PHOTO:
Orizzontale, Musacchio Ianniello – courtesy Fondazione MAXXI, Francesco Russomanno, Daniele Lanci, Alessandro Imbriaco, Invidio
YEAR:
2014
LOCATION:
Museo MAXXI, Roma, Italia
LINKS:
Can you tell me about the 8 ½ project?
8 ½ marked a significant moment in our professional growth. Not only for the international resonance of the Young Architects Program competition, but also for the jump in scale of the project in relation to our previous works. 8 ½ is a large relational infrastructure, a scenic machine that inhabits the external Maxxi square and proposes a new interpretation.
It is an eight and a half metre-high wall that divides the space and functions as a two-faced stage: on one side a screen covered with 312 craft beer kegs has been transformed into dynamically controlled lights, on the other a gathering arena covered by a curtain of shade cloth . The evening is a setting for events of all kinds, whilst during the day it embraces the daily life and informal meetings of museum visitors. At the edge of the arena, time-controlled fountains refresh the hot summer days and contribute to the creation of small rituals in the use of space.
8 ½ is a project that, still today, fully represents our way of understanding public space. It is a reflection of the dual nature of these places, as a space for privacy and elective relationships but also intrinsically territories of events and the shows. It is a large habitable, modular and dismountable scenography, built by way of a laboratory. Finally, it insists on the themes of upcycling, the ephemeral and the creation of programs and rituals within collective spaces.
