...the Paddington Place scheme – a huge development around the eponymous London station intended to include a 72-storey tower designed by Renzo Piano... [has] drawn the ire of Sir Terry Farrell, the famous architect and local resident who was also, slightly awkwardly, previously in charge of the developers’ masterplan for the area.

Farrell, known for designing the MI6 building on the Thames and Charing Cross station, made his views known in a dense, 1,500-word objection... — the Guardian

A raft of museums, most backed by private money, are springing up in what is, for many, an unlikely cultural hub: Beirut, the capital of Lebanon [...]

The design competition launched on 1 October; the architect Zaha Hadid is on the jury along with Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julia Peyton-Jones of London's Serpentine Galleries.

Salamé, who founded the Aïshti fashion chain, invested $100m in funding a contemporary art museum, designed by the British architect David Adjaye, in Jal El Dib [...]. — theartnewspaper.com

Making sandcastles was my training in fantasy. Now, as an architect constructing buildings like the Shard, I have to think about the final result, but as a child making castles of sand I didn’t, they were ephemeral. — theguardian.com

Renzo Piano's versatility continues to win the hearts of NYC developers, and it looks like the starchitect is finally getting his chance to flex his muscle in the residential realm. Piano—who just cut the ribbon to the new Whitney to rave reviews—has been chosen by Michael Shvo and Bizzi & Partners to design a brand new 290-foot tower at 100 Varick Street in up-and-coming Hudson Square bordering Soho. — 6sqft.com

May 1st will mark a new era for the Whitney when its brand new home along the High Line swings its doors open to the public for the first time. A project that has been decades in the making, the $422 million structure designed by Renzo Piano is a game changer for a museum that had long outgrown its Upper East Side space. — 6sqft.com

The Whitney Museum of American Art has yet to open its doors in a new location in the meatpacking district, but on Tuesday night it unwittingly played host to its first radical art exhibition. At 11 p.m., activists from groups including Occupy Museums and Occupy the Pipeline gathered on the street in front of the museum for a performance art-style demonstration about a natural gas pipeline that is adjacent to the $422 million building and its vast art collection. — NY Times

The galleries are immense, the Renzo Piano design is arresting and the views of the Hudson River are expansive. As it prepares to open its new $422 million Lower Manhattan home on May 1, the Whitney Museum of American Art is pulsing with anticipation as it plans the inaugural events, including a neighborhood block party.

But behind the scenes the museum is also preparing for the challenge of paying to operate a building that is three times as large as the old one. — nytimes.com

In the 1960s and '70s, like many of his contemporaries, Piano was involved in the battle to revive forlorn and decaying historic centers of cities. Now he's fighting to save their often desolate outskirts.

Unlike the suburbs of U.S. cities, which are often well off, the suburbs of many European cities tend to be the poorest parts of the metropolitan area. [...]

Piano believes "the suburbs are the place where energy is in the city — in the good, in the bad." — npr.org

Renzo Piano Building Workshop will be the design architect for the new corporate headquarters of Midwest convenience retailer chain Kum & Go. The 120,000 sq.foot building will be located at the Pappajohn Sculpture Park in downtown Des Moines, Iowa.
After competing teams submitted written proposals, six finalists were interviewed last month before RPBW won the project. In the next few months, a local architect and general contractor will be chosen as the design process begins. — bustler.net

The Whitney Museum of American Art announced today that it will open its new home in Chelsea on 1 May 2015. With double the exhibition space of its "old" Marcel Breuer-designed building, the museum will be able to show far more of its collection of Modern and contemporary American art in its Renzo Piano-designed new space in the Meatpacking District. [...]

Weinberg told us that Piano saved the institution from making one decision that it would have lived to regret. — theartnewspaper.com

After six long years of laboring on the renovation and expansion of the Harvard Art Museums, lead architect Renzo Piano had but one simple message at the unveiling of the new complex to the press on Friday.

“There is very little an architect should say about a new building,” he said. “Just ‘Welcome.'” — bostonmagazine.com