Renzo Piano Tiny House!

All Photos from Renzo Piano Building Workshop.

I am SO excited to see this!  Renzo Piano is in my top two favorite architects of all time (everyone has one of those, right ;-)…I’m a nerd…).  He may just claim that number one spot after seeing this project!  Seriously though, to see a mainstream, big name architect tackle a tiny house… cool!  Also, side note… Renzo is a cool name (thinking about re-naming Denny before he gets here, thoughts???).

He is also probably the person in school that I spent most of my time studying.  I love his work because every project is SO different, he sets on a mission to figure out the problem and then sets to designing solutions, usually a very specific and unique set of solutions.  How much more basic can you make architecture, find problem find solution…  And I am all about basic and simple.  Below are a TON of pictures of some of his other projects, for those of you who aren’t familiar with him to give you a basis:

A Parti is a concept drawing, usually simplified but generally encompassing the driving statement behind a building, distilling it down to a simple drawings, some architects are skilled at this, most I would say are not, Renzo Piano is the best in my opinion... this is one of his parti's

Which translates to this in real life. It may seem simple but it is hard to distill an entire building down to its simplest driving factors. I think most people look at this and instantly think 'hills', must be something 'environmental' or some sort of sustainable something, which is true but not the main point by any means of this building

This is a tribute to a local artist and had to reflect that and the history of the town. Each 'hill' is dedicated to a seperate function inside the building. The problem in this case is finding a 'style' that reflects the person this is dedicated to adn that fits naturally into the surrounding landscape. This building was one I focused on a lot in school for an underground airport that I designed...

Here is a diagrammatic drawing of the California Academy of Sciences Building

Piano really was doing green roofs before green roofs were 'cool'. He saw the benifits and incorporated them. being in the same field it boggles my mind how he was able to design something like this before products were made for these sorts of things and before codes really made allowances to accommodate things like green roofs, he is an exceptional designer but he has to have an exceptional team as well! Forget about applying a timeline to that.

Inside shot, how else do you get natural light in an underground space

Night shot

More schematic designing

He is known for finding creative solutions to problems at hand, this is a reaction to daylight and ventilation needs

I have no idea what this is other than cool 🙂

another natural lighting solution

and Pompidou, a gigantic building that needs lots of attention to ventilation and various 'systems'. Instead of trying to ignore those systems and hide them behind gyp board soffits and screen walls he celebrates them and makes them the main part of the building, the entire facade.

It looks very industrial but really, this is the stuff that goes in buildings that usually no one ever sees. By doing this he is able to completely gut the building basically and make it a huge show-room, which is the purpose of it. While it may not be a favorite it is definitely different and there are great reasons behind such moves.

Then onto Kansai International Airport... the problem here being that there is no more land in Japan, certainly not enough to accommodate an airport! So this is a man-made island, his building is on a lift system and is raised up several inches a year to make up for the fact this island slips away a bit every year. There is a whole set of problems here that I would have no idea how to go about approaching!

yet he still focuses on aesthetics! Here is an up close shot of the airport

And these are just neat

Pavilions devoted to a cultural center

And honestly, my favorite, his headquarter building. The coolest architecture office ever.

It's a series of trellis levels flowing down a slope toward the sea, another one I didn't include is a museum space that has a ceiling designed around leaves... a lot of the same concepts you would read about in books like biophilia are things he does intuitively. I like that!

And so what does it look like when a designer of that ability tackles a tiny house?  Check out the images below, let me know what you think.

The man!

I LOVE this tiny house parti, I would hang this on my wall... I just might!

I like how the girl is in the kitchen still 🙂

and the guy is sitting on his butt 🙂

Do you think these diagrams are helpful for you to see how it all goes together? I am thinking about incorporating something like this into my plans but I'm not sure it really conveys things?

I think what is funny about the tiny house movement is that it is SO personal, and I can actually say that I like my own design better than Mr. Piano’s because it fits me!  That is of the utmost importance!  I never thought I would genuinely like one of my designs better than Renzo Piano’s though, that’s just crazy :).  I do LOVE that he did this project though!

What do you think, should Denny be called Renzo instead (serious question)? 🙂  Also, do you think your design is better than Renzo Piano’s?  Why or why not?