"Will architecture save the future? - Kanak Native Art Museum, Noumea -Architect Renzo Piano" by Daniela Constantinescu, ,

As I looked down from the hill overlooking the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, lining up my shot, an allegorical image formed in my imagination. It was as if all the architectural challenges and triumphs of the past, present, and future stood arrayed before me. Straw huts of Kanak design reached high into the sky, monuments to ancient ambition. As I framed the image, that ancestral yearning blended naturally into the museum’s sail-like projections, the curves of their eco-friendly “green architecture” a striking contrast to the city of Noumea that stretched out behind. Although my viewfinder was filled with lush vegetation, already heavy clouds had gathered and the tide was coming in to displace the scattered pedestrians as if to echo the next great challenge in Architecture: will mankind learn to live in harmony with nature, as our forefathers did, or will our cities and our works one day be swept away?