Renzo piano was born in 1937, in Genova. He is an italian architect, but also politically involved as a senator. His main realisations such as Pompidou Center, NYT Building and The Shard tower made him one of the most famous architects of the modern movement. 

The exhibition dedicated to the Vedova Foundation is located inside one of the salt warehouses in Venice, near the tip of the customs. The Venetian artist Emilio Vedova had his own laboratory in one of these warehouses. The architect Renzo Piano’s project was born from the particular conception of the painter regarding artistic creation. Piano has not touched the wooden coverings in the roof, nor the solid brick walls of the gigantic hall, already the object of a consolidation intervention in 2004. The space is immaterially filled by a modern Leonardesque machine that tears out Vedova’s works to the fixed walls and leads to the visitor. The new intervention goes literally to “lean” to the existing without going to affect its peculiarity and fragility. The new intervention is also clearly recognizable with respect to the existing one. The apparent contrast between the brick walls, the larch wood and the metal elements comes to life in a melody in which the sounds of the shuttles that run on the metal track become confused with the crunching of the wooden trusses, in harmony with the background of the silent and solid walls.

References:

Renzo Piano’s Website

Radio emission : France Culture

Wikipedia