Yichen Cao

The Unbearable Heaviness

Yichen Cao’s project for the MAXXI museum involves the difficult negotiation of the canonical architecture of Aldo Rossi and the hyperspecific form of the MAXXI Museum in Rome. In this proposal, we see what happens when the unstoppable force of the MAXXI meets the immovable object of Aldo Rossi.

The plan exhibits the underlying power of Rossi’s rationalist approach to architecture. As a result of Cao’s form draping operation, what was once elevational now performs in plan. The gridded articulation of the façade comes to rationalize the sinuous gallery walls bringing rigidity to an otherwise fluid spatial arrangement. It is in these moments that Rossi wrestles back control from the institution.

If the plan is usually considered the seed of architecture, Cao demonstrates that, beyond its ordinary remit of façade articulation, the elevation in all its flatness and superficiality may be just as fertile a ground to uncover new forms of architecture.

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-Review (excerpt) by Lachlan Welsh