Renzo Piano – författare

The extraordinary sculptures of Belgian artist Jean-Michel FolonThe first half of Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon’s (1934–2005) career was devoted to posters, illustrations, and television animations that brought him international acclaim for their diversity and virtuosity; his illustrations appeared in magazines including The New Yorker, Fortune, and Esquire. In the 1990s, he pivoted to sculpture, focusing on statuary and working with both direct carving and modeling, which he then translated to bronze or stone. This is the first publication to explore the entirety of Folon’s sculptural work. Drawing inspiration from the Cyclades, the Etruscans, from African masks and Indian totems, Folon’s sculptures are characterized by their frontality and corporality. Distributed for MercatorfondsExhibition Schedule:Villers-la-Ville, Brussels(October 24, 2020–February 21, 2021)

"For those who love boats, architecture and original enquiring minds, this book is a dream. " -Jeremy IronsWorld-famous architect Renzo Piano and his son Carlo set sail from Genoa one late Summer day, guided by the ancestral desire felt by many explorers before them: to find Atlantis (in Italian, Atlantide). Atlantis is the perfect city, built to harbour a perfect society. This is its true beauty, precious and elusive. Renzo Piano, a man who can not only measure land at a glance but also the sea’s infinite geometry, returns to the places where he has erected his works, mosaic pieces in the infinite, necessary quest for perfection. With his son he sails across the Pacific, along the banks of the Thames and the Seine, reaching as far as Athens, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and Osaka Bay. In search of beauty, he finds the imperfections that every building project carries within it. And so, all that remains is to sail on.

The Whitney Museum is building itself a new home in downtown Manhattan's Meatpacking District. Due to open on May 1st, 2015, the project will substantially enlarge the Whitney's exhibition and programming space. Clad in pale blue- grey enamel steel panels, the new, eight-storey building is powerfully asymmetrical, with the bulk of the full-height museum to the west, Hudson-side, with tiers of lighter terraces and glazed walkways stepping down to the High Line, embracing it into the project. The Museum is entered via a dramatically cantilevered plaza, or "largo", a public space that serves as a kind of decompression chamber between street and museum, a shared space, with views to the Hudson and the High Line entrance just a few steps away. Accessed from the "largo", the main entrance lobby also serves as a public gallery - nearly a thousand square feet (100 sq. Meters) of free-entry exhibition space.Level three houses a 170-retractible seat theatre with double-height views over the Hudson River, along with technical spaces and offices. Some 4 650 sq. Meters of gallery space is distributed over levels five, six, seven and eight, the fifth level boasting a 1670 sq. Meters, column-free gallery - making it the largest open-plan museum gallery in New York City. A text at the end of the book provides the reader with a "behind the scene" view. A conception of the museum that starts from the work of art to arrive at the architectural project. A journey that takes the reader through time and space during its realisation.