Renzo Piano’s Light Touch

The world-renowned designer Renzo Piano grew up successful Italy watching his father, a section builder, enactment connected operation sites, and helium was fascinated by his father’s gravitation toward cumbersome materials—concrete, stone, and bricks. “As usual, you turn up wanting to bash the other of your father,” helium said. “My begetter made dense buildings; I ever tried to marque excavation light.” He took inspiration from his autochthonal Genoa, a metropolis built connected water: “The harbor is simply a magical spot wherever everything flies.” Piano has spent his vocation trying to recreate this consciousness of magic successful his designs. He precocious joined america to sermon his fascination with weightlessness, and his obsession with capturing it successful his work. Books person been 1 of his “companions” successful this lifelong endeavor, helium said, highlighting 4 that person been exceptionally influential. His comments person been edited and condensed.

On the Nature of Things

by Titus Lucretius Carus

Lucretius, successful an epic poem from the archetypal century, described the mode that the worldly satellite is made up of galore tiny particles, oregon “elemental bodies.” He alluded to atoms good earlier they were formally discovered, writing:

Or you mightiness accidental that it is worthwhile to study
The mode successful which the motes of particulate creation successful a sunbeam
Because the behaviour of these tiny objects
Gives america a conception of that of invisible particles.
You volition spot galore of these sailing dust-motes
Impelled nary uncertainty by collisions 1 cannot detect,
Change direction, and past crook disconnected this mode oregon that.
Surely their question depends connected that of the particles.

Lucretius was a philosopher and a poet, but helium was not a scientist. Yet helium recovered a mode to sermon matter, to posit that it’s much than what we tin spot and touch. It’s an unthinkable book, and it required a circumstantial benignant of lightness—a lightness of the mind.

The Idiot

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

To beryllium a bully builder, you indispensable person 3 things. The archetypal 2 are a spot easier: you request to beryllium precise pragmatic successful bid to marque coagulated structures that stand, and you indispensable beryllium a humanist, due to the fact that the places that you make are for people. The third, beauty, is much difficult. In my parent language, Italian, the connection for “beautiful”—bello—is besides a connection for “good.” In “The Idiot,” Prince Myshkin, the rubric character, says that “beauty would prevention the world.” He doesn’t conscionable mean that which you tin see; he’s besides referring to goodness. It’s an highly important observation. The different figures successful the book—which fundamentally follows Prince Myshkin arsenic helium navigates beingness wrong Russian society—assume that helium is an idiot, akin to the mode that radical presume quality is frivolous. Neither is true. Dostoevsky knew precisely what helium was doing; you could accidental that he, similar Prince Myshkin, was enlightened.

The Baron successful the Trees

by Italo Calvino

I spent immoderate clip with Italo Calvino. He visited maine astatine the gathering tract for the Centre Pompidou, successful Paris, and I took him up and astir the structure. It reminded maine of his publication “The Baron successful the Trees,” which helium had precocious published, due to the fact that it’s a communicative astir venturing precocious supra the ground. It centers connected a young lad from a noble household who, fed up with his life, climbs up a large oak histrion extracurricular his home, vowing to enactment up determination forever. He spends the remainder of his days moving from histrion to tree; helium befriends effect thieves and falls successful love, each portion ne'er touching the ground. It’s a magical book, a metaphor for flying. When I plan buildings, similar the Shard, successful London, I make them truthful that they, similar the baron, tin fly.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

by Milan Kundera

There’s a heaviness to life—to each of the things that we person to bash time aft day. You person to wage bills; you person to woody with illnesses; you person to negociate your relationships with household members. This book, which is much of a series than it is simply a story, captures the mode that you are the sum of each your responsibilities and experiences.

It reminds maine of the abbreviated poem “Ithaca,” by C. P. Cavafy, which is astir Odysseus’s travel home. Cavafy bids Odysseus a agelong travel “full of adventure, afloat of discovery.” Ithaca is not what matters—Cavafy cautions that Odysseus mightiness not adjacent beryllium blessed aft helium arrives—it’s the roadworthy there. Both Kundera and Cavafy convey thing profound: that beingness is thing much than the voyage, a thought that tin service arsenic a benignant of antidote to the burdens of living.