NOTES ON THE PROJECT

The Sheikh Zayed International Media and Knowledge Centre is situated in the main hall of the FAO of UN Headquarters in Rome. As a new portal between FAO and the world, as a link for knowledge e-sharing, it is physically placed in the main visual approach of visitors and users, and it virtually provides every tool necessary to communicate through the cyberspace in the information age. Its presence, both physical and virtual, celebrates at the same time its multimedia purpose, the enlightened message of the patron donor and the cultural mandate on which FAO organization is based.
The project suggests a balance of feelings generated from material and immaterial components: a neo-nature traversed by a multimedia flux. The suspended glass prism that wraps the intervention is open and permeable along the whole perimeter and, through the decorations and reflections, suggests and multiplies the ‘sky’ factor. The ‘water’ element, which recalls the Emirates emerging islands, envelopes the space and amplifies it at the same time, multiplying the cross referencing between physical and immaterial. Within these reflections and a ‘forest’ of green columns, we find the flowing and semi-transparent shape of the shell wrapping the meeting hall; its volume dematerialises and contextualises through the encounter of the blue-screen colour, typical of the virtual studios, with the friendly intimacy of the core in exotic timber. On one side, a promenade through a neo-natural forest takes you from the hall to the oasis lounge, while in the background Rome suddenly appears, with the ruins and the green of Terme di Caracalla. Between the promenade and the hall, the multimedia brain of the Centre is placed, in a volume shaped like a big “cathode-ray tube” set into a suspended glass wall that celebrates the enlightened patron Sheikh Zayed, citing one of its memorable mottos. Marco Felici’s project hosts the artistic installations of Sadika Keskes: the entrance portal becomes an important threshold through the Sheikh’s words, engraved in blown glass luminous letters. Before entering, the visitor has walked across a ‘curtain’ of palms in wrought-iron and coloured glass, a remind to the holy motif common to the monotheist cults. And inside the main hall, a forest of bronze elements reconnects to the theme of the tree of life, “fiat panis”, as said on FAO’s logo.