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Morandi Bridge in the Italian city of Genoa has been demolished almost a year after its partial collapse killed 43 people. Thousands of residents were evacuated before the operation, which was over within eight seconds. Water was sprayed over the scene to reduce the dust produced by the blast. — The Guardian
The partial collapse of Genoa's nearly mile-long Morandi highway bridge on August 14, 2018 killed 43 people trying to cross the bridge at the time. A controlled explosion brought down the last two pillars this morning while the rest of the old bridge is being removed. Construction on the Renzo... View full entry
Contrary to plans previously announced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will not open in 2019, or any time prior to the 92nd Oscars on Feb. 9, 2020.
The $388 million project on the site of the old May Co. department store on the Miracle Mile, which was first announced in 2012, was initially slated to cost $250 million and open in 2017, but it has been delayed several times now.
— The Hollywood Reporter
Rendering of the completed Academy Museum. Image: © Renzo Piano Building Workshop/ © A.M.P.A.S./ Images from L’Autre ImageThe Hollywood Reporter published a statement released by the museum last week: "The Academy Museum's intention is to create a unique and unparalleled museum experience... View full entry
As Art Basel kicks off this week in Miami the city has a new listing to boast about that comes with everything you would expect for the highest-priced penthouse in the area right now: a celebrity architect, more square footage than its competitors, ocean views that go on forever and, of course, an unusual luxury amenity... — Forbes
He designed the Shard in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but for his latest project, Italian architect Renzo Piano has taken his impressive legacy to the unsuspecting city of San Ramon in order to build a suburban shopping center. Completed for a reported cost of $300 million, City... View full entry
Renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano has offered to help design a new Genoa bridge to replace the one that collapsed, killing 43 people.
A native of the city, Piano was already involved in redesigning a 2km (1.2-mile) stretch of its waterfront.
Regional governor Giovanni Toti said: "We have gladly accepted the help, and he's already made some proposals."
— BBC
The BBC writes that Piano reportedly "provided sketches to Genoa officials, showing the road sitting on pillars that each resembled the prow of a ship. The other main feature would be 43 very tall posts illuminating the bridge at night in the shape of sails - one for each victim of the disaster."... View full entry
That, Mr. Zwirner said, is the site of what in the fall of 2020 will become the new heart of his New York operation: a five-story, $50 million gallery designed by Renzo Piano. [...]
The precise design has yet to be determined — Mr. Piano is in the early stages of the process. But it is likely to have a similarly spare aesthetic to Mr. Zwirner’s current spaces, by Annabelle Selldorf.
— The New York Times
In its article about art dealer David Zwirner's upcoming Renzo Piano-designed gallery and global headquarters, the NYT recounts a telephone interview with Piano about (early) design visions for the building: "You kill art by making just white boxes, so you need to integrate emotion in some way... View full entry
"I cross a bit my fingers,” Renzo Piano told me. “It may work. We shall see.”
We were standing inside the concrete shell of the main auditorium of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, an ambitious but troubled project that after a series of delays is expected to open in 2019. [...]
Construction workers hammered away all around us, producing a ring of noise that occasionally made it tough to hear Piano, who at 80 speaks more softly than he once did.
— Los Angeles Times
LA Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne dissects Renzo Piano's third Southern California project, the troubled Academy Museum of Motion Pictures which — plagued by delays and controversy — is currently under construction right next to his other two completed buildings, the... View full entry
The film academy on Wednesday drummed up excitement for its forthcoming museum on the Miracle Mile, releasing a batch of new renderings [...]
Pritzker-Prize winner Renzo Piano and architecture firm Gensler are restoring and reworking the Streamline Moderne-style department store built in 1939 to house a 288-seat cinematheque and spaces for exhibitions, an entire floor devoted to an “Oscars experience,” restaurants, and special events.
— Curbed LA
Sitting right next to Renzo Piano's other LA projects, the expansion buildings for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the new — and not entirely uncontroversial — film academy complex on Wilshire Boulevard is further coming along. While construction of the 130-foot tall 'bubble' theater... View full entry
The French artist Xavier Veilhan has created sculptures of the architects Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers that will be permanently installed next month in Place Edmond Michelet outside the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The pair designed the distinctive museum, which opened in 1977. — The Art Newspaper
Don't miss our 2015-podcast interview with Xavier Veilhan for Archinect Sessions. We talked with the Paris-based artist and his Los Angeles-collaborator, François Perrin, about their series of interventions into some of the world's most famous modernist landmarks and the resulting book... View full entry
Where we would be without the energetic (if usually misinformed) enthusiasm of youth? Apparently, without the Centre Pompidou as we know it. In this comprehensive and enjoyable profile in The Guardian, Richard Rogers reflects on his early days as an architect after he and his freshly-made friend... View full entry
Almost 20 years since Frank Gehry’s $100m titanium-clad Guggenheim Bilbao opened, another city on Spain’s north coast is getting a major contemporary art centre designed by an internationally acclaimed “starchitect”. — The Art Newspaper
Renzo Piano's first big commission in Spain, The Centro Botín, is opening today. The architect claims that its comparisons with the museum that became a model for culture-driven regeneration schemes worldwide are too simplistic. According the president of the Fundación Botín’s visual arts... View full entry
For Renzo Piano, every building should tell a story.
The 79-year-old architect is as busy as ever with a workload that spans from Los Angeles to Uganda. With no signs of fatigue in a nearly 50-year career, Piano doesn’t struggle to find meaning in each new project. “I’ve wanted to make buildings since I was a kid,” says the Italian-born architect, who fondly recalls spending time at construction sites with his dad.
— CityLab
CityLab recently sat down with Piano for a conversation that, among other topics, touched on urban peripheries, Columbia University’s new Manhattanville Campus, and "the importance of designing buildings that reject paranoia in a world increasingly concerned with terrorism." View full entry
Even the most punk of buildings eventually gets older. The Pompidou Centre in Paris, the landmark contemporary art museum designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, turns forty this year. To mark its birthday, the museum will get a two-year long facelift estimated to cost at least €... View full entry
The 6.2 magnitude earthquake that hit central Italy on August 24 reduced the medieval towns of Amatrice, Accumoli and Pescara del Tronto to ruins, and has claimed the lives of at least 290 people. With over 3,000 people displaced by the quake's damage, Italy's prime minister Matteo Renzi called on... View full entry
On March 18, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art opens an annex at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan, it will be attempting to shrug off the ghost of a museum past.
The specter is the Whitney Museum of American Art, which called the iconic Marcel Breuer building on that corner home for nearly five decades. In an eight-year deal, the Met is leasing the Breuer building from the Whitney— which relocated to its dazzling new Renzo Piano–designed home last year...
— Architectural Record
The Breuer-designed building will house some of the Met's modern and contemporary collection. But shrugging off the association between the Brutalist masterpiece and its former tenant may prove a tough task. For many, nothing say's "the Whitney" more than those protruding windows... For related... View full entry
