what you eat for lunch into architecture.
criticism architecture harmony
You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony
art people design
Architecture is an imposed art in some ways, imposed upon the public, so people must be sure about what you're doing. You have to be sure about what you're doing.
men house architect
When a man is not satisfied with a house where he lives, he becomes an architect
art writing past
In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.
dream architect wells
Architects have to dream, we have to search for our Atlantises, to be explorers, adventurers, and yet to build responsibly and well.
art architecture feds
Architecture is art, but art vastly contaminated by many other things. Contaminated in the best sense of the word – fed, fertilised by many things.
beautiful years cities
Cities are beautiful because they are created slowly; they are made by time. A city is born from a tangle of monuments and infrastructures , culture and market, national history and everyday stories. It takes 500 years to create a city, 50 to create a neighborhood.
piano discipline trouble
If you have total freedom, then you are in trouble. It's much better when you have some obligation, some discipline, some rules. When you have no rules, then you start to build your own rules.
fighting bad-ass ideas
Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity.
light giving quality
Light has not just intensity, but also a vibration, which is capable of roughening a smooth material, of giving a three-dimensional quality to a flat surface.
block book opposites
You can put down a bad book; you can avoid listening to bad music; but you cannot miss the ugly tower block opposite your house.