Architect

Architect

Architect

Genoa workshop session, with Renzo Piano and Tom Lentz (second and third from right)

Elevation from Quincy Street

Renzo Piano, Cambridge design session

Elevation, from Broadway

Cambridge design session, Renzo Piano (left) and Tom Lentz

Elevation, from Prescott Street

Renzo Piano, Cambridge design session

Elevation, from Harvard’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts

Renzo Piano, Genoa workshop session

Pritzker Prize–winning architect Renzo Piano, with local design partner Payette Associates, has created an extraordinary design that respectfully preserves the original historic building at 32 Quincy Street while creating new space to support the expanding programs necessary to fulfill the Harvard Art Museums’ teaching and research mission. Piano, who has designed many critically acclaimed museums around the world, is known for his thoughtful renovations of historic structures.

Bringing natural light into the new building is central to Piano’s design. As his longtime friend and collaborator Richard Rogers wrote, “Renzo Piano is an absolute master of light and lightness. His structures are very elegant, very humanistic. They grow out of understanding how buildings go together and how light comes through them.”

“I love building museums. They are magical places where you preserve art, enjoy art, everything becomes durable. Enjoying art is a very intimate thing. It’s about you and the art.” —Renzo Piano