Renzo Piano

The Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church in San Giovanni Rotondo.

Renzo Piano (born September 14, 1937) is a famous architect.

He was born in Genoa, Italy and still maintains a home and office (Building Workshop) there. He was educated and subsequently taught at the Milan Politecnico. From 1965 to 1970 he worked with Louis Kahn and with Makowsky. He worked together with Richard Rogers from 1971 to 1977, their most famous project is the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1977).

He designed one of the most extraordinary 20th century engineering feats in Kansai International Airport, Osaka (1988), and the rebuilding of the Daimler-Benz part of the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, Germany.

He also designed several museums, including the Menil Collection in Houston (1986), a museum in Bern, Switzerland dedicated to Swiss painter Paul Klee, the Beyeler Foundation museum in Basel, Switzerland, and the expansion of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta (2005).

2002 marked the completion of his state-of-the-art Auditorium-Parco della Musica (3 halls which can accommodate 2800, 1200 and 700 people respectively, an outdoor cavea and a large surrounding park) in Rome, Europe's largest music venue of its kind. In 2003 his Padre Pio Pilgrimage Church in San Giovanni Rotondo (Italy) was completed. Piano has also designed football stadia, bridges, liners and automobiles.

One of his most recent designs is the approved Shard London Bridge skyscraper (also known as the London Bridge Tower or Shard of glass) in London. His latest project is the natural history museum the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. In early June of 2006, he tentatively agreed to design an 850-foot tower that is part of the San Francisco Transbay Terminal project.

He won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998 and is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.

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Centre Georges Pompidou