London designers Doshi Levien have completed a Rome store for shoe brand Camper with faceted lighting clusters and a cash desk shaped like an old-fashioned television.

Shoes are displayed on stepped marble surfaces, against a background of blue and red.

A neon green lamp resembling a large eye surveys the room from a rear wall.

Other designers who've completed Camper stores include Jaime Hayón and Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec - see all our stories about Camper here.

This is the first Camper store by Doshi Levien, but you can see more of their work here.

Here's a little bit more text from Doshi Levien:

Eternal Summer / Camper shop. Via Baullari 18, Rome.

Our shop concept is inspired by the earthy, sun baked, solid architectural elements of the Mediterranean.

It has an authentic, monolithic simplicity of materials, with magical highlights.

It references the idea of an ETERNAL SUMMER and playfully re-appropriates everyday architectural and interior elements of the Mediterranean.

Marble steps, the water fountain in the Piazza, the ceiling fans in cafés, the sun faded colours of buildings, the flash of a bright neon light, a bright red dress or shoe, television watched outdoors by a neighbourhood together.

It feels like a shop that has been there forever; solid, sturdy, using materials that can be touched and washed.

Yet it is quirky; a rotating zoetrope in the window with animations entices you into the shop. The shoes have pride of place going up and down marble steps. Measure your feet on tiles by the floor.

Neon eyes watch over you. A mirrored fan gently cools the air and transforms itself according to the space.

Funny mirrors that take you by surprise by distorting your body proportions, defying pre-conceived notions of a perfect body! Making us laugh at ourselves and our vanity.

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This pavilion by Italian firm stARTT has won the first international edition of the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program and will be installed outside the Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI museum in Rome this June. See this year's New York installation in yesterday's story.

As inaugural winners of the YAP_MAXXI award stARTT's installation, entitled Whatami, will feature a series of mini hills around the concrete plaza with pools of water in between.

The artificial landscape will be littered with clusters of funnel-shaped canopies representing flowers.

WHATAMI will open in June this year at the same time as Interboro Partner's winning design for their installation in the courtyard of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre in New York. (See our earlier story)

See all our stories on past winners of the Young Architect Program »

Here's some more information from The Museum of Modern Art:

stARTT SELECTED AS WINNER OF THE INAUGURAL YOUNG ARCHITECTS PROGRAM AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF XXI CENTURY ARTS (MAXXI) IN ROME

stARTT’s WHATAMI to open in the Courtyard of MAXXI in June

NEW YORK, February 16, 2011—The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, and the National Museum of XXI Century Arts of Rome announce Interboro Partners of Brooklyn, NY, as the winner of the 12th annual Young Architects Program in New York, and start, of Rome, as the winner of the first annual YAP_MAXXI Young Architects Program in Rome.

Now in its 12th edition, the Young Architects Program at MoMA and MoMA PS1 has been committed to offering emerging architectural talent the opportunity to design and present innovative projects, challenging each year’s winners to develop highly innovative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provides shade, seating, and water. The architects must also work within guidelines that address environmental issues, including sustainability and recycling.

For the first time, MoMA and MoMA PS1 are partnering with another institution, MAXXI in Rome, to create the first international edition of the Young Architects Program. stARTT has been chosen from among five European finalists to create an innovative event space in the MAXXI piazza opening in June.

WHATAMI by stARTT is based on the manufacturing of an artificial archipelago-hill, generating smaller green areas in the garden and potentially outside the museum. The hill works as a garden, injecting “green” into the concrete plateau of the museum’s outdoor space, allowing it to serve as a stage and/or parterre for concerts and other events, or as a space to rest and look at the museum itself.

The artificial landscape will be punctuated by large “flowers” providing light, shadow, water, and sound. The materials proposed for the installation involve a two-fold recycling process, the supplying of the materials for the construction (straw, geo-textile, plastic) and the dismantling of the “hill” (turf, lighting).

Opened in May 2010, MAXXI was designed by Zaha Hadid and awarded Royal Institute of British Architect’s (RIBA) Stirling Prize for architecture, and has already gained a place among the elite international contemporary art and architecture museums.

The other YAP_MAXXI finalists were Raffaella De Simone/Valentina Mandalari (Palermo); Ghigos Ideas (Lissone/Mi, Davide Crippa, Barbara Di Prete and Francesco Tosi); Asif Khan (London, United Kingdom); and Langarita Navarro Arquitectos (Madrid, Spain, María Langarita and Víctor Navarro).

Pippo Ciorra, Senior Curator of Architecture at MAXXI, explains, “We’re very happy with the results of this program for three main reasons. First, the collaboration with MoMA proved as effective and productive as we hoped, finally allowing us a surprising insight into the most recent research in terms of architecture, public space, and landscape.

Second, we were able to discover an unexpected positive quality of answers by the Italian and European young (under 35) architects involved in the project, all proposing fascinating, innovative and well developed proposals. Third, we’re delighted that we were able to choose a winning proposal which incorporates a MAXXI_specific approach to the issues of ecology, recycle, and public space.”

See also:

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Holding Pattern by Interboro Partners	Afterparty by MOS at P.S.1	Mexican Pavilion for Shanghai Expo 2010 by Slot.

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Architect Daniele Durante of studiobv36 in Italy has designed a new headquarters in Rome for the Italian postal service.

Long volumes will be stacked in a staggered formation, forming cantilevered sections to shade large parts of the facade.

Light will be reflected by white polycarbonate panels with triangular perforations, which will be sandwiched between layers of glass in the facade.

There will be four different patterns with varying densities across the building's skin.

Called IPost Building, the eight-storey project will house 600 employees.

Construction is due to begin in January 2011.

The text below is from the architect:

The main starting point of the project is its strong relation with the urbanisation of the area, and its adjacency to a highly density block including Telecom building.

These relations have pushed the project idea towards a dialogue with the urban scale, making the building like a “perspective block”, with a strong plastic impact.

The choice of the block is defined by the exact urban alignments, that opening onto and prolonging itself towards the city, we tried to transform the urban block from a closed object into a different vertical sequence of variable plane elements.

The building is composed of 8 volumes in linear development, placed one on one.

The main facade on Via Semeria is shaded by jutting volumes.

The solar exposition is checked by a particular technological system.

Each glass facade is made up of three glass layer, in the layer between the two glass panels, we find a white polycarbonate panel made from special triangular matrix.

This allows the light to reflect, thus checking the glare and storing heat.

There are 4 panels with a different permeability, that give the building textural homogeneity and volumetric density with nuanced effect, from the ground floor until the last level.

WINNING COMPETITION ENTRY 2008
EXPECTED COMPLETION 2013

Client: Istituto Postelegrafonici - IPOST

Location: Rome
Program: new building for the IPOST headquarters
Status: International Design competition in two steps - First Classified

Gross floor area: 7156 mq
Construction area: 15.894 mq
Construction cost: 30.000.000 euro

Design: Daniele Durante_studiobv36
Consultants: Ai Engineering, Ai Studio
Design collaborators: Federico Pitzalis, Fabrizio Arrigoni, Claudio Cortese, Stefano Jacopini, Martina Telò.

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Photographer Luke Hayes has sent us a selection of photos of the MAXXI_National Museum of the XXI Century Arts in Rome by architect Zaha Hadid.

The 27,000 square metre centre is Italy's first national public museum of comtemporary arts and features two museums - MAXXI Art and MAXXI Architecture.

All photos here are copyright Luke Hayes and used with permission. Please see our copyright notice.

See photos of the construction of MAXXI by architectural photographer Hélène Binet in our story from April 2007.

See all our stories about Zaha Hadid in our special category.

Here's some text from Zaha Hadid Architects followed by a description from MAXXI:

--

In the words of Zaha Hadid

‘An interesting thing about the museum in Rome is that it is no longer an object, but rather a field, which implies that many programs could be attached to the museum. It’s no longer a museum, but a centre.

Here we are weaving a dense texture of interior and exterior spaces. It’s an intriguing mixture of permanent, temporary and commercial galleries, irrigating a large urban field with linear display surfaces. It could be a library; there are so many buildings that are not standing next to, but are intertwined and superimposed over one another.

This means that, through the organizational diagram, you could weave other programs into the whole idea of gallery spaces. You can make connections between architecture and art - the bridges can connect them and make them into one exhibition.

That gives you the interesting possibility of having an exhibition across the field. You can walk through a whole segment of a city to view spaces. In Rome, the organization will allow you to have exhibitions across the field, but they can also be very compressed, so you have a great variety.’

- Zaha Hadid

The Project by Zaha Hadid Architects

The MAXXI relates to the urban context in which it is inserted by re-proposing the horizontal development of the former military barracks, in opposition to the taller residential buildings that surround the site. The geometric structure of the project is aligned along the two grids that regulate the urban structure of this part of the city.

The reinterpretation of these two geometric structures within the proposal generates the surprising geometric complexity of the campus. Sinuous lines harmonise the overall scheme and facilitate flows across the site, mediating between the two urban axes.

The pedestrian path that crosses the campus follows the soft lines of the museum, slipping under its cantilevered volumes. The interior of the building presents visitors with a glimpse of numerous views and openings that cross the structure: on the one hand protecting its contents between its solid walls, on the other inviting visitors to enter through its large glazed surfaces on the ground floor.

The main idea behind the project is directly related to the objective of creating a building for the presentation of the visual arts. The site is “furrowed” by exhibition spaces, the walls that cross its spaces, their intersections defining interior and exterior space. This system works on three levels, the second of which is the most complex and richest, with it various bridges that connect the building and the galleries. Visitors are invited to dive into a dense, continuous space instead of confronting the compact volume of an isolated building.

The interior space, defined by the walls of the display galleries, are covered by a glass roof that floods the spaces with natural light, filtered between the roof trusses. These latter reinforce the linearity of the spatial system and assist the articulation of the various directions, overlappings and bifurcations of the system of gallery spaces. The honed linearity of the walls facilitates circulation through the campus, inside the galleries and between the objects on display.

MAXXI: A Campus for Culture

The MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts, instituted by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, is Italy’s first national public museum dedicated to contemporary creativity. The definitive home of the museum, designed by Zaha Hadid (winner of the 1999 international design competition) is currently nearing completion in Rome’s Flaminio neighbourhood, on the site of the former Montello Barracks. Since 2003 an experimental and innovative construction site has been working to complete this new, ultramodern museum.

The complex is home to two distinct institutions: MAXXI Art (directed by Anna Mattirolo) and MAXXI Architecture (directed by Margherita Guccione), focused on promoting the arts and architecture through the collection, conservation, study and dissemination of the most current movements. To date, the MAXXI Art collection contains over 300 works by such artists as Boetti, Clemente, Kapoor, Kentridge, Merz, Penone, Pintaldi, Richter, Warhol and others of equal fame.

The MAXXI Architecture collection features the personal archives of Carlo Scarpa, Aldo Rossi, Pierluigi Nervi and others, as well as projects by contemporary architects such as Toyo Ito, Italo Rota and Giancarlo De Carlo, together with the photographic collections of the Atlante italiano and Cantiere d’autore projects.

Designed as a campus of arts and culture, the multi-disciplinary and multi-functional MAXXI is also a new urban space open to the entire city. The MAXXI’s 27,000 m2 contain – in addition to the two museums – an auditorium, a library and media library, a bookshop, a cafeteria, temporary exhibition spaces, various open spaces for live events, commercial activities, workshops and spaces of study and recreation.

Open to the city and the world, the MAXXI aims to become a point of reference for public and private institutions in Italy and abroad, for artists, architects and the general public. The integration of Zaha Hadid’s project within the fabric of the city is made possible by an architectural solution that develops the idea of an urban campus. In fact, the MAXXI casts aside the idea of the “closed” building in favour of a broader dimension that extends the interior spaces into the exterior spaces around the building, open to the entire neighbourhood.

The two museums – MAXXI Art and MAXXI Architecture – rotate around a large, double storey atrium, the point of connection with the permanent collection galleries and temporary exhibition spaces, the auditorium, reception area, cafeteria and bookshop. Outside, a pedestrian path follows the shape of the building, slipping under its cantilevered volumes and restoring an urban connection interrupted for almost a century by the former military structure.

In opposition to the decisive architectural sign that dominates the exterior spaces and the atrium, a more sober spatial quality characterises the exhibition halls that host the collections of the two museums. A combination of glass (roof), steel (stairs and columns) and concrete (walls) defines the neutral appearance of the display spaces, while moveable panels ensure the flexibility of their use.

The fluid and sinuous forms and the variation and interweaving of different levels– assisted by the modulated use of natural light – combine to create a highly complex spatial and functional experience that offers continuously different and unexpected views, from the interior towards the open spaces. The project is characterised by two primary architectural elements: the exposed concrete walls that delimit the exhibition halls and determine the intertwining of volumes, and the transparent roof that modulates and filters natural light. Finally, the roofing system contains all of the various equipment required by the museum’s functions: it integrates operable glazing, natural light filtering devices, artificial illumination and environmental control systems.

MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo - via Guido Reni, 2f 00196 Roma

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