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.
“This is an inclusive and playful project”, explains Urban Design Movement, three architects all under 40 years of age, “that inspires health and movement and invites the museum visitors to live the space as a shared experience accessible to all.”
The interactive installation allows visitors to physically experience the building through the body in an entirely new way. Sculptural seating and planted pergolas, made of natural and recycled materials, unite various parts of the piazza. Once the summer session concludes, UNIRE/UNITE will be dismantled and relocated elsewhere to extend the relationship between MAXXI, its quarters and the city.
As Margherita Guccione, director of MAXXI Architettura says: “The YAP MAXXI 2012 project develops an idea of behavioral, playful and energetic architecture that ideally links the great body of the museum with the bodies of its visitors. UNIRE/UNITE is an installation that is designed to activate well-being and physical exercise and confirms our intention of experimenting with the summer installations new forms for the design of contemporary public space.”
Pippo Ciorra, senior curator at MAXXI Architettura, adds: “In presenting to the public the project chosen for the summer of 2012 we are particularly happy. Firstly because the YAP project is expanding and taking on a global dimension, being extended this year to Chile and soon to include other places and institutions on other continents, and also because the project chosen embodies particularly well the vocation of the museum’s open space: a continuous system of shady spaces, seating, places for contemplating but also for cultivating a physical and corporeal relationship with MAXXI.”
YAP Chile continues the YAP legacy, offering talented Latin American emerging architects the same opportunity. Water Cathedral Project by GUN Architects was selected as winner of the 2011 YAP competition in Santiago. The installation just concluded earlier this month and the 2012 finalists will be selected this May.
