new suburban shopping mall, image via Renzo Piano Workshop

Italian architect Renzo Piano is known for ambitious projects including the new Whitney Museum, the New York Times building, and the striking California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. So it comes as a bit of surprise, to say the least, that the Renzo Piano Building Workshop is focusing its efforts on a suburban shopping mall in the Bay Area, dubbed the City Center Bishop Ranch. According to Antonio Belvedere, a partner at the workshop, it is part of a plan to reimagine the mall as a new kind of gathering place for the community.

A plan, in other words, to make suburbia feel a little more like urban centers, where gathering places are plentiful. It's an idea that lines up with New Urbanism, a popular urban design movement that espouses the value of mixed-use and walkable neighborhoods.In agreeing to do this project, Renzo Piano is taking on a place (the exurbs) and a type of structure (a mall) that most prominent architects would never deign to touch.....Continue Reading

> via techinsider.io