Italian Architecture of the Twentieth Century. Issues and problems.

The history of Italian architecture of Twentieth-century, crossed and structured by the almost total identification between the same architecture and the city, was built layer by layer around some problematic issues became long as many narratives places, elements of a real mythology, now assumed by almost all of the disciplinary culture without substantial doubts come forward or move ahead substantial reserves on it. The taking away from the excesses of the avant-garde, from which the proposals that could be more easily metabolized were laboriously selected; the suffered mediations between different research directions, the criticism of separation of town and architecture present in the main theories developed within the Modern Movement, the necessity of finding a national line against European and global architecture, are some of these problematic issues. To these must be added more, such as the relationship between innovation and tradition; the interactions between the fragment, seen as a symbolic form of the ancient, and the whole, the interactions that permeate the work of a protagonist like Carlo Scarpa for example; the alternative between generalism and specialisms; the distinction or the operating integration between architecture and politics; the choice between autonomy and heteronomy of architecture; the relationship between this and the world of production; the continuity or discontinuity with the past, or the question about the meaning of history, its ability to interact with the project by promoting the precipitation of its components in a solid and complex solution or, on the contrary, its aim to offer only as a measure of differentiation; the question about resources and the limits of a rational conception of architecture. Starting from the issues just mentioned have been formed some recurring figures. Among these, a dichotomic thought that goes through the opposition between progressives and reactionaries, that manichean opposition does not allow distinctions and specifications, the idea of irreducible conflict between different positions as an essential category of architecture, as in the famous Difficolt politiche dellarchitettura italiana by Giulia Veronesi, and the corresponding adoption of the model of the crisis as a constant result of the clash between opposing sides, as a hypothesis, basically aesthetic, of the task of failure considered as a palingenetic fall, premise of a rebirth always deferred to a future undetermined and to another place, identification of the value of an architecture with the ideological choice that has been accomplished to think and realize. From here a few categories including an idea of architecture as an expression of an abstract freedom, more than any bias; the new as a result of a constant dialectic between the needs of settlement and representative born by the industrial revolution, which needs to be given an architectural response, and environmental preexistence, with the ambiguous compromise that they have produced; a marked limitation of innovation in favor of a compromise very questionable and harmful, even if deemed necessary and advanced with the tradition. The discouraged and warning vision of Edoardo Persico; the dramatization of the condition of Italian architecture by Giuseppe Pagano; the palingenetic exasperation of organicism introduced after World War II by Bruno Zevi; the constant and alarmed reminder of the responsibilities of the architect by Ernesto Nathan Rogers; the angry and perpetually dissatisfied look of Ludovico Quaroni; the tendency to apocalyptic readings that marked the historical-critical vision of Manfredo Tafuri outline a climate of endemic pessimism in which the architecture as a substance of things hoped for, according to the definition of the author of Punto e a capo dellarchitettura and Profezia dellarchitettura, proves to be a promise that cant be maintained. The same idea of environmental preexistence which is similar, in many ways, to the theories of Saverio Muratori, in his outline a middle-line between preservation and renewal for example the Torre Velasca in Milan by BBPR or the Palazzo Sturzo by Muratori in Rome - has created a planning approach oriented to incessant mediations that have taken energy to the new while at the same time have reduced, tentatively updating the mysterious and prophetic meaning from Alberto Savinio to Massimo Bontempelli of the traces, obvious or hidden, of the past. 1

Between memorable students of Rogers - Aldo Rossi, Guido Canella, Gae Aulenti, Vittorio Gregotti - only the last seems to finally be able to escape to mimetic historicism, or worse, to an implicit and insistency rhetoric that is in the same idea of urban environment. About pre-existing environmental something to be said about a very important precedents. The problem of their foundational relationship with the new was already set up and solved in the Twenties and Thirties, in similar terms to more than one way, by Gustavo Giovannoni and Marcello Piacentini. The urban design of the latter, especially, have always meant, even when involving demolition or reconnections, within both accurate assessments as efficient in their outcomes, the context in which interventions insisted. The same accuracy is also present in many rationalists theoretical projects including Milano Verde by Albini, Gardella, Minoletti, Palanti Predaval, Romano, which aroused the interest of the young Giulio Carlo Argan, and the Plan for a new neighborhood in Ivrea, by Figini and Pollini. Piacentini, however, in his famous Architettura doggi in 1930, cleared, with one hundred and twenty-eight illustrations, its cultural policy which is to find a middle-line between too pronounced innovative accelerations and an accentuated traditionalism. It should be noted that in the selection of examples which he sets proves much more open to the new as regards the international overview that as regards the Italian production. A historiography centered on ideology and politics could not be a source of misunderstandings and errors, of overstatement of situations, schools, occasions and of works at the same time due to symmetrical underestimation of events and personalities. If the Fascism regime tried to bend architecture to its propagandistic interests, during post-war period this precedent prevented, especially to the Left wing parties, to prepare advanced discussion about the prospects of architecture as an expression of society, except for one populist and short-term interest for housing designed for so-called lower classes. The architectural neorealism was seen as an entirely new attitude that wanted to claim, compared to the celebrative intent of fascist architecture, the potential in the popular tradition of building, whose lexicon was revived against modern abstraction. In fact, the neo-realism in Rome inherited the experience of the Twenties and Thirties, as noted by an unprejudiced comparison between Garbatella, Montesacro and Tiburtino by Ridolfi and Quaroni. It configures in many ways like a real invention of a language that would incorporate rural ambience deemed capable of evoking a strong community spirit, in reality profoundly anti-urban. This language was more evocative than derived from real architecture as well as an artificial lexicon, contradictory result of a simulation such as intellectual definitely inspired. Continuing the personal listing of narrative places that need to undergo a revision there are other issues to be considered. The return to order - the slogan of Jean Cocteau - which joined in Italy artists like Ardengo Soffici, Carlo Carr and Gino Severini, who were convinced avant-garde, should not be simply understood as a withdrawal to traditionalist positions, but as a realignment of research on a wider and shared horizon of meaning. The avant garde led to a strong epistemological break that caused the traumatic separation of language from its contents. The language had achieved almost total autonomy, independent of the direction of which was to be the vehicle. In this way, the artistic and architectural aspirations, but also literary, were entered in the obscurity of a radical hermetism which excluded almost all of the public from understanding the works. In this way it was created the need to recompose this dramatic gap reporting language and contents within the same sphere. This is to give back to the artistic search capacity of communication that seemed to have been placed permanently in crisis. This requirement also occurred in the architecture. Reflecting on this problem it is clear that judging this realignment as a moral betrayal is inherently unfair. It is certainly more correct, if necessary, to talk about a wrong choice, but certainly not guilty. Besides the return to order the reason for which is perhaps found in the tragedy of the First World War which seemed to have made with its destruction the resetting desire of the avant-garde. There 2

are other narrative places to be rethought entirely. The fact that during the Ventennio exemplary architecture have been realized, for example, recognized only if one assumed a silent opposition to Fascism by their authors, which is often not true, as in the case of the Casa del Fascio in Como by Giuseppe Terragni and the Palazzo dei Congressi located in the Eur, in Rome, by Adalberto Libera. Coming to a recent season, the Seventies, the problems of large residential projects of this period, inspired and supported by the Left, whose symbol is the Corviale, in Rome, by Mario Fiorentino, were evaluated with an excessive indulgence respect to the significant functional and technical inadequacy that these neighborhoods had. The briefly remembered distortions not only concerned with general issues. About topics closest to the specific problems of projective cultures should be to recall some aspects of the Italian architecture of the last century on which to reflect. For decades, creative events such as those of Mario Ridolfi, together with theoretical elaborations such as the proposals advanced in the pages of Casabella by Ernesto Nathan Rogers, or by Ludovico Quaroni, the master in dubitative methodology, in memorable books and in a half-a-century teaching, were somehow exploited, even unknowingly, to obscure other routes of rare qualities architectural such as those undertaken by irregular shapes, or difficult to fit in a specific ideological contexts, such as Gi Ponti, Luciano Baldessari, Luigi Moretti, Marcello D'Olivo, Maurizio Sacripanti, Giuseppe Vaccaro, Giuseppe Nicolosi. Zevis totalizing extremism was the origin of culture wars in which aggressive intentions as summary overtake significantly attenuated the ability to share the reasons for controversy often in themselves necessary. The total exclusion of the works of protagonists as Vittorio Gregotti, Aldo Rossi, Giorgio Grassi from his reading of contemporary architecture was born. Zevis aversion to Postmodern, explained in its unyielding opposition to Paolo Portoghesi is not justifiable in the form it took, as well as his penchant for operative criticism was fought with a schematic equally hard and final by Manfredo Tafuri. Overlooking here the numerous damnatio memoriae - just remembering about the almost total cancellation which felt the theoretical work and planning of Saverio Muratori following a confrontation in the Faculty of Architecture in Rome between the author of the Sede Nazionale della Democrazia Cristiana in the Eur and Bruno Zevi, just returned from Venice it could be easy to compile a long list of removed events, remarkable architectures condemned to oblivion, the indecisive momentous elected as epochal, modest experience all things regarded as experiences of international importance. Meanwhile, the real meaning of architecture created by the central figures such as, for example, Giuseppe Samon, Giancarlo De Carlo, and the same Rogers and Quaroni does not seem to build a real source of interest, these figures being considered more important for their intellectuals role than for the project research, with results usually remarkable, that they have done for several decades. In some ways only the academic culture is considered a solid and durable reference point, yet the architectonic results of this culture are in fact considered worthy to be explored critically. Paradoxically, a similar fate touches to the architecture that could be defined antiacademic, such as those produced by radical architects such as Alessandro Mendini, Andrea Branzi, Gianni Pettena, appreciated more for their experimental and unconventional nature than for their intrinsic architectural content. In this picture remain true historical-critical mysteries to solve. They include the role of the movement of Comunit, under the leadership of Adriano Olivetti promoted some important operations as the agricultural village La Martella, not far from Matera. What needs to be fully understood is the nature at the same time democratic and elitist vision of Olivetti, which ends up placing the proposed solutions, inspired by a critical illuminism, that takes care of the problems he wants to give an answer, above and beyond the urban situations and social conditions on which such a vision acts. The solutions proposed by members of the Comunit are moving in more ways than actually fell from above, as if the people involved in these experiments were regarded not as subjects dialoguing, but as privileged objects of reformist advanced engineering. Another issue to investigate is to find a reason for the less of support that should be given by the Left wing parties, beyond the seeming acceptance, in the early Sixties to the innovative hypotheses on business centers, places of urban sociability still largely incomplete and 3

indeterminate in its changing between openings and closings in the enclosure of neighborhoods with no connections to the territory. Another theoretical problem on which Italian architecture is laterally interested in is the technique. Perhaps because of the influence in Twentieth century of the Croce's idealism, the question of the meaning of the technical universe in modern society - an issue that was central in Germany, as the works of Martin Heidegger and Romano Guardini remember is so sporadic and marginal. Just to make clear this lack of interest just think that it took at least twenty years for the work of Renzo Piano, strongly supported by an original and humanistic idea of the technique, far from didactic and self-celebrative overexposure of high-tech, it was recognized by the Italian critics as a high contribution to one of the most complex problems, not only architectural, of the Twentieth century. To better understand the relationship between the current problems of Italian architecture, seen in historical perspective that was quickly resumed, the picture overall architecture, should at this point to recall some profound and irreversible changes that have occurred over the last twenty years in architecture. They were caused by the convergence of three phenomena whose importance is not yet fully evaluable, but which are certainly of great importance. The first is the advent of globalization, which has redefined the foundations of the political, economic and cultural logics of the world, sparking a tough competition not only between states but also between metropolises, each of which engaged, such Shanghai for example, to achieve global leadership. The second is the information revolution, which had as its main effect not only the transition, as written by Kurt Forster, from the Vitruvian tectonic paradigm - the trilithic paradigm - a construct based on the continuity of the bearing and wrapping surfaces - but also a new way to communicate, as can occur with the rise of social networks, one of the most obvious consequences of the birth of the network. Internet is the context within a new form of criticism that is expressed in several blogs devoted to architecture and in various press letter that deal with current issues is born and has spread to. Even sites that present the works that many architects or architectural firms help to determine a new way to read and to decode what is happening today in architecture. It is still too early to assess the role of criticism in the network, which is in any case, a phenomenon which gives particular attention. The third is the transition from production of material goods to those intangibles, or the affirmation of culture and art as the main sites of processing of mentalities and collective expectations. These three changes are part of a more pronounced speeding information flow, which is added to a reduction to the present this even more explicit every day, a crush on the most topical in turn made more active by a typical process of globalization, for which everything tends to be a generalization that results in the full abstraction. The speeding up of information, the reduction to the present and abstraction are the factors that prevent those who want to understand what happens to build that critical distance which from years firmly speaks Vittorio Gregotti. The time needed to see things from perspectives that allow to analyze and evaluate the effect was reduced to defeat. For that you need to know how to locate where you want to be found, using a sort of sixth sense that lets you do instant collimation, or that makes possible to make quick connections between too distant and different phenomena and elements. In light of this who writes hopes they will be made in the near future three operations related to each other. The first is to promote a strategy of Italian architecture of the Twentieth century finally conceived outside of the dual pattern, inspired by an ideological view of what happened, who dominated the second half of the century. The historical writing should take note of the end of a conception of Italian architecture as a result of a sort of endless civil war that has seen and sees two factions fight with all lawful and unlawful means. Modernity has not been a monolithic technical and operational entity nor had another modernity as an antagonist. It looks increasingly as the interaction of different viewpoints that have their own intrinsic legitimacy and which may well coexist. The completely absorbing idea that one is the search direction can make the contents higher and the programs more advanced can no longer be sustained. It must be replaced by a pluralistic 4

vision which, if it cant be placed the different positions on the same level, must still be able to note any equivalence and the same right to exist disciplinary conflicting interpretations of them. The second operation which should be done has to do with the problem of the simplification of issue set by cultural logic and global information. For example, the articulation between the national situation and regional identity of the Italian architecture is too complex to be able to be implemented at the level of global issues, dominated today by a relationship between sustainability and technology which incidentally probably can find a key in the theories of decline essential to be reset in a more complex, conscious and effective terms. A historiography of Italian architecture in which prevails the memory instead of researching how innovative ideas can find a space and a verification, a memory that cant tend to inject toxins of nostalgia into the disciplinary culture, and self-satisfaction of excuses in retrospect, is not able to put in a position a marginal percentage architecture like that Italian to enter with equal chances of iterations and exchanges in the global picture. In fact, memory cant be seen merely as a mental place and a size of the spirit that make those who have the ability and willingness to remember more aware and responsible, more sensitive to the complex texture of reality. The memory is really important if its the space of the structural reading of how things were formed. This is a not sentimental or evocative reading but intended to reconstruct the processes by which places and architectures have defined their identity. The need for simplified issue is the premise for the third operation, the more difficult. It is urgent to provide as soon as you can to find in Italian architecture not more than three priorities, become real in clear and instantly comprehensible problems. To translate the historic heritage in contemporary languages rescued from its tendency to ebb to the reassuring and conventional idea of the past; to create a program of innovative architectural and urban interventions by renouncing the possible variants of the current theories of pre-existing environmental; to facilitate the simultaneous presence of a plurality of conflicting trends, without thinking that one direction of research should be dominant, outline a program that might be worth achieving. If it is true, as Charles Baudelaire said that the criticism - and the culture in general - should be partial, passionate and political, is also true that these characters do not necessarily have to belong to a single array. Pending this new story, is no longer considered within a binary paradigm, intended as a comparison war for the conquest of hegemony, but as an intentional description of conflict and operating strategies of coexistence must be hoped in a creative season that find a happiness of doing far from the closed and worried atmosphere that permeated the narrative places of Italian architecture of the Twentieth century. Franco Purini