An uplifting display of gravity-defying designs gets a bit too technical
Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings Royal Academy
Exhibitions about architecture are notoriously tricky to pull off. After all, the main event – ie, the marvellous buildings that inspired the show in the first place – are, by definition, never in the room. . Yet Renzo Piano: The Art of Making
Buildings – a survey of the career of the 80-year-old Genoese architect responsible for the radical Centre Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers) and London’s Shard – makes as good a fist of mounting an architecture exhibition as I have encountered.
The first impression of the show – which has been overseen by the master himself, across three galleries that form the backbone of the RA’S recent redevelopment of Burlington Gardens – is wonderfully uplifting. The rooms dazzle with daylight. Strange, attenuated objects hang from the ceiling – models for parts of Piano’s buildings that resemble pterodactyl skeletons swooping through a natural-history museum. Beautiful plans and drawings adorn the walls. And, in the middle of the galleries, an arrangement of 16 tables, each devoted to a different project, encourages us to sit down, relax, take our time.
The whole ensemble emanates harmony and intelligence: we sense we are in some sort of utopian workshop where nimble ideas, in three dimensions, are taking flight.
Unusually for an exhibition about architecture, the display also has a sensory feel. Subtle soundtracks (birdsong, lapping water, an orchestra tuning up) evoke the experience of standing within Piano’s buildings. This is a space ingeniously designed to make both intellect and spirit soar.
All this, of course, feels apt, given the nature of Piano’s work. He is renowned for the elegance and refinement of his creations, which often deploy hi-tech materials and techniques, but still feel effortless and graceful. In Italy, his “workshop” occupies an eyrie-like position 400 steps up a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, and it is not fanciful to detect in his work some of its spirit.
His buildings are diverse – his portfolio includes a glider-like airport terminal on a man-made island in Osaka Bay, and beetle-like concert halls in Rome – but they often have a light, airy quality, with glass-walled façades that reflect the sky and glitter like the sun-flecked sea, or modular surfaces that create a visually rippling effect. The poet Baudelaire spoke of “luxe, calme et volupté” – qualities we might attribute to Piano’s buildings, which have their own Arcadian poetry.
Consider The Shard (2012). Its deliberately “unfinished” jagged peak is a clever conceit because it makes the building appear to dissolve into the clouds. There are touches like this throughout Piano’s oeuvre. Skyscrapers and museums seem to levitate. Always, there is this desire to defy gravity; nothing feels earthbound or laboured.
For all that, even the finest architecture exhibition, such as this one, is doomed eventually to plummet, Icarus-like, back to earth. Piano’s idealistic genius is not in question. Too often, though, the table-displays provide a glut of arcane technical and contextual information, and not enough clear photography to show his buildings off. Small polystyrene models simply don’t cut it, in terms of conveying the finished structure’s poise and finesse.
Of course, it’s fascinating to look at back-of-envelope ideas – some jotted down on Air France sick-bags while Piano, appropriately, was airborne.
Ultimately, though, this is a show that requires concentration. And even the most ardent lovers of architecture may feel that life is too short to get to grips with the minutiae of rooftop air-treatment systems, and the like.