Maxxi

The MAXXI relates with the urban context within which it is set by renewing the horizontal development of the former military barracks. The geometrical plan of the project aligns itself with the two urban grids that regulate the town planning structure of the area and the new interpretation of these two geometrical plans within the proposal generates the surprising geometrical complexity of the campus.

“The site has a unique L-shaped footprint that meanders between two existing buildings. Rather than seeing this as a limitation...” explains Zaha Hadid, principal and founder of Zaha Hadid Architects, “...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.”

The two urban grids are mediated by sinuous lines that harmonise the plan and facilitate the flow within the site. The pedestrian walkway that crosses the campus is open to the public and has been reinstated after approximately 100 years of being blocked by the barracks. This walkway follows the soft outline of the museum, sliding below the upper level galleries towards Via Masaccio. The interior of the MAXXI can be seen by visitors and pedestrians through the numerous openings in its curvilinear walls that on the one hand, protect its contents, yet beckon the visitor through the broad glazed surface on the ground floor.

The main concept of the project is directly linked to the purpose of the building as a centre for the exhibition of visual arts. The walls that cross the space, and their intersections, defines interior and exterior spaces of the MAXXI. This system acts on all three levels of the building, the second of which is the more complex—with a wealth of connections with various bridges that link buildings and galleries together. The visitor is invited to enter into a series of continuous spaces, rather than the compact volume of an isolated building.

“The MAXXI should not be considered just one building—it should be thought of as several buildings,” says Hadid. “The idea was to move away from‘the museum as an object’ and towards the idea of a ‘field of buildings’.”

The interior spaces, defined by the exhibition walls, are covered by a glass roof that flood the galleries with natural light filtered by the louvered lines of the roofing beams. These beams underline the linearity of the spatial system, aid in articulating the various orientations of the galleries and facilitate circulation through the museum and campus.

“I see the MAXXI as an immersive urban environment for the exchange of ideas, feeding the cultural vitality of the city,” says Hadid. “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.”

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. 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.

“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,” explains Hadid. “It’s an intriguing mixture of galleries, irrigating a large urban field with linear display surfaces.”

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 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 toward 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 willful negation, but by the necessity of 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 the design for the MAXXI gravitated. 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.

ON CONTEMPORARY SPATIALITY

In architectural terms, contemporary spatiality is most virulently executed by the figure of the ‘wall’. Against the traditional coding of the wall in a museum—i.e. the immutable vertical armature for the display of paintings, or delineating discrete spaces to construct order and linear narrative—walls in MAXXI create a critique of that coding through their 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. “The walls of the MAXXI create major streams and minor streams,” explains Hadid. “The major streams are the galleries and the minor streams are the bridges and connections.”

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, walls 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

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 swpectacles and differentiated luminosity. Whilst offering a new freedom in the curators’ palette, this in turn digests and recomposes the experience of art spectatworship as liberated dialogue with artefact and environment.

PROJECT DESIGN

Architects Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher
Project Architect Gianluca Racana (Zaha Hadid Limited)
Structural Engineering Anthony Hunt Associates, OK Design Group
Mechanical Engineering Max Fordham & Partners, OK Design Group
Lighting Design Equation Lighting
Acoustic Design Paul Gilleron Acoustic
Design Team Paolo Matteuzzi, Anja Simons, Fabio Ceci,Mario Mattia, Maurizio Meossi, Paolo Zilli, Luca Peralta, Maria Velceva, Matteo Grimaldi, Ana M.Cajiao, Barbara Pfenningstorff, Dillon Lin, Kenneth Bostock, Raza Zahid, Lars Teichmann, Adriano De Gioannis, Amin Taha, Caroline Voet, Gianluca Ruggeri, Luca Segarelli, ABT David Sabatello & Giancarlo Rampini

FACT SHEET

Total site area 29,000 m²
Exterior spaces 19,640 m²
Interior spaces 21,200 m²
Exhibition spaces 10,000 m²
Facilities 6,000 m²
MAXXI Art 4,077 m²
MAXXI Architecture 1,935 m²
Total volume 113,000 m³
Maximum height 22.90 m

CONSTRUCTION DATA
Total Steel used for structure 6,700,000 kg
Concrete cast in-situ 50,000 m³
Total surface of fair-faced concrete 20,000 m²
Total surface area of glazing 2,600 m²
Total working hours 1,250,000

Cost EUR 150 million
Visitors forecast 200,000 – 400,000 per year

Works of art 350
Architectural drawings 75,000

Zumtobel’s Lighting Solution

“We want to use light to create worlds of experience, make work easier, improve communications and safety while being fully aware of our responsibility to the environment.”

Ever since the company was founded in 1950 by Dr. Walter Zumtobel, this vision has guided Zumtobel in developing innovative and individual lighting solutions. The objectives at the heart of this philosophy have always been the emotional effect of light within its architectural surroundings, people’s well-being, and energy- optimised use of light. Zumtobel generates unique customer benefit through the combination of technology, design, emotion and energy-efficiency.

The new MAXXI National Museum of the XXI Century Arts represented a target to develop a synergetic strategy in accordance with the development of internal (exposition galleries) and external design.

The target to provide a scenario with the right illumination throughout the day offered the chance to combine natural light with the integration of different lighting solutions. It was necessary to develop a solution which embraced solar shields and dimmable luminaries.

Zumtobel has been involved in the following Gulf projects:
Yas Island Marina Hotel (Abu Dhabi), Burj Dubai, Dubai Mall (Porsche Design, Paul Smith, G-Star, Swarovski Crystal), Atlantis Palm Hotel Dubai

Regional office contact (MENA):
Oliver Schwarz (Regional Manager)
info@zumtobeluae.ae
T:+971(0) 4299-3530
F: +971(0) 4299-3531