HADID - MAXXI - STIRLING PRIZE 2010 In the Flaminio district of Rome, a sinuous concrete building stands on a quiet street. This is the home of MAXXI, the Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo (National Museum of 21st Century Art). Designed by Zaha Hadid, MAXXI has received the Stirling Prize for 2010 from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). — Published 2010.1006
	PARISH CHURCH IN LECCE The city of Lecce, located in the southern heel of the Italian peninsula, is associated with highly ornate baroque palaces and churches, their facades overlaid with elaborate decorative carvings in the local limestone. — Published 2009.0902
	THE REVOLVING VILLA "I have decided to make the complete turn." Euphoric over seeing his still under-construction house rotate its planned 180 degrees for the first time, the Italian civil engineer Angelo Invernizzi quickly wrote a colleague that the final version had to go all the way around. — Published 2009.0715
	MILAN TRADE FAIR "When you build one million square meters, you really don't know if what you envisioned will be good or bad," says Massimilliano Fuksas, the Rome-based architect for the New Milan Trade Fair. The 10.8-million-square-foot convention complex, which opened in April 2006, has a mile-long canopy that wows visitors with its whimsical flair, transforming a glass and steel structure into a fabric that billows and then touches down like tornados to the floor. — Published 2006.1129
	GEN'S TORRI SUPERIORE Perched like a fortress in the foothills of the Liguria maritime alps, the tiny Italian hamlet of Torri Superiore may seem an unlikely flagship in the search for sustainable solutions in architecture, landscape, and lifestyle. But a closer look into this labyrinth of stone dwellings reveals a community working hard to find workable solutions to what many see as a looming global energy famine. — Published 2006.0823
	POSTCARD FROM ROME Dear ArchitectureWeek, In April 2006, the new Ara Pacis Museum in Rome, designed by Richard Meier & Partners, is scheduled to officially open. But as I found on my recent visit, there's still a bit of work left to be done, and much of the museum is still under wraps. — Published 2006.0329
	POSTCARD FROM OVIEDO Dear ArchitectureWeek, With its 263-foot- (80-meter-) high spire visible from most parts of town, La Catedral de Oviedo serves as a city symbol and directional landmark in the heart of Oviedo, Spain (not to be confused with Orvieto, Italy!). The cathedral stands on one side of a historic square with government buildings lining the other sides. The street is closed to motor vehicles, but is always busy with pedestrians. The church continues to hold services and is a popular site for weddings and baptisms. — Published 2004.0818
	POSTCARD FROM ROME Dear ArchitectureWeek, Rome is an intensively occupied, definitively urban city. After thousands of years of concentrated human development and redevelopment, there is much hardscape, where the stony facade of one building is connected to the brick wall of the next by more stone, in the form of cobbled streets and other pavements. — Published 2004.0303
	NEW HOME FOR OLD PHOTOS Last year, the American Academy in Rome moved its valuable photographic archive to a newly renovated villa built in the early 1920s. The challenge for Studio Abbate & Vigevano, the architects designing the villa's renovation, was to create a delightful, daylit interior while protecting the delicate negatives from heat and humidity. They call the result a "minimalist model of sustainable architecture." — Published 2002.0417
	PLAYFUL PV IN ROME At the Children's Museum of Rome, a partly see-through photovoltaic (PV) roof brings new levels of meaning to everyday childhood experience of playing in the sun. One of the museum's central mandates is to heighten awareness of the quality of urban life through "a transparent guided itinerary" of everyday activities. Its new photovoltaic roof, designed by Abbate e Vigevano Architetti, gives form to this mandate. — Published 2001.1024

Architecture Design and Building in Italy