Oskar Rosa

The project begins with Rossi’s Proposal for a residential complex in Setubal, Portugal, 1975. In the two grounds it develops according to the natural slope of the landscape in which it sits, and the new terrace it creates on top. These grounds are mediated by the stair, an important theme for Rossi as well as a defining aspect of the MAXXI museum and the focus of this project. The project then extends itself from the step 2 cururotial strategy “Premonitions and Contradictions,” building on themes of an archive, an archeology and sites for a contested collective memory.

The methodology deployed throughout the project takes note of Fred Wilson’s 1992 exhibition “Mining the Museum.” In which he reorganised and reappropriated artifacts from the Maryland Historical Society’s archive in order to contest the mainstream stories those artifacts were employed to tell. The project considers the detail set of drawings provided by Zaha Hadid Architects as the ‘archived’ figure of the MAXXI, under scrutiny these documents were shown to have errors and inconsistencies which existed in concentration within the marginal staircases of the MAXXI. These instances were capitalised on as moments to discuss the slippages and disparities between a drawn, archived historical account of the architecture and its materialised other. These staircases, extracted and reassembled according to their archival manifestation are then reinserted back into the MAXXI as seven follies, their presence acting as monuments to the disjunction between drawn and constructed, their insertion inviting the eye to dig and explore the plans for their MAXXI double.