President also announces appointment of conductor Claudio Abbado and scientists Elena Cattaneo and Carlo Rubbia

Renzo Piano is one of four cultural figures to join the Italian senate. Photograph: Luca Bruno/AP

Renzo Piano,the award-winning architect who gave London the Shard and Paris the Pompidou centre, has been granted one of his country's highest honours, being named a senator for life by the Italian president.

Giorgio Napolitano said the 75-year-old was among four distinguished Italians whose achievements in the cultural and scientific fields would allow them to contribute to the nation's parliament "in absolute independence of any party political considerations".

Claudio Abbado, the world-renownedconductor who made his debut at La Scala in Milan before becoming chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra, also received the honour. The other nominees – Elena Cattaneo, 50, and Carlo Rubbia, 79 – are both scientists. Cattaneo, whose relative youth was noted by Napolitano, who is 88, is a leading stem cell researcher, while Rubbia is a particle physicist, inventor and joint-winner of the Nobel prize for physicsin 1984.

As stipulated under the Italian constitution, the four will have voting rights in the upper house of parliament, along with Mario Monti, the former technocrat prime minister, and former president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Ahead of the decision, there had been speculation that Napolitano could seek to pour oil on the troubled waters of Italian politics by naming as senator for life Gianni Letta, longtime henchman of Silvio Berlusconi and uncle of prime minister Enrico Letta, or even Berlusconi himself. But the president appeared keen to avoid politicising the move.

Daniela Santanché, a vocal centre-right MP, expressed anger that Berlusconi was not among the four names. "[I am] deeply sorry for the one person who should have been named a senator for life and has not been – that is, Silvio Berlusconi. He would have been the best and the person who is most qualified and most deserving."

The former prime minister was handed a four-year jail term, commuted to one year, for tax fraud earlier this month. He will not go to prison but faces spending a year under house arrest or in community service – and being stripped of his seat in the senate.

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