Star architect Renzo Piano in Baltimore

Hopkins University President Ron Daniels knew perfectly well that the invited architect wouldn't be  the enfant terrible which he was at 34 when he won the Centre Beaubourg in Paris design competition together with Richard Rogers in 1971, but a now internationally celebrated superstar who, at age  81, is  less likely to rock the Hopkins boat. Yet, in a discussion with Renzo Piano, on short notice arranged on the Hopkins Campus on Monday and titled "The Role of Architecture in Civil Society", Daniels, who is 59 but looks like 44, tried several times  to elicit the reverberations of the disruption the industrial looking Beaubourg had provoked in Paris and beyond. The most provocative thing the star architect finally said: "So it looks like a refinery? Yeah, why not?"

Ron Daniels and Renzo Piano at Hopkins on Monday
(Photo: Philipsen)

Renzo Piano is spry, witty and very well mannered, a perfectly fine dinner guest. His native tongue is Italian, he lives in Paris and builds all over the world. He had no trouble producing any number of print-ready English statements about architecture and the role of architects. ("Life is not what you have done but what is still to be done").

Recently Daniels had dinner with Piano in Athens since the Piano designed cultural center there is named for and funded by the same Stavros Niarchos Foundation which will also fund the envisioned Hopkins Agora project. (The Foundation also funded a large portion of the Parkway theater renovation on North Avenue). The Athens Center has already advanced to second most visited attraction in Athens after the Acropolis. Clearly, Hopkins is trying to direct some of the architect's glow to Baltimore by announcing last week that it had tapped the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) as their architect.  Daniels grabbed Piano's  elbow so often and looked at him with such adoration, that in a different constellation, it could have constituted harassment. Having the indefatigable man's fame rub off on the Hopkins institution is clearly the goal, even though the university's small 35,000 square foot interdisciplinary center, dedicated to the idea of strengthening democracy through civic engagement and discourse worldwide is tiny compared to the $800 million, 1.28 million square foot Greek project. In Greece the architect moved a mountain, what can he move in Baltimore?

Back of the Centre Beaubourg: Refinery architecture  shock in 1977

Students and MICA President "Sammy" Hoi got to ask the master some questions. All centered around how Piano can unite a divided Baltimore, or more modestly, how the programmatically themed "agora" building could unite people.

Piano noted that as an architect one has to understand shifts in society "as a builder" and "you need to be  bit a poet". "It’s a constant struggle", he said, "it looks obvious but it isn’t. Listen to the people is at the center."  He also allowed, a bit more to the point, that it is "important to understand the relationship between the city and the university".  He mentioned his Palais de Justice on the northeast edge of Paris, the "banlieue",a giant project that somehow is supposed to provide healing between the healthy core city and its ailing edges.

Under the gray and rainy skies of Monday's Baltimore Pritzker Prize winner Piano who currently is the star of a retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, had walked the Homewood Campus this way and that way to see what it would tell him. Piano and his American born partner Mark Carroll, apparently impressed be the dripping lushness of the Hopkins terrain, came away with the notion that "nature would definitely be part" of what defines the new building. Other than that they demurred and didn't say much about what they may have in mind. This isn't surprising, since the university still has to find a suitable site for the new center.

Stavros-Niarchos-Foundation Cultural Centre, Athens (Photo: Michel Denance)

First rumblings that the best location for a new statement may be the Mattin Center surfaced already in 2015 and caused some consternation  among Hopkins and in the architectural community. The arts center was Hopkins' last attempt of harnessing architectural starpower when they commissioned internationally known New York studio of Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to design it. As the below description taken from the architect's website indicates, many of the very same objectives now on the table for Renzo Piano to crack were also part of the Mattin Center which isn't even 15 years old.

The Mattin Center at Johns Hopkins University is a place to nurture the creative arts in a school where the primary focus has always been science and engineering. Students come here in their free time to take non-accredited classes in dance, theater and the visual arts. In many ways, it functions as an impromptu student union.

The center is composed of three buildings housing visual art and computer rooms, a dance studio, student offices, a black box theater, individual and group music practice rooms, and a café. Art studios open directly onto terraces. Large windows permit views into ground level dance studios. A brilliant green ceiling reflects light from a hidden skylight to a café below. Clerestory windows bring natural light to the student offices. The three structures are containers of life and light, and the triangulated plan sites the buildings close to each other, so people see other people working, creating a visual community.
The buildings are cut into the existing slope of the site and act as retaining walls to create a sunken, sheltered courtyard. This is the heart of the project and serves as a place of passage, gathering, study, and meeting. The roofs of the buildings that form the courtyard are accessible terraces. A series of ramps and stairways connect the plaza and terrace levels as well as the Center to the Hopkins campus beyond.  By cutting the buildings into the ground, the strong presence of the wooded knoll and the character of the existing Neo-Georgian architecture are retained. 

Hopkins campus: Where is the gateway?

The new envisioned SNF Agora Institute is a 2017 initiative based on a $150 million gift from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. As the BBJ described it "It is intended to be both an academic space and public forum that will bring together experts from diverse fields including political science, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, ethics, sociology and history. It will facilitate scholarly research and experiments on improving civic engagement." The local architect partner for the prestigious project was announced on Monday as well: It is Ayers Saint Gross (ASG) of Baltimore, a firm nationally and internally known for its campus plans and architecture.  According to Adam Gross of ASG, his firm has previously collaborated with RPBW on the Harvard Allston masterplan and on the Whittle School in DC. Added principal Stephen Wright: "the relationship with Renzo Piano is collaborative and isn't one where we are told what to do".

Mattin Center: Are its days numbered?

Asked whether there was room on the Hopkins campus for a new project without tearing significant buildings down, Hopkins President Daniels answered answered with a clear "yes".

Right after the one hour discussion in Baltimore, Mr. Piano headed off to take the train to New York where his firm is together with SOM behind the masterplan for Columbia University’s Manhattanville campus in Harlem, slated for completion by 2030. Star architects are not allowed to get tired. Here, too, diversity, access and overcoming divisions will play a key role and the Italian is supposed to make the miracle happen.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA