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Piano had been asked for a design that would help the increasingly popular museum grow and better use its permanent collection, but to do so in a way that would not overshadow the Meier building. Piano eventually proposed reshaping the entire city block. Now there are three more buildings and two new piazzas on an eight-acre (3.2-hectare) site in skyscrapered Midtown Atlanta.

"We designed it from the beginning not to make a big, big building... but to make many," he explains. "By making many we are able to build the campus, and to build the piazza." The 177,000-square-foot (72,000-square-meter) addition more than doubles the space of the original. Piano sought an "umbilical" relationship, a slight sense of passage between the buildings.

"If they completely forget that this was an addition, that would be the best compliment," Piano observed.

Museum on Display

In autumn light over the piazza, the feeling of space is multiplied as one looks north toward the pavilion. The lobby is entirely of glass, with no interior supports to block the view to the outdoor sculpture terrace.

To the west, the wing is also glass at the piazza level. Looking south, a new restaurant is shielded with a canopy of elms that form a roof over outdoor cafe tables. To the east, the buildings part and open to the sidewalks of Peachtree Street, framing an ancient gingko tree and the Roy Lichtenstein sculpture, "House III."

Across the back street is a city train station; the design removed an existing flyover bridge and instead steers riders toward steps to the piazza. On the 16th Street side, the brown stone and masonry of one of the city's older churches is visible beyond the glass of the new section for African art.

But Piano enthuses about the just-planted oak trees that will slowly fill in as a backdrop. Grass, ivy, and nearly 150 trees connect and soften the campus' blaze of white and concrete. Early on, Piano openly admired Atlanta's lush canopy. An estimated 60,000 trees were planted in the past 20 years, with a push just before the 1996 Olympic Games.

The four floors of the Wieland Pavilion connect to the Meier building and the smaller wing with short, transparent bridges. They provide a not uncomfortable flash of sunshine for those walking from the dimmer lower galleries.

On the glass bridges, it's natural to stop and look toward the piazza, or at people ascending one of several outdoor stairways that make visitors walk through the piazza before they enter a gallery. It's a display of assurance that one dominant feature is not a building, but space — the open sky over the piazza.   >>>

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SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE The newly expanded High Museum of Art in Atlanta, with the original Richard Meier building to the right, and new wings by Renzo Piano, center and left, surrounding the Sifly Piazza with "House III" by Roy Lichtenstein and "The Shade," by Auguste Rodin in the foreground. Photo: Jonathan Hillyer The museum's new Anne Cox Chambers Wing (left) and the Wieland Pavilion (right) by Renzo Piano. Photo: Jonathan Hillyer Main entrance of the High Museum of Art. Photo: Jonathan Hillyer Site plan, High Museum of Art campus. Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop South elevation, High Museum of Art campus. Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop West elevation, High Museum of Art campus. Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop North elevation, High Museum of Art campus. Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop East elevation, High Museum of Art campus. Image: Renzo Piano Building Workshop   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.