Closest to completion scheduled for October 2010 is the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion at the LACMA Los Angeles Museum. Piano is responsible for the renovation of the entire scattered museum complex, and two of his buildings were already opened there in 2008 - the Brod Museum of Contemporary Art and the BP Lobby. Now we are talking about a one-story pavilion for temporary exhibitions with an area of 4,180 m2. Its facades will combine travertine and glass; the roof will be equipped with a solar filtering system typical of Piano buildings. The free plan will allow arranging there both a single exposition and several different exhibitions at the same time. The modest appearance of the building outside will be enlivened by huge air ducts painted in bright red. The Resnik pavilion will form a key part of the second phase of the museum's reconstruction, but it should be noted that Peter Zumthor is currently working on a new strategy for this reconstruction: the director has changed at LACMA, and, obviously, he does not plan any further cooperation with Piano.
However, two other museum projects of this architect, and even more prestigious than Los Angeles, have recently received a new impetus for development. The management of the Kimbell Museum of Art in Texas, whose main building - a masterpiece of late modernism - was built by Louis Kahn, announced its intention to begin construction of a new building designed by Renzo Piano in late summer 2010, and to open it in 2013. This is a structure with an area of almost 8,000 m2, located 30 m from the existing structure: they will be separated by a rectangular pond. The new wing will consist of two steel-clad gallery blocks connected by a glass vestibule. A semi-underground extension with an auditorium, a library and additional exhibition rooms will appear behind it.
The third project is the new building of the Whitney Museum in New York next to the High Line Flyover Park. The Board of Trustees of the institution made the final decision on the earliest possible start of construction: the new building should open in 2015. Immediately before that, there was a heated debate about whether to build a new building at all, or to build it next to the existing building of Marcel Breuer on Madison Avenue, on the site of the museum's residential buildings. But philanthropists agreed that the former industrial area, where the High Line is located, has more potential than the "status" Madison Avenue. It was also decided, since it would be difficult for the institution to maintain both buildings, to share its old building with the Metropolitan Museum: the latter had just planned the reconstruction of modern art galleries, and new squares would not interfere with it. In the meantime, according to Piano's project, a seven-storey “ziggurat” building, clad with steel panels, will be erected; there, on an area of 18,000 m2, there will be exhibition halls, restoration workshops, an educational center and much more.
Piano is also engaged in the reconstruction of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which required a court decision: in her 1924 will, the collector set a mandatory condition - to keep intact not only her collection and the building she built for him, but even the exposition scheme in all its details. The court recognized that for the normal development of the museum, it is necessary to build a new wing with exhibition galleries, an auditorium (the museum is known for its concerts), educational auditoriums, greenhouses, etc. Construction began at the end of 2009.
Considering that the total number of Piano's museum projects in the USA has exceeded ten, and he has already implemented many of them, the expression Piano fatigue appeared in the local press - like “museum fatigue” or visual and noise fatigue. All his projects are of very high architectural quality, but the subtlety (and sensitivity) of his approach sometimes works at the expense of the individuality of the buildings. For example, this happened with his completed (and, it seems, future works too) in Los Angeles, and to some extent - in Chicago. But the popularity of Piano with cultural institutions is explained not only by the conservatism of their tastes and unwillingness to experiment. In the case of the first three projects described above - in California, Texas and New York - he was invited to collaborate after the failure of several previous renovation plans. Patrons of the board of trustees, city authorities, government agencies and public organizations for the protection of heritage and citizens who simply live in the neighborhood of a new building each adhere to their own opinion, and an original, unusual project is much more difficult to implement than a classic and restrained one.
Everyone likes drunk, so he works where he failed before, for example, Rem Koolhaas (Whitney and LACMA). But one must understand that the acuteness of the "political" situation around the project undoubtedly affects the architect himself, which does not affect his work in the best way. On the third hand, even the worst project of Renzo Piano is much better than the most successful works of a significant part of the architects - therefore, one cannot help suspecting those "tired" of him of being fed up and spoiled.
