Architect
Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW)

Renzo Piano was born in Genoa in 1937 into a family of builders.
While studying at Politecnico of Milan University, he worked in the office of Franco Albini.

In 1970, he set up the “Piano & Rogers” office in London together with Richard Rogers, with whom he won the competition for the Centre Pompidou. He subsequently moved to Paris.

From the end of the 1970s to the 1990s, he worked with the engineer Peter Rice, sharing the Atelier Piano & Rice from 1977 to 1981.

In 1981, the “Renzo Piano Building Workshop” was established, with 120 staff and offices in Paris and Genoa.

RPBW has designed buildings all around the world: the Menil Collection in Houston, the terminal for Kansai International Airport in Osaka, the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in New Caledonia, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, the extension the Morgan Library in New York, the Maison Hermès in Tokyo, the New York Times headquarters, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, the rehabilitation of the Ronchamp site, the London Bridge Tower (The Shard) in London, the expansion of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, the redevelopment and enlargement of the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge (Massachusetts), the new Whitney Museum of American Art, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, Greece, the new Paris Courthouse and the new campus for Columbia University - Manhattanville.

He has received numerous awards and recognitions among which: the Royal Gold Medal at the RIBA in London (1989), the Kyoto Prize in Kyoto, Japan (1990), the Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO (1994), the Praemium Imperiale in Tokyo, Japan (1995), the Pritzker Architecture Prize at the White House in Washington (1998), the Leone d’oro alla Carriera in Venice (2000), the Gold Medal AIA in Washington (2008), the Sonning Prize in Copenhagen (2009) and the Honorary Fellow title of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (2019).

Since 2004 he has also been working for the Renzo Piano Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of the architectural profession through educational programs and educational activities. The new headquarters was established in Punta Nave (Genoa), in June 2008.

In September 2013 Renzo Piano was appointed senator for life by the Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and in May 2014 he received the Columbia University Honorary Degree.