Renzo Piano Interview: On Jørn Utzon

“Architecture is a funny combination of precision and fantasy. Fantasy is interesting, but it’s not enough.” The lauded Italian architect Renzo Piano admires fellow Pritzker Prize-winner, Jørn Utzon, for his ability to combine the magical and the rational. Watch him talk about the world-renowned Danish architect, who would have turned 100 in 2018. “I always admired everything about him: stubbornness – the famous stubbornness – but also the desire to find rational things, geometrical constructions. And at the same time the fantasy of understanding vision.” Piano argues that if you have total freedom, you’re in trouble, but if you add something like gravity or geometry, you can create something truly great – and poetic. Utzon, he continues, was able to do exactly this, and not only in regards to the Sydney Opera House: “Jørn Utzon was able to do something with the rational, the force of gravity, structure, construction – and beauty, vision, fantasy.” Renzo Piano (b. 1937) is a la