Reassessing 1960s and 1970s Italian Architecture

Abstract

“Narrate, uomini, la vostra storia” [Narrate, men, your story] is the title of the oral history component of the major research project Italia 60/70: Una Stagione dell'Architettura [Italy 60/70: A Time of Architecture] led by Polytechnic of Milan between 2005 and 2010. Thirteen architects, belonging to the groups “La Tendenza” and “I Radicals”, were selected and invited to publically provide their accounts of the period; a sort of “call for confession”. All were asked to talk individually about their experience as designers and/or university professors, according to a precise set of questions, including their activity at university, the books and journals they read, their international references and key projects. The result was an extraordinary network of subjective histories, converging on the same cultural ground. The talks, understood as both rich sources of information and partial interpretations of the time, were turned into firsthand documents, published and recognised as indicative sources for producing critical texts.

This paper seeks to give an account of how the oral history project “Narrate, uomini, la vostra storia” provided an instrument to capture the “spirit of the time” and gave a means to reassess critical understandings of a controversial period in Italian architectural culture that had previously gone without a comprehensive analytical overview. Placing La Tendenza and I Radicals architects within the same historical frame for the first time, the project created a substantial advance to knowledge of the period, demonstrating how these two major groups of architects, previously considered opposed, were actually relatively similar in their aims, providing solutions to common problems, but towards diverse outcomes. The paper will also highlight how this oral history project has not minimised the role of architectural historians, but has proven an excellent research tool, complementary to more established historical methods.

Notes

^1. See “Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture”, the entry by Rem Koolhaas for the Italian journal Casabella's 1972 competition “The City as Meaningful Environment”. Between 1970 and 1975, Casabella was the main protagonist of Radical architecture. “Exodus”, which reveals influences of the work of Superstudio, was also Koolhaas' final project at the Architectural Association, London. Peter Eisenman has been Rossi's advocate in the United States and supported the English edition of Rossi's book, The Architecture of the City. Eisenman was particularly interested in Rossi's use of architectural language. Rafael Moneo wrote a thorough article about Aldo Rossi's San Cataldo cemetery in Modena, paying close attention to his use of typology. See Rafael Moneo, “Aldo Rossi: The Idea of Architecture and the Modern Cemetery,” Oppositions 5 (1976): 1–30.

^2.Clip, Stamp, Fold. The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines, 196X – 197X, eds. Beatriz Colomina and Craig Buckley (Barcelona: Actar; Princeton: Princeton University, 2010).

^3.La Tendenza: Architectures Italiennes 1965–1985, ed. Frédéric Migayrou (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 2012) (Paris: Editions du Centre Pompidou, 2012).

^4.Superstudio: The Secret Life of the Continuous Monument, curated by Gabriele Mastrigli, http://www.labiennale.org/en/mediacenter/video/fundamentals28.html, accessed 4 September 2014.

^5. The Milan-based Gizmo research group was founded in 2004 by Marco Biraghi, Gabriella Lo Ricco, Silvia Micheli and Mario Viganò.

^6. According to Manfredo Tafuri, the “historical distance” is a temporal and mental detachment that the historian has to adopt in order to approach any historical topic. If the topic is contemporary, the historian has to create an “artificial” distance. For an in-depth analysis of the concept of “historical distance” in Tafuri's work, see Marco Biraghi, Project of Crisis: Manfredo Tafuri and Contemporary Architecture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013), 22–24.

^7.Italia 60/70: Una Stagione dell'Architettura, eds. Marco Biraghi, Gabriella Lo Ricco, Silvia Micheli and Mario Viganó (Padua: Il Poligrafo, 2010).

^8. Cini Conforto, Gabriele de Giorgi, Alessandra Muntoni and Marcello Pazzaglini, Il dibattito architettonico in Italia, 1945–1975 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1977).

^9. Manfredo Tafuri, History of Italian Architecture, 1944–1985 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988).

^10. Paola Navone and Bruno Orlandini, Architettura “Radicale” (Milan: Milani, 1974).

^11. Gianni Pettena, Radicals, Architettura e Design 1960/75 (Florence: Il Ventilabro, 1996).

^12.Radici Radicali 1965–1975: Archizoom, Pettena, Superstudio, UFO, ed. Enrico Pedrini (Florence: Il Ponte, 2009).

^13. This part was organised by Silvia Micheli, Mario Viganò, Marco Biraghi and Gabriella Lo Ricco.

^14. This part was organised by Fiorella Vanini.

^15. Contributors were: Silvia Micheli, Mario Viganò, Marco Biraghi, Gabriella Lo Ricco, Giulia Del Vecchio, Lorenzo Baldini and Margherita Petranzan.

^16. Please notice that in Italian the word “storia” stands both for “story” and “history”.

^17. It is a collection of fascinating confessions by different protagonists of history, Alberto Savinio, Narrate, Uomini, la Vostra Storia (Milano: Bompiani, 1942).

^18. For instance, Pietro De Rossi showed the pamphlets produced for the exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape held at MoMA in 1972; Andrea Branzi spoke about the Global Tools – a series of workshops that were documented in self-produced magazines, and Paolo Deganello invited the researchers into his studio and showed them self-produced unpublished material, such as pamphlets, journal articles and texts.

^19. Aldo Rossi, Luciano Semerani and Silviano Tentori, “Architettura Italiana: 6 domande”, Casabella-continuità 251 (1961): 29–32.

^20. They passed away respectively in 1994, 1997 and 2005.

^21. Due to a delay of the publication of the research, Grassi decided to extend his talk and turn it into an independent autobiographical book, Giorgio Grassi, Una Vita da Architetto (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2008).

^22. About the professional distance, see Lynn Abrams, Oral History Theory (London; New York: Routledge, 2010).

^23. For an interpretation of this period of Italian architectural history, see Marco Biraghi and Silvia Micheli, Storia dell'Architettura Italiana 1985–2015 (Turin: Einaudi, 2013).

^24. Leavy Patricia, Oral History: Understanding Qualitative Research (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

^25. Pratone is an unconventional seat designed by Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi and Riccardo Rosso in 1971. It is a gigantic portion of artificial grass, and for that reason it can be considered piece of pop art, too. It has received both national and international recognition.

^26. Pietro Derossi's talk transcription, Italia 60/70, 192–209.

^27. Franco Purini's talk transcription, Italia 60/70, 276–97.

^28. Andrea Branzi's talk transcription, Italia 60/70, 152–67.

^29. Mario Bottas' talk transcription, Italia 60/70, 146–51.

^30. Clyde A. Milner, “Afterword: When History Talks Back,” in Oral History, Community, and Work in the American West, ed. Jessie L. Embry (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 2013): 327.

^31.Italia 60/70, 165.

^32. Mafredo Tafuri, “Per una Critica dell'Ideologia Architettonica,” Contropiano 1 (1969): 31–79.

^33. “Gruppe 47” was a West German informal literary association founded in 1947. In postwar Germany, it represented an attempt to give the nation's cultural setting a new direction. Amongst its members were Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Peter Weiss, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Uwe Johnson and Peter Handke.

^34. Manfredo Tafuri, Teorie e Storia dell'Architettura (Bari: Laterza, 1968).

^35. Umberto Eco, Opera Aperta: Forma e Indeterminazione nelle Poetiche Contemporanee (Milan: Bompiani, 1962).

^36. Enzo Paci, Tempo e Verità nella Fenomenologia di Husserl (Bari: Laterza, 1963).

^37. Aldo Rossi, L'Architettura della Città (Venice: Marsilio, 1966).