Sasha Waltz_Zaha Hadid

Sasha Waltz _Continu


World Premiere
20th of June, 2010
Sasha Waltz has consolidated her two major projects for museums to create the full-length choreography »Continu«. In 2009 the choreographer devised the artistic inaugurations for David Chipperfield's Neue Museum Berlin and Zaha Hadid’s MAXXI in Rome. »Continu« exhibits attention between choreographic and pictorial elements, coalescing a essential characteristics of Sasha Waltz’s work in a new way.


http://www.sashawaltz.de/a03.php?w=&ID=8&t=1&spr=en

Zaha Hadid_MAXXI Museum

It took 10 years and 150 million euros to build, but Rome’s MAXXI (Museo nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo – National Museum of 21st Century Art), designed by Zaha Hadid, has finally been opened for the public.
Here we are weaving a dense texture of interior and exterior spaces. It’s an intriguing mixture of permanent, temporary and commercial galleries, irrigating a large urban field with linear display surfaces. It could be a library; there are so many buildings that are not standing next to, but are intertwined and superimposed over one another.
The MAXXI relates to the urban context in which it is inserted by re-proposing the horizontal development of the former military barracks, in opposition to the taller residential buildings that surround the site. The geometric structure of the project is aligned along the two grids that regulate the urban structure of this part of the city.
The reinterpretation of these two geometric structures within the proposal generates the surprising geometric complexity of the campus. Sinuous lines harmonise the overall scheme and facilitate flows across the site, mediating between the two urban axes.
The pedestrian path that crosses the campus follows the soft lines of the museum, slipping under its cantilevered volumes. The interior of the building presents visitors with a glimpse of numerous views and openings that cross the structure: on the one hand protecting its contents between its solid walls, on the other inviting visitors to enter through its large glazed surfaces on the ground floor.
The main idea behind the project is directly related to the objective of creating a building for the presentation of the visual arts. The site is “furrowed” by exhibition spaces, the walls that cross its spaces, their intersections defining interior and exterior space. This system works on three levels, the second of which is the most complex and richest, with it various bridges that connect the building and the galleries. Visitors are invited to dive into a dense, continuous space instead of confronting the compact volume of an isolated building.


Designed as a campus of arts and culture, the multi-disciplinary and multi-functional MAXXI is also a new urban space open to the entire city. The MAXXI’s 27,000 m2 contain – in addition to the two museums – an auditorium, a library and media library, a bookshop, a cafeteria, temporary exhibition spaces, various open spaces for live events, commercial activities, workshops and spaces of study and recreation.


Outside, a pedestrian path follows the shape of the building, slipping under its cantilevered volumes and restoring an urban connection interrupted for almost a century by the former military structure.


http://www.minimalismi.com/2009/11/maxxi-museum-by-zaha-hadid/