The Hunt for Paolo Portoghese's 1960 Modernist Capolavoro: Now the Jordanian Embassy in Rome (and going to the dogs)

 

This gorgeous and unusual building is one of the capolavori (masterworks) of renowned Italian starchitect Paolo Portoghese.

We went in search of it last year after Bill had read an article in La Repubblica in which Portoghese had, as the paper put it, given his "J'accuse" to the degradation of modern architecture, an architecture of which he was a leading proponent. As the famed architect put it, "L'architettura moderna lasciata in balia di vandali e degrado" - "Modern architecture has been left to the mercy of vandals and decay." His prime example was his own work, now the Jordanian Embassy in Rome.

The article ran on April 26 and Bill had us out 4 days later in the Piazza Bologna/Nomentana area searching for the building, about which we knew little, not even the address nor what it looked like. After a few false starts (taking photos of buildings with barely a modern touch, thinking they might be the one), we discovered this magnificent structure tucked into an ordinary neighborhood, not too far from one of Rome the Second Time's 15 itineraries in our 2009 book. (Too bad we missed it then!)

Tucked into a street of ordinary palazzi

We also missed Portoghese's passing only one month later, on May 30, 2023, at age 91. So consider this post an homage to him, whose buildings we've admired, among them the famous Rome mosque, which we wrote about 15 years ago, in the first year of this blog.

For security purposes, understandably, 
the embassy doesn't let one get close to
the building.

This gives you some sense of the difficulty
in seeing the whole building.

The palazzo - we now know - was built for a contractor's grandson in 1960, named Casa Papanice, and eventually passed into the hands of the Jordanian Embassy in Rome (whose shields you can see on the building exterior), which has kept it closed to the public, even walled off to the public, and, as Portoghese lamented, in a state of disrepair.

Another glimpse - but you have to
know to look.

Rusting walls

The use of rounded, cantilevered, balconies against vertical striped and molded walls is highly distinctive, and the colored tiles playful. 

Speaking of playful, we also didn't realize the palazzo (before the Jordanians) was featured in several films, including the unfortunately named 1970 "Pizza Triangle" (better in Italian - Dramma della gelosia or the alternative title, Jealousy, Italian Style) by Ettore Scola and starring Monica Vitti, Marcello Mastroianni, and Giancarlo Giannini. A still from the film accompanied the 2023 La Repubblica article.

And, as usual, we found a spot for coffee nearby - at the very friendly "Chill Out Cafe" on viale XXI Aprile, Just steps from via Nomentana.

As long as you are on viale XXI Aprile, walk a few steps and across the street to the immense Fascist-era housing block Palazzo Federici (by Mario De Renzi, 1931-37), where director Scola filmed one of his own masterworks, 1977's Una giornata particolare,with Mastroianni and Sophia Loren, set completely in that apartment block on the day in 1938 when Hitler visited Rome. (Film still below.)

Dianne

Francesco Berarducci's Brutalist Masterpiece: Villino Colli della Farnesina

It's tucked in the hills above the Palazzo Farnesina, the massive Fascist-era building that now serves as the nation's foreign policy center, but was once Fascist Party headquarters.

Less monumental but perhaps more striking, the Villino Colli della Farnesina hugs the street by the same name (no. 144).  The community is gated, but open for a tour on this particular Sunday, the 2nd day of the 5th edition of Open House Roma.

A gated community, but even the gate is cool brutalism.

The front.  Impressive verticality,
deteriorating concrete below.

RST had been looking for an outstanding example of Rome Brutalism--a style, look, and feel based on masses of raw concrete.  We had come to the right place.  There, at Palazzina 16, stood Berarducci's brutalist palazzo, somewhat the worse for wear--the building dates to 1969--but muscular, and even
majestic, still.  As our knowledgeable guide Elisa explained, the front of the building, despite its obvious weight, manages to project  an impressive verticality, while, as we shall see, the back emphasizes the horizontal.

Cantilevered front canopy, now supported by posts.  

The enormous, cantilevered canopy over the front entrance has suffered significant decay--its reinforcing steel bars (rebar) revealed here--to the point where it no longer can be depended on to hold itself up, and is now supported by construction posts.  That condition is likely permanent, since it seems doubtful that the building's owners would elect to finance the kind of high-tech reconstruction used to reinforce the sagging balcony at Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Pennsylvania.

Framed in red, that's the front, glass, door, hinged in
the center.

One enters the building through a center hallway that houses services--stairs and the elevator--for apartments on both sides.  The door to the hallway, like some others in the complex, is a single sheet of framed glass, perhaps 10 feet wide, that pivots in the center.

The Berarducci studio

Concrete-framed hole lets  in light, lightens load.

The Berarducci studio, now occupied by the architect's son--also an architect--is on the floor below, entirely below ground level but lit from the end by a large window that looks out onto a sloping garden, and by a large, round hole (in concrete, of course) that drops down into a square glass container with white stones below.  It not only brings in natural light, but lightens the load on the roof of the studio.









Berarducci (1924-1992) is described in the literature as "schivo" (secretive), and he spent most of his later years in this studio, avoiding theoretical debates while focusing on design and construction.

A stone path meanders around the east side of the building, revealing a projection that from inside seems to have no other purpose that to give the building shape and complexity.

Exterior projection right, in the trees.

Interior view/result of the exterior projection, above.

Tiered, Wright-like balconies--that is, like the massive balcony at Fallingwater--dominate the rear of the building, together emphasizing the horizontal line. They've been repaired and repainted,

unfortunately in a creamy color that doesn't match the raw concrete above, left unpainted.  While necessary (one of the balconies is held up with supports), the repairs and painting deprive this part of the building of some of its expressive power: it's no longer raw concrete, but something else.

A visit to a top floor apartment, originally Berarducci's, allows us to appreciate those balconies from inside, where the great expanses maintain their elegance.











The front door opens onto a very large, essentially square living room, slightly sunken; it reminded us of Don Draper's apartment in the Mad Men television series.  It's been poorly decorated--the remaining furniture is

Living Room

Showmanship in Concrete

almost comical--and painted in an uninteresting white, apparently to the tastes of its last tenant, an Egyptian.  The room to the right is more dramatically elevated.  Otherwise, the spaces seem rather ordinary.  The living room is the spectacular center of things.

A not-so-spectacular view of the living room, looking inward.
Bad art, bad decoration.

Church of San Valentino in the Olympic Village.

Berarducci's influences include Le Corbusier, Pier Luigi Nervi (his teacher at the university, where he graduated in 1950), Victor Morpungo, with whom he collaborated on the Torre Spaccato quartiere, Mario De Renzi, and postwar Scandinavian architects.  Most of his work was residential, including Rome palazzine in Via Cavalier D'Arpino and Via S. Giovanna Elisabetta.  He is perhaps best known for the church of San Valentino, in the Olympic Village (1962) and, especially, for the RAI center on Via Mazzini, apparently--though this is difficult to believe--the first all-steel structure in Rome.

The most famous concrete building in Rome is Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sport, on RST's Top 40.

For more on concrete, see Adrian Forty, who lectured on the topic this year at the American Academy in Rome and has inspired RST to do more posts on this topic.

Bill

Oldest Supermarket in Rome: 1961

Tucked away behind the 1960 Olympic Village, where the athletes stayed, and backed up against the busy Lungotevere dell'Aqua Acetosa, is the first grocery store in Rome, or so we hear.  Not the first

store that sold groceries--that would take us back into the 19th century, no doubt--but the first American-style grocery, Rome's first supermarket.  By American standards you won't find it "super"; it's quite modest in size, perhaps a 10th of the floor space of the U.S. equivalent, and not much larger than two 7-11s--maybe 3.

The Carrefourgoncino/Shopping at Home

Nor is the exterior especially noteworthy, though the enormous surface parking lot--room for at least a hundred cars and never close to half full--is, for Rome, a spectacle, and for shoppers, a gift.  Dianne took pleasure in the "Carrefourgoncino"--the store's van, parked right there in the spectacle.  The van's name is a word-play on the name of the market--Carrefour--and the Italian word for van, "furgone."

The banners outside the store's entrance announce that the store is open 24/7.  We haven't tried the place at 3 a.m., but I wouldn't count on getting the baby formula at that hour. 

The best part is the wall to the right as you enter, which you can scan as you're waiting in line to be checked out.  Though it didn't open until 1961, the store was apparently built for the 1960s games.  With that in mind, the current owner/tenant, the Carrefour chain, has mounted half a dozen large photos of athletes at the games.

This section of photos is labeled "La Moda del Villaggio" (Village Style)

The store, as it looked probably in the early 1960s.  

While Dianne was shopping I was photographing the photos.  I have included one of them here, as
well as another of the store in operation sometime in the early 1960s (the signs above the vegetables are vintage early-60s shape).  Then a woman cashier (not the owner or the manager) rushed up, shook her finger, and told me that what I was doing was "proibito."  End of photo session. 


Bill  

Not far to the west, the underbelly of the architecturally
significant Corso di Francia

And all around, the buildings of the Olympic Village, now residential housing

The Butterfly Roof: from Marconi to Palm Springs, California

This forlorn building, partly boarded up and for rent, is located just south of via Grimaldi, in the Marconi district.  It was once a theater.  We took the photo because we're interested in Rome's modern architectural forms, and the roof line--an element of what is known in the states as "googie" architecture--is an unusual one for the city.

We were reminded of the photo a few days ago, when we read in the New York Times of the death of architect Donald Wexler at the age of 89.  Wexler lived and worked most of his life in Palm Springs, California, a hotbed of mid-century modernism (now all the rage among the millenial generation).

He is best known for the Palm Springs International Airport, for a set of 7 prefabricated "steel" houses, and for El Rancho Vista Estates, 75 homes built in 1960.  One of Wexler's signature architectural features, found on many of the houses he designed, is the folded or "butterfly" roof--see below--very much like the one on the Marconi district theater.

Wexler didn't design the theater, or the butterfly roof at its front, but his story offers a window into mid-century modernism, and it helps to fix the date of the Rome building.  It was very likely constructed in the 1960s, probably early in the decade.

Bill