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
almost campus center chose clarity create extra honest materials opens steel strength wide
We chose steel and extra wide panels of glass, which is almost like crystal. These are honest materials that create the right sense of strength and clarity between old and new, as well as a sense of transparency in the center of the institution that opens the campus up to the street.
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.
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.
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.
childhood related remember single
I don't remember a single thing in my childhood that was not related in some way to building.
capacity children might people
I think people should try to teach young children that these qualities - stubbornness and a capacity to listen - might look like they are opposites, but they are not.
architect builder cares dreams
The difference between a builder and an architect is that an architect also cares about desire, about dreams.
art great itself
Great American art needs the idea of uninterrupted spaces, like a loft, which itself is something very American.
As an architect, you cannot be so arrogant as to say you are 100% sure about what you do.
god somebody
A builder is like a little god - somebody who does things, doesn't just draw things.
attitude believe firm good people quality somebody
In some way, people believe that if you are permeable, if you are a good listener, you don't have the quality of somebody with a firm attitude. This is what, fundamentally, I got from my mother.
architect believes build concept design detail general somebody
When you design a building, you start from a general philosophy, and you come down, and you start from detail and come up. Only the theoretical architect believes that you can make the concept and then sometime, somebody will come to build it.
architecture bad dangerous hundred impose people ugliness writer
Architecture is a very dangerous job. If a writer makes a bad book, eh, people don't read it. But if you make bad architecture, you impose ugliness on a place for a hundred years.
architecture
In architecture you should live for 150 years, because you have to learn in the first 75 years.