Few architectural briefs carry as much weight as one that asks you to build beside a masterpiece. The MAXXI — Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI Secolo — is Zaha Hadid's iconic cultural landmark in Rome's Flaminio district, a building of sweeping curvilinear forms that redefined what a museum could feel like. When Studio Symbiosis entered the competition to design a new multifunctional building on the adjacent site, the challenge was not simply to add a structure — it was to extend a conversation already in progress between architecture, culture, and the city.
Their response is a proposal of genuine intelligence and ambition: a building that respects its extraordinary neighbour without being overshadowed by it, and that brings to the site a set of values — circular economy, material innovation, landscape integration, and civic generosity — entirely suited to a museum dedicated to the art of the twenty-first century.
Two Systems, One Vision
The proposal is organised around two distinct but interconnected components. Building A is the primary architectural intervention: a compact, multifunctional structure housing art storage spaces, advanced technical laboratories, a café, and a rooftop garden bar with panoramic views over the MAXXI Museum itself. System B is a landscape reconfiguration of Via Masaccio — the street that separates the new development from the museum — reimagined as a vibrant, interactive public realm that stitches the two institutions together.
Together, these two systems create something more than a building and a garden. They create a cultural precinct: a continuous experience that flows from the street through the landscape and into the building, connecting visitors to the MAXXI and to the new programme in a single, legible sequence.
Building A: Compact, Layered, Connected
Building A is conceived as a compact, layered volume that brings together computational design methods and vernacular architectural elements — a pairing that speaks directly to the MAXXI's own dialogue between the futuristic and the contextual. The building is designed to feel grounded in the Flaminio district: responsive to its urban grain, its scale, and its material palette, while still carrying the formal ambition appropriate to its cultural context.
The programme is carefully considered. Archive spaces and technical laboratories serve the operational needs of an institution the size of the MAXXI, providing infrastructure that is rarely visible but always essential to a functioning museum. These are arranged within an internal circulation strategy that allows external visitors to access the building — and to experience curated artworks within it — without ever disrupting the museum's day-to-day operations. Public and institutional flows are separated thoughtfully, ensuring both are served well.
The rooftop is the building's most spectacular gesture. A lush garden bar sits atop the volume, accessible via a scenic exterior staircase integrated directly into the architectural form of the building. From here, visitors look out over the sinuous roofscape of Hadid's MAXXI — a view that transforms the rooftop not merely into an amenity, but into a piece of cultural programming in its own right. To stand here is to see Rome, the museum, and the new building as a single, layered whole.
System B: Extending the Museum into the Street
The landscape strategy along Via Masaccio is as considered as the building itself. Rather than treating the street as a boundary — a line that divides the MAXXI from its new neighbour — Studio Symbiosis reimagines it as a zone of connection and civic life. The curvilinear architectural flows of the MAXXI Museum are extended into the public realm, creating green spaces that feel continuous with the museum's own external spaces rather than separate from them.
This is urban design at its most generous: creating conditions for social interaction and leisure, improving the local ecosystem, and enhancing urban biodiversity — all while making the simple, powerful gesture of opening the cultural precinct to the city around it.
Circular Economy as a Design Principle
What truly sets this proposal apart is its commitment to circular economy principles — not as a sustainability addendum, but as a fundamental design methodology. The project incorporates recycled elements from on-site demolition, ensuring that material demolished to make way for the new building is not wasted but reintegrated into the construction itself. Low-carbon emission materials are specified throughout.
The structural system pairs a robust steel frame — chosen for its flexibility and long-term durability — with X-Lam laminated wood, valued for its renewable properties and structural performance. Construction waste is processed into aggregates to further reduce embodied carbon. The building's energy systems are driven by geothermal heat pumps and integrated solar panels, supplying heating, cooling, and electricity with minimal reliance on the grid.
Perhaps most significantly, the building is designed for adaptability. Its structure anticipates future reconfigurations — the understanding that a cultural building must evolve with the institution it serves, and that the most sustainable building is one that remains useful and relevant across generations.
A Proposal for the Long Term
Spanning a site area of 5,080 sq.m and a built-up area of 9,482 sq.m, the MAXXI Multifunctional Building is a competition proposal of considerable scale and scope. Designed by Amit Gupta, Britta Knobel Gupta, and Fulvio Wirz in collaboration with Daniel Widrig, with structural engineering, MEP, and sustainability consultancy by Cundall, landscape design by Francis Landscapes, and cost and project timeline support by Cundall's BC Building Consulting division, it represents a genuinely multidisciplinary effort — one where engineering, landscape, and architecture are integrated from the outset rather than coordinated after the fact.
In proposing a building next to the MAXXI, Studio Symbiosis has done something quietly courageous: they have engaged seriously with one of the most architecturally charged sites in contemporary Rome, and offered a vision that is not intimidated by its neighbour, but enriched by it. A building for art, for the city, and for the long future of both.
Project: MAXXI Multifunctional Building, Rome, Italy | Programme: Art Storage, Workshops, Café, Roof Garden, Landscape Plaza | Site Area: 5,080 sq.m | Built-up Area: 9,482 sq.m | Status: Competition | Scope: Architecture & Landscape | Design: Amit Gupta, Britta Knobel Gupta, Fulvio Wirz with Daniel Widrig | Collaborators: Cundall (Structural, MEP & Sustainability), Francis Landscapes, Cundall BC (Cost & Timeline) | Studio: Studio Symbiosis