MODERN ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE OF INTERWAR TIME - APPROACHES TO THE MEMORY OF THE SPACE (original) (raw)
Related papers
Rationalist Architecture in Romagna, Italy. Towards Better Preservation
A. TOSTÕES, Z. FERREIRA (a cura di), Adaptive Reuse. The Modern Movement Towards the Future. Proceedings of the 14th International docomomo Conference, Lisbon 6-9 September 2016, docomomo International and Casa da Arquitectura, Lisbon 2016, pp. 669-676.
The Santarelli Kindergarten in Forlì and the Casa del Fascio in Predappio, both significant examples of Fascist regime architectures of the 1930s, are comparable for their times of realisation and the year of their inauguration. Beyond their chronology they are inherently linked by many reasons, including their experimental technologies. Indeed the two buildings can be compared both for a common design tension between tradition and innovation and for their construction frailties, deficiencies and failures. On the one hand, the kindergarten in Forlì, a measured building for the “city of the Duce”, employed traditional technologies to resolve its construction failures; it continued to be used for its original function until 2012. On the other hand, the Casa del Fascio constitutes an iconic and monumental building of the Fascist regime era, built for a town which, from periphery status, aimed at becoming a centre. The Casa pursued technological innovation with more perseverance than the Forlì kindergarten but, in the post-war era, fell victim to ideological rejection and a state of physical abandonment. By comparing these two architectures, the paper intends to analyse their affinities and contrasts as well as their shared construction deficiencies and failures. Since both buildings present problems caused by constructive experimentation, the results of the interventions attempting to address these will also be illustrated. The paper intends to delineate an investigation in fieri of this heritage of undeniable patrimonial value while touching on some characterising aspects (including experimental technologies and the theoretical and operational problems of preservation). The objective is, on the one hand, to diffuse a better knowledge of these buildings and, on the other hand, to provide professionals with better restoration tools, capable of guaranteeing the preservation of these frail Modern architectures.
This article scrutinizes the effects of 1968 student protests and events on architectural pedagogy and epistemology within the European and American contexts. Through the juxtaposition of the transformations that followed the 1968 events, mainly within the north-American and Italian contexts, it shows how the approaches vis-à-vis the concept of urban renewal, in the case of Italy, and the concept of “nuova dimensione”, in the case of Italy, were reoriented and progressively abandoned. The central argument is that the strategies elaborated, in the American context, to criticize urban renewal architecture were based on principles that pushed architectural discourse away from the real, either neutralizing the real, as in the case of Peter Eisenman, or reducing the real city into its image, as in the case of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. In parallel and in contrast with the situation in the United States, in Europe, and mainly in Italy, the effects of a network of significant events that preceded and followed 1968, extending from the battles at Valle Giulia in 1963 to the occupation by students of the 15th Triennale di Milano in 1968 and the event “Utopia e/o Rivoluzione” at the Politecnico di Torino in 1969, triggered the rejection of the concept of “nuova dimensione” in favour of the rediscovery of the immediacy of reality, the "locus" and the civic dimension of architects' role in society. The purpose of the article is double-fold: firstly, it unfolds the mutations of pedagogical strategies and epistemological tools of architecture that were shaped because of the student protests in Italy and North America; secondly, it explains why the 1968 effects on architectural pedagogy and epistemology in Europe, and especially in Italy, were linked to the demand to reinvent and reinforce the relation of architecture to the real, in contrast with the North-American context, where the 1968 effects were associated with the invention of strategies that reinforced the liberation of architecture from the real.
For many architects, who attribute to memory a fundamental role in their creative process, Rome and its multiple spatiality have been and continue to be extraordinary sources of inspiration. Its ruins, expression of the fragment and unfinished condition, have been used as a bare architecture, pluging in a new building, or as a layer on which build up the following one. Their building systems and urban role have attracted architects from different eras. Its Renaissance buildings show how architects have been able to adapt the principles of symmetry to the irregularity of the sites, generating exciting new solutions. Thereafter, the baroque architects change the relationships between architecture and urban space and create innovative devices for shape the light. This great repertory of space, intervention strategies, architectural themes that Rome offers, is used by many modern and contemporary architectes that, starting from their experience of those places, have studied them and reuse, reinterpreting them in their projects. Among them, the intervention aims to deal with two Italian architects: Alessandro Anselmi (1934-2013) and Francesco Venezia (1944). Both have selected from this extensive repertory buildings and places, that, captivated by their memory, could emerge later, providing strategies and meanings to their projects.
EAHN 6th International Meeting, 2021
In spite of the dispute between Saverio Muratori and Manfredo Tafuri, and of the ever-widening split that has characterised the global scholarship of architecture ever since, Italy gave rise to several methods of typo- morphological studies founded upon both rigorous historiography and a coherent theory underpinning the operative use of this historical knowledge in architectural design. This paper argues that the Italian 'school'—for want of a better word—is perhaps unique insofar as it defines a clear scope of objects and methods pertaining to the disciplinary field of architecture as a whole, thus providing a unified framework for both historiography and design. Yet, this Italian 'school' of typo-morphological history and theory is diverse, exposing rifts between traditionalists and modernists. The former are tributary of Aldo Rossi's postmodernist formal relationships derived from a concept of 'collective memory,' whereas the latter adopt Saverio Murat...
The Architectural Word--Essay for Massimo Cacciari
In Inquieto pensare. Scritti in onore di Massimo Cacciari, ed. Emanuele Severino and Vincenzo Vitiello (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2015): 271-282.
Prima edizione: xxxx 2015 www.morcelliana.com i diritti di traduzione, di memorizzazione elettronica, di riproduzione e di adattamento totale o parziale, con qualsiasi mezzo (compresi i microfilm e le copie fotostatiche), sono riservati per tutti i Paesi. Fotocopie per uso personale del lettore possono essere effettuate nei limiti del 15% di ciascun volume dietro pagamento alla Siae del compenso previsto dall'art. 68, comma 4, della legge 22 aprile 1941 n. 633 ovvero dell'accordo stipulato tra Siae, aie, SnS, SlSi e cna, conFarTiGianaTo, caSarTiGiani, claai e leGacooP il 17 novembre 2005. le riproduzioni ad uso differente da quello personale potranno avvenire, per un numero di pagine non superiore al 15% del presente volume, solo a seguito di specifica autorizzazione rilasciata da aiDro, via delle erbe n. 2, 20121 Milano, telefax 02.809506, e-mail aidro@iol.it iSBn 978-88-372-xxxx-x legoDigit srl -Via Galileo Galilei 15/1 -38015 lavis (Tn) 001_FestCacc_Guardia.indd 4 03/04/15 07:33 thomas harrison
Histories of Postwar Architecture , 2018
This article scrutinizes the effects of 1968 student protests and events on architectural pedagogy and epistemology within the European and American contexts. Through the juxtaposition of the transformations that followed the 1968 events, mainly within the north-American and Italian contexts, it shows how the approaches vis-à-vis the concept of urban renewal, in the case of Italy, and the concept of “nuova dimensione”, in the case of Italy, were reoriented and progressively abandoned. The central argument is that the strategies elaborated, in the American context, to criticize urban renewal architecture were based on principles that pushed architectural discourse away from the real, either neutralizing the real, as in the case of Peter Eisenman, or reducing the real city into its image, as in the case of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. In parallel and in contrast with the situation in the United States, in Europe, and mainly in Italy, the effects of a network of significant events that preceded and followed 1968, extending from the battles at Valle Giulia in 1963 to the occupation by students of the 15th Triennale di Milano in 1968 and the event “Utopia e/o Rivoluzione” at the Politecnico di Torino in 1969, triggered the rejection of the concept of “nuova dimensione” in favour of the rediscovery of the immediacy of reality, the "locus" and the civic dimension of architects' role in society. The purpose of the article is double-fold: firstly, it unfolds the mutations of pedagogical strategies and epistemological tools of architecture that were shaped because of the student protests in Italy and North America; secondly, it explains why the 1968 effects on architectural pedagogy and epistemology in Europe, and especially in Italy, were linked to the demand to reinvent and reinforce the relation of architecture to the real, in contrast with the North-American context, where the 1968 effects were associated with the invention of strategies that reinforced the liberation of architecture from the real.
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 2014
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
Writing of the History: Ernesto Rogers Between Estrangement and Familiarity of Architectural History
2017
Ernesto Rogers was the key figure of the postwar Italian architecture. Architect, educator, writer, editor, he was a man of a great erudition and talent. As with many intellectuals of the post-Second World War Italy, he theorized history and used somewhat eclectically sources to promote his idea of continuity as a temporal model in architecture. His theory came on one hand out of particular Italian prewar intellectual tradition but was also based on a wide spectrum of resources such as Enzo Paci, Henry Bergson, John Dewey and Henri Focillon, among others. It found its way into writing a story of architecture in some of the work of his office, namely project for Torre Velasca in Milano that we will use as case study in this paper. Following his idea of "sensing the history" he created buildings and pieces that are in constant state of flux between what one might feel is familiar, a "true" representation of the history and, on the other hand, estrangement that comes with desire to physically embody history in the field of preexisting environments (i.e. cities or natural environments) that was never really present. The result was the uneasiness that comes with the question of representation of history in the physical form that oscillates between history as we imagine it and history as a source of future imagination.