a+u 2025:01 Feature: Renzo Piano Building Workshop 2010–2025
Content
a+u’s January issue features projects by Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) from the past 15 years, as well as works to be completed in the near future. With offices in Genoa and Paris, RPBW is skilled in building in historic cities such as London, Istanbul, and New York. Yet their analytical approach, which centers the human experience by demonstrating an awareness of history, culture, and climate, produces architecture that is either in harmony or in tension with its surroundings, depending on the unique parameters of the site. The solarpunk spirit that has distinguished RPBW over the years comes through in smaller humanist projects such as the Children’s Surgical Hospital in Uganda, which combines local techniques of rammed-earth construction with high-tech photovoltaic panels, but also in buildings of monumental scale, such as the cliff-like Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens. This issue of a+u highlights RPBW creative agility by presenting 25 works, including 3 ongoing projects, that encompass principles of structural and visual lightness, environmental integration, and human-centered design. (a+u)
Essay:
RPBW: From Atelier to Building Site
Fulvio Irace
Paddington Square
Pathé Palace
Istanbul Modern
GES–2 House of Culture
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures
CERN Science Gateway Building
Essay:
Renzo Piano Building Workshop: In Search of Common Values 62
Nicolai Ouroussoff
Marunouchi Tokio Marine
New Grands–Montets Ropeway Stations
The Orto Rampante
Children’s Hospice
Children’s Surgical Hospital
Citadel University Campus
Manhattanville Campus Plan
The Forum
Jerome L. Greene Science Center for Mind Brain Behavior
Lenfest Center for the Arts
Centro Botín 1
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center
Jérôme Seydoux Pathé Foundation
Whitney Museum of American Art at Gansevoort
Kimbell Art Museum Expansion
Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art
Resnick Pavilion (LACMA Expansion – Phase II)
Ronchamp Gatehouse and Monastery
The Shard