RENZO PIANO

Nicolai Ouroussoff said of Piano's works that the "...serenity of his best buildings can almost make you believe that we live in a civilized world."

Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1937 into a family of builders. He was educated and subsequently taught at the Politecnico di Milano. He graduated from the University in 1964 and began working with experimental lightweight structures and basic shelters. [3] From 1965 to 1970 he worked with Louis Kahn and Z.S. Makowsky. He worked together with Richard Rogers from 1971 to 1977; their most famous joint project is the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (1977). He also had a long collaboration with the engineer Peter Rice, with whom he shared a practice (L'Atelier Piano and Rice) between 1977 and 1981.

In 1981, Piano founded the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, which today employs 150 people and maintains offices in Paris, Genoa, and New York. In 1999, Piano designed a watch entitled "Jelly Piano (GZ159)" for the Swatch Summer Collection. The watch design is clear and the exposed inner workings were influenced by his Centre Georges Pompidou design. On 18 March 2008, he became an honorary citizen of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Piano's recent expansion of the Art Institute of Chicago includes a 264,000-square-foot (24,500 m2) wing with 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2) of gallery space called the Modern Wing, which opened on 16 May 2009. It includes a "flying carpet", a sunscreen that hovers above the roof and a 620foot (190 m) steel bridge connecting Millennium Park to a sculpture terrace that leads into a restaurant on the wings third floor.

A man-made island, 4 km (2.5 mi) long and 2.5 km (1.6 mi) wide, was proposed. Engineers needed to overcome the extremely high risks of earthquakes and typhoons (with storm surges of up to 3 m (10 ft)). Construction started in 1987. The sea wall was finished in 1989 (made of rock and 48,000 tetrahedral concrete blocks). Three mountains were excavated for 21,000,000 m3 (27,000,000 cu yd) of landfill. 10,000 workers and 10 million work hours over three years, using eighty ships, were needed to complete the 30-metre (98 ft) layer of earth over the sea floor and inside the sea wall.

Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture. It houses the Bibliothque publique d'information, a vast public library, the Muse National d'Art Moderne which is the largest museum for modern art in Europe, and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research. Because of its location, the Centre is known locally as the Beaubourg 1977

Potsdamer Platz (German: [potsdama plats] ( listen), literally Potsdam Square) is an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin, Germany, lying about one kilometre south of the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag (German Parliament Building), and close to the southeast corner of the Tiergarten park. It is named after the city of Potsdam, some 25 km to the south west, and marks the point where the old road from Potsdam passed through the city wall of Berlin at the Potsdam Gate

THEPAULKLEEZENTRUM
CONCEPT STRUCTURE MATERIALS

Structure
The design of the Zentrum Paul Klee is characterized by the structure of corrugated steel deck. These beams have the curves of any complexity is equal to the other as the wave extends from the front to the back next to where you lose ground, and each "wave" has a different height. It is estimated that the entire building were used for beams 4.2kms. The geometry of the building so special is the fact that the section of the steel arches is slightly tilted, but always in different angles. The arches are tensioned by a compression stanchions directly integrated into the structure of the roof to prevent the arches bend backwards. The ends of the steel arches are compressed together using ligatures which are connected to the ground and the floor slabs to prevent the arches from sliding steel base. Each of the curved steel beams, with different weights, has been constructed individually. The individual sections were first cut from large sheets of metal using a cutting machine controlled by computer. Then shaped its final form and eventually welded together. The strong curvature of the steel beams that prevented welding process could be done by machines, which means that more than 40 km have been welded together by hand. After reviewing alternative materials such as aluminum, copper and titanium, it was decided to use a special steel for the deck. Ecological criteria, economic and technical were crucial to this election. The structure is covered, along with the foundations and facade were simulated by computer 3D models and analyzed by many experts.

Materials
The materials used by Renzo Piano for the center are few and precise. The glass for the glazed facades, steel gray and oak interior floors are all that the architect needed to realize their project. This only adds the use of umbrellas in the main facade, used to control the entry of natural light, as many of the works of Klee are very likely to be affected by it. From the inside, the steel structure remains visible, and are accompanied by large arched ceilings birch with its natural color or painted white. This use of few materials must Piano wanted to emphasize the fact that the exterior landscape provide the necessary color into the museum. Another aspect to highlight is that Piano wanted the building would be sustainable and have the lowest energy consumption possible. Therefore, environmental impact studies were conducted on each material. In this way the steel beams that were studied as a whole, the deck having a good insulation, as well as the use of double glass guarantee the lowest energy loss in winter and air conditioning in summer. To this we add the hardwood floor that has thousands of small and almost imperceptible grooves, which allow the cool air passes through them, and warming up as they go up, only to be expelled to the outside and thus promote proper ventilation.

Academy of Sciences in

California

Academy of Sciences in
Nearly 10 years and $500 million dollars in the making, a museum that The new Academy is a masterpiece "With the new Academy, we have created it's finally here. is visually and in sustainable architecture,to its natural surroundings, metaphorically setting, andpiece of with hundreds of functionally linked blends seamlessly into the park's natural lifting up a is filled innovative exhibits and a building underneath." Renzo Piano animals. the park and putting thousands of extraordinary plants and

California

The Academy is a single structure but contains multiple venues, including the aquarium, the planetarium, the natural history museum and the 4-story rainforest.

The building also houses the Academy science labs and administrative offices, including an extensive library and scientific archive consisting of more than 26 million specimens.

From the basement to the roof of the Academy's new building, the choices behind each element of construction reflect a commitment to energy efficiency, reducing the carbon footprint, and preserving the natural world. Steep undulations in the roofline roll over the Academys domed planetarium, rainforest, and aquarium exhibits, echoing the topography of the buildings setting and evoking the interdependence of biological and earth systems. The iconic hills on the roof were designed not only for visual impact but also for energy conservation. These hills, which feature slopes in excess of 60 degrees, will draw cool air into the open piazza at the center of the building, naturally ventilating the surrounding exhibit spaces.

Strategically placed skylights will automatically open and close to allow heat to escape through the tops of the domes. These skylights will also allow sunlight to reach the living rainforest and coral reef exhibits below, reducing the energy requirements for artificial lighting. The dramatic four-story Rainforests of the World" exhibit will offer a vertical journey through four different rainforest habitats.

Padded with six inches of soil, the roof will provide excellent insulation, keeping interior temperatures about 10 degrees cooler than a standard roof and reducing low frequency noise by 40 decibels. It will also decrease the urban heat island effect, staying about 40 degrees cooler than a standard roof. Moreover, it will absorb about 98% of all storm water, preventing up to 3.6 million gallons of runoff from carrying pollutants into the ecosystem each year. The roof is bordered by a glass canopy containing nearly 60,000 photo voltaic cells, which will produce over 5 percent of the Academy's annual energy needs and prevent the release of over 405,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions each year. These photo voltaic cells, clearly visible in the glass canopy, provide both shade and visual interest for the visitors below.

Piano's goal was to create a sense of transparency and connectedness between the building and the park through both a careful selection of materials and a thoughtful arrangement of space.

Glass is used extensively in the exterior walls, allowing visitors to look through the museum to the surrounding green space of the park along both the east-west axis and the north-south axis of the building. The glass, which is manufactured in Germany, is famous for its especially clear composition.

To enhance the open, airy feeling created by the glass, Piano designed the central support columns to be extremely slender. A series of carefully configured cables will prevent these slim columns from bending. The concrete for the walls and floors is untreated, continuing the emphasis on natural materials.

Recycled Building Materials Over 90% of the demolition waste from the old Academy was recycled. 9,000 tons of concrete were reused in Richmond roadway construction, 12,000 tons of steel were recycled and went to Schnitzer Steel, and 120 tons of greenwaste were recycled on site. At least 50% of the wood in the new Academy was sustainably harvested and certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Recycled steel will be used for 100% of the buildings structural steel. The insulation that will be installed in the buildings walls is made from recycled blue jeans. The product contains 85% post-industrial recycled content and uses cotton, a rapidly renewable resource, as one of its main ingredients. All concrete contains 30% fly ash, a by-product of coalfired power plants. It also contains 20% slag, a waste product from metal smelting.