Renzo Piano (Genoa, 1937) studied architecture at the Polytechnic in Milan. Since winning the competition to design the Centre Pompidou in Paris (1971) along with Richard Rogers, Piano has become a prominent figure on the international architectural scene, with more works constructed outside Italy than in his own country. Piano brings a similar approach to both the small and the large scale. He has directed projects of very varying sizes: small buildings like the travelling IBN Pavilion and the Brancusi Museum; and great megastructures like Kansai's International Airport Terminal built on a man-made island in the Bay of Tokyo, and the remodeling of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz where work is scheduled to be completed in 2002.

The Renzo Piano Logbook

Piano. Renzo

Biographies & Memoirs

Monacelli Press

The product of a collaboration between French philosopher Jacques Derrida and Belgian photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart, Right of Inspectionis a visually alluring and engaging tour de force. Beginning with Plissart's hundred-page photo-novel, both the images and Derrida's text meditate on a variety of issues including gender, photographic genre, spectrality, and the interpretive act of seeing. Having seen Plissart's haunting black-and-white imagery, Derrida himself confesses that one cannot resist the compulsion to "make up stories." Recalling his recent preoccupation with ghosts, Derrida spectrally engages two of the most influential visual arts theorists -- Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. Within the framework of Plissart's project, Derrida engages a discussion of the relation of the photographic image to memory, authenticity, and reality. Responding to the impression of Plissart's world of artifice, reversibility, and seduction, Derrida's text illuminates what is at stake in "the right to look."

Right of Inspection

Arts & Photography

Jacques Derrida

Individual Artists

The Dumbarton Oaks Research and Study Center in Washington, D.C., administered by Harvard University, is a famed museum and study center specializing in pre-Columbian art, Byzantine studies, and garden history and design. Long known for its museum pavilion, designed by the noted architect Philip Johnson, Dumbarton Oaks sits within one of the most spectacular gardens in America. The founders of Dumbarton Oaks, Mildred and Robert W. Bliss, were important American philanthropists; the garden was developed between 1920 and 1965 by Mildred Bliss. She worked with several designers, the most significant of whom was the American landscape gardener Beatrix Farrand. The romantic but disciplined design, a series of small individual terraces and winding walkways, reflects the character of Mildred Bliss: her place in society, her travels, and her spiritual ideals. Cool formality, joyful opulence, and feelings of intimacy, reticence, and artlessness are all present in the garden. Private, public, and utilitarian areas coexist within the integrated whole. This volume, the first to present the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks, features more than one hundred color photographs of the garden in all seasons. Photographer Ping Amranand has documented the garden over the course of more than a decade, and his exceptional images capture all aspects of the garden. Susan Tamulevich's text details the original conception of the garden, its implementation over the course of half a century, and its continuing inspiration as an unparalleled American landscape.

Dumbarton Oaks: Garden into Art

Amranand, Ping

Tamulevich, Susan

Photography & Video

MVVA's 23-year story of transforming 85 acres of Brooklyn waterfront into parkland that reconnects New Yorkers to the East River &#65279;Reclaimed from 1.3 miles of New York's postindustrial waterfront, Brooklyn Bridge Park is a place for escape, recreation, and immersion in the natural world. Transforming parking lots and crumbling piers into a living ecosystem, the project is an exemplar of climate resilience, fiscal innovation, and joyful public space. This book examines MVVA's process of designing a park that went from a remote possibility to an essential part of the city around it.

Brooklyn Bridge Park: Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates

Architecture

Following the well-received New York 1900 and New York 1930, New York 1960 presents a massive, in-depth study of the city during a period of unprecedented change. New York's post-war period offers an exceptionally abundant and varied mix of building types and styles. Lavishly illustrated with more than 1,000 period photographs and illustrations.

New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial

STERN, Robert A.M. & MELLINS, Thomas & FISHMAN, David

Italy: A Complete Guide to 1,000 Cities, Towns, and Landmarks, with 80 Regional Tours (Italian Touring Club)

Travel

Touring, Club

Europe

Venice: The Islands of Murano, Burano, and Torcello, and the Villas of the Riveiera del Brenta (Italian Touring Club)

Rome and the Vatican: The Eternal City, with Its Museums, Churches, Landmarks, and Archeological Sites (Italian Touring Club)

The Swedish House

Lars Sjöberg

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Books by Monacelli Press