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	title of this thread your message Now, consider Piano's Klee Museum. It is not dumb at all. In fact he practically succeeded in getting rid of walls, which is a virtue in a feasibility analysts calculating mind. It is an undulating wave of metal frame sided only at each end with glass walls. It is quite a concept visually, too, and, again, it is quite an elegant engineering exercise. Renzo was learning. But how much design is really involved in the Klee? Not much I would argue. Mostly engineering. And remember that behind the wave concept the Klee museum is essentially Quonset huts with the trough of the curve let in. The idea of quonset huts go back to Bucky Fuller in WWII I believe. Military bases used to be full of them. I would imagine Mr. Piano saw some of these in his childhood in war ravaged Italy and thought: I lift them up and slide the troughs in under them and, presto, I have a multi-partitioned building with only walls at each end! And yet the wave concept in the Klee building never disappears into the building design. It is always front and center. The Klee building is not about the building. It is about the undulating wave. Compare this tendency for the concept never to transmogrify fully into a building with say, someone like Wright, another guy who claimed to work with concepts. Wrights buildings are almost alchemical in the way they transform their concepts into buildings (except when he was doing pre Columbian voodoo that he do not so well in LA). Ask the average person about a Wright building, and they will say, "that's the darnedest house I ever saw," whether liking it or not. Ask the same person about the Pompidou Center and they will say, "look at that building with all the pipes and junk on the outside." Or ask them about the Klee Museum and they will say, "Wow, look at that wave." So to summarize my thoughts about Piano before wading into the CAS, what I admire about Piano's work--its generally high concept thoroughly carried through--is also what I find his shortcoming; that his buildings never seem to fully transcend their high concepts. Fully working through a concept in a building is not the same as designing a fully integrated building that is beautiful, useful and financially feasible, as well as, rational in its trade-offs with environment. Okay, so what about the CAS? Is it great design, great engineering, both or neither? And does it transcend its own high concept? And is its catchy high concept useful, or goofy. Let's consider the high concept first. I am lifting the ground up and sliding a building in under it. associated web images (optional) associated web link (optional) your email your password create a forums account \| you forgot your password?