Previous project / Next project
Grande MAXXI project interprets the expansion of the museum not as a simple functional extension, but as an opportunity to redefine the contemporary role of a cultural institution within the city. Rather than adding new spaces, the proposal creates a new urban, cultural, and landscape infrastructure capable of extending the MAXXI experience beyond the boundaries of the building and transforming it into an open and shared public dimension.
In direct dialogue with the original MAXXI project by Zaha Hadid and with the historical stratification of the former Montello Barracks, the project establishes a continuum between architecture, landscape, and the city, generating a new urban centrality for the Flaminio district.
The intervention interprets the contemporary museum as a dynamic ecosystem where culture, public space, nature, and urban relationships converge into a new form of collective experience.
Key data
Team
Status
The Museum as Urban and Social Infrastructure
Architecture and Landscape as a Unified System
Grande MAXXI moves beyond the traditional model of the museum as an autonomous building and introduces a vision in which the cultural institution becomes an active component of urban life. The project expands the sequence of public and architectural spaces of the existing MAXXI, creating an open system of connections, relationships, and crossings capable of extending the museum into the city itself. Public space is not conceived as a residual element but as primary design material: a new urban geography where plazas, pathways, gardens, and cultural spaces create opportunities for encounter, permanence, and participation. The project transforms the museum experience from an internal event into a distributed urban experience.
The project develops a fluid organism in which architecture and landscape cease to be separate systems and merge into a single spatial structure. Architecture rises, bends, and transforms into topography; landscape enters the building and becomes an integral part of the experience. The design of voids plays a central role, creating continuity between the new and the existing while generating a dynamic sequence of solid and open spaces. Rather than a collection of buildings and gardens, the project defines a continuous cultural landscape where built form and nature become part of the same experience.
Building A: A New Cultural Topography
Building A forms the heart of the proposal and is conceived as a traversable architectural hill capable of integrating cultural programs, public space, and landscape.
Archives, laboratories, educational environments, and support functions are organized within a structure culminating in a public Cavea intended for outdoor performances and events. The suspended upper volume accommodates educational and research activities, while the landscape system beneath creates physical and perceptual continuity with the surrounding urban environment. The building therefore assumes a dual role: cultural infrastructure and urban device capable of mediating relationships between museum, neighborhood, and landscape.
System B: Urban Ecology and Public Space
System B expands the landscape dimension of the project through an integrated network of open spaces and natural environments intended to become part of the daily life of the neighborhood. New vegetation species, pedestrian paths, educational areas, and flexible spaces for temporary activities create an urban ecosystem capable of enhancing biodiversity, environmental quality, and social inclusion. A rooftop educational garden, Sakura Garden, urban forest, and promenade along the northern edge generate a new green infrastructure in which nature and culture continuously interact. Landscape is not conceived here as a decorative element but as an environmental, social, and cultural device.
Sustainability as Urban Experience
The project integrates environmental strategies and sustainable technologies within a circular and systemic vision. Green roofs with high thermal inertia, double-skin façades, photovoltaic panels, rainwater management systems, and high-efficiency mechanical systems contribute to the development of an NZEB complex aligned with LEED Gold and CAM protocols. Sustainability is not interpreted as an isolated technical performance but as a widespread quality of urban space and collective experience. Architecture becomes a tool capable of generating environmental wellbeing, social relationships, and public value.
Connections, Flexibility, and Future
The project organizes laboratories, classrooms, archives, and support spaces through modular systems capable of ensuring adaptability and future transformation. North–south pathways are strengthened, reconnecting the Flaminio district and extending Piazza Alighiero Boetti toward Via Masaccio through a new network of urban crossings. More than a response to immediate functional needs, Grande MAXXI creates a structure open to future evolution. A project capable of expanding not only a museum, but the very role of culture in shaping the contemporary city.
