Wednesday, May 20, 2009

All Things Renzo


There's quite a love affair going on with Nicolai Ouroussof, the NYT architecture critic, and Renzo Piano, the world-famous, Pritzker-Prize winning architect based in Italy. Selection of articles below.

The trip to SF for AIA National Convention of course included a new iconic structure by Renzo Piano, the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate park. The photo above is not a glamor shot, but rather looks at the elements of the structure from the back side, which are steel, glass and precast concrete used with a very industrial vocabulary. The gulls are quite fond of it. The glamor shots of his projects are here at Piano's building workshop web site. Ouroussof's review of the Academy structure is here.

Also note that the De Young museum, a notable structure by Herzog & de Meuron
, is across from the Academy.

Here's the links to reviews of other Renzo projects. One that's local here in LA is an intervention - "The Transformation" - to the much-remodeled and added-to LACMA. The museum had wonderful displays of his entire work 2 years ago - including models, slides and photos, as well as the project models and study drawings for the entire process for the LACMA project.

The Art Institute of Chicago,
as well as other projects in slideshow are to be found at the NYT site. Here's a review of the Paul Klee Center in Bern, Switzerland. The New York Times headquarters, NYC. The Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia, at another website.