February 01, 2013

MAXXI MUSEUM DESIGN BY ZAHA HADID




MAXXI - NATIONAL MUSEUM OF XXI CENTURY ARTS 
DESIGN BY ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS




MAXXI - NATIONAL MUSEUM OF XXI CENTURY ARTS DESIGN BY ZAHA HADID ARCHITECTS
ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPT AND URBAN STRATEGY : STAGING THE FIELD OF POSSIBILITIES
The MAXXI addresses the question of its urban context by maintaining a reference to the former army barracks. This is in no way an attempt at topological pastiche, but instead continues the low-level urban texture set against the higher level blocks on the surrounding sides of the site. In this way, the MAXXI is more like an ‘urban graft’, a second skin to the site. At times, it affiliates with the ground to become new ground, yet also ascends and coalesces to become massive where needed. The entire building has an urban character: prefiguring upon a directional route connecting the River to Via Guido Reni, the Centre encompasses both movement patterns existing and desired, contained within and outside. This vector defines the primary entry route into the building.  By intertwining the circulation with the urban context, the building shares a public dimension with the city, overlapping tendril-like paths and open space. In addition to the circulatory relationship, the architectural elements are also geometrically aligned with the urban grids that join at the site. In thus partly deriving its orientation and physiognomy from the context, it further assimilates itself to the specific conditions of the site.
SPACE VS OBJECT
Our proposal offers a quasi-urban field, a “world” to dive into rather than a building as signature object. The campus is organised and navigated on the basis of directional drifts and the distribution of densities rather than key points. This is indicative of the character of the MAXXI as a whole: porous, immersive, a field space. An inferred mass is subverted by vectors of circulation. The external as well as internal circulation follows the overall drift of the geometry. Vertical and oblique circulation elements are located at areas of confluence, interference and turbulence.
The move from object to field is critical in understanding the relationship the architecture will have to the content of the artwork it will house. Whilst this is further expounded by the contributions of our Gallery and Exhibitions experts, it is important here to state that the premise of the architectural design promotes a disinheriting of the ‘object’ orientated gallery space. Instead, the notion of a ‘drift’ takes on an embodied form. The drifting emerges, therefore, as both architectural motif, and also as a way to navigate experientially through the museum. It is an argument that, for art practice is well understood, but in architectural hegemony has remained alien. We take this opportunity, in the adventure of designing such a forward looking institution, to confront the material and conceptual dissonance evoked by art practice since the late 1960’s. The path led away from the ‘object’ and its correlative sanctifying, towards fields of multiple associations that are anticipative of the necessity to change.
INSTITUTIONAL CATALYST
As such, it is deemed significant that in configuring the possible identity of this newly established institution (housing both Art and Architecture), with its aspiration towards the polyvalent density of the 21st century, conceptions of space and indeed temporality are reworked. Modernist Utopian space fuelled the white ‘neutrality’ of most 20th century museums. Now, this disposition must be challenged, not simply out of wilful negation, but by the necessity for architecture to continue its critical relationship with contemporary social and aesthetic categories. Since absolutism has been indefinitely suspended from current thought on the issue of art presentation, it is towards the idea of the ‘maximising exhibition’ that we gravitate. In this scenario, the MAXXI makes primary the manifold possibilities for the divergence in showing art and architecture as well as catalysing the discourse on its future. Again, the ‘signature’ aspect of an institution of this calibre is sublimated into a more pliable and porous organism that promotes several forms of identification at once.
WALLS/NOT-WALLS: TOWARDS A CONTEMPORARY SPATIALITY
In architectural terms, this is most virulently executed by the figure of the ‘wall’. Against the traditional coding of the ‘wall’ in the museum as the privileged and immutable vertical armature for the display of paintings, or delineating discrete spaces to construct ‘order’ and linear ‘narrative’, we have created a critique of it through its emancipation. The ‘wall’ becomes the versatile engine for the staging of exhibition effects. In its various guises - solid wall, projection screen, canvas, window to the city - the exhibition wall is the primary space-making device. By running extensively across the site, cursively and gestural, the lines traverse inside and out. Urban space is coincidental with gallery space, exchanging pavilion and court in a continuous oscillation under the same operation. And further deviations from the classical composition of the wall emerge as incidents where the walls become floor, or twist to become ceiling, or are voided to become a large window looking out. By constantly changing dimension and geometry, they adapt themselves to whatever curatorial role is needed. By setting within the gallery spaces a series of potential partitions that hang from the ceiling ribs, a versatile exhibition system is created. Organisational and spatial invention are thus dealt with simultaneously amidst a rhythm found in the echo of the walls to the structural ribs in the ceiling that also filter the light in varying intensities. 
STAGE FOR THOUGHT/ART AS DRAMA
It is in this way that the architecture performs the ‘staging’ of art, with moveable elements that allow for the drama to change. ‘Sets’ can be constructed from the notional elements of the gallery spaces. These are attuned to the particularities of the exhibition in question, materialising or dematerialising accordingly.
The drift through the MAXXI is a trajectory through varied ambiences, filtered spectacles and differentiated luminosity. Whilst offering a new freedom in the curators’ palette, this in turn digests and recomposes the experience of art spectatorship as liberated dialogue with artefact and environment.

http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/maxxi/


















































MAXXI: A CAMPUS FOR CULTURE
The MAXXI - Museum of 21st Century Arts is a foundation created by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (Minister Sandro Bondi). The president is Pio Baldi.
Designed by architect Zaha Hadid (winner of the international competition in 1999), the MAXXI is located in the Flaminio quarter of Rome, in the area of the former Montello military barracks.
The complex houses two institutions: MAXXI Arte (Director Anna Mattirolo) and MAXXI Architecture (Director Margherita Guccione), aiming to promote art and architecture through collection, conservation, study and exhibition of contemporary works. As of today, over 300 works are part of the MAXXI Art collection, including those of Boetti, Clemente, Kapoor, Kentridge, Merz, Penone, Pintaldi, Richter, Warhol and many others. MAXXI Architecture includes the files of the designs of Carlo Scarpa, Aldo Rossi, Pierluigi Nervi and others, as well as the projects of contemporary authors such as Toyo Ito, Italo Rota and Giancarlo De Carlo, and photography collections of the projects Italian Atlas and Author’s Site.
Designed as a true multi-disciplinary and multi-purpose campus of the arts and culture, the MAXXI creates an urban complex for the city that can be enjoyed by all. The MAXXI includes – in addition to the two museums – an auditorium, library and media library, bookshop and cafeteria, spaces for temporary exhibitions, outdoor spaces, live events and commercial activities, laboratories, and places for study and leisure.
The MAXXI, open to the city and to the world, is offered as a point of reference for public and private institutions in Italy and abroad, as well as for artists, architects and the wider public.
The design by Zaha Hadid is woven into the city’s fabric with an architectural arrangement based on the idea of an urban campus. In the MAXXI, the idea of a “closed” building gives way to a broader dimension, creating both indoor and outdoor spaces that become part of the surrounding city.
The two museums - MAXXI Art and MAXXI Architecture – are located around a large full height space which gives access to the galleries dedicated to permanent collections and temporary exhibitions, the auditorium, reception services, cafeteria and bookshop. Outside, a pedestrian walkway follows the outline of the building, restoring an urban link that has been blocked for almost a century by the former military barracks.
Materials such as glass (roof), steel (stairs) and cement (walls) give the exhibition spaces a neutral appearance, whilst mobile panels enable curatorial flexibility and variety.
The fluid and sinuous shapes, the variety and interweaving of spaces and the modulated use of natural light lead to a spatial and functional framework of great complexity, offering constantly changing and unexpected views from within the building and outdoor spaces.
Two principle architectural elements characterize the project: the concrete walls that define the exhibition galleries and determine the interweaving of volumes; and the transparent roof that modulates natural light. The roofing system complies with the highest standards required for museums and is composed of integrated frames and louvers with devices for filtering sunlight, artificial light and environmental control.
http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/maxxi/
























“I see the MAXXI as an immersive urban environment for the exchange of ideas, feeding the cultural vitality of the city.
The MAXXI should not be considered just one building - but several. The idea was to move away from the idea of “the museum as an object” and towards the idea of a “field of buildings”. After many studies, our research evolved into the concept of the confluence of lines, where the primary force of the site is the walls that constantly intersect and separate to create both indoor and outdoor spaces. It’s no longer just a museum, but an urban cultural centre where a dense texture of interior and exterior spaces have been intertwined and superimposed over one another. It’s an intriguing mixture of galleries, irrigating a large urban field with linear display surfaces.
The walls of the MAXXI create major streams and minor streams. The major streams are the galleries, and the minor streams are the connections and the bridges. The site has a unique L-shaped footprint that meanders between two existing buildings. Rather than seeing this as a limitation, we used it to our advantage, taking it as an opportunity to explore the possibilities of linear structure by bundling, twisting, and building mass in some areas and reducing it in others - threading linearity throughout both interior and exterior or the MAXXI.” 
Zaha Hadid


























































ZAHA HADID
Zaha Hadid, founder of Zaha Hadid Architects, was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize ( considered to be the Nobel Prize of architecture) in 2004 and is internationally known for both her theoretical and academic work. Each of her dynamic and innovative projects builds on over thirty years of revolutionary exploration and research in the interrelated fields of urbanism, architecture and design. Hadid’ s interest lies in the rigorous interface between architecture, landscape and geology as her practice integrates natural topography and human – made systems , leading to experimentation with cutting – edge Technologies. Such a process often results in unexpected and dynamic architectural forms.
EDUCATION
Hadid studied architecture at he Architectural Association from 1972 and was awarded the Diploma Prize in 1977.
TEACHING
She became a partner of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, taught at the AA with OMA collaborators Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, and later led her own studio at the AA until 1987. Since then she has held the Kenzo Tange Chair at the Graduate School of Design, Harward University; The Sullivan Chair at the University Illinois, School of Architecture, Chicago; guest professorsships at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg; The Knolton School of Architecture, Ohio and the Masters Studio at Columbia University, Newyork. In addition, she was made Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture and Commander of the British Empire, 2002. She is currently Professor at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria and was the Eero saarinen Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
AWARDS
Zaha Hadid’ s work of the past 30 years was the subject of critically – acclaimed retrospective exhibitions at New York’ s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 2006, London Design museum in 2007 and the Palazzo della Ragione, Padua, Italy in 2009. Her recently completed projects include the MAXXI Museum in Rome; which won the Stirling award in 2010. Hadid’ s outstanding contribution to the Stirling award in 2010. Hadid’ s outstanding contribution to the architectural profession continues to be acknowledged by the most world’ s most respected institutions. She received the prestigious ‘ Praemium Imperiale ’ from the Japan Art Association in 2009, and in 2010, the Stirling Prize from the Royal Institute of British Architects. Other recent awards include UNESCO naming Hadid as an  ‘ Artist for Peace ‘ at a ceremony in their Paris headquarters last year. Also in 2010, the Republic of France named Hadid as ‘ Commandeur de l’ Ordre des Arts et des Lettres’ in recognition of her services to architecture, and TIME magazine included her in their 2010 list of the ‘ 100 most Influential People in the World ‘. This years ‘ Time 100 ‘ is divided into four categories: Leaders, Thinkers, Artist and Hereos – with Hadid ranking top of the Thinkers category.
ZHA PROJECTS:
Zaha has played a pivotal role in a great many Zaha Hadid Architects projects over the past 30 years. The Maxxi National Museum of 21 st Century Arts in Rome, Italy; the BMW Central Building in Leipzig, Germany and the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg, Germany are excellent demonstrations of Hadid’ s quest for complex, fluid space. Previous seminal buildings such as the Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art in Cincinati, USA, have also been hailed as architecture that transforms our vision of the future with new spatial  concepts and bold, visionary forms.
Currently Hadid is working on a multitude of projects worldwide including: The London Aquatics Centre fort he 2012 Olympic Games; High – Speed Train Stations in Naples and Durango; The CMA CGM Headquarters tower in Marseille; The Fiera di Milano masterplan and tower as well as major master planning projects in Beijing, Bilboa, Istanbul and Singapore. In the Middle East, Hadid’ s portfolio includes national cultural and research centres in Jordan, Morocco, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, as well as the new Central Bank of Iraq.
You may visit Zaha Hadid Architects’ projects, design  and exhibitions news; Crest at Victoria & Albert Museum, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, , Unique Circle, Serpentine Sackler Gallery, Parametric Space, Heydar Aliyev Center, Serac Bench, The Collins Park Garage, Burnham Pavilion to click below links from my blog archive.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2014/09/crest-design-by-zaha-hadid-architect-at.html