Renzo Piano

The Italian architect's career pivoted global architecture toward transparency, lightness, and industrial expressionism. His Centre Pompidou in Paris (1977, co-designed with Richard Rogers) turned a cultural building inside-out — placing structural and mechanical systems on the exterior as architectural features — and remains the most visited museum in Europe. Piano won the Pritzker Prize in 1998 and later designed the New York Times Building and the Whitney Museum of American Art.