Paolo Portoghesi's Strada Novissima Recreated at MAXXI Rome

The MAXXI museum in Rome is hosting 'Dentro la Strada Novissima', a recreation of the iconic 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale installation curated by Paolo Portoghesi. The original Strada Novissima featured twenty international architects designing facades for a fictional street inside the Corderie dell'Arsenale. The exhibition, curated again by Portoghesi 39 years later, includes sketches, archival materials, photographs, videos, and magazines, many from the Historical Archive of the Venice Biennale. It is structured in four sections: Aldo Rossi's Teatro del Mondo, an introduction to the event, a wooden perspective reconstruction of the twenty facades, and a final section with publications and interviews. The show highlights the concept of 'street' as a critique of Le Corbusier's 'rue corridor' and references the 'Strada Nuova' in Genoa. The exhibition follows Léa-Catherine Szacka's 2016 book 'Exhibiting the Postmodern', which argued the 1980 Biennale marked the mediatization of architecture rather than the start of postmodern historicism. Portoghesi donated his private archive to MAXXI two years prior.