In Search of the 1950s: The Aqua-Blue Building on via Bari

 

We lived this year just a few blocks from one of my favorite modernist Rome buildings. Romans might call it "particolare"--one of a kind, sui generis, unique, maybe odd. You'll find it at via Bari 5, corner of via Rovigo, just a few blocks uphill along via Catania from Piazzale delle Provincie, one of two large circular piazze in the Piazza Bologna area. 

Same building, via Bari 5, from the less than 90 degree corner with via Rovigo -
 a very different look, no camera tricks employed.

he palazzina, in the mid-century-modern style, was constructed between 1958, when Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire" was #1on the US charts, and 1961, when teens were doing the "Twist" to Chubby Checker's hit song. In architecture, post-modernism had yet to assert itself as the next wave, but architects everywhere were experimenting with forms that went beyond the severe rectilinear modernism of the 1930s and 1940s (a good example of that sort of modernism is Rome's university--La Sapienza, nearby). The late 1950s and 1960s were also decades in which architects and planners experimented with buildings and other structures that were elevated--in the US, "skyways"--elevated highways--were the rage, and in Rome, planners decided to place the "sopraelevata" [1966-1975] down the center of Scalo San Lorenzo (a 15-minute walk from via Bari 5). 

Above, the sopraelevata from the street.

Architect Renato Valle framed the via Bari building in aqua-blue glass (now an iconic 1950s color), and used the less-than-90-degree corner at via Rovigo to give his structure an angular shape that defined the rectilinear tradition. And it's elevated. Today, under the building, there's a gas station. Significantly, the building is owned by, and houses offices of, Enerpetroli, a company that operates 150 gas stations in central Italy. 

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find other information about architect Valle. If you can contribute, please do!

Bill 

You-Can't-See-it-Anyway Series: I Gemelli Romani, via Guattani

Our latest effort to deal with the fallout from covid-19 takes the form of the "you-can't-see-it-anyway" series, where we present accounts and descriptions of Rome "attractions" that one couldn't get into even if there were no covid-19. Many of these were and are visitable and accessible only through the once-a-year Open House Roma event (except, of course, this year, thanks to covid-19).

Today's effort along these lines is stretching the concept just a bit, because it's possible--even likely--that an aggressive tourist could get into the first floor of the building--but the first floor only.

The building has an unusual name: I Gemelli Romani ("the Roman twins"), which we'll explain in a moment. It sits at via Guattani 9, a street lined with large villas and ordinary apartment houses, running perpendicular to via Nomentana on Rome's near-north end. The folks who designed it were pleased that it didn't fit in with its neighbors, pointing out some pride that the "impetuous" structure resisted alignment with nearby villas.

Since its construction in 1954, the building has housed the Lega Nazionale delle Cooperative--the "national association of cooperatives." The Lega/LNC was founded in Milan in 1886, at a time when cooperative associations were more common than they are today. The LNC was disbanded by the Fascists (along with all other cooperatives) and reconstituted after the war under article 45 of the Italian Constitution, which recognized the social role of cooperatives. The League includes many cooperative associations, including ones for consumers, housing, and retail. The building on via Guattani is its principal seat.

The building not only houses a national organization of cooperatives. It was designed by a cooperative association of architects and engineers: CAIREPRO (Cooperativa architetti e ingegneri progettazione). CAIREPRO was founded by 9 young men in 1947 in Reggio Emilia (where the HQ remains) and 2 more were added in 1961.

Seven of the founders of CAIREPRO

The building has several distinctive features.  The upper floors are supported by massive exterior columns of reinforced concrete--a material coming into common usage at the time (in the Palazzetto dello Sport, among other buildings) --which allow the first floor interior to be column-less. The brickwork--here and there quite complex--is understood to be special too, contributing to the design.

Most unusual, the plan consists of two trapezoidal areas--the "gemelli Romani," or the Roman twins--one at each end of the building, connected by an inset central section that houses the stairway and elevators.

The "gemelli"--one on each end.

The near end of the building consists of a meet-and-greet area, lobby, and social center. My recollection is that the shiny blue ceiling was a later addition.  Much "busier" than the original.

The author of this post, taking a mirror selfie. 

As built, it also included a lovely spiral staircase, but this has been, unfortunately, removed.

Removed!  How could they?!

The far end of the building is an auditorium with a brutalist look (before the word brutalism was coined).

The auditorium, as it looked in 2019: the concrete painted (bad!),
much of the ceiling covered (probably by projection equipment), windows
at the end covered (a shame). 

Exterior view of the auditorium. 

The staircase leading to the upper floors (which are more ordinary in layout) is not without elegance.  A nice banister in wood.

And on the top floor, below, flying buttresses over walkways--and views of the neighborhood, a neighborhood that includes Luigi Pirandello's former home and a villa occupied (we were told) by Galeazzo Ciano - bottom photo.

Bill

Stazione Termini: Spectacle of Mid-century Modernism

In 1937, the Mussolini regime decided it was time for a new central-Rome railroad station.  It was to be ready in time for E42, an enormous fair with permanent buildings in what is now EUR, all designed to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the March on Rome.  The war intervened, Mussolini was thrown out of power in 1943, and construction stopped on both E42 and the new Termini Station. The station's enormous side structures, designed by Angiolo Mazzoni del Grande, had been completed, and these remain.

The rest of the building was subject to a 1947 design competition.  Two teams emerged victorious--nobody really famous among them--and together they re-imagined the structure, which was inaugurated in 1950.

Inside, the great hall was covered by a concrete roof, which one source describes as a modernist version of the barrel vaults used in ancient Roman baths.  This roof is integrated with a cantilevered canopy over the entrance.  Spectacular, we think.  The station was, and is, one of the largest in Europe.

The postcard view shown here captures the modernist allure of the Stazione Termini in its first decade.  The automobiles offer the possibility of a more precise dating, but we're not car buffs, and to be reasonable accurate, one would have to identify the newest car in the lots.  Not easy.  Still, perhaps a reader can help date the photo more precisely. [See the wonderfully detailed comment below from Roger H. who identifies a couple cars and concludes the photo was taken close to when station was inaugurated.]

Bill

A few postscripts from Dianne:
The piazza is no longer called "Piazzale della Stazione," as we see in the postcard photo above, but "Piazza dei Cinquecento" ("Piazza of the 16th century") - I assume that's the meaning, and not the piazza of the Fiat car, the 500 (i.e. cinquecento). [CORRECTION - Nope, that's not its meaning.  I should've known it would've been political and more serious.  Both Marco and Frederika pointed out the real meaning of the cinquecento - Italians soldiers killed in Ethiopia.  See their helpful comments below.] The national train service has a rather thorough, if somewhat glorified, history of the station on its Web site. (You'll get some different opinions about it on Yelp.)  And the station, because of its roof line, is sometimes called the Dinosaur.

Modernist Treasure, or Monstrosity? Via Teano 223, Roma

We were somewhere in the Rome countryside, slogging our way toward the new Teano Metro station--our goal was to walk all the new ones in one outing--when we saw a huge, and we would say unique, building rise up before us.  Modernist treasure or monstrosity?  And what was inside?

School entrance

At one entrance, we learned from signage that at least part of the building housed a technical high school.  The IISS Di Vittorio-Lattanzio opened there, we learned later, in 2000.  (Lattanzio is an Italian family name, apparently a revival of the Latin name Lactantius, from Lactans, for the Roman god of vegetation.  Like you really needed to know that.  However,  the building is sometimes referred to as the Palazzo del'ex lattanzio, which strongly suggests that a lattanzio is, indeed, something.  The word isn't in our dictionary, but we're guessing it's an ex-cannery).




The other side of the round part of the building has been visited frequently by graffiti artists. When we walked through a large, open gate to get a better look, a guard indicated we had entered prohibited territory, adding, in response to our query, that parts of the building were used for storage.

That's the guard who told us to leave.

Indeed, the building, constructed between 1958 and 1961, was built for and originally housed a warehouse for the Teatro dell'Opera--that is, space for opera costumes and scenery--complete with a system of ramps.  In the late 1960s, elements of it (likely the square elements) were adapted for use as a school.  In the 1970s, the upper floors housed "sfratti"--that is, people evicted from their homes or apartments.

Iacurci's "Zero Infinito"

The flat, eastern end of the building features an enormous piece of street art by Agostino Iacurci.  It
was completed in 2013 with the permission (and perhaps the financial support) of the local government, Rome's 5th Municipio, and under the auspices of the Wunderkammern gallery, an avant-garde art space located in Tor Pignattara.  It's titled "Zero Infinito."

The Teano metro station is now open, so the l'ex lattanzio is easily accessible.  Don't miss it!  Via Teano 223.

Bill

New Teano metro station. Shades of Saarinen.

Rome's New Metro Line: Walking the Walk.

The pristine travertine stairs and escalators at the Lodi station, on its pre-opening day tour

On June 29 Rome's transit system accomplished what many thought it might never do - it opened new Metro line C with 6 stations.  In theory line C had been opened earlier, further out of Rome, but that was just a refurbishing of an above-ground train line already in existence.  The 6 stations and 5.4 kilometers of track opened recently are the true accomplishment, because they actually put line C IN Rome, rather than way outside of it.

Men in Black

We took advantage of a rather unusual offer in late April. The 6 newest stations were open a few hours on April 29 for self-guided tours, even though there were no trains running.  To see them all, one had to drive or walk between them.  So we made it our goal to do a 6-station trek, and back.  We figured, oh, 5+ km x 2 - we had to get back to our moto without the metro, of course - that's only 7 miles and we're used to that.  Oh, how wrong we were... but for now to the features of that day - the stations.

The line is billed as from "Mirti" to "Lodi" because the outer part of the line, the old train line, is already operating.  But Lodi is the most central of the Rome portion of the line - to date. The line still doesn't hook up with either of the other 2 operating lines - A and B, but it will when the San Giovanni station is added in, supposedly, 2016.

A visitor checks out the line - it's the part in red we're visiting.

So we showed up at the "Lodi" station - named for its proximity to Piazza Lodi - at noon, when the stations were to open.  Well, we were 5 minutes early.  So you can see the guys in black blocking the entrance until the appointed hour. And it turns out, guys in black were at every station, being very one-might-say fascist-like in ordering the few people coming to see the stations which way to go in and out, protecting fenced areas, and the like.  Part of the ambiance of the day.

Lodi is undistinguished from the outside.  It has only surface level entrances.  Below it has some of the grand travertine staircases and it looks wonderfully shiny new, of course.  So we dutifully walked down all the levels, and up, and marched on to the next station.

Pigneto station skylight, outside

Pigneto comes next, and this is a long-awaited station in a rapidly gentrifying, even hipster neighborhood of Rome.  Pigneto's station is more interesting, with an enormous skylight.  And here we learned about the "TBM", "Tunnel Boring Machine" (yep, that's Italian) used to create the metro openings below ground without opening up the ground from the surface and then

skylight, inside

recovering it, as Rome has done for prior lines.

Display photo of Pigneto station under construction.

This process minimizes the problems of archeological finds.  As former Mayor Rutelli put it to us once, one can dig at 35 meters, but not between 15 and 35 meters.  Of course, since it's Pigneto, we were treated to lots of street art as we came back up and started our walk to our third station, Malatesta.

Leftist graffiti in Pigneto

Dianne interviewed by radio reporter at Malatesta station

Malatesta is one of the more elaborate stations. That's the reason, we assume, it was selected for Mayor Marino's visit.  So it was full of people. Enough so that a radio reporter interviewed me, in Italian, on my reactions to the new stations. And our timing was good enough that Bill got a photo of the mayor.

Photo op for mayor (red tie) and cohorts.

Unlike the other stations, this one had a train car open to visit.  Helps to have the Mayor around.  It was here we learned from the instructive panels that this line is "driverless" (again, Italian).  Whoa, that's a bit scary.

Inside the cars

"Data (I Numeri) of the "Driverless trains"":
80 km/hr maximum; 35 km/hour normal; 1200 passengers
per trip; + or - 30 centimeters - leeway in terms of where
they stop at the stations.

Open stairs lead down into the Malatesta station

Walking out of the Malatesta station to the next one, Teano, we were reminded that, yes, old Rome still exists.

We passed some old medieval-like buildings, towers, agricultural land, and then a pretty strange building for Rome.

Opera sets were stored here.

We read later it was built in the 1950s and stored opera sets and costumes!  It's been repurposed partly as a school and community center.  And, across from it is perhaps the most interestingly-designed station. The ATAC Web site tells us that the "atrium" is meant to be used for commercial activity and cultural events.

Teano station

Atrium for commerce and cultural events, Teano

The prosaic Gardenie station.

1930s public housing in the far-flung suburbs.

The 5th station, Gardenie, again is ordinary. Outside it we were reminded that the Fascists built public housing out this far in the 1930s, sending workers far away from where the jobs might be, and sending any potential challengers to the regime out of communication with the city.






















We ended up at Mirti in Centocelle, a once disparaged suburb of Rome that is reviving a bit, and certainly the metro line will help that.

That's a victory sign at Mirti, as well as storm clouds brewing.

 Besides having time to give the victory sign, we found a tour group in this station and we learned more about the entire project (including the use of the TBMs).

Tour group at the Mirti station.

At this point, we figured we probably had walked close to 10 miles - the 5.4 km is the way the Metro or crow flies.  Walking between stations is much more circuitous.  Plus we went up and down the stairs at each station (the escalators weren't operating). And it was starting to rain.

Dianne checks the various transit options.

Walking another 4 or 5 miles back to our moto was ruled out.  While celebrating our 6-station triumph with a glass of wine in Centocelle at a familiar bar there, we discovered the "trenino," or urban train, was not far away.  So we walked over to it, through the familiar non-glitzy underpass of existing Rome transit, to catch the train back reasonably close to "Lodi" and our moto.

What the 'normal' transit underground looks like.

The Italians are good at design, and these stations are striking in their pristine state.  We don't want to think what they might look like if the graffiti artists get busy on them.  This project connects some of these far flung suburbs and we hope makes Romans living in them feel more in touch with the city itself.

Video in the station teaching kids to hang on.

We'll do a check in 2016 to see how the system is progressing.


Dianne

Study in black and white

Art in unlikely places - Pericle Fazzini in the Piazza dell'Independenza

Detail from Fazzini's frieze

Piazza dell'Indipendenza is a few blocks from the central train station, Termini, within the confines of Rome's Aurelian Wall, but fairly modern in its appearance.  It's primarily a large transportation piazza these days, and we've mainly scootered through it with our focus on successfully exiting the other side, but sometimes taking time to observe the supposedly Mussolini faces (they don't look like him) on one of the government buildings on the piazza (photo at end).

One day this year we stopped to look at another, what seemed to us fairly nondescript mid-century (as in mid-20th-century) building that looked like it had an interesting brass frieze on it.  And so we discovered the work of Pericle Fazzini.  The frieze depicts agrarian themes, as one can see, to honor the building which was then the offices of an agrarian agency, and still bears that name: Palazzo della Federconsorzi (short for Federazione dei Consorzi Agrari).  The building was constructed in 1952-57, and we assume the frieze dates from the 1950s as well.

The Palazzo as it looks today - offices for rent.  The Federconsorzi apparently went down in a scandalous blaze in the 1990s.
It was at its peak in the 1950s, when this was built, and when it was, apparently, privatized, but received public money (Welcome to Italy).  Information on the scandal is given in detail on the Wikopedia Italian Web site.

More detail - the title of the frieze is sometimes given as "Work in the fields."

Fazzini was a noted scuptor at the time he did this frieze.  He went on to do more monumental works, including the "Resurrection," for the Pope Paul VI Audience Hall, where Benedict XVI used to give his weekly audiences.  That work shows Christ arising from a nuclear crater in the Gardens of Gethsemane.  Monumental it is.

Fazzini to us is another "find," among "modern" artists in Rome.  Like our discovery of Amleto Cataldi's sculptures in the weeds of the Olympic Village, we discovered Fazzini's piece by accident, accidental discovery being one of the great joys of Rome.  Fazzini died in 1987, known by then as a "Vatican sculptor."  The Peggy Guggenheim Museum Web site has a nice biography of him.

Dianne

Pope Benedict XVI with Fazzini's work behind him.