On view at MACRO in Rome until November 8, nine projects by IED students envision new ways of inhabiting the museum and transforming it into a space that is open, permeable and connected to everyday life.
MACRO. Museum of the Everyday: Rethinking the Museum as a Space for Everyday Life
Date
23 September 2026
Can a museum be more than a place dedicated to exhibitions? Can it become a space for meeting, working, learning, producing culture and sharing experiences?
These questions are at the starting point of MACRO. Museum of the Everyday, the exhibition bringing to MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome the outcomes of the Interior Design Thesis Lab at IED Roma, developed during the 2025/2026 academic year in collaboration with MACRO.
The exhibition opens tomorrow, Thursday, September 24, at 6 pm. It will be open to the public until November 8, 2026.
Nine projects, nine interpretations of the museum as a Museum of the Everyday: a permeable institution, open to everyday life and capable of accommodating activities and forms of social interaction that would normally take place outside the museum space.
The students imagined a MACRO in which exhibition spaces are complemented by places for education, cultural production, work, well-being and sharing, transforming the museum into a platform for new forms of collective experience.
The starting point is MACRO’s architecture and its vocation for experimentation. Through their projects, the students explored the museum as a cultural and civic infrastructure, rooted in the city while also capable of adapting to the needs of contemporary society.
Circulation routes, atriums, connecting spaces and liminal environments become design material. These are spaces to be reinterpreted through new programmes and flexible spatial devices, capable of questioning the traditional separation between museum and city, and between cultural space and everyday life.
The exhibition also presents the research that accompanied the design process: an investigation into the history of MACRO, the transformations of Rome’s cultural system, and the legacy of the period of architectural experimentation that shaped the city in the decade spanning the turn of the millennium.
Rather than proposing a single vision for the future of the museum, MACRO. Museum of the Everyday presents a plurality of possibilities. The nine projects reflect the Thesis Lab as a collective process in which research, discussion and design intertwine to question the role of the museum institution within the contemporary city.
The museum thus emerges not only as a place for exhibitions, but as a public space, a cultural platform and an integral part of urban life.
MACRO. Museum of the Everyday
Opening
September 24, 2026, 6 pm
Free admission
MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome
Via Nizza 138, Rome
Dates
September 24 – November 8, 2026
Students
Taso Archaia, Nazerke Ashimova, Sofia Bressano, Valentina Bruni, Ylenia Castiglioni, Giada Chiacchari, Sofia Ciaccio, Giorgia Cialone, Anna Chiara Ciuffreda, Marta D’Ercole, Giorgia D’Onofrio, Teodora Maria Enoaie, Francesca Gaudino, Martina Giuliani, Almira Mirzalimova, Viola Saracini, Alessandra Stranges, Valeria Zocco.
Thesis Supervisor: Matteo Costanzo
Thesis Co-Supervisor: Alina Aggujaro
MACRO. Museum of the Everyday is part of the Public Program conceived by IED to mark its 60th anniversary: a program of events centered around the theme of Plural Intelligence, with the aim of bringing together diverse perspectives and fostering a shared reflection on new ways of thinking, designing, and engaging with the contemporary world.
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