Renzo Piano and the Renzo Piano Building Workshop (RPBW) were recently announced as the architects to design the new headquarters of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Agora Institute at the Johns Hopkins University.
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation committed $150 million to a joint effort with Johns Hopkins University to create the SNF Agora Institute, in order to forge new ways to address the deterioration of civic engagement worldwide and facilitate the restoration of open and inclusive discourse, that is the bulwark of healthy democracies. Drawing inspiration from the Agora of ancient Athens, which was a hub of conversation and debate, and the center of the city-state’s democratic governance, the gift establishes the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, as an academic and public forum bringing together experts from fields such as political science, psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, ethics, sociology, and history.
Renzo Piano’s best-known buildings include the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Athens, the SNF’s largest single grant, the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, the Shard in London and the new Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
In addition to the above, Renzo Piano has undertaken the design of the infrastructure projects to be carried out within the framework of the SNF’s grant Initiative to strengthen Greece’s Health sector.
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