ROME.- MAXXI has opened Vitalità dell’architettura italiana 1946–2026, a major exhibition that looks at eight decades of Italian architecture through the history, ideals and transformations of the Italian Republic.
The exhibition, inaugurated in the presence of Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Minister of Culture Alessandro Giuli, marks the 80th anniversary of the Republic by asking how architecture has helped shape the country’s democratic life. Rather than presenting buildings as isolated works, the show frames architecture as a record of Italy’s cultural, social, economic and political evolution.
On view at MAXXI’s KME Gallery from May 29 through November 15, 2026, the exhibition is curated by Pippo Ciorra and Elena Tinacci. It brings together archival materials, interviews, photographs, installations and projects by several generations of architects, from the postwar period to emerging practices working today.
For MAXXI, the exhibition is also a statement about the museum’s identity. Maria Emanuela Bruni, President of Fondazione MAXXI, described the project as a reflection of the institution’s founding mission, noting that MAXXI is home not only to a museum of contemporary art but also to Italy’s first and only national museum of architecture. The exhibition, she said, pays tribute to architects, urban planners, scholars and institutions whose work has given form to the values of the Republic, including openness, participation, progress and the common good.
Minister Giuli placed architecture at the center of Italy’s national story, describing it as one of the most powerful cultural languages through which a civilization represents itself. In the case of Republican Italy, he noted, architecture has shaped the places where citizens live, gather and build community, while also reflecting the country’s passage from postwar reconstruction to the challenges of the present.
The exhibition opens with interviews featuring some of the most prominent figures in Italian architecture, among them Stefano Boeri, Maria Giuseppina Grasso Cannizzo, Massimiliano Fuksas, Renzo Piano, Franco Purini, Elisabetta Terragni, Paola Viganò and Cino Zucchi. This introductory section is joined by an installation that pays homage to Studio BBPR’s Monument to the Victims of Nazi Concentration Camps in Milan, reinterpreted by Matilde Cassani.
From there, the show moves into an archival section that revisits the years in which Italian architecture “resumed its journey” after the war. Public initiative, civic ambition and social change gave rise to projects that helped define the modern image of the nation. These materials situate architecture within broader debates about housing, public space, infrastructure, culture and democratic life.
At the center of the exhibition are eight studios with strong international profiles: DEMOGO studio di architettura, MoDus Architects, Giulia De Appolonia, Francesca Torzo, Studio Labics, Barozzi Veiga, ELASTICO Farm and Kuehn Malvezzi. Born largely between the late 1960s and early 1980s, these architects belong to what the exhibition calls the “Erasmus generation,” a group less bound by traditional academic identities and more accustomed to working across borders.
Their work is presented through two complementary approaches. Photographer Allegra Martin was commissioned to portray a manifesto project by each studio, while a large table allows each practice to condense its method, language and way of thinking into a more intimate display.
The final section turns toward younger voices through NXT, MAXXI’s long-running program inviting emerging designers to create summer installations for the museum’s outdoor spaces. Videos document ten editions of the initiative, while the winning project for NXT 2026, Rubato by the collective HPO, enters the museum’s collection.
Installed in the MAXXI Piazza from May 29, Rubato will be accompanied by a soundscape created by sound artist Agnese Menguzzato and will also serve as a setting for summer events. The exhibition also includes this year’s finalist projects by Associates Architecture, Atelier Vago, Facchinelli Daboit Saviane and m²ft architects.
Together, the exhibition presents Italian architecture not as a fixed canon, but as a living field: one that has absorbed the memory of postwar reconstruction, responded to the pressures of modern democracy and continues to imagine new forms for civic life.
