Atlanta has a Piano man they can call their own. His new masterpiece is Atlanta’s Woodruff Arts Center Campus, an expansion of the High Museum.
Renzo Piano comes from Genoa, Italy, and with him he thankfully brings a simple, yet sophisticated, idea of the city center, or Piazza.
“It’s a place where you feel well. You feel well first because you are in the middle of nature, because you are perfected…you are in the piazza.”
One of the most fascinating features of the High museum’s expansion is the roof, which provides illumination of the museum galleries with natural light by a special roof structure: 1,000 light “scoops” will capture northern light and filter it into the top-floor galleries. The shadow’s created at different times of the day reinforce the idea of art being fluid and never static. Each piece takes on a different look every second of every day, depending upon nature. Cool, huh?
Piano has this down-to-earth, wise air about him. He says things, with this captivating old world Italian accent, like “an architect must catch the little genius of the place. every place has a little genius, or many…” and “Architecture is not just the art of making buildings – it’s an art of telling stories.”
Please keep telling your story, Piano man.