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
bit builder
The day I went to see my father to say I wanted to become an architect, he was a bit surprised, because for him being a builder is much more than being just an architect. He was very angry, and I never thought I could do something else.
dreamt feet freedom house
When I was a student in the '60s, I dreamt of making a house 7 feet by 7 feet, as a dream of freedom, of self-moderation.
architecture builder came everybody family
I came to architecture from building. Because my father was a builder, everybody was - and is - a builder in my family.
bad-ass architecture starting
One of the great beauties of architecture is that each time, it is like life starting all over again.
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.
fighting bad-ass ideas
Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
criticism architecture harmony
You have to accept as an architect to be exposed to criticism. Architecture should not rely on full harmony
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.
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.
years islands sailing
Every year I spend one month just sailing, but I still work when Im on the boat. You never separate work from leisure. A boat is like a magic world, like a little island.