100+ Forum Russia hosted by Renzo Piano

Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) — an international architectural company with offices located in Paris and Genoa. At the end of November, representatives of the forum's organizing committee, as part of an official delegation from the Yekaterinburg City Administration, visited the Italian workshop.

At the 2016 forum, representatives of the Genoa Municipality presented Renzo Piano's BluePrint project for the reconstruction of the city's waterfront. In 2017, the organizers are waiting for the leading architects of the world-famous bureau at the 100+Forum Russia.

One of the areas of the bureau's work is the Fondazione Renzo Piano, which provides assistance to young architects. Established in 2004, the foundation conducts six-month internships for graduate students of architectural universities in the offices of the RPBW in Genoa and Paris. Tuition is paid for through scholarships provided by the foundation. Representatives of Fondazione Renzo Piano became interested in the possibility of attracting students from Yekaterinburg, as the Ural Architectural school is considered one of the leading in Russia. Within the framework of the 100+ Forum Russia, representatives of the Italian side are scheduled to meet with the leadership of USAHU to discuss cooperation options.

Since its establishment in 1981, Renzo Piano Building Workshop has successfully implemented more than 120 architectural projects throughout Europe, North America, Australia and East Asia. Among them is the Georges Pompidou National Center for Art and Culture. It is one of the most visited tourist sites in the world and is considered an architectural icon of Paris. The 72-storey London Bridge Tower, also known as the Shard, has been built in London (UK). In New York (USA) in 2007, a 52-storey skyscraper was commissioned in the USA — a new headquarters for the New York Times newspaper designed by the Italian architect's office.

The workshop has a solid list of unique architectural masterpieces: the Paul Klee Museum and Exhibition Center in Bern (Switzerland), the Kanaksky Cultural Center in New Caledonia, the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam (Netherlands), the reconstruction of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (USA), the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo (Norway), The foundation building of the Pathe Film Studio in Paris (France) and others. In 1994, the Kansai International Airport Terminal was built on an artificial island in Osaka Bay (Japan). The architect specially created a long and lightweight structure capable of withstanding strong earthquakes.

In Russia, Renzo Piano's first job will be the reconstruction of the Moscow HPP-2 power plant on Bolotnaya Embankment as a center for contemporary culture. The unusual project was presented in the fall of 2015. According to the architect, the new concept assumes that glass walls and a roof will be made and eco-friendly technologies will be used.