International

Renzo Piano

Kamran Afshar Naderi · Memar 08 · Spring 1378 / 1999

Renzo Piano building with brick and glass facade

While twentieth century avant-gardes protested against the Academy just to join the people's cause and society's benefits, today's avant-gardes are fleeing from human discussions and society, refuging to the Academy and seeking legitimacy through books and magazines. The works of these architects, although bearing significant values on the specialized level, like organization of space and creation of new forms, are not related to the consumer, this later not taken into account as the main addressee of the work.

A phenomenon very similar to Stockhausen music or haute couture, which predominantly culture making to construction. This architecture, being forged during the social and construction crisis of the sixties, has an intellectual and specialized vision of architecture. “Architecture for architecture,” or constructing only to carry along the discussions on architecture (as Coop Himmelblau says), refuge to world of abstract ideals, are all suggestive of fear of reality. As seen in works of Eisenman, it is only form and process, which are important, and form is imported directly from the abstract domain of mathematics into architecture.

Piano is one of the exceptions which has achieved this and has created a style by following no style. What links his works is not the process of producing forms; these are super-structural variables of architecture, which today in many academical works are erroneously considered as constants. Constants of Piano's works are permanent principles of architecture like: nature as environment, forces and elements, size and its entourage, light, materials, music of which the project is extracted. For Piano, creativity without rules does not exist, and discovering the rules needs strong intuition. Only when the rules have reached enough density, then the idea of the project is born.

Workshop

Piano believes that today, when every part of the world has been explored, architecture presents a unique area for adventure and exploring unknown spaces. He works unknown ideas for his projects. Modeling in unknown areas needs more experience and innovation. Piano's office is a real “architecture workshop,” in which by building hundreds of models, in different scales, sometimes even the construction detail, and experimenting with light, sound, and wind tunnels, he explores the characteristics of the project.

Although Piano's works have always a solid idea based on intuition, but the building is never the mere materialization of the initial idea. In the process of design, a hierarchy of architectural values, structural aspects, which are as important as the form, to construction details, texture and materials, and expanding aesthetic dimensions, work together to create the work.

Tradition and Local Cultures

Many of his works have such forms and details accuracy and enhancement, that it seems they are the outcome of a long and gradual evolution of a building tradition. Tradition and local cultures are one of the challenges of contemporary architecture, approaches towards which are often theoretical and delicate, to the point that sometimes it translates or it so replies that resembles a copy. Working with traditional architecture is more difficult than the historical architecture, because the historical architecture does not conflict with the notion of recurrence.

A complex of buildings built over a long period of time, creates a view having a synthetic totality, among which a single building is disappeared. In the project of Tjibaou Cultural Center in Noumea, which was built as the symbol of independence of Kanak people, and in which a return to local traditions was a major precondition, the problem became more complex. The traditional architecture of this people consists merely of straw houses and huts. Piano's response to this situation is a sort of architecture in which a single building does not exist. The overview of the complex presents an environment, which is complementary and yet distinctive from the seashore. This complex is composed of ten different-size huts, combined together, which like mysterious statues of Easter Island, resembles an artwork built by some mythical artists.

Environment and Sustainability

Apart from the Tjibaou cultural center, other recent works of Piano have succeeded in this vein. The residential and office tower of Sydney (with 230 meters height) was designed in a way so as not to prevent the sunlight reach the adjacent botanic garden. Wood is used to maintain a natural air-conditioning for the building. Apart from environmental issues, there are other urban and architectural issues, considering the sky line of the city and to try to outstand the tower among skyscrapers, and at same time having a relation with it.

Technique and Artisanship

The greatest error is to classify Piano in the high-tech architects. For him, technique is only the means, not the objective. Of course the structure is important for Piano, not only as a constructional element, but as an indispensable and inseparable element of form. For Piano there is no boundary between design and construction. As he himself points out, just like a composer or painter, who creates his work by performing it, Piano, with the help of computer simulation and models, creates his architecture little by little.

Piano does not take part in long theoretical discussions; his theories are expressed in his work. With his method, which is based much more on practical grounds and not theoretical knowledge, many of sustainable contemporary architectural ideals have been created. The George Pompidou Cultural Center (1971-77) is his first famous work with Richard Rogers. This work is a combination of Archigram ideals of “the great urban machine” and Neo-brutalism. The ideas of the latter, founded by Peter and Alison Smithson, were usually materialized in a special taste of using harsh and unrefined materials, and a combination of simple and elementary volumes. In Pompidou Centre these principals, that is “the truth” presented by an honest and visible use of materials and structure, “objectivity” by considering the main intentions and capabilities in suggesting solutions, and “responsibility” towards the society and the city, are considered in their best form.

As seen in most of Piano's works, he always uses authentic solutions, technology and materials, to respond to specific necessities of the project. For Piano methodology is not an ideology, not to be changed, but is rather a strategy which leads to goals in human life domain, and not the domain of specialized architectural discussions. The goal is light, not a specific sort of window; the goal is lightness of volume not a specific sort of structure. It is because of this and also because he does not follow a specific style, that one cannot call him an artisan (despite his own belief). In actuality, repetition, style, and evolution of a certain form, appears more important than creativity.

Piano has the triple personality of an inventor, artist, and artisan. As an artisan he has great consideration for details and quality of materials, and using higher technology, is able to build unique parts, in a mass-produced system and then link them that surpassed the traditional boundary between industry and artisanship.

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