MAXXI Museum wins World Building of the Year at 2010 World Architecture Festival

MAXXI Museum won the Best Building of the Year Award

The National Museum of XXI Century Arts (MAXXI) is now officially the best new building in the world. Zaha Hadid’s latest work, built in Rome, has won global architecture’s most coveted accolade of ‘World Building of the Year’ at the prestigious World Architecture Festival Awards (WAF) 2010.

The presentation of the WAF Awards took place at the Centre Convencions International Barcelona (CCIB) last week. The winning design was selected from a shortlist of 15 projects from around the world. At collecting the award was Gianluca Racana, project director at Zaha Hadid Architects for MAXXI. This was the 3rd edition of the event, and previous winners include the Luigi Bocconi University, designed by Irish practice Grafton Architects and Mapungubwe Interpretation Centre in South Africa, designed by Peter Rich Architects of Johannesburg.

Onyx Solar participated in the development of a Photovoltaic Roof installed in the Cabinet House designed by Rintala-Eggerston Architects in the MAXXI Museum. The building is a prototype of a sustainable house and can be visited in Rome.

Onyx designs the photovoltaic roof and façade for Rintala’s Cabinet House located in the MAXXI musseum in Rome

Onyx Solar has designed and developed the photovoltaic roof and façade for the Cabinet House installed in the MAXXI museum, the last work of Zaha Hadid. The Cabinet House is an ecological prototype based on a new division of the space following the urban contemporary lifestyle: less squares meters and most of them for social life.

Firstly using wood, secondly by minimizing space and thus the construction materials being used, and lastly by adding the possibility of collecting rain water and sun energy in such a way that the architects are offering a more sustainable model  than the short-sighted, monotonous production of the building market today.

Cabinet House with photovoltaic façade and roof from Onyx Solar

The project is located in a public yard in front of the MAXXI museum and it’s aimed to become a mediator between this iconic building and the reality surrounding it, offering the visitors a peaceful place to stop by in the middle of Rome.

The Green Movement

Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

“Green architecture, arguably the biggest single movement in the field since the emergence of modernism a century ago”. The last blog post of the Los Angeles Times journalist Christopher Hawthorne is devastating. And the comment comes to justify his critics to a survey undertaken by Vanity Fair to determine the most iconic architectural work in the last 30 years, which didn’t take into account sustainable building. Thus, among more than 50 prestigious architects including Foster, Gehry, Hadid or Pelli; the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao finished in the first place.

The Adam Joseph Lewis Center de Oberlín (Ohio)

As a response to that ranking, Architecture Magazine published his own survey which only considered green buildings. The winner? The Adam Joseph Lewis Center in Oberlín (Ohio), designed by William McDonough + Partners, followed by the California Academy of Sciences of Renzo Piano. It’s odd that the Italian architect is the only one alongside Foster that has two buildings in the ranking.

Hawthorne’s article is not only interesting for checking the results of the surveys but also to put in context both rankings, and the phrase with which we started this post makes us really happy as we feel we are participating in this green movement which is becoming more and more important.