Architecture for sport

Twenty-two projects and their stories build the exhibition at MAXXI dedicated to Pierluigi Nervi’ research on sports facilities in Italy and in the world

Stadia with innovative structures, diving boards that have become icons, sports centres with lace-like concrete domes, in the long career of Pier Luigi Nervi research into sports facilities was a continuous fil rouge.  

From the first stadium built in Florence in 1929 to the Kuwait Sports Centre from 1968, 22 projects and their stories make up the exhibition “Pier Luigi Nervi. Architecture for Sport” curated by Micaela Antonucci with Annalisa Trentin and Tomaso Trombetti of the University of Bologna.

Top: Pier Luigi Nervi with William and Tazewell&Associates, Sport Arena nel Cultural and Convention Center di Norfolk (USA) (1965-71). Collezione MAXXI Architettura. Archivio Pier Luigi Nervi. Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI. Above: Pier Luigi Nervi and Marcello Piacentini, Palazzo dello Sport all’EUR in Rome (1955-59). Collezione MAXXI Architettura. Archivio Pier Luigi Nervi. Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI

The presentation – organized on a chronological basis – opens with a succession of photographic panels featuring Nervi's principal projects for sports facilities, the same panels that were attached to the walls of Nervi’s studio to illustrate his work to public and private clients: the images include two enlargements of postage stamps produced in 1960 on the occasion of the Rome Olympics with the Palazzo and the Palazzetto dello Sport.

The first section of the exhibition Experimentation and innovation (1929/49) describes the process that led to the creation of the engineer's innovative constructional method with the Giovanni Berta stadium in Florence (1929-32) representing a starting point for systematic technical and design research that was to project Nervi into the midst of the Italian and international architectural debate. However, it was the post-war years – those tackled in the section Concrete Champion (1950/60) – that conformed Nervi’s success with a series of works in which formal invention goes hand in hand with constructional capability; these included the Kursaal bathing facility at Lido di Ostia (1950), a symbol of rebirth in the 1950s with its iconic diving board, and the works constructed for the Rome Olympics of 1960: the Palazzo dello Sport, the Palazzetto dello Sport  and the Stadio Flaminio.

Pier Luigi Nervi and Annibale Vitellozzi, Palazzetto dello Sport a Roma (1956-57). Collezione MAXXI Architettura. Archivio Pier Luigi Nervi. Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI

Together with the projects on display there is also the Album 19 photographic album containing a vast collection of contact prints: from Gothic and renaissance churches to typewriters, from opticians studios to aircraft fuselages, images that served Nervi as references and cues for studies. The final section of the exhibition From Italy to the world (1961/79) features above all projects realised abroad, from Europe to the United States, from South America to South Africa, from India to the Middle East, including the Good Hope Center at Cape Town, South Africa (1964-80), one of the Studio Nervi’s most important international works, both in terms of dimensions and technical characteristics (at the time it was the world’s largest concrete dome) and its political and symbolic significance (it was the first multiracial sports facility to be built in the period of apartheid, with no separation between blacks and whites).

On the occasion of the exhibition MAXXI Architettura will presenting the publication of the inventory of the Pier Luigi Nervi Archive: the result of a decade of complex archival work and a working tool and point of departure for future research, the Pier Luigi Nervi Inventory is the first of the Centro Archive’s Inventories which form part of a specific section within the series of publications Quaderni del Centro Archivi del MAXXI Architettura.

Pier Luigi and Antonio Nervi, drawing for the competition for the construction of the municipal stadium in Novara (1964-76). Collezione MAXXI Architettura. Archivio Pier Luigi Nervi. Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
Pier Luigi and Antonio Nervi, GoodHope Center, Cape Town, Sud Africa (1964-1980), joint-venture con lo studio Colyn&Mering. Collezione MAXXI Architettura. Archivio Pier Luigi Nervi. Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
Pier Luigi and Antonio Nervi, Rupert Thompson Ice Arena Hockey Rink at Dartmouth College, Hanover (USA) (1967-75). Collezione MAXXI Architettura. Archivio Pier Luigi Nervi. Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI
<b>Left</b>: Pier Luigi and Antonio Nervi, Stadio Flaminio in Rome (1956-59) Collezione MAXXI Architettura. Archivio Pier Luigi Nervi. Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI. <b>Right</b>: Pier Luigi Nervi, Stadio Comunale Giovanni Berta, Firenze 1929-1932). Collezione MAXXI Architettura. Archivio Pier Luigi Nervi. Courtesy Fondazione MAXXI.


from February 5 until October 2, 2016
Pier Luigi Nervi. Architecture for Sport
curated by Micaela Antonucci with Annalisa Trentin and Tomaso Trombetti
MAXXI
via Guido Reni 4A, Roma