1154 museo della scienza roma

The design for the new Science Museum in Rome establishes a dialectic relationship with the existing context. Instead of creating a new volume that constitutes a physical and institutional boundary, the project adapts, reuses, and expands the existing spaces familiar and recognizable in the urban fabric. The new museum was conceived as a space for the public, where residents can use its spaces for activities related to neighborhood administration, decision-making, and representation of common values and needs. Together with the MAXXI Museum across the street and the Church backyard, used in the summer for movie projections, the new Science Museum is an addition of public space rather than another institutional presence that wants to control its interior and surrounding spaces.

The project is an urban structure designed as a system of solids and voids that integrate the museum functions with the existing public space and green spaces of the Flaminio neighborhood, retaining 80% of the existing structures. A series of formally defined objects, such as three buildings that protrude from the current roof and the volumes contained under it, and a system of covered and uncovered “piazzas,” house the museum functions, favoring their different degrees of public and private use. This strategy guarantees a well-defined functional division of the spaces and their flexibility of use, encourages their fluid and continuous use, and ensures an adequate functioning of the exhibition structure.