On the fifth floor of the Power Station of Art, some 27 projects by Italian architect Renzo Piano (pictured below), who won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998, are being displayed on three rows of neatly arranged square tables in a large bright room.

Each table holds a wealth of knowledge regarding one of Piano's creations, including documents, sketches, photographs and models.

Suspended in the air above are beautiful images and colorful molds that further immerse the viewer in the process that went into creating these structures.

Piece by Piece - Renzo Piano Building Workshop is the 77-year-old architect's first solo exhibition in China, and offers a retrospective of his career. The exhibition will be open until June 28.

 

  

Step by step

"Piece by Piece not only means architecture is built piece by piece, it also means step by step, things after things, so that's the spirit of that," said Piano last Friday at the opening of the exhibition.

"You'll see in this exhibition, and you'll understand all those productions are about a process, a joyful but sometimes painful process. It's a long process where everything comes to me, piece by piece," added Piano.

Born in 1937 into a builders' family in Genoa, Piano shot to architectural stardom when he, along with partner Richard Rogers, won a competition to design the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the 1970s. The artistic center resembles a factory in its appearance yet emits a sense of friendliness and casualness through its open structure.

Visitors check out exhibits at Renzo Piano's exhibition in Shanghai. Photos: Sun Shuangjie/GT and courtesy of Fregoso & Basalto, ©Fondazione Renzo Piano, Stefano Goldberg - Publifoto, ©RPBW

Piano established the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) in 1981. Over the past three decades the firm has been responsible for iconic buildings such as the headquarters of The New York Times, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the terminal of Kansai International Airport in Osaka, the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, the Foundation Beyeler Museum near Basel, and the Ronchamp Gatehouse and Monastery, to name a few.

Some of the firm's creations are skyscrapers in bustling urban centers, while others are low-rise structures that integrate with their natural surroundings.

Piano said in a talk at the exhibition's opening that every place has its own story to tell, and to find the best plan for each project he always goes to the site and listens to stories of the place and people there.

For instance, the ongoing JNBY project in Hangzhou by Piano is themed "Fruit of Life." It is a compound of main buildings surrounding a central garden like a thick outer layer of fruit peel. The project is located between West Lake and the Xixi Wetland, and focuses on the harmony created between architecture and the environment.

The Pritzker Prize jury said: "The array of buildings by Renzo Piano is staggering in scope and comprehensive in the diversity of scale, material, and form … He has remained true to the concept that an architect must maintain command over the building process from design to built work."



Lightweight and intelligent

Piano refuses to use the term "style" to define an architect, as he sees it as a cage that limits people. But an architect undoubtedly has his or her own character that will be reflected in their works. A pursuit of lightness and openness can be seen in Piano's creations.

 

The terminal of Kansai International Airport seems like a bird with giant wings ready to take off; his glass-surfaced RPBW headquarters (above) in Genoa perch on a slope like a clifftop nest by the sea; at the Ronchamp site, natural light floods through French windows to fill the rooms; while for The New York Times headquarters, which was built after the 9/11 attacks, he chose a semitransparent surface.

His search for lightness is realized through not only lightweight materials but also immaterial elements such as transparency, light, shadow and sound.

"It's not a flight from responsibility, it is rather a lightness born of the understanding of weight," art critic Philip Jodidio noted in his book about the architect.

At the Friday opening event, Piano told the hundreds of people in attendance what he thought it takes to succeed in his field. He said it's important to be yourself, to not hesitate to take action and to not worry about what your first project is, because it's in the process that you learn more about architecture. He said visiting the site of a proposed structure is important so as to be able to tell what is suitable for the area, and to be ready for all kinds of challenges.

Date: Until June 28, 11 am to 7 pm (closed Mondays)

Venue: Power Station of Art

上海当代艺术博物馆

Address: 200 Huayuangang Road

花园港路200号

Admission: Free

Call 3110-8550 for more information