Stabilized Modernity

The way Italian architecture developed over almost a century can be summed up in a single word: continuity. Since the 19^th century, Italian architecture has been fundamentally eclectic in style. Here, modernity came late and with the unification of Italy there was a drive to develop architecture that would represent the country’s different components with adaptive versions of the Liberty, or Italian Art Nouveau, style. The fascist period triggered a sea change. The regime used architecture as a tool to ensure consensus, giving the impression that Italy was a single cohesive entity. However, Italian Rationalism was neither as cohesive nor as compact as trumpeted, being the result of an improbable fusion of the Metaphysical movement and Futurism, of formal stability and dynamism.

After the fall of fascism, Italian architecture was forced to come to terms with its basic eclecticism and signature continuity, a feature that would be theorized by Ernesto Nathan Rogers, who would pointedly rename Casabella, the magazine he headed, Casabella-Continuità. Importantly, Italian continuity is present not only on one but on several levels. It is continuity with its architectural heritage but also with modern national traditions – think Futurism – and the approach to ancient and modern contexts. This continuity peaked in the 1970s, a period in which Italy’s cultural contribution to the figurative arts, and especially to architecture, was at its height. Ideologically committed, the works produced covered a spectrum that included on the one hand, “Tendenza” architects (especially Giorgio Grassi and Aldo Rossi), and on the other, Radicals from Florence, like Superstudio and Archizoom. Falling between the two was a plethora of professionals, who, failing to find favor with the “politically engaged” architecture of the day, took refuge in design. Everything changed in the 1990s during...

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