Renzo Piano (born 1937) is an Italian architect from Genoa, known for carefully engineered buildings and for museums lit by daylight from above. He won the Pritzker Prize in 1998, and his practice is the Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
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Piano became known with the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1977), designed with Richard Rogers as an "inside-out" building, with its structure, pipes and escalators on the outside. His later projects are quieter. The Menil Collection in Houston (1987) was built to make the most of natural light, and the Fondation Beyeler near Basel (1997) has a glass roof that lets in north light and screens out the east and west sun. The Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre in Nouméa (1998) lines up ten curved timber "cases" along a ridge, patterned on the great huts of the Kanak people and tested in wind tunnels for ventilation. Kansai International Airport Terminal 1 in Osaka (1994) stands on an artificial island, and The Shard in London (2012), 305 metres tall, was Europe's tallest skyscraper when it was finished. Renzo Piano's buildings are studied for their details, their use of daylight, and their response to place.