"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
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
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
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
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
