MAXXI - Museum of 21st Century Arts

MAXXI, an abbreviation for the Museum of 21st Century Arts, is a newly established institution of the Italian Ministry of Culture that will serve as the home base for MAXXI Arts and MAXXI Architecture, which will be the first two museums in Italy focused exclusively on contemporary art.
The final form of this ambitious project was decided in 1998, when Zaha Hadid won an international competition that featured 273 proposals. The concrete building with a glass roof, covering nearly 30,000 m², is located in Rome's Flaminio district, on the site of a former car factory and later military barracks that were transformed into a museum.
Zaha Hadid's considerations leading to the current form of the museum were: “It was important to decide to preserve some of the existing buildings, but not all of them. Once we made that decision, a series of studies followed, where the newly designed masses replaced the existing rectangular and parallel system with a new diagonal one. Convergences of lines of different geometries began to emerge, which did not resonate with the place. This led to the idea of a very formal interpretation flowing from the program.”
The way the spaces intersect and intertwine takes into account curatorial requirements leading to various connections of exhibitions and the creation of a series of unexpected links and juxtapositions. Zaha Hadid’s project represents more of an urban composition than an architectural object.
A key feature of the new design is the long, undulating walls, which the author elaborates on: “The twisted walls that I designed serve not only to display inside but also from the outside of the object. You can have murals on them, video projections, or regular installations: it’s about the activity both inside and outside.”
The project and the construction of the museum itself had to span the functional terms of three different mayors, suffered from frequent construction stoppages due to financial shortfalls, and in 2001, Rome's classification as a seismic area resulted in a complete redesign of the building and further budget increases.
The museum was ceremonially completed in November of last year. However, the first visitors will have to wait until this April, as the museum will be undergoing arrangements and installations of art collections throughout the winter. The author sought to ensure that the new museum does not become a static container for art, but radiates the life of an artistic campus, where paths in many levels overlap and connect to create a dynamic and interactive space that better corresponds to the chaotic flow of events and adapts more readily to modern ways of life.