One of the most successful recent additions to the European cultural scene is about to grow after the MAXXI Museum revealed a call for submissions to an international competition for a new green corridor and multi-purpose building project named MAXXI Grande. 

The ever-popular Roman institution announced on Friday its plans to build a new building that will be home to a research and development center called MAXXI Hub which will combine with an outdoor exhibition area named MAXXI Green to provide improved access, storage, and conservation facilities for its drastically evolved collection. 

Backed by private funding and an investment from the state’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), the expansion will include a sustainable revamp of the existing structure into a key energy-efficient cog in the overall program’s circular economy. The MAXXI has nearly doubled in size in its decade-plus of existence, giving further cause to the necessity of changes President Giovanna Melandri says were brought to light over the past few years. 

“We learned a lot in the pandemic years, bringing our content online and strengthening the educational and social function of the museum,” she said in a statement, adding that “now is the time” for a “natural and further evolution under the banner of urban regeneration, sustainability and high-tech, which will enable us to confront the ‘new world’ that must arise from the syndemic, environmental, social and health crisis and become even more a laboratory of the future.”

As mentioned, the expansion centers around the new Hub building, which will rise from the adjacent Piazza Alighiero Boetti and feature two levels of laboratories and specialist training areas that help serve an important part of the museum's mission to educate the future generation of Italian arts professionals. A green roof connects the new building to the public spaces around the square and Zaha Hadid’s Stirling Prize-winning 2010 building, which will become a “prototype for the use of photovoltaics on monumental architecture” through the installation of a new solar roof that will eventually lead to a net-zero carbon footprint.

“The master plan expands the Museum's prospects and range of action with a series of organic operations that will lead to a profound urban regeneration of the entire area,” MAXXI architecture director Margherita Guccione said of the scope of the project. “Our virtuous path begins today with the international ideas competition, which will focus on the design of an equipped productive green axis — as well as the seat of the new research, development, and digital innovation hub — and will continue with a radical energy transformation of the entire complex, all with the goal of achieving carbon neutrality within a few years.”

Jurists for the competition include President Melandri, Mario Cucinella, Petra Blaisse, Maria Claudia Clemente, and Lorenzo Mariotti. Alternative members are Pippo Ciorra and Simone Gobbo. Proposals for the MAXXI Grand master plan are due by May 13th with a winner to be announced on June 10th. Archinect will post any project updates as they become available.