Review: Energy: Oil and Post-Oil Architecture and Grids

Abstract

Energy: Oil and Post-Oil Architecture and Grids MAXXI Museum, Rome 22 March–10 November 2013 Architecture exhibitions are of two kinds: those that celebrate an epoch—or a practitioner—that has already left its mark, and those that give credibility to emerging movements. Curator Pippo Ciorra attempted to do both, situating the narrative in Energy: Oil and Post-Oil Architecture and Grids between a poetic reflection on the “Petroleum Interval” that is coming to an end, and a foreshadowing of a new era of energy production and distribution.1He achieved this through a cogent organizational strategy, dividing the exhibition into two parallel sections: “Stories” recounted the past, while “Visions” presented projects for the future. The content of the exhibition was not really about “energy” but rather about our cultural fixation with all that energy implies. Energy is the magic input that will bring Italy out of its postwar slump to realize its own American dream. And rethinking energy today, in the aftermath of decades of this American dream, will magically bring us back from the brink of ecological disaster. In the exhibition, energy was equated with mobility. No reference could be found to the 50 percent of the country’s energy that is consumed by its buildings; it was all about cars and speed. The unstated presence of the Futurists hung heavy in the air, especially in the “Stories” section, as if Marinetti and the Marshall Plan were joining forces to fuel an engine for rapid growth, snaking across …