bam! at the MAXXI

Large, light, yellow, suspended over the MAXXI piazza, the temporary He installation by bam! bottega di architettura metropolitana will be inaugurated to the public on 25 June. The installation, which won the 2013 Young Architect's Program (YAP) at the MAXXI, will be unveiled alongside proposals at the NY MoMA/MoMA PS1, Santiago de Chile's Constructo and, for the first time, Istanbul Modern.   He is a large volume suspended above the MAXXI piazza that creates a cool, shaded space during the day. At night, the structure transforms into a luminous and evocative lantern, accompanying the evenings and events promoted within the YAP Summer Program. The structure uses lightness, transparency, innovation and flexibility to enhance the museum's role as a place in which culture, fun and free time may converse. During the day, the perimeter of the prism drips water to ideally delimit the space beneath the volume and create a refreshing curtain for the public. The colour and the transparency of the material, contrasting with MAXXI's external walls, donate surprising chromatic reflections that vary with the light over the course of the day.

Simultaneously, the 20 finalist projects from the four international YAP network partners will be exhibited at MAXXI in the Carlo Scarpa Hall through 20 October 2013. The model by the winners bam! bottega di architettura metropolitana will be on show together with those of the other four finalists AKO-architettura a kilometro zero, LABORATORIO PERMANENTE, Matilde Cassani, and LOOP Landscape & Architecture Design Network. The same exhibition will also be shown at MoMA in New York, by the Constructo association in Santiago de Chile and at Istanbul Modern in Istanbul.

“The Young Architects Program is one of the best responses to MAXXI’s mission as a crucible of ideas and a workshop for new talents,” President of the Fondazione MAXXI Giovanna Melandri states.  “I believe that the strength of this year’s winning YAP MAXXI project again lies in the experimental and innovative approach to the theme of public space," states Director of MAXXI Architettura Margherita Guccione. "A dialogue with the great building by Zaha Hadid played out on the poetic and evocative level, thanks to a playful, impalpable installation capable of donating wellbeing to visitors and a new skyline to the Museum piazza”.

On the day of the opening, MAXXI intends to give voice to the curators and the designers of the twin installation recently inaugurated by Istanbul Modern, with a video connection with the finalists at Istanbul Modern. They will talk about their work and provide testimony to the situation in Turkish cities during this very delicate phase of civic unrest. At 20:00 the piazza will be enlivened by a special event devoted to Indian classical music: a concert paying tribute to Ravi Shankar with Ustad Sageer Kahn (sitar) and Rashmi Bhatt (tabla).