Erin Campbell

The MAXXI is an object in itself, sitting within the city as a series of interconnecting parts within one autonomous object. This object is exhibited as art object within its own exterior context. Criticised for its off-axis and disconnection with the city, the MAXXI is transformed similar to that of its Roman counterparts, a composition of masses often described as a city of collective objects rather than a singular logical system.

Within the contemporary museum setting, architectures are absorbed, layered and merged to the MAXXI. By treating the MAXXI as an object, many layers of architecture are built on top of another with each replacing the last, but with the old structures still present underneath. Just as Rome is a mass of layers, the MAXXI presents itself as many structures hidden beneath the surface, at the same time present and absent, visible and invisible.

Between museum and object utilises the histories associated with the architecture within Imperial Rome and Aldo Rossi’s theory and attitude towards urbanism and the city as theoretical grounding within the project. Rossi interprets the city as an assemblage of architectures, demonstrating an archive of its own memory. Together with Hadid’s MAXXI as composition of inbetween spaces the MAXXI is transformed utilising this Rossi methodology. The interconnecting corridors of the MAXXI are at first stripped and reimagined, thus, reinterpreting the role of the architectural corridor within the contemporary museum. Multiple corridor typologies are layered and reconfigured on top of the existing. The result, is against the “illusion of the plan”, revealing the building to have multiple architecture elements not limited to the space of one single typology. Space is ever-changing to create new intersections, collisions, and punctures, overlapping corridor as gallery space types together. The movement within the museum is not room to room like a typical museum space but rather corridor to corridor, the corridor and the room are now conflated.

The MAXXI within itself, begins to notion this concept, this secondary layered movement uses the existing corridor typologies present in the museum and redefines them as sole and primary building element rather than a precursor to space or in-between one. By colliding a set of corridors chosen to stand as platonic, and then by aggregating them into a unified element. Gallery space has been transformed where corridor becomes object rather than translated as the in-between space of buildings. This series of objects are reinserted into the MAXXI, embedded within and in doing so establishes an assemblage of architectures
layered, just as the city in its context, the MAXXI becomes an archive of its own history. The insertions are somewhat familiar and recognisable having been derived from the original museum itself.

Project Presentation

12:00 - 12:30 PM AEDT Thursday 12th November 2020

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Zoom link: https://unimelb.zoom.us/j/82852141305

Password: studio8

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Miro Board: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kg0iOBA=/

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