Categories: Architecture

Italian rationalism

The Italian Rationalism is the current architecture that developed in Italy in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century in conjunction with the Modern Movement International, following the principles of functionalism, continuing in various ways in the fringes until the seventy years.

In architecture, rationalism is an architectural current which mostly developed from Italy in the 1920s-1930s. Vitruvius had claimed in his work De Architectura that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. This formulation was taken up and further developed in the architectural treatises of the Renaissance. Progressive art theory of the 18th-century opposed the Baroque use of illusionism with the classic beauty of truth and reason.

Twentieth-century rationalism derived less from a special, unified theoretical work than from a common belief that the most varied problems posed by the real world could be resolved by reason. In that respect it represented a reaction to historicism and a contrast to Art Nouveau and Expressionism.

Enlightenment rationalism
The name rationalism is retroactively applied to a movement in architecture that came about during the Enlightenment (more specifically, neoclassicism), arguing that architecture’s intellectual base is primarily in science as opposed to reverence for and emulation of archaic traditions and beliefs. Rational architects, following the philosophy of René Descartes emphasized geometric forms and ideal proportions.

The French Louis XVI style (better known as Neoclassicism) emerged in the mid-18th century with its roots in the waning interest of the Baroque period. The architectural notions of the time gravitated more and more to the belief that reason and natural forms are tied closely together, and that the rationality of science should serve as the basis for where structural members should be placed. Towards the end of the 18th century, Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, a teacher at the influential École Polytechnique in Paris at the time, argued that architecture in its entirety was based in science.

Other architectural theorists of the period who advanced rationalist ideas include Abbé Jean-Louis de Cordemoy (1631–1713),:559:265 the Venetian Carlo Lodoli (1690–1761),:560 Abbé Marc-Antoine Laugier (1713–1769) and Quatremère de Quincy (1755–1849).

The architecture of Claude Nicholas Ledoux (1736–1806) and Étienne-Louis Boullée (1728–99) typify Enlightenment rationalism, with their use of pure geometric forms, including spheres, squares, and cylinders.

Early 20th-century rationalism
Architects such as Henri Labrouste and Auguste Perret incorporated the virtues of structural rationalism throughout the 19th century in their buildings. By the early 20th century, architects such as Hendrik Petrus Berlage were exploring the idea that structure itself could create space without the need for decoration. This gave rise to modernism, which further explored this concept. More specifically, the Soviet Modernist group ASNOVA were known as ‘the Rationalists’.

Rational Architecture (Italian: Architettura razionale) thrived in Italy from the 1920s to the 1940s. In 1926, a group of young architects – Sebastiano Larco, Guido Frette, Carlo Enrico Rava, Adalberto Libera, Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini, and Giuseppe Terragni (1904–43) founded the so-called Gruppo 7, publishing their manifesto in the magazine Rassegna Italiana. Their declared intent was to strike a middle ground between the classicism of the Novecento Italiano movement and the industrially inspired architecture of Futurism.:203 Their “note” declared:

The hallmark of the earlier avant garde was a contrived impetus and a vain, destructive fury, mingling good and bad elements: the hallmark of today’s youth is a desire for lucidity and wisdom…This must be clear…we do not intend to break with tradition…The new architecture, the true architecture, should be the result of a close association between logic and rationality.

One of the first rationalist buildings was the Palazzo Gualino in Turin, built for the financier Riccardo Gualino by the architects Gino Levi-Montalcini and Giuseppe Pagano. Gruppo 7 mounted three exhibitions between 1926 and 1931, and the movement constituted itself as an official body, the Movimento Italiano per l’Architettura Razionale (MIAR), in 1930. Exemplary works include Giuseppe Terragni’s Casa del Fascio in Como (1932–36), The Medaglia d’Oro room at the Italian Aeronautical Show in Milan (1934) by Pagano and Marcello Nizzoli, and the Fascist Trades Union Building in Como (1938–43), designed by Cesare Cattaneo, Pietro Lingeri, Augusto Magnani, L. Origoni, and Mario Terragni.
Pagano became editor of Casabella in 1933 together with Edoardo Persico. Pagano and Persico featured the work of the rationalists in the magazine, and its editorials urged the Italian state to adopt rationalism as its official style. The Rationalists enjoyed some official commissions from the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, but the state tended to favor the more classically inspired work of the National Union of Architects. Architects associated with the movement collaborated on large official projects of the Mussolini regime, including the University of Rome (begun in 1932) and the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR) in the southern part of Rome (begun in 1936). The EUR features monumental buildings, many of which evocative of ancient Roman architecture, but absent ornament, revealing strong geometric forms.

Group 7, MIAR and the manifesto of Italian Rationalism
“There is no incompatibility between our past and our present. We do not want to break with tradition: it is tradition that is transformed, takes on new aspects, under which few recognize it. »

(Notes in the Italian Review, December 1926)
In 1926 a group of architects, from the Polytechnic of Milan, Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco, Carlo Enrico Rava, Giuseppe Terragni and Ubaldo Castagnoli, replaced the following year by Adalberto Libera, formed the ” Gruppo sette “, the group was officially established only in 1930, under the name MIAR (Italian Movement for Rational Architecture).

The group began to make itself known with a series of articles published in the magazine Italian Review and on that magazine, in December 1926, the “Group 7″ made public the new principles for architecture, which refer to that movement Modern that is now growing all over Europe. However, the group was paying close attention to the Deutscher Werkbund and the Russian constructivists, while distancing themselves from the Futurists. On them also she exerted a great influence the book of Le Corbusier ‘s 1923 Vers une architecture.

The right occasion to highlight their first results was that of the ” First Italian Exposition of Rational Architecture ” which took place in Rome in 1928 on the initiative of the group itself. But already in the III Biennale of Monza in 1927 Terragni had had the opportunity to present his first works.

Terragni gave a clear example of the synthesis elaborated in this context in the Fascio di Como house of 1932 – 1936, where the façade is designed according to the proportions of the golden section and at the same time modern forms and structures merge with a volumetric plant and a balance of classical architectural space. In 1938 he created the Casa del fascio also in Lissone, in Brianza, later named in his honor Palazzo Terragni. But above all in the Fascio di Como house one can, according to Ignazio Gardella, recognize the original character of the modern Italian movement. It is therefore the moment of classicism that distinguishes it from the international modern movement that had been a mother for Italian Rationalism: “the character of classicism, understood not as a mimetic reference to a specific historical, Renaissance or other period, but a timeless classicism, as the desire to seek an order, a measure, a modulation that make the architectural forms clearly perceptible to the light of the sun and coherent with each other, that is, parts of the same unity. ”

In 1930 it was the turn of Figini and Pollini, who presented the Electric House at the IV Triennale di Milano. Other young architects – such as Giovanni Michelucci and Giuseppe Pagano – joined the MIAR and were convinced supporters; in short there were almost 50 accessions of architects from various Italian regions.

At the 1931 exposition in Rome the impact was very strong and it immediately became clear that rationalist works were ill-suited to an authoritarian regime. The controversies that arose with the supporters of the old “academy”, which were then the majority, generated many defections in MIAR, so that in December 1932 his secretary Libera was forced to dissolve the movement.

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From that moment the rationalist architects worked in a narrower context, however managing to carry out various realizations also in the public sphere.

In the Milan area, thanks to the magazine Casabella – Costruzioni directed in the forties by Giuseppe Pagano Pogatschnig and Giancarlo Palanti, they were mentioned in the famous article Intervallo optimista by Raffaello Giolli, reflecting the importance of the Milanese school, Gianni Albricci, Achille and Piergiacomo Castiglioni, Mario Tevarotto, Enea Manfredini, Anna Ferrieri, Luciano Canella, Mario Righini, Augusto Magnaghi, Mario Terzaghi, Vittorio Gandolfi, Marco Zanuso, Renato Radici as young rationalist architects.

Structural rationalism
The term structural rationalism most often refers to a 19th-century French movement, usually associated with the theorists Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Auguste Choisy. Viollet-le-Duc rejected the concept of an ideal architecture and instead saw architecture as a rational construction approach defined by the materials and purpose of the structure. The architect Eugène Train was one of the most important practitioners of this school, particularly with his educational buildings such as the Collège Chaptal and Lycée Voltaire.

Representative works of Italian rationalism

The Fascio house in Como
The Casa del Fascio in Como (1932) by Giuseppe Terragni is one of these public works and is also the largest from a formal point of view. Zevi defines it as the “masterpiece of Italian rationalism”, for its pure volume drawn on the golden section, which has a solid structure and almost “classical” consistency. Inside the Fascio house it was once possible to admire an abstract decoration (now lost) created by Mario Radice.

By translation, the painters of the group of the Como-based abstract artists Mario Radice, Manlio Rho and Aldo Galli are also called “rationalists”, reflecting a common cultural forge that united painting and architecture.

The Santa Maria Novella station in Florence
The Santa Maria Novella station in Florence (1933) was designed by Giovanni Michelucci with a group of very young architects called Gruppo Toscano, the winning results of a competition held in 1932 and under the supervision of the engineer and professor cav. Gioacchino Luigi Mellucci (domiciled in Florence for the construction of the stadium with the Nervi).

The building, even in its modernity, fits perfectly into the urban environment, both for its sober and balanced design and for the wise choice of materials (the strong stone), compositional elements and architectural details. The integration of the rationalist building into the historic built environment is one of the main merits of the intervention.

The La Sapienza University Physics Institute in Rome
In the Physics Institute of the Sapienza University of Rome by Giuseppe Pagano the rational theme is controlled and the functionalist aspect prevails. In the building every form of monumentalism is banned (unlike the other buildings of the University City), but also of formal research, as was the case in the Fascio di Terragni house.

Palazzo delle Poste of Piazza Bologna in Rome
In 1932 the competition for the construction of the work was won by the architect Mario Ridolfi. The Palazzo delle Poste in Piazza Bologna in Rome is characterized by its double curvature and is one of the most interesting works of Italian rationalist architecture.

Other relevant buildings
Other important buildings, on minor or private assignments, were:

Palazzo Gualino in Turin, by Giuseppe Pagano Pogatschnig and Gino Levi-Montalcini (1928-30)
Asylum Sant’Elia in Como, di Terragni (1936-37)
Bocconi University of Milan, G. Pagano and G. Predeval (1938-41)
some exhibitions for Franco Albini, Persico and Nizzoli (1934-35)
two buildings and a library in Rome by Mario Ridolfi (1938-40)
Villa Malaparte in Capri, by Adalberto Libera (1938-40)
House of the beam in Bolzano (1939-42)

Neo-rationalism
In the late 1960s, a new rationalist movement emerged in architecture, claiming inspiration from both the Enlightenment and early-20th-century rationalists. Like the earlier rationalists, the movement, known as the Tendenza, was centered in Italy. Practitioners include Carlo Aymonino (1926–2010), Aldo Rossi (1931–97), and Giorgio Grassi. The Italian design magazine Casabella featured the work of these architects and theorists. The work of architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri influenced the movement, and the University Iuav of Venice emerged as a center of the Tendenza after Tafuri became chair of Architecture History in 1968.:157 et seq. A Tendenza exhibition was organized for the 1973 Milan Triennale.3

Rossi’s book L’architettura della città, published in 1966, and translated into English as The Architecture of the City in 1982, explored several of the ideas that inform Neo-rationalism. In seeking to develop an understanding of the city beyond simple functionalism, Rossi revives the idea of typology, following from Quatremère de Quincy, as a method for understanding buildings, as well as the larger city. He also writes of the importance of monuments as expressions of the collective memory of the city, and the idea of place as an expression of both physical reality and history.

Architects such as Leon Krier, Maurice Culot, and Demetri Porphyrios took Rossi’s ideas to their logical conclusion with a revival of Classical Architecture and Traditional Urbanism. Krier’s witty critique of Modernism, often in the form of cartoons, and Porphyrios’s well crafted philosophical arguments, such as “Classicism is not a Style”, won over a small but talented group of architects to the classical point of view. Organizations such as the Traditional Architecture Group at the RIBA, and the Institute of Classical Architecture attest to their growing number, but mask the Rationalist origins.

In Germany, Oswald Mathias Ungers became the leading practitioner of German rationalism from the mid-1960s. Ungers influenced a younger generation of German architects, including Hans Kollhoff, Max Dudler, and Christoph Mäckler.

Source from Wikipedia

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