A Story for the Future. MAXXI’s First Decade — Exhibition

Una storia per il futuro. Dieci anni di MAXXI / A Story for the Future. MAXXI’s First Decade is an exhibition that celebrates the first ten years of the MAXXI museum, curated by Hou Hanru with the curatorial team and designed by the Dutch studio Inside Outside.

The project comprises of two main parts.

We designed a customized typeface to be used both in a three-dimensional way with the use of neon tube on the exhibition’s space as well as an ad hoc font for titles and other contents on display. We designed each letters starting from the modular dimensions based on the standards of the neon tube (30, 60, 90, 120 cm). The number of strokes as well as the position and the nodes between the bars, the body height and the inclination of each letter, have the purpose to give back the feeling of a DIY project without losing the legibility of the contents. The typeface is paired with a linear typeface for the texts.

The second part of the graphic design project is based on the representation of the Atlas. Because of their presence on the first Atlas (MAXXI and the City, Urbi et Orbi) it seemed to us that the two pictures 1. Aby Warburg, Mnemosyne and 2. Andrè Malraux, Le Musée Imaginaire, can be considered as key images for the reading of the other images (and the relation between them) of every atlas on display.

Starting from this, we tried to make clearer the representation of each, transconnected portion of the atlas by the use of a tape, itself containing t he title of the visualised portion. As a rough, urban sticker, the speaking tape is designed to be a sort of fil rouge of the curator’s thoughts. The title of each Atlas, neon made, is installed on the wall of exhibition’s space.

We designed a book which contain the captions. The book is displayed close to the each atlas in order to give back textual contents to the visitor even without relating captions to images on the wall and to make the reading of the atlas more clear.

Take a look to the book Una storia per il futuro. Dieci anni di MAXXI / A Story for the Future. MAXXI’s First Decade, here.