When in Rome, they say, and so I did — I found the modern architecture the Romans built. You can only walk through the hot and huddled masses of the Vatican Museum so many times. My previous post describes my visit to the Maxxi Museum. I also wanted to visit Richard Meier's Jubilee church, but ran out of time. Luckily, one of only two Renzo Piano buildings in Italy happened to be almost across the street from the Maxxi. After a short walk through buildings from the 1960 Olympics, I reached Renzo Piano’s Parco Del Musica, a group of three music auditoriums clustered together like three leaves, with a curved copper shell roof giving each of the three the appearance of a beetle. They were clustered around an outdoor amphitheater with red brick stairs. The complex also featured a nice cafe and restaurant built into the ground beneath the auditoriums.
The three auditoriums were shaped in a semi-circle around the central amphitheater.
The three auditoriums hovered over the edges of the red brick seats.
When viewed from the side, the sections of the roof begin to seem like a beetle’s shell.
During construction, apparently they uncovered the ruins of an ancient Roman villa. Renzo Piano decided to preserve the ruins, and rotated the theaters to accommodate the ruins.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go inside any of the theaters, but I did appreciate much of the detail work. For example, the struts supporting the underside of the roof were intricately arrayed in a rotating pattern:
Google Earth shows Piano’s adept blending of the landscape with his buildings (most of the trees and grass actually are on the roof of the buildings underneath — the cafe and restaurant), and the relative sizes of each building:
Three months later I was able to see Piano’s addition to the Gardner museum in Boston, and noticed a lot of similar details in metal struts and lights, along with a similar blend of classic red brick and woodwork.
The picture below is taken from the vertical new theater in the Gardner museum:
I say vertical because the stage was on the ground floor, surrounded by chairs, and three higher square terraces, each with two rows of seats, surrounded the stage, like a hollow ziggurat.
After exploring the entire museum, and listening to a jazz trio play in the garden, I sat in the lounge. The lounge was full of bright red tulip chairs and couches. It has books, and postcards, along with an invitation to comment on your experience. Instead of words, I drew the mid-century proportioned shelves, against Piano’s classic red brick.
Needless to say, I will visit any Renzo Piano building I have the opportunity to visit.