Was in Rome last week helping photograph Zaha Hadid's new Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome.
The museum will be the first national museum of contemporary art and the first national museum of architecture in Italy.
Zaha Hadid (and her Office!) have kept one or two of the original buildings of this former baracks, located in the north of the city near Piano's Music City, The national Stadium and Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sport, her creation is 'a confluence of geometries'; fluid and flowing.
This is a brave building. It has taken many years, political parties, and expanded budget to get to the stage where it is ready to open next year, with the press preview this week.
Its concrete walls are unclad, unlike typical italian construction which is clad in terrazzo or at least painted a warm tone. It certainly is representative of a museum for modern art. But then, isn't Rome the motherland of Concrete innovation?...ie the aformentioned Palazzetto dello Sport?...The Pantheon?
This is what I love about this building; it stirs up conversation, brings out opinions; just like the art it will exhibit. You can imagine the heated conversations in local cafes as the natives discuss its arrival.
The biggest fault, in my mind, has to do with the light. The roof in this building is the 5th faccade as it compensates for the ope-less walls; but is it trying to emulate Sverre Fehn's Nordic Pavilion in Venice? If it is, it certainly doesn't compare! The rooflights in Rome appear to be concrete, but are in fact steel trusses clad in concrete...it just doesn't fo hand in hand with the apparent honesty of the rest of the complex. Furthermore, the rooflights are aided by artificial strip lights; what a let-down.
Nonetheless, the structual system (which took 6 years to work out...puts our 4 months of struggles in College into persepctive eh?!) and the finish of the concrete is sublime.
Its a new monument to slot into Rome's timeline...but not to rival greats of the past.
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