suspending-modernity-the-architecture-of-franco-albini_compress

Modernity in the Balance: Italy’s Equilibrium 19
Italian Rationalist architecture from the late 1920s and 1930s, however, drew
the attention of Walter Gropius and began to be widely featured in journals with
international circulation, including L’Architecture d’aujord’hui, Werk, Architectural
Review, Architectural Design, Architectural Forum, and CIAM papers. Of equal
importance, Italian journals, including Domus, Casabella, Quadrante, Rassegna,
Stile, Comunità and L’Architettura published in Rome and Milan, were circulating
abroad. This volatile period of cultural transformation at home and abroad, which
bolstered Italy’s renewed economic prosperity, are coincident with Franco Albini’s
most expansive period of architecture and design. Albini’s immediate influence
on cohorts at home and abroad during this time deserves investigation by way of
comparative analysis of his innovations with specific works by renowned figures
including Carlo Scarpa, Louis Kahn, and Philip Johnson.
Innovations by Europe’s most progressive architects were introduced south of
the Alps by various means when the ongoing industrial revolution and political
changes were rapidly transforming the relatively new nation of Italy in 1900.
While Italians lagged behind their neighbors technologically, they encountered
new European buildings and theories by means of exhibitions, publications, and,
especially for those closest to the northern border, by traveling abroad. Most foreign
influences beginning with Art Nouveau, the Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism,
existenzminimum housing in Germany and Holland, and the Chicago School,
were emulated in northern Italy without any equivalent exchange by early Italian
Modernists.
The abstract languages of new architecture that Albini would soon encounter
were introduced by Swiss architects Alberto Sartoris and Le Corbusier, Dutch de
Stijl artists, and Adolf Loos, who taught some of the new generation of Italian
architects shortly after World War I. Albini’s direct contact with Gropius and
Sartoris had the most impact on him, but he was part of the generation that
established functionalist architecture within the confines of Italian Fascism.
International trends felt in Italy immediately provoked questions about national
identity, especially as political leaders partook in the massive building campaigns
and urban cleansing. The early Modern project in Italian architecture grew out of
a consciousness of native cultural history regarding Italy’s own artistic patrimony.
Myths about collective Italian values, monumentality, and Mediterranean
traditions fostered nationalist rhetoric about Italianità (Italianness), that directed
local research, sponsored exhibitions and in some cases led to the awards of
major commissions. Nationalist priorities grew in importance during the 1920s
and 1930s and eventually demanded loyalty from its elite classes. Following
the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia, Italian architects were restricted by economic
and intellectual isolation from all progressive influences outside Italy. 2 Political
pressures leveraged by the regime and its apologists for a progressive Fascist
culture would surround Albini and ultimately lead to the demise of several of his
close cohorts.