Philip Jodidio

Big ideas for small buildings

Over the years, talented architects have occasionally indulged themselves with the challenge of designing small but perfectly formed buildings. Today, with reduced budgets, many architects have turned in a more focused way to creating works that may be diminutive in their dimensions, but are definitely big when it comes to trendsetting ideas. Whether in Japanese cities, where large sites are hard to come by, or at the frontier between art and architecture, small buildings present many advantages, and push their designers to do more with less.

A dollhouse for Calvin Klein in New York, a playhouse for children in Trondheim, vacation cabins, and housing for victims of natural disasters are all part of the new rush to develop the great small architecture of the moment. The 2013 Pritzker Prize winner Toyo Ito is here, but so are emergent architects from Portugal, Chile, England, and New Zealand. From world-famous names to the freshest new talent, come discover architectural invention on a whole new, small scale.

The exploration and iconoclasm of an Italian master

While some architects have a signature style, Renzo Piano seeks to apply coherent ideas to extraordinarily different projects. His buildings impress as much for their individual impact as for their diversity of scale, material, and form.

Piano rose to international prominence with his codesign of the Pompidou Center in Paris, described by The New York Times as a building that “turned the architecture world upside down.” Since then, he has continued to craft many high-profile cultural spaces, including the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Morgan Library Renovation and Expansion in New York; and, most recently, the Whitney Museum of American Art, an asymmetric nine-story structure in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District with both indoor and outdoor galleries. In New York and London, the Renzo touch has also transformed the skyline with the towers of the New York Times Building and the Shard, the tallest building in the European Union.

This essential introduction travels from Osaka, Japan, to Bern, Switzerland, and through many cities, structures, and islands in between, to explore the staggering scope of the Renzo Piano repertoire. From the “inside-out” Pompidou to the airy shells of the Tjibaou Cultural Center in Nouméa, New Caledonia, this is a thrilling journey through the beauty of architecture, where, in Piano’s own words, “each time, it is like life starting all over again.”