Renzo Piano Building Workshop: Le fil rouge is a lightweight, modular exhibition concept, designed to limit the weight, energy and waste of traveling exhibitions. The project offers an in-depth look at selected projects that are informing current and future work at Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The simple and reusable installation of lightweight panels immerse the visitor and make walking through the exhibition feel like reading and turning the pages of a book, each panel illustrating the ideas, themes, and strategies that have provided a foundation to the Workshop’s production continuing to inform ongoing projects and innovations.
Exploring the design and construction process of selected projects completed over the last fifty years, the exhibition presents a selection of key buildings, such as the Menil Collection (Houston Texas), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), The Shard (London), the New york Times Building (New York), the Pathé Foundation (Paris), the Whitney Museum (New York), the Paris Courthouse and Maison de l’Ordre des Avocats (Paris), the California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco), the Children’s Surgical Hospital (Uganda), the Kansai International Airport Terminal (Osaka, Japan), the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (Athens), Istanbul Modern (Istanbul), the CERN Science Gateway Building (Geneva, Switzerland), the San Giorgio Bridge (Genoa, Italy), the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures (Los Angeles), the Parco della Musica Auditorium (Rome), the Morgan Library renovation and expansion (New York), the Columbia University Manhattanville Campus Plan (New York), the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Center (Noumea, New Caledonia), the Centro Botín (Santander, Spain), Paddington Square (London) and The Fubon Tower and Art Museum (Taipei).
The exhibition is often complemented by additional material. In Madrid, at the heart of the exhibition is an imagined ‘Island’, a sculptural installation which brings together over a 100 of Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s built projects. This specially designed piece provides a wondrous vision of the diversity in type and scale of the Workshops production to date. Originally conceived for a major exhibition dedicated to the Building Workshop at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2019, the Isola has been rarely shown.
The project also features a film short from the documentary Inside Renzo Piano Building Workshop by Muse – Factory of Projects, following the work of Renzo Piano Building Workshop over a 19 month period.
Le fil rouge is accompanied by a series of public events connected to the exhibition themes.
Le fil rouge has been presented at La Galerie d’Architecture Paris, The Boca Raton Museum of Art, Columbia University’s Lenfest Center for the Arts, the Italian Institute of Culture of Los Angeles and COAM (Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid).
