ABSTRACT
Renzo Piano is one of the major figures in the world of contemporary architecture. Since he and Richard Rogers won the competition for the design of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris over 30 years ago his work has undergone a remarkable transformation. Since the almost overwhelming expression of the capabilities of mechanical processes of environmental control at Pompidou, perhaps the ultimate ‘exclusive’ mode building, Piano has progressively confronted the issues of environmental design and has consistently offered new insights into the definition of the environmental agenda. Kenneth Frampton has pointed to Piano's relationship with the principles of Baconian empirical science, and it is this belief in the potential of objective analysis as the basis of architectural invention that has invested his designs with their originality and avoidance of the dictates of passing fashion.
