Renzo Piano

I mean, take the shard back to that example.

That was Renzo Piano.

Was there some step in the process where he had to demonstrate that what he was suggesting was in fact just as economical or not much more expensive than a conventional curtain wall cubic kind of building? Mies van der Rohe kind of building? No, I think at

some point the, you know, the client just wants something to show off.

appearance, for materials and technologies, and for the allure attached to celebrated buildings and their architects.

But what about the way buildings affect our lived experience? How do we really experience building? And does architecture have the power to affect the way that we think about the world and ourselves? In his new documentary, Five Living Buildings by Renzo Piano, Emmy-nominated filmmaker Jonathan Goodman Levitt approaches the work of the Italian architect from a very different perspective.

Rather than focusing primarily on architectural language, materials, and forms, or composition, he rather explores how buildings by one of the most admired and influential architects in our time shape human experience emotionally, physically, and even spiritually.

Traveling across continents, Goodman Levitt visits five of Piano's public buildings, the Emergency Children's Surgical Hospital in Uganda, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Uili Art and Cultural Complex in China, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Through beautiful cinematography, he documents the interns, the gardeners, doctors and patients, security guards, maintenance workers and visitors who inhabit these spaces, allowing them to speak about the way the buildings have entered their lives.

Above all, Goodman-Levitt reveals something essential about Renzo Piano's architecture, However ambitious the buildings may be, people remain at the center.

Hi, Jonathan.

How are you?

Chris, we're going to patch in Chris Young from New York, I think, for a question now.

So my question for you, Chris, is with the Sterling Prize this year, you were obviously chair of the judges and you decided to award it to a social housing scheme when there were many other sort of very eye-catching schemes like schemes by Renzo Piano.

And I just wanted to know why you thought that particular scheme should win.

So I was asked a similar question on the night, and it was out of the blue for BBC TV just before the result was announced.

if he saw it? Good question.

Piano told me that Ernst and him peeked into the park and were always looking, but they couldn't go in.

So when I told him about the expansion, he said, well, I know that it's like...

Ernst was always an Augewerfen.

One prime example is the Whitney Museum, which sits at a Manhattan flood zone off the Hudson River.

The museum's current space was still under construction when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, and the architect, Renzo Piano, actually adjusted his design based on lessons learned from that storm.

so the building's steel frame was built to bend, not break, under severe weather.

Critical infrastructure like HVAC systems and backup generators were relocated to upper floors rather than the basement.

Just to make it clear, I think that the one on the left, the brick facade is horrendous.

And I think the Renzo Piano one is quite nice, just to set the tone.

Do you have any comment on that?

Well, it's interesting.

It's great to be here.

How did this show come to be informed by Bruce Nauman visiting your iconic Renzo Piano-designed building, looking around and thinking, "Oh"?

Well, the design of our building is very inspiring to most artists, if not every artist who crosses the threshold with the invitation to make a show.

A lot of the work, uh, in fact, 99% of the work in, in Identical was already made.

I, I worked at a bunch of cultural orgs for quite some time.

Um, so I was at the Whitney for four years during the, you know, big overhaul redesign and also the new building, the moving from the uptown, uh, famous foyer building to the current Renzo Piano building downtown in the Meatpacking District.

And, um, after about four years there and my introduction and immersion into Dutch graphic design, I decided to pursue, um, my master's degree, studying at the Verband Dutch Typografie in Arnhem, the Netherlands.

Studying under, um, Danny from Experimental Jet Set, as well as Armand and a ton of other incredible instructors there.

Just a quick one.

Can you look up who, who designed that, um, cultural center in New Caledonia? Oh, no, Renzo Piano.

Oh, yeah.

There you go.