MAXXI: Zaha Hadid Taps
into Rome’s past while creating its most contemporary building in decades.
In Rome,
history flows through every urban artery, providing a strong pulse to obscure
outposts and tourist destinations alike. For architects, the Eternal City
presents history as inspiration, obstacle, and challenge. With the National
Museum of XXI Century Arts (MAXXI), which opened in May in the Flaminio
district just outside the city’s historic core, Zaha Hadid treats it as a river
— a fluid construct comprising a series of streams — converging, overlapping,
then changing course. In the process, she taps into powerful flows of the Roman
past and delivers her most convincing building to date — a sensual piece of
construction that works both urbanistically and as a place to view art. More
than 10 years in the making, MAXXI offers visitors a trip to Hadid’s past, as
well as Rome’s. When she entered the competition for the project in 1999 and
made it to the short list of 15 architects (which included Steven Holl, Toyo
Ito, Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel, and Kazuyo Sejima), she had built very little
and employed only about 30 people. Today, her staff numbers more than 350 and
she is building major projects around the world. The year 1999 turned out to be
a pivotal moment in her career, starting with a set of unsuccessful
competitions and ending with her busy designing two projects in Germany — the
Phaeno Science Center and the BMW Central Building — and a transit terminus in
France, in addition to MAXXI. (See sidebar, page 86.)
In each of these projects,
Hadid and her partner, Patrik Schumacher, approached the building as a
“quasi-urban field, a ‘world’ to dive into rather than a signature object,”
explains Hadid. With MAXXI, the architects confronted a site covered by a set
of military barracks, some of which they could remove and some they needed to
keep. Their design incorporates a military building on Via Guido Reni to the
south and carves out a public plaza running the length of the site to Via
Masaccio on the north. In addition to opening a pedestrian connection through
the city block, the scheme acknowledges the angled street grid beyond Via
Masaccio — twisting the museum building to align with a nearby streetcar line.
Or, as the architects explain in their tortured project text, “An inferred mass
is subverted by vectors of circulation.”
Matching the three-story height
of its neighbors and wiggling between and around them, MAXXI cleverly embeds
itself in the fabric of this emerging part of town. Along with Renzo Piano’s
Parco della Musica Auditorium (2002) and Pier Luigi Nervi’s Sports Palace
(1960) just a few blocks away, MAXXI is turning what had been an industrial and
military area into a new arts district. As you approach the museum along Via
Guido Reni, you notice only a pair of modest bookends on either side of a
restored barracks. So when you walk into the entry plaza, the size and twisting
form of MAXXI take you by surprise. But the way it connects to the different
city grids on the north and the south and its sinuous allusion to the nearby
Tiber river make it feel very much a part of this place.
When the project began, it was
unclear what kind of museum would occupy the building. There was talk of
focusing on Arte Povera — a movement that emerged in Italy in the 1960s.
Eventually, the national government set up Fondazione MAXXI, made up of two
parts — one devoted to art and the other to architecture — and both dedicated
to contemporary work. To deal with the uncertainty of the art to be displayed,
Hadid approached the museum as a “frame or clearing for the unknown and
untested.” As built, the museum leads visitors along winding paths accented by
lengths of concrete fins suspended from glass-and-steel roofs; some of the fins
hold lights and other utilities, while others have tracks for securing
temporary partitions. The galleries work best for big works of art and
challenge curators to think creatively in displaying smaller pieces.
Due to its complex geometry,
the building “is not easily understandable at first,” says project architect
Gianluca Racana. Just as one needs to explore an Italian city on foot, visitors
must wander around MAXXI — ascending forking stairs and following tiered
galleries accessed by long ramps. On both the inside and the outside, the
museum works as a series of connected ribbons, a composition that conjures the
spirit of Baroque architecture with its play of convex and concave forms. And
like buildings designed by Borromini and Bernini, MAXXI manipulates daylight in
an almost mystical way — bringing it in from above, through glass roofs
shielded by metal grilles, adjustable louvers, and concrete fins. Fluorescent
tubes in the stairs and light boxes on the underside of circulation routes give
these elements the appearance of floating and add to the museum’s liquid
approach to space.
Reinforcing this fluid
character, the architects designed the building as a poured-concrete structure,
exposed on the inside and out. To handle the complex geometry, they used
self-compacting concrete. And to ensure an continuous supply of concrete, they
built a factory on-site. Four expansion joints split the building for seismic
reasons. But uniform finishes give visitors the impression of moving through
uninterrupted space. One of the few false moments, however, happens on the
second floor where a north—south gallery meets a tiered set of display spaces;
instead of a seamless convergence, a glass wall and doors separate the two
flows.
“I think this is the best
building Zaha will ever do,” states Pippo Ciorra, senior curator of
architecture at MAXXI. “Because the project took so long and she had a small
firm when it started, she was able to fully develop the design,” he explains.
Some people have criticized the building as overwhelming the art inside it. Pio
Baldi, president of Fondazione MAXXI, disagrees, saying the continuous
galleries allow visitors to see art from different perspectives. The museum has
certainly shaken up Rome’s often staid world of art and architecture, provided
a jolt of creative energy to the Flaminio district, and given visitors a
thrilling place to think about the future while still connected to the city’s
rich past.
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