RENZO PIANO WORLD TOUR 05

Forty days journey discovering the architecture of RPBW

R ENZO P IANO

ORLD

Forty days journey discovering the architecture of RPBW

ISBN 978-88-6242-970-2

First edition June 2024

Photographers:

© Antoine Geiger: pp.9,17,21,22,23, 24, 25, 26,28,30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39, 40,45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 56, 58, 59, 61, 64, 70, 74, 75, 78, 80, 81, 88, 108, 112, 116, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, even for internal or educational use. Italian legislation only allows reproduction for personal use and provided it does not damage the author. Therefore, reproduction is illegal when it replaces the actual purchase of a book as it threatens the survival of a way of transmitting knowledge. Photocopying a book, providing the means to photocopy, or facilitating this practice by any means is like committing theft and damaging culture.

If any mistakes or omissions have been made concerning the copyrights of the illustrations, they will be corrected in the next reprint.

Book conception: Fondazione Renzo Piano

Book design: Francesco Trovato

Book curator: Lorenzo Ciccarelli with Milly Rossato Piano and Chiara Bennati

Book layout: Martina Distefano

Printed in Italy by Priulla Print, Palermo June 2024

LetteraVentidue Edizioni Srl

Via Luigi Spagna 50 P 96100 Siracusa, Italy

Renzo Piano World Tour Award 2023

(PART 1)

Renzo Piano World Tour 2023: the great routes of contemporary architecture in 40 days

Destination Europe

Discovering America

(PART 2)

The grand finale of the “Grand Tour”

Chiara, Maria, Antoine and Álvaro at the RPBW model shop in Genoa

4 people

40 days

2 continents

15 countries

27 cities

138 buildings

Our story starts almost like this.....

“There are an Italian, a Spaniard, a Norwegian, a French on a plane”

Maria, Chiara, Álvaro, Antoine, Roberto Bosi, Marcello Bacchini with Renzo Piano at the RPBW Office in Genoa

RENZO PIANO WORLD TOUR

AWARD 2023

“The journey is discovery, the journey is life. On the journey you look for one thing and find another. The journey is a bit like going to a big library to look for a book: it is true that you are looking for that book, but in looking for that book you find many others”.

So wrote Renzo Piano in 2017, when the foundation that bears his name established the Renzo Piano World Tour: a 40-day trip around the world that offers young, recently graduated architects the opportunity to visit some of the Renzo Piano Building Workshop's edifices and other famous works of architecture.

Among the various activities promoted by the Renzo Piano Foundation in the field of education and training of young people, this world tour is undoubtedly an unusual experience. On the other hand, the trip was a fundamental experience in the formation of the young Renzo Piano, who in the 1960s, immediately after graduating from the Milan Polytechnic, undertook a series of explorations outside Italy, during which he visited cities and buildings, and personally got to know a series of architects and engineers - from Jean Prouvé to Zygmunt Makowski, Louis I. Kahn, Robert Le Ricolais etc. - who had a profound impact on the development

Young architects on a journey

of his ideas and early construction attempts. And it was also through a trip to London in the late 1960s that he met Richard Rogers, with whom he designed and built the Centre Pompidou between 1971 and 1977.

Travel as a training ground for life, an experience of encounter and enrichment, and also an opportunity to compare cultures and building traditions, thus inspired the creation of the Renzo Piano World Tour, whose first edition took place in 2017.

Chiara Barbetta, Antoine Geiger, Álvaro Romero Sancho and Maria Schrøder took part in the edition that this book narrates, which took place between 19 June and 28 July 2023. They were selected respectively by the Sapienza University of Rome, the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture of Paris-Malaquais, the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, through public tenders.

The journey described in the following pages presents a different route compared to previous editions: the choice was made to privilege the European and North American continents, to the detriment of the destinations in Africa and the Far East that had been

The Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern by RPBW

DAY 4 BERN

Being planted in landscape, not being present until you reach it. The Zentrum Paul Klee has a strong duality of being well integrated in the landscape, and at the same time be able to stick out in its context. It becomes a strong landmark with a distinct silhouette, melting into the topography. The building consists of three volumes welcoming different programs, connected with a transparent corridor, unifying all the complex and make you realize how a simple gesture could create such a detailed system.

Antoine’s sketches of the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern by RPBW

DAY 21 NEW HAVEN

The Yale student complex is a harmonious ensemble of functions related to education and culture. The volume of Louis Kahn’s Yale Art Gallery is set back from the two fronts of the existing buildings and features a ceiling made of tetrahedron-shaped ribs that define the directions of the glazing and exhibition walls. Walking through the park you discover a stone origami housing a precious library: it is the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library designed

by Gordon Bunshaft. The rich materiality alternates with the translucent effect given by the marble slabs that filter the light to protect the rare books, creating suggestive perceptions inside. The whiteness of the exterior is contrasted by the steel and glass interior volume that houses the books.

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University by SOM

Visiting the Pathé Palace building site in Paris

RENZO PIANO WORLD TOUR 2023: THE GREAT ROUTES OF CONTEMPO -

RARY ARCHITECTURE IN 40 DAYS

19/06/2023 – Giulia Mura

It is certainly not the case that every new graduate will be able to go from studying books to actually visiting the best contemporary architecture in the world, whether completed or under construction. Nor do they get to do it in forty days, perhaps accompanied by a project manager to explain the details or the site manager, nor do they get to see their experiences, photos and sketches published in a book. For Antoine, Chiara, Maria and Álvaro, however, this opportunity has become a reality and the day of departure has finally arrived. In the meantime, we would like to introduce you to this

select group of very excited people who say of this experience: “Let's try not to have expectations that can overwhelm us, but rather let us be surprised by beauty”. It is not the jet lag, nor the heat, nor the fatigue that worries them, but the fear of not being able to properly process the enormous amount of sensations and information they will be exposed to during this trip.

“I look forward to improving my knowledge through the discussion that 4 young architects from 4 completely different backgrounds and contexts can have after experiencing the same building,” says Álvaro, “my

fear is, if anything, that we will come to similar conclusions”.

A Franco-Swiss, an Italian, a Norwegian and a Spaniard. No, this is not the beginning of a joke, these are the nationalities of the four participants in the fifth edition of the Renzo Piano World Tour.

Antoine Geiger, born in 1995, is a graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture in ParisMalaquais; a reserved and lively personality, he already runs his own practice and is passionate about photography, the tool through which he likes to read places. Chiara Barbetta, born in 1996 and a graduate of the Sapienza University of Rome, is a dancer as well as an architect; in her life she wants to work on projects that benefit people,

and in this experience she seeks the definitive confirmation that being an architect is her profession. From the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Maria Schroeder, class of 1995, sunny, extroverted, highly motivated, interested in the practical processes of architecture (she is in fact a supervisor at the university's workshop laboratory), and Álvaro Romero Sancho (class of 1996), a graduate of the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, optimistic and enthusiastic, who grew up surrounded by construction sets and hand-made models, and who says, “then architecture was my hobby, now it is my profession”. Of course, to be selected for the Renzo Piano World Tour, you have to be good: meritocracy counts for a lot here. In fact, the

DISCOVERING AMERICA

24/07/2023 – Elisa Scapicchio

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the echo of over one hundred works through snapshots, sketches and reflections. Four young architects from four different European countries, together discovering the United States. What will happen? Photos, drawings, notebook jottings to capture as much as possible of the 100 architectures they visited, but above all, as they themselves declare, "they became a travelling family". Here is a summary in words and images.

Moving from Europe to the United States is a big leap: jet lag aside, it means

leaving the European comfort zone and immersing yourself in a different lifestyle. Even more so when you consider that the transition is from the tranquillity of Bilbao to the frenzy of New York, between skyscrapers and taxis whizzing down Fifth Avenue. But how wonderful!

The eye gets lost, struggling to rest from all the stimuli that capture its attention. Probably the same sensations as a New Yorker feels on seeing our Rome, but here we are talking about Chiara, Maria, Álvaro and Antoine, who have finally arrived in the 'New World'.

A very swift journey, unlike the very slow one taken by the then 54-year-old Oscar Niemayer, who drove more than 1,200 kilometres from Rio de Janeiro to the site where Brasilia was to be built, rather than take the plane.

Our young architects, on the other hand, full of energy, have travelled so many kilometres in less than a month by every possible means. They make one think of putting into practice one of the most beautiful phrases on the subject of travel penned by Mark Twain, which read: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover".

Literature taken literally, but with a healthy rule before exploring: never skip breakfast!

From New York to Boston, from Chicago to Dallas to San Francisco and, finally, Los Angeles. We retrace some of the stages of the journey, guided by the photographs and posts left on the social profiles of the RPWT_40 days. Not a review of architectural history, but certainly a useful recap to take notes on well-known projects, whether very recent or still in progress.

New York, days 16 - 20

In a song, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys called New York a "concrete jungle where dreams are made of". And New York looks just like that: some of the most famous architecture stands in this portion of the world, a real

This book tells about the 40-days journey between Europe and USA made by four young architects in the 2023 summer, to discover renowned buildings by Renzo Piano and his partners, and other great master of architecture.

An initiative promoted by the Renzo Piano Foundation, pursuing the belief that travel is a life experience, an opportunity for meeting and enrichment, and opportunity of comparison between cultures and traditions, even in the construction and project practice.

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