Italian architect Renzo Piano is widely considered one of the most influential green architects today. Yet he doesn’t let environmental considerations limit his ideas by forcing him to consider only stereotypical green building shapes or materials or components. Instead, he lets his imagination fly, then incorporates eco-friendly elements into the resulting structures [source: Green Architects].
One of Piano’s more acclaimed buildings is the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The museum houses an aquarium, planetarium and natural history museum, and appears as though it’s tucked into two hills, which, in reality, are the building’s 2.5-acre green, “living” roof that absorbs up to 2 million gallons (7.6 million liters) of rainwater annually. The building also has no air conditioning, relying on weather sensors that communicate with motorized windows to open and close at select times so the museum can be entirely cooled with outside air [source: Alter].
As of this writing, Piano was working on the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, Greece, which — by the time it’s completed in 2015 — will sport a green roof and, hopefully, will attain a platinum LEED certification, the highest-level sustainable building award currently achievable [source: Meinhold].
(McManus, Melanie Radzicki. “10 Influential Green Architects” 08 May 2012. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/construction/green/10-influential-green-architects.htm> 21 October 2013.)
The Academy is a single structure but contains multiple venues, including the aquarium, the planetarium, the natural history museum and the 4-story rainforest. In addition, there’s a 3D theater, a lecture hall, a Naturalist Center, two restaurants, an adjacent garden and aviary, a roof terrace, and an Academy store. The building also houses the […]
Located in Numea, the J. M. Tjibaou Cultural Center is composed of 10 houses. It’s designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano and sited in direct contact with the ocean. Renzo brought great concept into the center, he want this project as a work taking care of nature, a humanistic realization where history, architecture, archeology and […]
The Vulcano Buono (“good Vulcano” in italian) is an epic cone-shaped commercial center crowned with a sloping green roof. Piano’s “good Vulcano” contributes a vital new space to the southern edge of the Nola commercial district, which is the most most important freight terminal complex in southern and central Italy. Inspired by the surrounding […]
The building’s outline simulates the slopes of the surrounding mountain peaks and the internal layout of the exhibits on its various floors is a metaphor of the mountain environment. The museum building stretches from East to West for 130 metres on its longest side and is 35 metres wide from North to South. It […]
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The original newspaper headquarters were located on Broadway and 42nd Street in Times Square from 1904 to 1960—the new building is promoted as a green structure, though it is not LEED certified. The design incorporates many features for increased energy efficiency. The curtain wall, fully glazed with low-e glass, maximizes natural light within the building […]