Renzo Piano is an architect whose work seems increasingly relevant to our times. Winner of the Pritzker Prize in 1998, Piano is certainly one of the most interesting and acclaimed contemporary architects. Since his first building, the Centre Pompidou in Paris produced in collaboration with architect Sir Richard Rogers, he has realised a great number of attractive buildings all over the world, always creating new languages that combine a deep concern of the topography of the site, a clear comprehension of the brief and an amazing interest in the experimentation of new technologies. In Volume Five, Peter Buchanan shows, as he has in the previous four volumes, that Piano follows no fashions of form or theory, nor is he limited to a personal idiom. Instead he concerns himself with the specifics and potential of a particular situation and moment, meeting the challenges of the programme, often pushing technology beyond its present limits, and always responding sensitively to the urban fabric of the building's site. The first four volumes of the Complete Works have traced Piano's career from his early collaborations with Rogers and Peter Rice, and the formation of the Building Workshop in 1981, to the completion of Kansai Airport in 1995. This fifth volume will include Piano's latest buildings, which illustrate the continuing complexity of his work. Chief amongst these are the Nasher Collection in Dallas, the Woodruff Arts Centre Expansion in Atlanta, USA, Maison Hermes in Tokyo, Japan, and the Aurora Place Office and Apartment Towers in Sydney, Australia. As before, the book will also include 'work in progress', to demonstrate the full diversity of the Building Workshop's activities. This includes the London Bridge Tower, UK.
