YAP MAXXI - Young Architects Program

Rome 23 June 2011. Now in its 12th edition at MoMA/ MoMA PS1, the YAP – Young Architects Program has reached Rome for the first time thanks to the collaboration between MAXXI and the New York museum. The program, which in Rome goes under the name YAP MAXXI, sees the museum’s external spaces transformed into a garden of green islands that will host the summer season events, thanks to the WHATAMI project, conceived by the Rome studio stARTT. An artificial landscape, delineated by hills on which to pause, topped by great flowers providing shade by day and light by night, will allow the public to relax and contemplate the sinuous lines of the museum. In New York, YAP has seen the realisation of the Holding Pattern project by the New York studio Interboro Partners. A jury composed of MAXXI and MoMA/MoMA PS1 staff members selected both designs from among the numerous international proposals. For the entire duration of the YAP, visitors to both institutions may visit the exhibitions presenting the projects by all the finalists.

WHATAMI by stARTT (Simone Capra, Claudio Castaldo). An archipelago of eight green islands built on a structure of straw bales and earth and dressed with 700 m2 of washed turf (normally used for football pitches). The central island is fixed and around two metres high, while the seven smaller islands are mounted on wheels. This landscape is mobile and illuminated at night by 18 five-metre tall glassfibre flowers that instead cast pools of shade by day. A running water feature completes the installation that is as attractive as it is attentive to environmental issues: it in fact involves a recycling process: at the end of the season, the hills realised with prevalently reusable materials (straw, geotextile membranes, plastic) will be dismantled and donated to the municipality to be used again, together with the flowers, by the local district.

THE PROJECTS BY THE TEN FINALISTS ON SHOW IN MAXXI’S GALLERY 5 AND AT MOMA The projects of the five Italian competition finalists: Raffaella De Simone/Valentina Mandalari (Palermo); Ghigos Ideas (Lissone/Mi, Davide Crippa, Barbara Di Prete and Francesco Tosi); Asif Khan (London, United Kingdom); Langarita Navarro Arquitectos (Madrid, Spain, Mar'a Langarita and V'ctor Navarro), stARTT (Rome, Simone Capra and Claudio Castaldo). The exhibition at MAXXI is curated by Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator MAXXI Architettura. The projects of the five American competition finalists: FormlessFinder (New Haven, CT/Brooklyn, NY, Julian Rose and Garrett Ricciardi); Interboro Partners (Brooklyn, NY, Tobias Armborst, Daniel D'Oca and Georgeen Theodore); MASS Design Group (Boston, MA, Michael Murphy); Matter Architecture Practice (Brooklyn, NY, Sandra Wheeler and Alfred Zollinger); IJP Corporation Architects (London/Cambridge, MA, George L. Legendre). The exhibition at MoMA is curated by Barry Bergdoll, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecure and Design, The Museum of Modern Art.

A WHOLE DIFFERENT SUMMER AT MAXXI: THE SCHEDULED EVENTS: The concert of Momus, singer-songwriter and artist of Scottish origins, kicks off MAXXI’s summer season on 23 June at 20.30. WHATAMI is in fact the setting for a programme that will see the museum’s summer evenings animated by a series of events devoted to the various contemporary arts. Momus is the first instalment of the second edition of MAXXIMALISM/Summer music shows at MAXXI (free entrance when purchasing a museum ticket) curated by NERO, that presents, for the first time in Italy, a series of musical performances by some of the most innovative figures on the international scene. Momus will be followed by the American DJ Rupture (7 July) and the Canadian Sandro Perri/POLMO POLPO (21 July): performers capable of combining experimental rock, electronic, hip-hop and post-punk music with influences mutated from contemporary visual arts. Also on-going is the ContemporaneaMente (ticket 4 €) review in which the protagonists of our age discuss their vision of contemporaneity: Gianna Nannini will be talking about her encounter with contemporary art (30 June); the astronomer Giovanni Bignami will guide us in an exploration of space in search of new stars and planets (14 July). The programme then gets underway again in September with Ascanio Celestini (8 September), Carlo Verdone (15 September), Elio front man of Elio e le Storie Tese (24 September) and Andrea Camilleri (6 October). MAXXI is also presenting Architecture Talks (free entrance), a review devoted to the latest Italian architecture: 24 Roman studios present their research and activities to the public. The programme will be an opportunity to discover, through brief conferences accompanied by videos and images, the work of recently founded practices in direct comparisons with internationally established studios. The principal exponents of contemporary architecture and their creations are the protagonists in the programme of screenings Architecture Visions (free entrance) curated by Image ARCHIVES, a selection of videos and films that offers the public the opportunity to get to know the most interesting international buildings from the comfort of the YAP MAXXI green archipelago. From Wednesday 29 June and every Wednesday throughout July and September the Roma Tai Chi Village Association will be offering free Tai Chi lessons in the MAXXI piazza from 19.00 to 20.30. Friday 1 July will see the first of the DJ sets in the REWF@MAXXI project (free entrance), realised in collaboration with Romaeuropa Webfactory: every Friday in July and September from 20.30 some of the best composers and DJs from the community will be presenting user generated digital suggestions and electronic sounds with projections of works from the REWF 2011 video art contest. Saturday 1 October, DROME MAGAZINE – A SUPERNATURAL PIC-NIC (free entrance) with artistic performances and music. The complete MAXXI summer programme may be consulted on www.fondazionemaxxi.it

“I am particularly happy that in the summer the museum embraces the city even more thanks to this project that sees us a partner of one of the most prestigious international institutions, MoMA of New York”, says Pio Baldi, President of the Fondazione MAXXI. By promoting young talents, MAXXI confirms and reinforces its mission as a workshop for the most up-to-date creativity in all its multiple forms."

“With the YAP, MAXXI stands as a “cultural agent” committed to engaging new relationships in order to valorize our younger generations on the international scene”, says Margherita Guccione, Director of MAXXI Architettura, “this is demonstrated above all by the quality of all the projects present, visible in the exhibitions staged in parallel in Rome and New York. The idea of an urban campus at the foot of Zaha Hadid’s architectural campus confirms its versatility thanks to the installation by the young Roman studio start in harmony with the fluid forms of the museum building.”

“Thanks to the outstanding quality of stARTT’s proposal – says Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of MAXXI Architettura – the YAP MAXXI program starts with the right pace since its inception, giving a tangible shape to some of most important aspects of the museum's mission: collaborating with the main international cultural institutions, promoting independent architectural research and innovation, to support and present on a worldly stage the work of the most interesting younger Italian architects and, last but not least, enhancing the mutual exchange between the museum and the public space of the city”.

“For over ten years, the Young Architects Program has been a crucible for emerging talent in American architecture. Says Barry Bergdoll The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art. Now with the program linked with the MAXXI, and with Young Architects Program in Santiago, Chile, YAP is developing an international network dedicated to fostering opportunities for architecture that is locally engendered but that deserves an international stage. We are especially proud that MoMA and the MAXXI, two of a small roster of museums around the world who also elevate the work of young architects to artistic consideration, mark the launch of Young Architects Program International”.

YAP MAXXI and MoMA/MoMA PS1 TOGETHER
FOR YOUNG ARCHITECTURE
P.S.1 MoMA
Kuratoren: Pippo Ciorra, Barry Bergdoll

Künstler: Raffaella De Simone, Valentina Mandalari, Davide Crippa, Barbara Di Prete, Francesco Tosi, Asif Khan, Maria Langarita, Victor Navarro, Simone Capra, Claudio Castaldo, Julian Rose, Garrett Ricciardi, Tobias Armborst, Daniel D´Oca, Georgeen Theodore, Michael Murphy, Sandra Wheeler, Alfred Zollinger, George L. Legendre