August 2014 Discipline Problem: The relationship between art and architecture in recent decades has ranged from sympathetic complicity to outright hostility. Photo courtesy of the Artist and Meessen De Clercq, Bruxelles Unbuilt 5'Magn's Th. S Bl'ndal Residence, S'lvellir 18, 1925' Architect: Einar Erlendsson, 2012. The artistGordon Matta-Clark's most famous instance of what he called “anarchitecture” amounted to cutting through an abandoned house, as one would a cake, and then tilting the two halves slightly so as to reveal a slim vertical “V” of empty space between them. However physically destructive his actions toward the built environment might have appeared, it

Report card: Zaha Hadid's MAXXI turns out to be a good place to see art. There's a giant, white, habitable sculpture sitting in the midst of Rome's nondescript Flaminio district just north of the city center. Its exterior juxtaposes sinuous curves and sharply angled planes, and its interior flows in smooth, serpentine capaciousness. It's Zaha Hadid's National Museum of XXI Century Arts (better known as MAXXI), and doubtless it's a work of art itself. But museums aren't supposed to be stand-alone masterpieces. They're supposed to display and enhance other works of art to visual and contextual advantage. The 228,000-square-foot MAXXI