MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts
Rome, Italy. Zaha Hadid (architect). 2009 C.E. Glass, steel, and cement.
The building is repetitive in that the architecture is supposed to mimic movement to depict the progressiveness of the future of architecture and building.
FORM:
glass, steel, and cement
FUNCTION:
museum devoted to 21st century art
CONTENT:
interior space presents a contrast between curvilinear ribbons and strict rectangular geometries; stairways are black but lit underneath with white light; sense of ribbons of space inspired by a minaret in Iraq; power of pure geometry - influence from Islamic art as well as modernist architecture; the building seems to almost land on the older structure, peeks around older buildings - suggests weightlessness despite the fact that it is an almost unbroken slab of concrete (partly created from shadow of overhanging); concrete columns remind of old Roman columns - also the use of concrete that was a material that the ancient Romans perfected and used to shape space
CONTEXT:
Zaha Hadid was born in Iraq but is a British architect, she has won many architectural prizes; draws inspiration from modernism, constructivism, and work of great Russian painters of the early 20th century - embodies an early 20th century Utopianism about the modern city
