MAXXI Temporary School: The museum is a school. A school is a battleground by Parasite 2.0 was the winning project of YAP MAXXI in 2016.

YAP MAXXI is a programme promoting and supporting young architecture organized by MAXXI in collaboration with MoMA/MoMA PS1 of New York, Constructo of Santiago de Chile, Istanbul Modern (Turkey) and MMCA Seoul (Korea).

Other New Generations network’s offices such as Orizzontale (2014) and STUDIOD3R (2018) were selected to develop their proposals.

For Parasite 2.0, the difficulty of building the architectural object, due to the economic condition, has transformed the architect into a competition-machine that produces numerous projects each year.

Cases like the Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition and its incredible number of proposals, tell us of the precarious working condition of the architect who wastes his time, money, and physical and mental resources

Only good for filling the Dezeen or Archdaily databases, without any proactive contribution to the issues that today should be urgently investigated.

Cultural institutions, museums and administrations every year invest in the realisation of these temporary pavilions and ephemeral structures.

Most of the time, they represent a waste of economical resources for the umpteenth new aesthetics of an architecture spread through Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook.

A well-known example is the Serpentine gallery. 

‘Have we arrived at the Instagram Architecture in which the only task of the architect is to create the most unique and upsetting scenography for a one-thousand-like selfie?’

In 2015 the Serpentine pavilion took to the extreme level this concept becoming “the most instagram-friendly” architecture. 

The MAXXI Temporary School wanted to be a producer of contents and research, with the physical installation as a background, in order to reach a broader goal.

They consider the museum as the place in which we can learn, as a pedagogical tool.

Starting from the main theme of the environmental sustainability, the project developed over four months of cultural programmes involving different personalities and excellencies

Being aware of living into the era of the ultimate human impact on the earth, brings them to consider the issue of sustainability in a more radical and broader way, thus re-considering the modalities of intervention.

The project questions the modalities with which today the man and the architect should modify their approach in relation with the acknowledgment of the Anthropocene.

And with “unique opportunity to reevaluate the terms of theory and practice which have been inherited from modernity.” 

Green elements, a huge greenscreen and a mobile app, build up a background for selfies of the Instagram Architecture, producing a reflection on the paradox embodied by the Anthropocene age. The use of simple mobile structures allowed different layouts

The disappearance of the boundary between natural and artificial, the disappearance of pure nature, reaching a new total hybridisation.

These big scenery silhouettes will bring the exterior plaza to life, making it liveable and enjoyable.