Renzo Piano's Diogene cabin on the Vitra campus in Switzerland, as published in Cabins (Taschen, 2014).

Kitchen/Dining Room: Perhaps when setting the holiday table you noticed your cutlery has lost it's luster. Upgrade your fine flatware with the Piano set by Renzo Piano for Iittala.

Photo: David L. Ryan/Boston Globe

Renzo Piano (born 1937)

Quintessa Winery has a commitment to creating modern architecture that complements rather than competes with the landscape.

A view of the new Living Room visitor orientation space on the ground floor of the Gardner's new wing. Furniture selected by Renzo Piano Workshop, including the vibrant red seating. Not pictured: a guest book commissioned from artist Stefano Arienti, who also created the installation piece hanging on the entry facade.

Architecture: The Shard, LondonRenzo Piano’s London skyscraper is currently the tallest building in Western Europe at over one thousand feet high.

When Austrian entrepreneur Erich Sattler refocused his family’s business from mixed agriculture to grape growing, he needed headquarters to house the budding wine enterprise. He turned to his architect brother, Kurt, to design a winery capable of production, bottling, and cellaring on the ground-floor wine hall, with guest accommodations, presentation space, and an office in the wine loft above. Read the full story here.

Catwalks and viewing platforms encourage visitors to take in the surroundings and, in effect, make the building reach out into the city.

If visitors suffer an art overload, they can retreat to viewing areas that flank the galleries.

The Whitney Museum's new Meatpacking District home opens May 1, 2015. Asymmetrical in form, the structure gleans inspiration from the industrial-commercial neighborhood in which it's situated.

Adjacent to the High Line, the museum seeks to become a cultural anchor in downtown Manhattan.

The eighth-floor galleries are illuminated by skylights, which bear some similarity to Dia:Beacon's (the ultimate modern art exhibition space) ceiling. Movable walls allow for curators to easily adapt the space.

The facade along Gansevoort street is transparent—a symbol of how the museum seeks to become the neighborhood's living room.

While elegant might not be the operative word for the Whitney, the last thing the city needs is an art-object that doesn't meet the needs of a modern-day museum.

A glass-walled lobby welcomes visitors into the structure—a dramatic departure from Marcel Breuer's design for the Whitney's previous Upper East Side location.

Museum directors hope the terraces become lively spaces for outdoor sculpture and performace.

One of the three pavilions is an open, single-story space that combined the home's kitchen and great room. The Bigelows specifically liked the idea of a great room because it affords a flexible plan and airy atmosphere for entertaining. The Flexform furniture can become an in-the-round seating arrangement for impromptu piano sessions.

The rear facade of the winery.

Renzo Piano's Rocca di Frassinello winery is situated on 2,000 acres of hilly land visible from the Aurelia, the wending road built by the Romans that runs through the Tuscan hillside and connects the surrounding mountaintop villages.

A pair of glass doors open to the tasting room, also designed by Renzo Piano.

The renovation focused on connecting a production facility and tasting room with the agricultural landscape.

A naturally weathering rain screen replaced gaudy, faux-historical details.

A remodel by Aidlin Darling Design at the Brecon Estate Winery in the Paso Robles wine-growing region of California has won a Merit Design Award for Architecture at the 2016 San Francisco AIA Design Awards.

While the windows are larger than what one would find in a traditional Cape Cod structure, they were essential in establishing a connection with the forest.

California Academy of Sciences Location: San Francisco, California Architect: Renzo Piano Building Workshop

The interior of the Sattler Winery is kept at a constant 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Section view of the technologically advanced Caldwell Hall, designed by Renzo Piano with the acoustical expertise of Yasuhisa Toyota.

Kawamata's high-perched pods are intriguingly and precariously wedged into select corners of Renzo Piano's steel skeleton.

"Prefabrication allows us to control quality while reducing error margins," explains Teke, who partly credits his interest in prefab to his work experience at Renzo Piano’s firm. "It helps us save time, reduce waste, and use materials to their maximum efficiency, allowing for a sustainable process of production—an easier and faster way to build."

Connecting the original Willard T. Sears building to the Renzo Piano addition is a glassy vertebrae, which Piano describes as a "conversation," not to close to the subject and not too far away.

Upon entering the winery, visitors are met with a minimalist hall and an unobstructed route through the structure.

Renzo Piano's sketch of his vision for the transparent connector between the historial palace and the contemporary wing of the Gardner museum.

The Centre Pompidou in Paris opened in 1977 and was a collaboration between Rogers and fellow Pritzker Prize–winner Renzo Piano.

Thanks to the extra space, the clients were able to bring their baby grand piano out of storage. It now sits in the main room, overhung by Mega Bulb pendants from Great Dane.