Rome's MAXXI: Force Field as Field Space

This past weekend marked the grand opening of Rome's MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, which is being billed as the first national museum dedicated to contemporary creativity and thought as a great campus dedicated to culture, a laboratory of experiment, study and research. The museum itself was designed by the noted Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, whose design was chosen from more 272 entries, allegedly because of her ability to integrate the space into the existing urban fabric. In Hadid's view, densities are distributed around an open campus, which is navigated on the basis of directional drifts. "This is indicative of the character of the center as a whole," notes the architect, "porous, immersive — a field space."

Which, in essence, she accomplishes quite well. Hadid's plan, at first blush, is housed beneath a facade that sits quietly on an otherwise broad street, but once you turn the corner, it explodes with curvilinear craziness. The public areas flow easily into the opening foyer, where visitors are introduced to a series of spaces of varying and intersecting heights. And here, Hadid succeeds in ways that Daniel Libeskind — in his extension to Gió Ponti's Denver Art Museum — does not: there's a successful counterpoint system in place, with shifting scales guiding visitors through complex collections of interior spaces. Unlike Liebeskind's addition, Hadid's design decisions never seem indulgent to the point of compromising the experience for her public: her loopy lines never overwhelm viewing patterns, but instead, seem to play against and work within them. There's an interplay, too, between public and more private spaces, with subtle lighting in a series of sequenced hallways expertly guiding the traffic flow. Hadid deftly articulates smaller galleries within the Maxxi's larger exhibition spaces with a ramp system that meanders up and down, gesturing ever so loosely to Wright's Guggenheim Museum. Unlike the Guggenheim, however, the Maxxi's 29,000 square meter footprint is a staggering vision in a densely packed city like Rome, but the program is at once dynamic and sensitive, with compelling corners that allow for quiet contemplation within an otherwise mammoth space. The signage is surprisingly good, too: clean, simple, playful and functional.