"The Architect’s Studio: Renzo Piano"
2003-06-05 until 2003-09-28
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Humlebæk, , DK

In the series of exhibitions named The Architect’s Studio, the Louisiana Museum, in collaboration with the Margot and Thorvald Dreyer Foundation, has focused on some of the most innovative and influential architects of today. This series of exhibitions will conclude with a presentation of the Italian architect Renzo Piano, born 1937 in Genoa. Having so far included Frank O. Gehry, Henning Larsen and Norman Foster, these architectural shows have been conceived as a series of studio exhibitions, providing insight into each architect’s formal concepts, working processes and sources of inspiration.

Renzo Piano has founded the Renzo Piano Building Workshops, a sort of international architecture academy where students and experienced architects work together in teams. These architectural studios – located in Paris and Genoa – resemble Renaissance workshops in their combination of theory and practise. The last of The Architect’s Studio exhibitions tells the story of these workshops, focusing on their extraordinary way of working with ecology and technology. The exhibition will focus on the studio in Genoa, Punta Nave, which can be viewed as a laboratory for experimenting with structures inspired by nature. Renzo Piano’s work is characterised by a remarkable typological range of buildings, materials and structures. Throughout his career, Piano has aimed for an architecture defined by humanistic concerns and technical sophistication. His projects are united by a Genius Loci – a sensitivity to the particularity and culture of the site – coupled with functional analysis and constructional daring. Though each project pushes the envelope of technology, this is always done with great consideration for local conditions. The exhibition will show the most advanced methods of construction and unexpected materials employed within the same ecological spaces, whether they are housing projects, museums, concert halls or cultural centers. This is true of such mega-structures as the Centre Pompidou and the Kansai Airport in Osaka, Japan; the major, urban-renewal projects in Paris; and most recently, the reconstruction of the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin; as well as the uniquely empathetic creation of the J M Tjibaou Cultural Center in New Caledonia.

The Renzo Piano exhibition is organised by curator and architect Kjeld Kjeldsen. An exhibition catalogue will be published as a volume devoted to Renzo Piano in The Architect’s Studio series of publications.

IMAGE:
Renzo Piano
ROME AUDITORIUM Exterior. Facades
Photo: Maggi Moreno
Copyright: RPBW, Renzo Piano Building Workshop

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Denmark

Other Important Exhibitions in Denmark