[in-enaction] architecture: Storm over Ara Pacis (and superStarSpeak! as VIPs celebrate)

Violent culture clash over ultra-modern monument to peace
From Martin Penner in Rome
ITS critics say it looks like a petrol station, a municipal swimming 
baths or even a giant coffin. It is derided as an insult to Romans and 
hopelessly out of keeping with its surroundings. A prominent art critic 
has even advised the city’s architecture students to blow it up.

Rome’s new Museum of the Ara Pacis, designed by Richard Meier, the 
American architect responsible for the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, has 
had a troubled gestation. Built to house an ancient Roman altar to 
peace, the 4,000 sq metre oblong of glass and travertine marble took 
eight years to complete and there have been polemics at every stage.

It was finally opened to the public yesterday amid a mixture of 
exultation and sneers.

cont'd....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2145417,00.html

| and nuggets of MeierSpeak! resorting to platitudes,
| who declines to speak about the architectural programme
| of the building. Ara Pacis has an architectural programme,
| the Meier building, we wonder if it even has a function..

"The modern museum is much more flexible, open and transparent. There's 
a lightness here that is different than in ancient museums," said Meier, 
according to Associated Press.

"You see the city in a totally different way from this building," he 
added. "The city becomes alive from your experience of being here," he 
said Friday as officials and VIPs celebrated on the eve of the reopening 
of the museum.
....

cont'd....
http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/04/21/ara-pacis.html

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http://thechronicleherald.ca/Entertainment/498942.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/arts/design/24paci.html