Renzo Piano donates his archive to the Politecnico di Milano – Corriere.it

“But why?”. Almost eight decades after his first construction sites where the family placed him sitting on a pile of sand (“A construction site is a dangerous place for a child, but seeing gravel, stones and bricks become a pillar had something miraculous about it”), Renzo Piano has still in mind the question of his father Carlo the day he said to him: «I want to be an architect». «“ But why? ”, He answered me. He didn’t understand. He had a small business and was a small builder, his dad was a small builder, my uncles were small builders, my brother Ermanno was already studying engineering to be a small builder… And I, imagine, wanted to be a architect”.

It began like this, he says: «At that age you have to decide: either you say yes or you go your own way. There was no architecture in Genoa, I had to choose between Florence and Milan. I chose Florence because it was further away.’ In love with Brunelleschi? «Here I want you: after two years, having completed the “preparatory” two-year course (as it was called) one day I get up, look in the mirror and say: “What am I doing here in Florence? This city is too beautiful. So beautiful it’s paralyzing. What am I doing here?”. I decided to move to Milan. I was already confusedly thinking that the architect not only designs buildings, but also questions about construction, materials, techniques…». In short, practical problems. Concrete. That required studies, science and research. So it was that he chose Milan: «Perhaps it was a little less beautiful, but I was more interested in it being alive. Open. In French there is a word that holds everything inside: il bâtisseur is the one who builds, the master builder English…”. Our “builder”, perhaps associated with a building contractor, does not give an idea… «I wanted to do the bâtisseur».

He arrives in Milan, enrolls at the Polytechnic (“I liked that it promised more “poli”, today we would say multitasking”), plunges into student movements and university occupations (“A stroke of luck. We grew up breathing an air of freedom creative”. Sexual freedom too? “Complete clumsy”), he begins to break the most vulgar schemes, goes to the workshop of the architect Franco Albini, who “worked a lot on matter and had his own poetics: the search for lightness. A master who always made stairs that didn’t touch the ground… That skimmed the ground…».

In short, learn to study. Wasn’t he a nerd? «Not at all, I was a bad student and a bad high school student. My mother, Rosetta, was worried. But I will say one thing: if you don’t grow up as the top of the class, but as one of the last, you realize that others are better than you and therefore that there is always something to learn from others. It is a lesson in modesty and in life. I owe everything to university: that’s where I really grew up. I’ve learned everything.” Also to answer the fatherly question? «Also: he was very good, we were very close but different. He did beautiful but heavy things. I was forced to make them read».

For this reason, he explains, he decided today to donate his own archive to the Polytechnic, for which he had already designed the new Campus inaugurated in mid-2021 with Ottavio di Blasi. From Osaka airport to the Sydney tower, from Columbia University in New York to the courthouse in Toronto up to the San Giorgio viaduct in Genoa built after the collapse of the «Morandi», the Piano Foundation owns 1,560 linear meters of paper dossiers, 131,000 drawings and 20,900 surveyed sketches, 150 linear meters of shelves of photos and so on… Difficult to move everything. However, the assets destined for the Milanese university in the 350 square meters reserved for the Foundation are already so rich as to become a gold nugget mine to study for aspiring architects. Just together with the same Plan.

As he will explain today in a lectio magistralis in the university, in fact, after having been revered for decades as a Master, the Surveyor (as his friends call him, but it’s not for mockery: he’s proud of him) will begin to really teach. At the age of eighty-five, carried vigorously, he agreed to sit for five years in the chair (which will never be!) to pass on to the students what he has learned. «I know how important the Italian pedagogical culture is that ignites the hidden creativity in young people, from Don Milani to Mario Lodi, from Loris Malaguzzi to Franco Lorenzoni: I don’t know if I’ll be up to it. Apart from a brief experience at the Architectural Association School in London, I have brought up a lot of young architects in my studio and in my office in the Senate, but I have never really “teached”. But I have a lot of stories to tell, true stories. That might be interesting.”

From his enchanted reportage to the twin temples of Isé in Japan (where every twenty years one of the two is demolished and patiently rebuilt to take over twenty years later for the other to be demolished and rebuilt in a centuries-old turnover of young people who for a third of life they study and learn, for a third they build the new temple, for a third they teach the new students) up to the importance of capturing the right inspiration in nature for the right project, as he is doing for a refuge on Mont Blanc inspired by the discovery that among the alpine rocks pyrite has aggregated over the millennia assuming the shape of perfect silver cubes.

Starting point of lectio, as we said, the paternal catchphrase: «But why?». He will answer: «Because building is the most beautiful profession in the world. As long as we start from three dimensions: the technical one that comes from the study of the context, the landscape, the materials, the innovations, the ethical and the poetic one. It is necessary to walk, look, travel, discover, to be able to go straight to the goal: to change the world. Where are you going at twenty if you don’t have the idea of ​​changing the world? And so, gradually, you understand that the most important commitment must be in public places. All my life I have made public places. Libraries, universities, schools, museums, hospitals like the one we are building in Paris…”

But will the boys listen to the elderly patriarch who at the age of thirty, with long beard and hair, crew-neck sweater, scrambled every world competition by inventing the Beaubourg with the Englishman Richard Rogers (“we were two bad boys”)? «I will start from my mistakes. I would like to confess reticence, omissions… If I can be completely honest, because twenty-somethings notice it immediately when you cheat them, miraculous things can happen. The first would be to destroy the distance between me and the young people. Breaking down the wall of awe, let’s even say of reverence, which often exists towards someone like me. And they will be able to feel free to intervene, ask questions, criticize». Not risking? “Maybe. But it is essential that they understand, and here I have to lead by example, how important it is to accept criticism. And do you know which criticisms work? The irritating ones. Otherwise they don’t count for a damn».

Second “lesson”? «Those who do this job must be aware that it is a dangerous job. If you make a mistake in a book, a law thesis or a chest C, it’s painful. But if you risk people’s lives by building a house or a bridge badly, you will never forgive yourself for it…”. Third? “Table tennis. It is rare if not very rare that a genius, at a certain time of a certain day, has a dazzling idea. I’ve said it several times: ideas don’t come like that. Generally, a word, a joke, a provocation is thrown in and then this passes and passes among everyone like a ping pong ball, until it takes on the form of an idea that is gradually “fixed”». Does he mean that «eureka is collective?». “Yup. It rarely comes out of our bag. We get there together. Borges said that every creative activity “is always suspended between memory and oblivion”».

What is there, basically, in this decision to pour so many years of experience in favor of university students? «The real truth, if I have to say it, is that I like being among young people and taking care of these things, the Foundation, the Polytechnic, because this is the only way I’ve found to survive myself. Because you do many things in life, you do many, many, but the right one, really right, you haven’t done it yet, and then you find a moment that you have to survive». Is it hard for the Renzino who played in the sand of the building site to drag a monument like Renzo Piano along with him? «No, not too much because I live it lightly and I survive like this, giving it away, giving it to others. You don’t have to keep it to yourself what you are. If not, you won’t survive it. Stay chained.” Fear of death? “Hmm, no, no, no. But you think of your children, of those who love you, of many things… Of course it would be a great nuisance». Too many construction sites still open for the bâtisseur light…