Bauhaus and Greece The Idea of Synthesis in Art and Architecture Athens, May 30-31 / June 1st, 2019, 2019
As happened worldwide, also in Italy during the Sixties a lively debate about the schools and the... more As happened worldwide, also in Italy during the Sixties a lively debate about the schools and the training of designers grew up. The education of the industrial designer was the topic of a conference organized by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSD) in Bruges from 21 to 24 March 1964. Under the presidency of Misha Black, they took part, among others: John Radic (Yugoslavia), William Katavolos (US), Tomas Maldonado (Germany), Roger Tallon (France), Gino Valle (Italy). The conference discussed the question of the designer's profession, splitted between its technological and artistic aspects. The subjects discussed in Bruges have long been addressed by Italian culture, ever since Giulio Carlo Argan published his fundamental book on Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus in 1951. Specifically, this discussion was highlighted when the model of the Bauhaus school was analyzed as an example for the design schools. In the 1960s, this discussion was improved when trying to figure out if the model of the Bauhaus school could become an example for modern design schools. The occasion to rekindle the debate were the celebrations of the Bauhaus's 50th anniversary. The great exhibition of 1968 obtained indeed a resounding success. Furthermore, in 1971 a Bauhaus Weimar exhibition held in Turin, exactly one year after the publication of a monographic issue of the magazine "Controspazio" dedicated to the Bauhaus.
The paper aims to show the results of a broader research on the topic of the industrial designers’ training in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, which had, as a starting point, the discussions on the Bauhaus training models opposed to those of the more technical schools and involved philosophers, art historians and the growing category of the design theorists engaged in the definition of a scientific disciplinary status such Alberto Rosselli or Tomas Maldonado.
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Tra ricerca del passato, controversie sulla conservazione, finalità politiche e senso della storia nazionale, il fenomeno si esaurisce nei primi anni del Novecento, quando il dibattito sui monumenti della Terza Italia, quali simulacri del pensiero e dell'identità civile, si sposta verso altre questioni. Analizzando documenti inediti e fonti a stampa poco note, il libro "affronta - come scrive Fabio Mangone nella prefazione - un tema di grande importanza e di grande rilevanza nella vicenda storica dell'architettura post-unitaria, rimasto nel suo complesso - al di là di encomiabili approfondimenti monografici - negletto e inesplorato".
The phenomenon of building the façades of ancient and monumental churches, which had been without 'faces' for centuries, took on new significance in the second half of the 19th century, starting with the first competition for the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (1861), reaching its acme in the height of the Umbertine era, with the unresolved competitions for the basilica of San Petronio in Bologna and the cathedral of Milan, and with the countless church façades that were built (Amalfi, Savona, Naples, Arezzo, Pavia and many others). This phenomenon involved not only talented architects, refined scholars and attentive critics, but also politicians, civic administrations and, above all, citizens, through the promotion committees and the many fund-raising associations, who were called upon to discuss artistic themes central to identity culture. The result of many years of research, conducted in numerous archives and libraries, the book offers a new key to interpreting the phenomenon, investigating the complexity of relations between State and Church, between anti-papal and clerical groups, and analysing the individual events in the broader context of the secular re-foundation of the political system, which had been attempting to impose itself for over forty years, ever since the rise of Cavour's Risorgimento liberalism.
Between research into the past, controversies over preservation, political aims and the sense of national history, the phenomenon came to an end in the early 20th century, when the debate on the monuments of the Third Italy, as simulacra of thought and civil identity, shifted to other issues. Analysing previously unpublished documents and little-known printed sources, the book "tackles - as Fabio Mangone writes in the preface - a topic of great importance and relevance in the historical vicissitude of post-unification architecture, which has remained neglected and unexplored as a whole - beyond praiseworthy monographic studies".
Developed within the seismic verification project of the State Museums, promoted by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e Turismo and by ARCUS S.p.A. in collaboration with the ReLUIS Interuniversity Consortium, this path, created as part of the seismic risk prevention and mitigation policies, also allows a rereading of the Carthusian monastery, thanks also to the contributions of scholars who have dealt with the theme of the Charterhouse, not only in Italy, through crossed looks and wider contextualizations.
Multiform and exceptional architectural palimpsest inserted in an uncontaminated landscape, the monastic complex of the Certosa of Trisulti, with the church, the cells, the cloisters, the pharmacy, the refectory, the grange and other functional structures, also revives in the drawings and the poetics photographic images of intense evocative value.
Formatosi prima all'Accademia di Brera e poi a Roma presso l'Accademia di San Luca, Sada acquistò notevole esperienza con Andrea Scala, all'epoca il più autorevole architetto di teatri ed edifici per lo spettacolo: al suo seguito, il giovane Sada arrivò a Catania per collaborare con il maestro alla realizzazione dell'importante teatro cittadino allora denominato “Nuovaluce”. Nella città etnea, dove trascorrerà il resto della sua vita, e in tutta la Sicilia orientale, ottiene ben presto numerosissimi incarichi: dalle residenze private ai palazzi pubblici, dai completamenti di chiese al disegno di cappelle ed edicole funerarie. Sada partecipò anche a prestigiosi concorsi nazionali e internazionali inserendosi, con il suo linguaggio eclettico, in quegli orizzonti culturali cosmopoliti che gli consentirono – al pari dei Basile e di Damiani Almeyda – di affermarsi come uno dei più aggiornati architetti operanti nella Sicilia fin de siècle.
Il libro propone una visione di sintesi – finora mai tracciata – della sua biografia, restituendo al contempo un quadro di ampio respiro della sua attività professionale. Grazie allo studio dei materiali documentari, iconografici e a stampa, editi e inediti, conservati in diversi archivi, nonché attraverso la riproduzione di immagini (d'epoca e attuali), si ricostruisce qui l'affascinante vicenda della realizzazione di molte sue opere e la genesi di importanti progetti rimasti sulla carta.
Author of the celebrated Massimo Vincenzo Bellini theatre in Catania, inaugurated in 1890, the Milanese Carlo Sada (1849- 1924) was one of the protagonists of Sicilian architectural culture, so much so that between the 19th and 20th century he became the most important professional in the service of the Catania bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Trained first at the Brera Academy and then in Rome at the Academy of San Luca, Sada gained considerable experience with Andrea Scala, at the time the most authoritative architect of theatres and buildings for the performing arts: following him, the young Sada arrived in Catania to collaborate with the maestro on the construction of the important city theatre then called 'Nuovaluce'. In the city of Catania, where he would spend the rest of his life, and throughout eastern Sicily, he soon obtained numerous commissions: from private residences to public buildings, from the completion of churches to the design of chapels and funerary aedicules. Sada also took part in prestigious national and international competitions, inserting himself, with his eclectic language, in those cosmopolitan cultural horizons that allowed him - like Basile and Damiani Almeyda - to establish himself as one of the most up-to-date architects working in Sicily at the end of the century. The book offers a synthesis - never before outlined - of his biography, while providing a wide-ranging picture of his professional activity. Thanks to the study of documentary, iconographic and printed materials, both published and unpublished, conserved in various archives, as well as through the reproduction of images (from the period and present day), the fascinating story of the realisation of many of his works and the genesis of important projects that remained on paper is reconstructed here.
Essays
La contribución pretende investigar las formas en que se promovió la Arquitectura Asistencial para la mujer y el niño durante los años del fascismo en Italia. El análisis realizado a través del estudio de publicaciones periódicas de arquitectura (Architettura, Casabella, Rassegna di architettura, Edilizia moderna, y otras), parte de la consideración de que la asistencia social fue un instrumento propagandístico fundamental para gestionar el consenso popular. No sólo hospitales y sanatorios, sino también clínicas, colonias y "Case della Madre e del Bambino" realizadas por la Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia (ONMI). En particular, para estas últimas, la revista Maternità e Infanzia desempeñó un papel fundamental. Durante el fascismo, el cuidado del cuerpo y la "salud de la raza" se consideraban uno de los principales objetivos sociales y políticos. En este sentido, la publicación periódica, como órgano oficial de la ONMI, constituye una fuente excepcional para comprender el uso de estas tipologías arquitectónicas como instrumento de persuasión y propaganda.
Tra ricerca del passato, controversie sulla conservazione, finalità politiche e senso della storia nazionale, il fenomeno si esaurisce nei primi anni del Novecento, quando il dibattito sui monumenti della Terza Italia, quali simulacri del pensiero e dell'identità civile, si sposta verso altre questioni. Analizzando documenti inediti e fonti a stampa poco note, il libro "affronta - come scrive Fabio Mangone nella prefazione - un tema di grande importanza e di grande rilevanza nella vicenda storica dell'architettura post-unitaria, rimasto nel suo complesso - al di là di encomiabili approfondimenti monografici - negletto e inesplorato".
The phenomenon of building the façades of ancient and monumental churches, which had been without 'faces' for centuries, took on new significance in the second half of the 19th century, starting with the first competition for the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (1861), reaching its acme in the height of the Umbertine era, with the unresolved competitions for the basilica of San Petronio in Bologna and the cathedral of Milan, and with the countless church façades that were built (Amalfi, Savona, Naples, Arezzo, Pavia and many others). This phenomenon involved not only talented architects, refined scholars and attentive critics, but also politicians, civic administrations and, above all, citizens, through the promotion committees and the many fund-raising associations, who were called upon to discuss artistic themes central to identity culture. The result of many years of research, conducted in numerous archives and libraries, the book offers a new key to interpreting the phenomenon, investigating the complexity of relations between State and Church, between anti-papal and clerical groups, and analysing the individual events in the broader context of the secular re-foundation of the political system, which had been attempting to impose itself for over forty years, ever since the rise of Cavour's Risorgimento liberalism.
Between research into the past, controversies over preservation, political aims and the sense of national history, the phenomenon came to an end in the early 20th century, when the debate on the monuments of the Third Italy, as simulacra of thought and civil identity, shifted to other issues. Analysing previously unpublished documents and little-known printed sources, the book "tackles - as Fabio Mangone writes in the preface - a topic of great importance and relevance in the historical vicissitude of post-unification architecture, which has remained neglected and unexplored as a whole - beyond praiseworthy monographic studies".
Developed within the seismic verification project of the State Museums, promoted by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e Turismo and by ARCUS S.p.A. in collaboration with the ReLUIS Interuniversity Consortium, this path, created as part of the seismic risk prevention and mitigation policies, also allows a rereading of the Carthusian monastery, thanks also to the contributions of scholars who have dealt with the theme of the Charterhouse, not only in Italy, through crossed looks and wider contextualizations.
Multiform and exceptional architectural palimpsest inserted in an uncontaminated landscape, the monastic complex of the Certosa of Trisulti, with the church, the cells, the cloisters, the pharmacy, the refectory, the grange and other functional structures, also revives in the drawings and the poetics photographic images of intense evocative value.
Formatosi prima all'Accademia di Brera e poi a Roma presso l'Accademia di San Luca, Sada acquistò notevole esperienza con Andrea Scala, all'epoca il più autorevole architetto di teatri ed edifici per lo spettacolo: al suo seguito, il giovane Sada arrivò a Catania per collaborare con il maestro alla realizzazione dell'importante teatro cittadino allora denominato “Nuovaluce”. Nella città etnea, dove trascorrerà il resto della sua vita, e in tutta la Sicilia orientale, ottiene ben presto numerosissimi incarichi: dalle residenze private ai palazzi pubblici, dai completamenti di chiese al disegno di cappelle ed edicole funerarie. Sada partecipò anche a prestigiosi concorsi nazionali e internazionali inserendosi, con il suo linguaggio eclettico, in quegli orizzonti culturali cosmopoliti che gli consentirono – al pari dei Basile e di Damiani Almeyda – di affermarsi come uno dei più aggiornati architetti operanti nella Sicilia fin de siècle.
Il libro propone una visione di sintesi – finora mai tracciata – della sua biografia, restituendo al contempo un quadro di ampio respiro della sua attività professionale. Grazie allo studio dei materiali documentari, iconografici e a stampa, editi e inediti, conservati in diversi archivi, nonché attraverso la riproduzione di immagini (d'epoca e attuali), si ricostruisce qui l'affascinante vicenda della realizzazione di molte sue opere e la genesi di importanti progetti rimasti sulla carta.
Author of the celebrated Massimo Vincenzo Bellini theatre in Catania, inaugurated in 1890, the Milanese Carlo Sada (1849- 1924) was one of the protagonists of Sicilian architectural culture, so much so that between the 19th and 20th century he became the most important professional in the service of the Catania bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Trained first at the Brera Academy and then in Rome at the Academy of San Luca, Sada gained considerable experience with Andrea Scala, at the time the most authoritative architect of theatres and buildings for the performing arts: following him, the young Sada arrived in Catania to collaborate with the maestro on the construction of the important city theatre then called 'Nuovaluce'. In the city of Catania, where he would spend the rest of his life, and throughout eastern Sicily, he soon obtained numerous commissions: from private residences to public buildings, from the completion of churches to the design of chapels and funerary aedicules. Sada also took part in prestigious national and international competitions, inserting himself, with his eclectic language, in those cosmopolitan cultural horizons that allowed him - like Basile and Damiani Almeyda - to establish himself as one of the most up-to-date architects working in Sicily at the end of the century. The book offers a synthesis - never before outlined - of his biography, while providing a wide-ranging picture of his professional activity. Thanks to the study of documentary, iconographic and printed materials, both published and unpublished, conserved in various archives, as well as through the reproduction of images (from the period and present day), the fascinating story of the realisation of many of his works and the genesis of important projects that remained on paper is reconstructed here.
La contribución pretende investigar las formas en que se promovió la Arquitectura Asistencial para la mujer y el niño durante los años del fascismo en Italia. El análisis realizado a través del estudio de publicaciones periódicas de arquitectura (Architettura, Casabella, Rassegna di architettura, Edilizia moderna, y otras), parte de la consideración de que la asistencia social fue un instrumento propagandístico fundamental para gestionar el consenso popular. No sólo hospitales y sanatorios, sino también clínicas, colonias y "Case della Madre e del Bambino" realizadas por la Opera Nazionale Maternità e Infanzia (ONMI). En particular, para estas últimas, la revista Maternità e Infanzia desempeñó un papel fundamental. Durante el fascismo, el cuidado del cuerpo y la "salud de la raza" se consideraban uno de los principales objetivos sociales y políticos. En este sentido, la publicación periódica, como órgano oficial de la ONMI, constituye una fuente excepcional para comprender el uso de estas tipologías arquitectónicas como instrumento de persuasión y propaganda.
The contribution aims to analyze and compare the history of some emblematic cases of hospitals, to understand what lessons we can learn, and which can be consistent with the needs and paradigms of our contemporaneity. We have already experienced some needs, due to the pandemic emergency, in the last year, in the form of social distancing, domestic segregation and the forced suspension of a large area of social and economic, private and collective activities. In this perspective, some thoughts about the actual role and validity, of the hospital building system with pavilions will be proposed.
Yet is it possible to consider copying as a practice determined purely by convention, even when referring to private drawings? First of all, how the drawings reproducing monuments and places were selected to be copied? Were the copies made by the apprentice architects in Paris before the trip, or only after arriving in Rome? Why the work was carried out with so much care and precision, when the private drawings were not intended to be displayed in public and were therefore not subject to any judgment?
Starting from the analysis of the “private” drawings and travel notebooks of the French architects, who operate between the end of the First Empire and the beginning of the July Monarchy, the contribution will answer these questions. Furthermore, by presenting the results of a research on the didactic methods and knowledge practices of Italian archaeological sites and monuments, the contribution aims to understand the dissemination of the images of Italy, and to evaluate how the drawings, through direct observation or serial reproductions, have provided multiple suggestions, useful in the professional and academic future of the French architects.
Mussolini's message of 1928 came at a precise moment, characterised by great transformations that were affecting not only the practices of persuasion and transmission of culture, but also the instruments of dissemination. There was an awareness that the museum - like architecture more generally - could be a vehicle of mass communication not exclusively intended for experts and scholars, and therefore had to be the subject of a complete rethink. Until then, scientific-university museums, or those connected to them, were still conceived as rooms with display cabinets showing the most disparate collections.
Thus, from the mid-1920s onwards, discussions and insights into such museums intensified, both in terms of layout and design. First and foremost, the questions concerned the role and significance to be assumed by the places of demonstration, as well as the preservation of science. But how to 'exhibit' science and technology in new ways? How would they differ from the science museums and industrial museums tout court, which had already been in operation in Europe for some time? What was to be the role of research for such institutions? And again. How to be educational and spectacular at the same time? And how to set up and prepare the 'staging' appropriate to the demands of the regime?
It was clearly not a question, in a renewed cultural season, of referring to the role of so-called 'art applied to industry', which referred back to the museums specifically created in the second half of the 19th century, such as the Royal Industrial Museum in Turin . These were no longer the days when didactic proposals had to start with education in beauty, in order to attain technical skills capable in turn of transforming industrial objects into mass-produced artefacts endowed with aesthetic value. This time, the terms of the question concerned the union of school and research, popularisation and propaganda.
Although not addressed in such terms, the issue nevertheless dated back to the phase following Italian unification, i.e. when Quintino Sella and a group of academics decided that the expression of national identity and patriotic sentiment should be manifested in the renovation of universities, particularly the one in Rome . In fact, it was an increasingly widespread conviction among Italian academic scientists that the country's backwardness compared to Europe was to be attributed to the Church's long-standing brake on scientific development, and that ex-cathedra teaching in classrooms proportionate to the number of people attending was no longer sufficient, but that spaces for 'demonstration' were needed. Consequently, the so-called experimental sciences in Italy, as all the scholars in every assembly repeated, also needed galleries and museums in one place for the collection of study specimens and the results of experiments. At that time, the 'staging' of science was reserved exclusively for student pupils, the future ruling classes of the country.
Als Architekt, Grafiker, Maler und Bildhauer durchlief Max Bill verschiedene Epochen der Moderne, wobei er biswei- len exzentrische Wege ging und mit unterschiedlichen Gestaltungsansätzen experimentierte. Im Alter von nur
28 Jahren erhielt Bill 1936 seinen ersten Auftrag von internationaler Bedeutung für die Einrichtung des Schweizer Pavillons auf der Triennale von Mailand, wo die Wurzeln von Bills Bauhaus-Ausbildung zum Vorschein kamen, insbesondere der von Meyer, Moholy-Nagy und Albers vertretene Elementarismus, aber vor allem die Lehre von Kandinsky. Die zweite Installation, die Bill für die Triennale entwarf, stammt aus dem Jahr 1951: In den fünfzehn Jahren, die seit seinem letzten Auftrag vergan- gen waren, hatte sich der kulturelle Bezugskontext völlig verändert, und die elementaristische Forschung der Avantgarde musste sich an radikal veränderten Bedürf- nissen und Bedingungen messen lassen. Im Vergleich zur Arbeit von 1936 war bei Bill ein Bewusstsein für die Autonomie des Ausstellungsprojekts gereift, das als Experimentierfeld für den Architekten verstanden wird, innerhalb dessen die Disziplin als Ordnungsprinzip aller Künste angesiedelt ist.
The competition financed by Ercole Marelli gave a significant impetus to the program of reconstruction not only of the rural houses but also of the destroyed cities and villages in the areas of the front, devastated by years of battles. The contribution focuses in particular on the value of knowledge of the landscape conveyed by the Touring immediately after the years of the war, analyzing the Marelli competition, its meaning, and the concept of ‘italianità’ of the ‘architettura minore’ promoted by the TCI.
Pavia, 10-12 settembre 2020
Materiali del Convegno internazionale di storia urbana AISU 2020
The paper aims to show the results of a broader research on the topic of the industrial designers’ training in Italy during the Sixties and Seventies, which had, as a starting point, the discussions on the Bauhaus training models opposed to those of the more technical schools and involved philosophers, art historians and the growing category of the design theorists engaged in the definition of a scientific disciplinary status such Alberto Rosselli or Tomas Maldonado.
* 29 Gennaio 2018 h 17:00 aula Gamma Politecnico di Milano
* Saluti Federico Bucci (Prorettore Delegato del Polo Territoriale di Mantova PMN)
* Introduce Giulia Ricci (Comitato di Redazione ARK)
* Intervengono Imma Forino e Massimiliano Savorra (Comitato scientifico ARK), Davide Pagliarini (Direttore scientifico ARK)
* ARK è una rivista trimestrale che racconta i paesaggi e le architetture più significative del ‘900 lombardo e d’oggi.
* ARK è rivolta a Bergamo e alla sua provincia ma anche alla Lombardia, di cui illustra opere eccezionali, amate da chi ha a cuore tanto i luoghi quanto la ricerca e la cultura del progetto. ARK è una rivista pluridisciplinare, in cui studiosi tra i quali architetti, sociologi, antropologi, fotografi, storici, si confrontano su un tema specifico, analizzandolo da molteplici punti di osservazione.
* ARK parla di architettura, di materiali e di arredamento, di fotografia e di paesaggi, naturali o trasformati dall’uomo, con lo sguardo esperienziale di un osservatore partecipante.
The debates about urban planning during the 1970s were dominated by a tension between those who criticized strategies that characterised the post-war period, such as the strategies that supported “urban renewal” and “slum clearance”, and those who believed in “ecology” and the intention to achieve a balance in the interaction between humans and their natural environment. More recently, the notion of “new mobility” has acquitted an important place. The interest in this notion goes hand in hand with the intention to explore urban planning strategies that aim to contribute to a significant reduction in the use of individual car, and to an increase of the use of public transportation in our everyday life. The session welcomes papers that aim to reflect on these issues. Among the topics that could be treated are the following questions:
• Which has been the impact of this evolution vis-à-vis the 1973 oil crisis on how urban structure is interpreted?
• To what extent the choice of reutilizing the stock of buildings, as in the case of the 1974 plan of Bologna, was a real alternative after stopping the urban sprawl?
• Which has been the impact of these transformations in urban planning strategies on housing?
• To what extent the new models of urban planning that emerged from the 1970s until today achieved energy-saving?
• How the “new mobility turn” has conceptualised the reduction in the use of individual car and the increase of the use of public transportation?
• How the ecological crisis is connected to the necessity to explore new ways of re-utilizing the patrimony of the past, and how new technologies such as augmented reality can contribute to this?