The Italian lecturer and designer Renzo Piano (born 1937) is best known for his work with Richard Rogers on the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1971-1977). He gained an international reputation from projects executed in Italy, France, England, the United States, Germany, Senegal, and Japan.

Renzo Piano was born in Genoa, Italy, on September 14, 1937. He entered the Polytechnic of Milan in 1959 to study architecture and from 1962 to 1964 worked under the guidance of Franco Albini. In 1964 he received his diploma and subsequently worked with his father, a building contractor, in Genoa. It was on building sites that the young architect acquired the rudiments of his experimental and craftsmanlike philosophy. Between the years 1965 and 1970 Piano worked with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia and with Z.S. Makowsky in London studying stressed-skin space grids and three-dimensional structures in tension.

Two of his earliest architectural products were a woodworking shop and a factory for sulphur...