Rapport 99-00_final - Canadian Centre for Architecture

ather than in stylistic terms. That is to say, it was
through the venues of exhibition, photography, and
film, architectural criticism, architectural education,
and public debate that architecture was politicized
through an affiliation with Fascist rhetoric.
My research project at the CCA Study Centre
analyzed the role played by vernacular architecture
within the emerging definition of a Fascist modern
architecture and Fascist culture during the 1930s,
a topic that has yet to be thoroughly dealt with by
scholars of Italian architectural history. Although
architectural critics of the 1920s and 1930s referred to
Tuscan vernacular architecture as “modern,” their
nuanced concept of the term is distinct from the understanding
of modern promoted by today’s historians.
The objective of the project was three-fold.
Drawing upon a variety of primary sources, I analyzed
the way in which modern Italian architects
mobilized an interest in vernacular architecture within
the architectural community; assessed how the
image of rural vernacular architecture was constructed
and propagated through various forms of mass
media; and determined how those mass media
allowed the government to co-opt the vernacular for
the increasingly racist agendas of the late 1930s.
I paid particular attention to the work of three
Tuscan Rationalists: Giovanni Michellucci, Pier
Niccolò Berardi, and Nello Baroni, all members of
the internationally acclaimed “Gruppo Toscano”
(responsible for the design of the Florence train station).
Michellucci was an influential professor at the
Florence Architecture School and in that capacity
served as a mentor to a generation of young architects.
Together these men actively studied and photographed
Tuscan vernacular housing. Their
declared agenda was to familiarize the public with
what they called “the true autochthonous tradition of
Italian architecture,” their ultimate goal being to
excite a Rationalist architecture more closely tied to
local traditions.
One of the most exciting things about this project
lies in its potential to render a more complete and
complex understanding of architecture during the
Fascist regime. The project’s interdisciplinary and
multimedia nature (drawing as it does upon the disciplines
of anthropology, sociology, photography, film,
architecture, and history, and popular as well as
academic primary material) underscores this. I presented
my preliminary research in talks delivered at
the annual meeting of the Society of Architectural
Historians, a symposium on Italian Modernisms held
at Cornell University, as well as the
Collins/Kaufmann Modern Architecture seminar
series at Columbia University. I also spoke with the
Berardi and Baroni families about the possibility of
organizing an exhibition of architectural photographs
and drawings that could travel to various
architectural schools in the United States.
As part of my research before taking up residency
at the CCA, I made several trips to Florence,
Rome, and Geneva, where I consulted a range of
written and visual sources, including ephemeral
political propaganda, posters, films, agricultural
journals, documents on the curriculum of the Florence
Architecture School, and photographs, drawings,
and documents from the archives of Giovanni
Michellucci and those of the Berardi, Baroni, and
Blasetti families.
My residency at the Study Centre allowed me to
sustain momentum on a book-length study and to
make substantial progress towards completing the
manuscript. The invaluable resources available at
the CCA, particularly the relevant periodicals in the
Library, made the Study Centre an ideal place to
complete this project. I am also grateful for the
opportunity to have experienced an environment that
is simultaneously collegial and critical.
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