Urban Movement Design, winner of the 2012 Young Architects Program (YAP) MAXXI in Rome, has reinvented the MAXXI experience by engaging the mind and body with their interactive, summer installation. UNIRE/UNITE responds to the current public health crisis by offering an alternative solution to traditional urban furniture that choreographs exercise and play back into our daily lives. As our world struggles in crisis, Urban Movement Design believes it is imperative that we rethink the way we live and change the disabling, sedentary lifestyles that are currently promoted by our built environment.
The New York and Rome-based practice has merged the two disciplines of architecture and movement therapies in an effort to integrate health back into design and promote a greater sense of community. This project is a reflection of their philosophy. Continue after the break to learn more.
Urban Movement Design: “All of nature acts according to the law of interconnectedness, but humankind has moved away from this natural law and into an unnatural state of self-interest and isolation.”
Two weeks ago, we reported that Zaha Hadid Architects famed Maxxi Museum may face closure, as the high-profile museum was placed under special administration after the government uncovered a €800,000 hole in Maxxi’s 2011 accounts. With major budget cuts in cultural funding slashing the museum’s €11 million budget to less than €2 million for 2012, the future of the Maxxi remains unknown. However, as reported on BD Online, Maxxi president Pio Baldi has resigned and Italian architect Antonia Pasqua Recchia has been appointed to take his place.
Recchia has announced that she will to do everything possible to keep the Maxxi afloat and preserve the museum’s prestigious reputation on the international stage. She plans seek corporate sponsorship and private funding to make up lost funds and save the museum from closure.
The free event that has unveiled secret places in the most beautiful cities all over the world is, for the first time ever, in Rome the weekend of May 5-6. An idea both simple and revolutionary, Open House Rome 2012, which is open to the public, features the most interesting and inaccessible places in a city through completely free of charge guided tours including more than 80 sites from a wide variety of historical periods within the city as well as organized outdoor walking and cycling tours in 4 wide districts of Rome. For more information, please visit their official website here.
ArchDaily announced the winning proposal for the Young Architects Program (YAP) MAXXI 2012 in late February. In order to bring you full coverage of the annual competition, we are featuring the other four creative designs that competed against UNIRE/UNITE. NAMI, which means “wave” in Japanese, is a project that reflects contemporaneity, aims to send a message about the importance of harmony, and to create a bridge between people and cultures. This proposal, designed by VeryVery Architecture Office, is very simple and essential: an airy space provided with shadow, movable sitting benches, and a space that can accommodate different types of events and activities. Imbued with an experimental spirit and a strong attention to sustainability, NAMI offers a chance to express the social and cultural values requested by the Young Architecture Program.
The program promoting and supporting young architecture organized by MAXXI Architettura together with MoMA/MoMA PS1 in New York and CONSTRUCTO of Santiago in Chile has announced UNIRE/UNITE by Urban Movement Design as winner of the 2012 Young Architects Program (YAP) MAXXI in Rome. Following MAXXI’s first successful summer installation named WHATAMI by stARTT, Urban Movement Design now has the opportunity to reinvent the MAXXI piazza with an interactive installation featuring a long and sinuous band of wood and grass that encourages a playful bond between the building and its users. This proposal was selected over four other shortlisted contestants who where chosen by an Italian jury.
Both UNIRE/UNITE by Urban Movement Design and WENDY by HWKN (HollwichKushner) will be inaugurated in the MAXXI piazza and the courtyard at MoMA PSI in June 2012, along with an exhibit showcasing the fifteen design proposals from the finalists.
Continue reading for more information on this years MAXXI winner, UNIRE/UNITE.
Architect Joshua Prince Ramus (REX architects), just awarded as one of the five greatest architects under 50 in the world, will hold a main lecture at the MAXXI at 6:00pm on September 16th during the event Y1 – Independent Architecture Stuff organized by Cityvision Mag and curated by Francesco Lipari and Vanessa Todaro. More information on the event after the break.
A large tree, whose leaves are drawings, a pond from which photos of projects arise, a large installation which recreates the mental landscape of Alberto Campo Baeza: this is CAMPO BAEZA. THE CREATION TREE, the third of the monographic exhibitions of NATURE, the series of four monographic installations in which MAXXI Architectura explores different interpretations of contemporary architectural investigation.
Co-produced by MAXXI Architectura and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) with the special collaboration of TOTO GALLERY MA of Tokyo, the show, dedicated to the work of one of the masters of Spanish architecture, is curated and designed by Manuel Blanco. More information on the event after the break.
Designed by Nabito Arquitectura, the QR ROME PROJECT is a new open Coliseums , a media building mixed use that works as an International multiple hub. It is located in Rome, Italy. One of the goals is to collects opportunities from the society, to feedback ideas and creativity, to give people solutions of a better quality. In this sense the building is the concrete translation of its program and goal.
Outside the Intelligent coliseum is both a infrastructural gateway to Rome and a linked way-out from Rome, it is a detectable building.
The facades of the building are QR (quick response) codes open to flexible contents and remind the user to different portals of information.
“WHATAMI”, winner of the 2011 Young Architect Program at the MAXXI, is beginning to take shape. This summer installation is situated within the exterior spaces of the museum and is the result of a partnership between MoMA’s P.S.1 and the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts in Rome. Simultaneously Interboro Partners‘ “Holding Pattern” will on display at the MoMA in New York andsTARTT’s winning design “WHATAMI” at Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI.
The exhibition will show ten of OMA’s Masterplanning commissions which are now either on-hold or discontinued: an urban regeneration project in White City, London, a project for the ‘Nuova Bovisa’ science city in Milan, and a selection of projects in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
