Università Roma Tre

This course examines the history of Italian architecture in the 1900s, focusing on the years between the two World Wars and on the second post-war period.
The first part of the course is dedicated to the leading figures, the themes and the works of the Fascist period in Turin, Milan and Rome. The purpose is to highlight the dialogue between Italian architectural culture and the new European debates while studying the peculiarities of Italian architecture and its relationship with local tradition.
The second half examines the post-World War II period, starting with the reconstruction projects until the Post-Modern debate, brought to the attention by Paolo Portoghesi during the 1980 Venice Biennale of Architecture.

Marco Biraghi, Storia dell’architettura italiana 1985-2915, Einaudi, Torino 2013
Giorgio Ciucci, Gli architetti e il fascismo. Architettura e città 1922-1944, Einaudi, Torino 1989.
Manfredo Tafuri, History of the Italian Architecture, 1944-1985, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989

Lessons will focus on Italian architecture during the second half of the Twentieth century and, particularly, on the architectural production between the end of World War II and the First International Architecture Exhibition of “La Biennale di Venezia” (1980). Main topics – such as post-war reconstruction, the crisis of Modern Architecture, the relationship between Architecture, History and Tradition, new avant-garde proposals, the debate on Art, Architecture and Urban development, the identity of architectural discipline, the development of new building technologies – will be discussed through an in-depth analysis of the most important architectures of the period.

M. Tafuri, Storia dell’architettura italiana 1944-1985, Einaudi, Torino 1982.
F. Dal Co (a cura di), Storia dell’architettura italiana. Il secondo Novecento, Electa, Milano 1997.
M. Biraghi, Storia dell’architettura contemporanea 1945-2008, vol. II, Einaudi, Torino 2008.
E. G. Haddad, D. Rifkind (a cura di), A critical history of Contemporary Architecture: 1960-2010, Routledge, Oxford 2014.