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UNESCO, laboratory and workshop
Renzo Piano, 1989-1991
Punta Nave (Genoa), Italy

 A collaboration between UNESCO and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop

The Workshop is basically sculpted from simple forms. On entering the building, one encounters a realm that hardly seems to be an interior, so thoroughly permeated by light and nature. Light floods through the roof and dances upwards from the sea, and the brightness, color and mood of sky and sea is sensed in all parts of the building.   The purpose for which the building was originally conceived, was to research natural materials for their technological potential, and to use the products of natural evolution to extend that of humans. More simply put, behind Piano's architecture is the dream of acting with the world rather than upon it, as  well as the architect's ambition to be fully  part of his time.

" Light, transparency, vibration, texture, color are immaterial elements; they interact with the form of the space, but are not just function of it." 

The UNESCO Laboratory and Workshop stands on the ancient terraces of the Lingurian coastal region, it is almost built completely out of glass, with a roof structure of laminated wood. Renzo Piano: " Made almost entirely of glass and transparent to the sunlight and reflections from the Gulf of Genoa, it looks like a greenhouse, one of many scattered over this stretch of Riviera. It is poised between the mountains and the sea. It stands on a terraced slope, and has respected the characteristics of this land carved by human hands, even echoing the same stepped structure in its interior. The work areas follow the slope and are set on different levels. In addition to creating a suggestive sequence of spaces, this solution permits a view of nature and sea at every level."

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