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

Rome's first Drive-in Theater: Casal Palocco

When we first saw this photograph, from the New York bureau of United Press International, we thought it might be of early construction on the Palazetto dello Sport, designed by Annibale Vitellozzi and engineered by Pier Luigi Nervi. It isn't, but it's likely not a coincidence--given the angled, concrete supports--that the Palazzetto and the structure in the photograph were completed in the same year: 1957. [Thanks to Dianne's cousin, Jim Bennett--an Italophile, for sending us this original UPI photo.] 

The concrete in the photo is there to support a 540 square meter screen for Italy's first drive-in movie theater, then--and perhaps still--the largest ever in Europe, with 60,000 square meters of parking for 700 cars.

Another view of the construction

The completed screen. 

The drive-in was built near Axa in Casal Palocco, a then-new Rome suburb (completed in 1961) on the north side of via Cristoforo Colombo, well beyond the GRA and not far from the coastal town of Ostia. 

The theater was very successful through the 1960s, then fell on hard times until, sometime in the 1980s, it closed. 

In the 1960s

It was briefly reopened in the late 1990s and again, briefly, in 2015, by the committee behind the Trastevere group, Cinema America Occupato (an "illegal" sit-in or squatter type arrangement). 

How it looks today--assuming it's still there. 

Designed to resemble the American suburbs of the 1950s, Casal Palocco was a planned community with design links to Adalberto Libera, whose vision produced Foro Mussolini (now Foro Italico) under the Fascist regime, and to Raffaele de Vico, Rome's most famous and prolific landscape designer. 

The plan for Casal Palocco

Because of its many parks and gardens and athletic fields, Casal Palocco--actually a part of Rome--was known was known as the "Quartiere Verde" ("Green Quarter"). Many of the homes were large and sumptuous. A central shopping plaza had, and has, a rationalist flair. 

Late '50s rationalism

Today, about 32,000 people live in the community. 

. 

Not sure of the date of this photo, but the cars are vintage, and that's Charlton Heston on the screen in the 1956 film, "The Ten Commandments." On the horizon, back left, the Alban Hills.  

Space-Age Buildings: LA and Rome

 RST spends time in both Rome and Los Angeles, very different cities that share traffic problems but, seemingly, little else. 

We found another connection.  Each city has an iconic, well-known, mid-century, high-modernist,  dome-like building that utilizes powerful, dominant exterior supports.  Both were constructed at

Garry Winogrand's famous 1964 photo

about the same time, and both have a space-age look consistent with the era but nonetheless rare.  We can think of no other building, anywhere, that has all these characteristics.  If you're aware of one, let us know.  

The LA building is known (rather oddly) as the "Theme Building."  It sits near the entrance/exit of Los

Looks like an artists's conception

Angeles International Airport (known to locals as LAX) and houses a Jetsons-like (the program began in 1962) restaurant in its core - Encounter (managed in part, we might add, by Buffalo-based Delaware North Companies).  Credit for the innovative design is usually given to an architectural firm headed by William Pereira and Charles Luckman.  But there were other firms involved in this "team" effort, including Welton Becket and Paul R. Williams, the black architect, and web sites say the "real" credit for the design should go to James Langenheim--or Gin Wong--both of Pereira and Luckman.   The building opened in 1961. 

Prosaic during the day

Its Rome counterpart is the Palazzetto dello Sport, completed in 1958 for the 1960 Rome Olympic games.  It isn't quite as fanciful as the Theme Building, except perhaps at night, when interior light flows through the glass windows beneath the dome.  But an impressionable (and stoned) foreign student, coming upon the structure suddenly and after dark, might wonder if the Martians had landed. 

In this case the lead designer is known: Italian Pier Luigi Nervi.   Bill

See earlier posts on the Palazzetto and the 1960 Olympics.

Compelling at night

Pier Luigi Nervi: Palazzetto dello Sport

Pier Luigi Nervi's Palazzetto dello Sport (little palace of sport) sits on its own small piece of land in the Flaminio district, a thing apart.  It's a stone's throw (even for this tired old wing) from the Parco della Musica, so we've been by it, and around it, many times over the last few years, admiring its space-age design while wondering why the roof always seemed to need a coat of paint.  Bill recalls being inside in 1962 with a touring group of Stanford students, unsure what to think of the building, which was new then, having been constructed for volleyball and other events at the 1960 Rome Olympics. 

The Palazzetto beckoned on a recent trip to the neighborhood, when the late afternoon light drew our attention to the building's striking colored glass windows.   The Palazzetto is also featured in the Flaminio itinerary in our new book, Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler. More on the book at the end of this post.

Walking around the exterior, of the Palazzetto, we found an open entrance (!) and walked in.  Voilà.  Some very good volleyball players were practicing.  We admired the space, took some pictures and, not wanting to press our luck further, left.  A few hours later we photographed the same windows, from outside (photo at top).  Lovely.
Bill

As noted above, the Palazzetto, and more around it, are featured in the Flaminio itinerary of our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Modern Rome features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.

RST Top 40. #37: Parco della Musica

This gorgeous new (2006) complex of music space has been highly successful. The performances are many and varied - suiting every taste and pocketbook: classical to folk to dance to new music, Euro 150 to free.

Many of the US's top artists perform here. See the English website http://www.inromenow.com/ for events. It's easier to navigate than PDM's (as it's called, or sometimes it's called just the Auditorium).

Whether or not you're going to a performance, the complex is worth a visit. It's in the Flaminio district, a short tram ride from Piazza del Popolo. Renzo Piano, one of Italy's best known international architects, hit his stride with these buildings. Piano also designed the New York Times building in New York City that opened earlier this year and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's large addition, that opened last year. But we think Parco della Musica is another degree better than his commissions in the US. (It's in Rome the Second Time as a music venue, Chapter 7; and also a highlight of the Flaminio walk in our latest book: Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler. More on the book at the end of this post.)

You can also get food and drink here (and in the adjacent Flaminio neighborhood - in Rome the Second Time, Chapter 8; and in the Flaminio walk of Modern Rome).

Take a look at the basketball stadium, Palazzetto dello Sport, as you walk from the tram to PDM. The Palazzetto was designed for the Rome 1960 Olympics by one of that era's most well-known Italian international architects, Pier Luigi Nervi, a master with concrete - we were taken to the Palazzetto as college students by our Stanford art prof who was trying to get us to appreciate modern architecture (wow, he got what he wanted from us!).  The Palazzetto also is featured in Modern Rome.

Dianne

As noted above, these sites are feaured in the Flaminio walk of our new print AND eBook,  Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler.  Modern Rome features tours of the "garden" suburb of Garbatella; the 20th-century suburb of EUR, designed by the Fascists; the 21st-century music and art center of Flaminio, along with Mussolini's Foro Italico, also the site of the 1960 summer Olympics; and a stairways walk in Trastevere.

This 4-walk book is available in all print and eBook formats The eBook is $1.99 through amazon.com and all other eBook sellers.  See the various formats at smashwords.com. 

Modern Rome: 4 Great Walks for the Curious Traveler now is also available in print, at amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, independent bookstores, and other retailers; retail price $5.99.