Quartiere INA-Casa Tiburtino IV: a Postwar Suburban Public Housing Project

One of our favorite Rome guides is 200 Architetture Scelte: Il Moderno Attraverso Roma (200 Architectural Choices: The Modern Across Rome; pub. 2000).  Obviously in Italian, it has multiple authors: Gaia Remiddi, Antonella Greco, Antonella Bonavita, and Paola Ferri (I just noticed they are all women).  Our fondness for the book has less to do with its analysis of the buildings, which is often quite technical, perhaps meant more for architects than historians or tourists, than its "pointing out" function; without it, we would never have found some of its "choices."

And so it was that in the Spring of 2017 we found ourselves dismounting the scooter at kilometer 7 on via Tiburtina (the right side, going out).  We were there to see and experience a major housing development built between 1949 and 1955.  We've driven by this project dozens, maybe even hundreds of times, and never noticed it.  It has the feel of a protected suburban enclave. The project was coordinated by Mario Ridolfi. The dozen or so architects who designed parts of the project include Ridolfi and Ludovico Quaroni, the latter perhaps best known for a poster designed to commemorate an enormous arch for E42 at EUR, but never built.

When you see the gas station sign (at left in the photo above), turn right and park across the street from the "Snack Bar."

Quaroni and his colleagues designed and built 771 housing units on the site.  Many of the buildings are sited at odd angles to via Tiburtina and to area streets (and to each other), are of moderate scale, and--for public housing units--have a remarkably "homey" presence, to this day.  Despite the overall dimensions of the project. the dominant feeling is of a comfortable suburban community.  Exterior colors are in several shades of "terre romane" (Roman earth).  "INA-Casa" was a post-World War II government entity designed to provide subsidized housing, in this case for a class above working class. "INA" refers to l'Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni, (the National Institute for Insurance), that managed the funds.  One of our favorite architects, Giò Ponti, was critical of the project, though most architects of the day were not.

If you park across the street from the bar on via Tiburtina and walk south, up the street, on via. D. Angeli, you'll find a Ridolfi-designed 2-story structure with an unusual stairway and an elevated second-floor walkway.  The building has this unusual look because of changes in the terrain. In suburban fashion, all units have exterior space.  Our book calls the building case a ballatoio (houses on a gallery/walkway).

Below, on via dei Crispolti, a winding/jointed 4-story complex by Quaroni and Mario Fiorentino.  Communal outdoor space at ground level.  Because the building is composed of several large units set at different angles, the result is that the interior units vary in angularity, from rectangular to octagonal.

At via D. Angeli and via L. Cesana, the tallest building in the complex at 7 floors (below).  Designed by Ridolfi, its distinguishing feature is the intersection at angles of three square buildings--a feature that can be hard to see from some perspectives and from ground level.

Communal outdoor space is a feature of several of the buildings.  When we visited, this space was being used by a group of older men.

Angular businesses, perhaps part of the original design:

There are other project buildings to the south and southwest--explore at your leisure. 

Pleasant as the INA-Casa project was, the most spectacular "find" of the day was a structure that stood in stark contrast to those around it.  This Brutalist masterpiece,  Santa Maria della Visitazione, was designed in the Mayan temple mode by Saverio Busiri Vici, who was active in Rome between 1960 and 1980.  It was completed in 1971. More on the church in a post to come.

The view from the church terrace showcases the surrounding community.

Bill

The postwar American Academy in Rome: Incubator for Modern Architecture

Writing in the latest issue of American Academy in Rome Magazine, 2015 Fellow Denise R. Constanzo examines how the Academy, located in a city better known for its ancient monuments and baroque churches than sleek, modern buildings, survived the rise of postwar architectural modernism.


 "Rome and the classical legacy promoted by its academies," she writes, "were antithetical to modernism's emphasis on industrial materials, abstract forms, and progressive politics.  Constanzo continues:  "Many of Rome's own modernist developments were ideologically problematic, because they enjoyed considerable Fascist support.  After World War II, when modernism gained widespread official sanction, the Rome Prize appeared irrelevant, perhaps even perilous, to an architect's career."



"How, exactly," asks Costanzo, did the Academy survive?  The answer, she argues, is that the American Academy, unlike its French and British counterparts, left its Fellows free to explore Rome's diversity, "eliminating all work requirements in favor of independent projects with minimal oversight."

Venturi: Sainbury wing of the National Gallery, London (1991).
A meeting of modernism and classicism--i.e., postmodernism.

There's a good deal of truth in that explanation, but it's not the whole story.  It would seem to be relevant to Robert Venturi's 1957 experience as an Academy Fellow.  As the title of his brilliant and influential 1966 book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, would suggest, Venturi reveled in Rome's urban and architectural ambiguities, its tensions and paradoxes, its "messy vitality."

Quaroni poster for E42

I would add, nonetheless, that Rome's architecture was not as far out of the mainstream as Constanzo might claim. Eero Saarinen was not in the least reluctant to fashion his entry in a 1948 competition (what would become the St. Louis Arch) along the lines of a similar arch drawn by Ludovico Quaroni for E42, an enormous exposition designed to commemorate the 1922 March on Rome.  At the very least, Saarinen was likely familiar with the imperial meaning of Italian arches, dating to antiquity and running through Fascism, and that knowledge fazed him not at all as he prepared his contest submission.

Just as important, elements of Rome's diverse architectural heritage contained the seeds of two strands of American postwar architecture: postmodernism and brutalism. With its weighty mass and its affection for unforgiving, uniform facades of reinforced concrete, the brutalist movement that

Fascist-era office building, viale Castro Pretorio, Rome.  A precursor of brutalism--and perhaps postmodernism, too.  

began in the late 1960s owed much to the ponderous office buildings of the Fascist-era, though the latter used marble and stone.

Michael Graves, Steigenberger Hotel, Egypt 

Postmodernism, with is pastiche of forms, its penchant for mixing and matching architectural styles and elements, was eclectic Rome itself, full of juxapositions and the "complexities" that Venturi so admired.  It was the sort of place where Michael Graves--also a Rome Prize recipient (1962)--could begin to imagine his Portland Building, the Steigenberger Hotel in El Gouna, Egypt, the Humana Building in Lousiville, or any of a number of his other "postmodern" buildings.

Bill

Rome's most famous Building that Never Was: the Arch for E42

It may be Rome's most important building--that is, among those that were never constructed. Certainly the architects and engineers involved--Pier Luigi Nervi, Adalberto Libera, Gino Covre, Vicenzo di Berardino, among others--were top-notch.  And the stakes were high.  According to one authority, had it been built "it would have become the symbol of modern Rome."  Likely true.

Via dell'Impero, 1938 illustration

The "building" was not even quite that.  It was an arch, but a spectacular one, intended as the centerpiece of the grand exposition E42--a world's fair, really.  The fair was designed to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Fascism (the 1922 March on Rome) and, then, to become a model suburban neighborhood in the south of Rome.  The great world fairs of the past had been represented by, and left behind, iconic constructions: London's Crystal Palace from the 1851 fair, Paris's Eiffel Tower from 1889 and, it was expected, Rome's triumphal "Arch of the Empire," from its 1942 extravaganza.  A gateway to Rome, from the south, just as a planned 100-meter "Colossus of Mussolini" at the Foro Mussolini (now Foro Italico) would have functioned as a gateway from the north.

The arch was not to be.  The war intervened, of course, and the half-finished grounds of EUR--the Esposizione Universale di Roma--would become a staging area for German and then American armies.  But it wasn't only the war.  An arch on the scale imagined, up to 600 meters wide and 240 meters high, proved an enormous technological challenge.

Virtual reconstruction of the final plan for E42.

Had it been built, it would have been sited in the southern portion of EUR, more or less where Nervi's Palazzo dello Sport (1960) now stands, Some argue that the arch would have been just to the south of Nervi's stadium, but in models it appears it would have been closer to the EUR lake, in front of, or perhaps in the middle of, the space now occupied by Nervi's building.

Ortensi/Pascoletti, et. al. design in steel, set against
model of St. Peter's

The idea for a grand arch of spectacular dimensions (600 x 240 meters, dwarfing St. Peter's) first emerged in 1937.  At that time, two groups offered elaborate plans and specifications for a proposed arch.  One group, led by engineers Dagoberto Ortensi, Cesare Pascoletti, Adelchi Cirella and Covre, offered an arch made of steel--a "spectacular metal arch," according to the plans.

Libera/di Berardino design in cement, 1938

Another group, led by Libera and di Berardino, offered an arch in concrete, inspired by a contest-winning painting of an arch by Ludivico Quaroni, soon to become a well-known poster.

Materials made a difference.  One issue that seems a trifle silly now, but was then of considerable importance, was whether the materials for the arch were "autarchic"--that is, able to be produced within Italy, rather than imported.  The Libera/di Berardino group's first proposal, in 1937, envisioning an arch in non-reinforced concrete, had appeal because Italy produced concrete.  The group also presented a proposal for an arch in reinforced concrete, somewhat less autarchic, perhaps. Nervi argued later that both arches--in reinforced and non-reinforced concrete--were feasible and could be built with Italian materials.  Steel, the favored material of the Ortensi/Pascoletti group, would have to be imported.

As it happened, steel and concrete were both thrown under the bus in April 1939, when E42 President Vittorio Cini announced that the arch would be built in "Italian aluminum''--that is,

Vittorio Cini, gesturing center right, picture of
arch behind and, in the model, at right

"absolute autarchy."  Cini asked that bygones be bygones, and that the two groups come together to jointly solve whatever problems might arise.  And they did, though Nervi would argue that the aluminum was less than fully autarchic because of the ancillary materials required in its production.  In any event, once aluminum was chosen, the arch's dimensions were reduced.  The "final" specifications called for an arch with a 330 meter span and about 200 meters high--smaller than once imagined, but still quite something.  Even with the reduced dimensions, the arch envisioned was to have a system of carriages inside, conveying groups of people to a restaurant/recreation area at the top.  Some even imagined a platform for parachuting to the ground.

Ad campaign idea from the Mussolini regime.  Ship
owners nixed it as unsafe.  

Mussolini was infatuated with the E42 project and, especially, with the arch.  The Duce scribbled: "Arch=E42 and vice-versa."  For a time it looked as if it might happen.  In the late 1930s and early 1940s the arch became a feature of many advertising campaigns--one envisioned ocean liners and commercial ships sporting large on-deck arches; and E42 and its iconic arch were widely promoted at the 1939/40 New York World's Fair.

Ludovico Quaroni's 1937 poster for
E42.  Saarinen's St. Louis design (1948)
was- for some - uncomfortably similar.

The technical problems were not solved by the time the war came to Italy and Rome.  In the 1950s, the idea was set aside for other building priorities, and decisions that one scholar describes as "A pity, not least because there was very little ideologically to be attributed to the Arch," which was, he
argues, even then all about peace and solidarity with other countries.  Not so.  From the beginning, the Arch was deeply identified with Italian Fascism and with Fascist ideology: the drive to the sea, the desire for territorial expansion.  From the beginning, it was understood as "The Arch of the Empire." That's why Mussolini so desperately wanted it built.

St. Louis Arch, under construction, c. 1965

Today, there is renewed interest in building an arch in EUR.  In 2007, the Rome City Council approved a small amount of money, some 30,000 Euros, for very preliminary plans and discussions for a project that was estimated then at 70 million Euros--an extraordinary amount for a city that can't afford to fix potholes.  Some are suggesting an international competition for an arch to "symbolize universal peace," an idea apparently broached by Piacentini in 1937.

It's not hard to imagine that an arch would be an attractive complement to EUR and perhaps draw tourists to the area.  Unfortunately, it's been done.  It seems likely that architect Eero Saarinen got the idea from posters and designs and publicity for E42.  Regardless, he built the arch, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, in St. Louis, almost 50 years ago.  The horse is out of the barn, as they say.

For photos and commentary on the E42 arch--past and present configurations--see L'Arco dell'E42, Supplement to C.E.S.A.R, March-April 2009, a softcover large-format book available in Rome at the Casa dell' Architettura bookshop in the  l'Aquario building, near the Termini station.  On the relationship between the arch intended for E42 and Saarinen's St. Louis Arch, see William Graebner, "Gateway to Empire: An Interpretation of Eero Saarinen's 1948 Design for the St. Louis Arch," Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, 18 (1993): 367-399, reprinted in Italian in Ventesimo Secolo (May-December, 1994). 

Bill

Design for "Arch of Peace" with a new square, 2009.

American Academy Open Studios - Art and Architecture in a Sublime Setting

The dwindling crowd at dusk at the McKim Mead and White building,
The American Academy in Rome

The American Academy in Rome's Open Studios are, for us anyway, a not-to-be-missed event. This year, the "Centennial Festival" on June 5 was no exception.  One cannot see these studios and have unlimited access to the Academy's Fellows except one evening per year, and that evening has just passed, but we think some flavor of the experience and the work is worth writing about, even after the event and perhaps in anticipation of next year.

LaBombard explaining her work on the greening of Rome's land.

The Fellows are strongly concentrated in architecture, including landscape architecture. So that influences what one sees in the studios.  We started at the top of this 3-story building to avoid the crowds - and the event does draw crowds, which seemed to be more Italian this year than in the past.   We were intrigued from the outset by Elizabeth Fain LaBombard's graphs and aerial photos showing the urbanization of Rome, and her efforts to bring more green space to the city and its suburban areas. Since we've walked and hiked in many of these areas, we were drawn to her photos and her work.

Newell's dark space photos

Down the hall, Catie Newell, also an Architecture Fellow, was focused on dark space.  Her photos were fascinating ["Those are the ones you want me to throw away, said Bill."  "Not quite," I replied.], as were her dark, tar-coated - perhaps - objects.

Noordkamp's film on Gibellina, a Sicilian city reconstructed in the 1980s
and perhaps killed by the good intentions of architects and planners of that era.

And on the same floor, Petra Noordkamp [Dutch Affiliated Fellow] drew us in with her film about Gibellina, a city in Sicily destroyed by the 1968 earthquake, reconstructed with buildings by well-know archiects - away from the original city - in the 1980s, and now mostly abandoned.  Our discussion with Petra led to her telling us of another short film she did that explores a church in Gibellina, by the famous architect Ludovico Quaroni.  Petra described his son as "my ex-lover who killed his mother."  We bought the dvd on the spot.

Wine, kids and views - along with the art.

The 3 Preservation and Conservation Fellows are fascinated by some of the same 20th century work as are we. Tom Leslie celebrated with us his love of Pier Luigi Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sport, which we've lauded on the blog.

One of Dobbins' puppet shows.

Reynolds' film of his artist-and-model

Among the visual artists, we particularly enjoyed the puppetry of Hamlett Dobbins that uses Futurist authors' [Marinetti, Depero, etc.] plays, and Reynold Reynolds' short film that riffs off the Durer etching of a man sketching a nude through a grid [ "painting made easy"?].

These are just 6 of the 16 studios we visited.  We also found time for the villa's spectacular views, and the free flowing wine and almonds.

Serving up the wine.

If you are in Rome at the end of May/beginning of June, don't miss next year's AARome's Open Studios.  A footnote - the concept of the Open Studios was begun by our friend Dana Prescott, then the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome, now Executive Director of Civitella Ranieri Foundation, which hosts fellows in a spectacular castle in Umbria.







To next year...  Dianne

We're always pleased to see Rome the Second Time

on an Academy bookshelf.

Fascist Design--in Miami Beach

RST is pleased to once again have Paul Baxa, an outstanding scholar and interpreter of the Fascist experience, as a guest blogger.  Here, Baxa takes us through the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach, currently (through May 18) hosting 3 exhibits on the Fascist era.  A smaller, fourth exhibit on Italo Balbo's air exploits, closes April 29.  Baxa is Associate Professor of History at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida and the author of  (University of Toronto Press, Roads and Ruins: The Symbolic Landscape of Fascist Rome (20l0).  

Mural study, Antonio Santagata

Ferruccio Ferrazzi's Il Mito di Roma, 1940

For those interested in the intersection of Modernist design and twentieth-century politics, a visit to current exhibitions at the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami Beach cannot be missed.  This museum, run by Florida International University, was established by Mitchell Wolfson Jr. who collected documents and artifacts of modernism and was especially interested in materials that connected modernist design with totalitarian regimes.  As a result, there is a wealth of material from Fascist Italy.  I’ve had the good fortune of spending many hours in the Wolfsonian reading room this past fall and also to visit their three special exhibits pertaining to Italy:  The Birth of Rome; Rendering War: The Murals of A.G. Santagata; and Echoes and Origins: Italian Interwar Design.  All opened in the fall of 2013 and will close May 18, 2014. 

The Birth of Rome exhibit displays materials related to Mussolini’s attempts to revive ancient Rome in a Fascist mode.  On display are renderings of the E42 (EUR) as it might have been—including sketches of the never-to-be-built arch.*  Next to these are posters, sketches, and photographs of the Foro Mussolini and its sports complex.  Included are maquettes of statues from the Foro Mussolini designed by Eugenio Baroni.  The centerpiece of the exhibit is a massive detail for Ferruccio Ferrazzi’s tempera on paper drawing, Il Mito di Roma, designed in 1940. Spanning two floors of the Wolfsonian's atrium, the detail is an allegory of the Tiber River holding the twins with the she-wolf at its feet.  To be sure, Baroni and Ferrazzi were not star names of the interwar generation of artists but they figured prominently in the attempts to make a Fascist aesthetic.

Antonio Santagata.  Fascism looks back at the
Great War 

Off to the right of the Birth of Rome exhibit are several rooms filled with large-scale mural studies by Antonio G. Santagata.  These superb studies were designed for the walls of Marcello Piacentini’s Casa dei Mutilati in Rome (on the Tevere, sandwiched between the Palace of Justice and Hadrian's Castle).  The subjects of the murals all deal with the First World War and provide a glimpse of the myth of the Grande Guerra under Fascism. 

Up a floor, one finds the Echoes and Origins exhibit.  This is a perfect complement to the propaganda of the previous exhibits as it demonstrates another side of Fascist Italy—that of consumerism and style.  Here one finds vases and furniture by Giò Ponti, as well as exquisite cupboards by Gustavo Pulitzer Finali.  There is some wonderful kitsch here as well including a 

Fascist-inspired wall lamp

wall lamp designed as lictors rods.  A magnificent La Cimbali espresso machine is one corner next to artifacts from the famous ocean liner Rex.  Posters advertising FIAT, chocolates and cruises are plastered on the wall.  This was another face of Fascist Italy—no less propagandistic than the Imperial Roman bluster but revealing a desire to create a modern, consumerist culture. 

The magic of the Wolfsonian exhibit is found not just in the materials on display but also in the mounting of the exhibits.  The curators create spaces that enhance the impact of the displays.  For example, the Birth of Rome exhibit is displayed in an all-white, minimalist space which emphasizes the Novecento (20th-century) style of the drawings.  In the Echoes and Origins space the visitor is greeted by a massive, amber-glass bowl and pedestal from the Fontana Arte group next to a pillar containing the famous, Futurist-style bust of Mussolini by Renato Bertelli. 

The effect of the exhibits is to immerse the visitor into the visions of the Fascist regime as interpreted by less famous artists and sculptors.  None of these artists had the fame of the likes of Piacentini, Terragni, Sironi et al, but they all in their own way contributed to the Fascist program of reviving Rome in a way that harmonized modernism with classicism.


Paul Baxa 

*  The arch for E42 was intended to span the multiple lanes of the via Cristoforo Colombo, a task that proved beyond the skills of Italian engineers at the time.  Many designs were offered, among them a poster rendering by architect Ludovico Quaroni (left), which closely resembled Eero Saarinen's winning entry in a 1948 competition to honor Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase--the design that in 1966 became the St. Louis Arch.  The site of the E42 arch is on Walk 2, "EUR: Mid-Century Spectacle," in RST's new guidebook, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler  (2014).  On the Quaroni/Saarinen controversy, see William Graebner, "Gateway to Empire: An Interpretation of Eero Saarinen's 1948 Design for the St. Louis Arch," Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, vol, 18 (1993).  Ed.