Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano was born into a family of builders in Genoa, in 1937. He graduated from the Polytechnic in Milan in 1964, and during his studies he worked with Franco Albini. In 1970, in London, he founded the Piano & Rogers studio in collaboration with Richard Rogers, and from 1977 to 1981 he collaborated with the engineer Peter Rice and created the Atelier Piano & Rice.
In 1981, he established the “Renzo Piano Building Workshop”, which currently employs 150 staff and has offices in Paris, Genoa and New York.
His best known projects include the Menil Collection in Houston, the Kansai International Airport Terminal in Osaka, the Beyeler Foundation in Basel, the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, the regeneration of the port in Genoa, the Parco della Musica Auditorium in Rome, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, the extension of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Morgan Library in New York, the Maison Hermès in Tokyo, the New York Times headquarters, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the regeneration of the Ronchamp site, the London Bridge Tower (The Shard) in London, the extension of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens and the Botín Centre in Santander, Spain, the new Paris Courthouse and the new campus for Columbia University in New York.
He has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the “Royal Gold Medal” for architecture at RIBA in 1989, the “Praemium Imperiale” in Tokyo in 1995, the “Pritzker Architecture Prize” in 1998 and the AIA Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects in 2008.
On 4th September 2013 Renzo Piano was appointed a senator for life by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and in May 2014 he received an Honorary Degree from Columbia University in New York.