Piano's rectangular pavilion stands on the site of the original Academy, a complex that was irreparably damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The front of the new Academy incorporates a large portion of one of these buildings, designed by Beaux Arts-trained Lewis P. Hobart in the 1930s. The neoclassical stone facade does not look out of place, for while Piano uses a Modernist architectural vocabulary, his grammar is traditional: repetitive structural modules, symmetry, movement along major and minor axes, a logical plan. There are distinctly untraditional effects, however, such as the shimmering semishade provided by the translucent roof canopy, which also carries arrays of solar cells. The extremely skinny steel columns reminded me of 1950s Southern California architect Craig Ellwood, an underappreciated designer who stretched the Miesian steel-and-glass idiom to extravagant lengths.