Zaha Hadid in Italy

Considered to be one of the most influential and visionary architects of our time, Zaha Hadid redefined the architecture of the 21st century and captured the imagination of the entire world. A year after her sudden death, from 23 June 2017 to 14 January 2018 MAXXI is hosting Zaha Hadid in Italy, an exhibition curated by the director of MAXXI Architettura Margherita Guccione and Woody Yao, associate director at Zaha Hadid Design.

Zaha Hadid in Italy, organized in collaboration with Zaha Hadid Design, Zaha Hadid Architects and the Zaha Hadid Foundation, main partner Eni, intends to highlight the architect’s intensive and enduring relationship with the country.

Installed in the spaces of Gallery 5 with its extensive glazing overlooking the museum piazza, the exhibition explores Hadid’s work through the rich and complex representational media she employed during the course of her career: from pictorial and conceptual sketches to three-dimensional models, from virtual renderings to interdisciplinary studies, together with objects, videos and photographs revealing her constant pioneering and investigative design research.

The exhibition installation by Zaha Hadid Design, which has been responsible for the design of all the studio’s exhibitions in recent years, was inspired by the architect’s sketches for MAXXI, a three-dimensional version of the fluid lines imagined for the museum that in adapting to the curves and the slopes of the architecture present the various materials organized in diverse areas.

An important section of the exhibition is devoted to the Italian projects including the Terminal Marittimo in Salerno that with it is organic oyster-like structure establishes a new link between the city and the sea; the Messner Mountain Museum at Plan de Corones that is set into the heart of the mountain and which opens up new views; the extraordinary Torre Generali for City Life in Milan that with its vertiginous vertical torsion constructs a new urban horizon; the Stazione dell’alta velocità at Afragola and MAXXI itself, the fluid forms of which traverse an entire city block: more than just a museum, a public urban space.