Buildings less frozen in time Sam Lubell
Rome’s farther reaches offer many stunning treasures of modern architecture. reports.
For people who love contemporary architecture, trying to find striking new buildings in the historic center of Rome is about as easy as trying to go gluten-free there. But if you move a little farther out — or a lot — stunning treasures can be found.
I undertook a breakneck tour of these newly completed structures, in widely varying districts, last summer with two on-call critics: my septuagenarian parents, self-professed architecture lovers who are not shy about their opinions. We traveled around Rome mainly by car that brought out the, let’s say, raw side of the Roman population. Luckily, the buildings were as dramatic as the drive but much less stressful.
Jubilee Church
Heading into the city from Umbria, we drove through a steady progression of crowded traffic circles and bizarre turnoffs, somehow happening upon Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church, also known as the Chiesa di dio Padre Misericordioso, in the eastern neighborhood of Tor Tre Teste, a shabby area of tall housing blocks from the ’60s and ’70s.
Created in 2003, the white church is covered with a curved shell of multiple travertine and concrete walls pierced by huge sheets of glass. It’s closed off with high white fences, and this fortresslike aspect, along with the rain and dirt streaks smudged on the building’s white surfaces, first left us cold.
The church had just closed when we came by, but we could see from the fence that the interior space for worshippers was a glorious contrast to the scene outside. Its extra tall spaces were full of air, light, white marble and warm wood — elegant sublimity. Angled sunbeams hit the floors and filled the space with a soft glow, leaving us all impressed.
Maxxi Museum
Instead of waiting five hours for the church to reopen, we went to Flaminio, a low-key and lush residential area northwest of the city center. Despite the always fast-moving traffic, the quarter has some breathing space with far fewer tourists wandering the streets. The interesting architectural sites — many of them built in recent years — are close by, giving us a good excuse to leave the car and walk.
The most talked-about new building here is t he Maxxi Museum of 21st Century Arts, which opened in 2009. Designed by the London architect Zaha Hadid, the i mpressive edifice — whose wavy, zigzagging geometries were inspired by the very urban grid that we had struggled to navigate — jogs through and around an early 20 th-century military barracks. Its large plaza encourages wandering and gawking at a facade that constantly defies gravity with its large cantilevers and ultrathin columns.
Walk inside and you are energized by the flow of space and light. Concrete floats like glass, ramps move in several directions, and your eyes can span the cavernous lobby, open to all levels. The galleries alternate between traditional square boxes and not-so-traditional sweeping ones. My starstruck father loved the building, but my mother found the wavy walkways and stairs too discombobulating.
Ponte della Musica
I momentarily went off on my own to stare at the graceful white girders of the Ponte della Musica, an impressive pedestrian bridge spanning the Tiber. Designed in 2011 by the British engineering firm BuroHappold, it has arches that lean outward as if being slowly pushed apart.
I rejoined my parents at the Maxxi to walk just one block for a view of Pier Luigi Nervi’s Palazzetto dello Sport, an indoor arena for the 1960 Olympic Games and an exquisite example of midcentury futurism. The white building’s ribbed concrete shell waves up and down, supported by a ring of braces. It looks like an aging spaceship. The paint is peeling badly, but in this town of ruins, it feels like a poetic modern vestige. The area inside is still reserved for sports like basketball, and it’s worth a look: The elaborate structural ornamentation is mesmerizing.
A block east is an extraordinary performance center, the Parco della Musica, by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. The complex, opened in 2002, is deceptively simple and smart. Three brick performance halls are covered with weathered armadillo-shaped steel shells, lifted above a large plaza and amphitheater. It looks foreboding in pictures, but in reality it’s a lovely, tree-lined complex set at street level, with a string of cafes and shops. The theaters inside are heavy in woods, fabrics and typical Piano elegance.
Macro
Just northeast of the historic center is the upscale district of Salario, an area full of neoClassical buildings, embassies, outdoor markets and upscale stores. In the middle of it all is the Macro (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma), a contemporary art museum inside the former Peroni Brewery, expanded in 2010 by maverick French architect Odile Decq.
Decq’s goal was to make the museum experience less predictable, and she has done that in spades, creating weird and noteworthy experiences inside a vastly divergent series of spaces.
At different points walk on a steel catwalk above the art, advance to a rooftop with views of the neighborhood and of one of the museum’s own murals, walk through false doors in and out of the structure, and linger on a plate-glass floor looking down at the people below. And don’t miss the bathrooms if you like curvaceous glass fiber furniture and swiftly changing colors.
It was the most original of all the buildings we’d seen that day, and my parents approved. “It was a museum for everyone,” commented my father.
From here we got back into the car to find dinner in the congested heart of the city. It was a wondrous and dangerous ride, but all the time I missed being in the farther reaches of Rome, experiencing places a little less frozen in time, and a little more full of unpredictable, strange possibilities.