Word: architect
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...glut of architects. A surfeit of architects. Whatever the collective noun for architects is, there sure were a lot of them visiting the Graduate School of Design last week. Following Richard Meier earlier in the week, Renzo Piano, one of the world's foremost architects and the man responsible for the planned revamping of the Harvard University Art Museums, spoke to a packed Piper Auditorium last Thursday. Famous for his work in such major spaces as Houston's Menil Collection, Osaka's Kansai Airport and Paris's Centre Georges Pompidou, Piano's speech attracted so large a crowd that...
Despite the cramped conditions and the technical flaws of the secondary broadcast, the Italian architect's one-and-a-half-hour speech went over well with the audience. Introduced as the "romantic architect," to contrast with Meier's classical leanings, Piano lived up to his billing by choosing to speak about his concern for "lightness" and fluidity. Although he did not mention his forthcoming plans for the Harvard museums, and instead spoke only about other recently opened projects, the palpable sense of excitement at architecture's possibilities demonstrated that Harvard's own museums are in good hands...
...Piano's words, architecture involves walking "the knife edge between art and science": One day the architect is a poet, the next day an engineer. That fine edge was highlighted in the first part of his speech, which dealt with his redesign of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz. This enormous, 5 million square foot space resonates with cultural significance, since it is both the former cultural center of Europe as well as the center of tragedy. The Cold War divide between East and West Germany, however, is now a matter for the history books, and Piano's task, as he noted...
...this point, Harvard and in turn the community, are waiting for design specifics from the architect, Henry M. Cobb '47, and his firm Pei Cobb Freed and Associates...
...proposals presented at the community meeting would connect the Fogg and the Sackler through a double tunnel underneath Broadway. The aim of the tunnel, according to the architect Renzo Piano, is many-fold: to relieve pedestrian congestion at the intersection of Broadway and Quincy, to unify visitors' experiences of the museums, and to allow the University to transport artwork more safely between the Fogg and the Sackler...