Opened in 2016, the New Rome-EUR Convention Center by Massimiliano and Doriana Fuksas of Studio Fuksas was an early victim of COVID-19, which required canceling the conventions, operas, ballets and other public gatherings held in the monumental building. One of Rome’s proudest contemporary structures--and the largest completed in the city in 50 years–went dark. The glass-and-steel hangar, which garages an auditorium enveloped by a translucent white fiberglass cloud made feasible with 3D software, updated the residential and business district EUR – the surrounding Modernist, largely masonry interwar area of Rome – by an era.
Ironically, it was COVID that re-opened the structure on February 24 in its new, temporary role as the largest vaccination center in Italy (and perhaps Europe). The President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, along with a large cohort of local and regional officials, celebrated the event—cameras rolling—by visiting on March 6. Italy has been one of the countries in Europe most traumatized by the virus, and the high architectural profile of such a prominent building signaled the seriousness of the government’s response to the threat, and the collective determination at all levels of the state. The city and country enlisted one of the best and brightest buildings of the times to the cause.
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