Paradoxes of Neorealist Architecture

İstanbul Ticaret Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Dergisi Yıl: 13 Sayı: 26 Güz 2014 s. 49-59 PARADOXES OF NEOREALIST ARCHITECTURE ∗ Didem BOYACIOĞLU ABSTRACT Neorealism is one of the most important movements in the history of Italian literature, cinema and architecture. Flourished especially after the Second World War, Neorealism sought to deal with the economic and social problems of the postwar period within the concept of “reality” which involves some paradoxical meanings. This paper aims to accentuate those paradoxical aspects of Neorealist architecture by focusing on Tiburtino District which is supposed to be the most notable example of Neorealism. The subject is discussed with the titles of “designed history”, “erased architectural composition”, “studied happenstances”, “imperfection of religion” and “aesthetics of ugly”. Keywords:Neorealism, Neorealist architecture, Tiburtino District NEOREALİST MİMARİNİN PARADOKSLARI ÖZET Neorealizm ya da Yeni Gerçekçilik Akımı II. Dünya Savaşı sonrasında İtalya’da ortaya çıkmış ve İtalyan sinema, edebiyat ve mimarlık tarihi içerisinde önemli izler bırakmış bir akımdır. Savaş sonrası toplumun içinde bulunduğu ekonomik ve sosyal sorunlara yönelen bu akım “gerçeklik” teması üzerinden gelişmiştir. Bununla birlikte ulaşılmaya çalışılan gerçekliğin bazı paradoksal yaklaşımlara yol açtığı görülmektedir.Bu yazıda Neorealist mimarinin içerdiği paradokslara dikkat çekilmesi ve konunun bu bağlamda tartışılması amaçlanmaktadır. Neorealizmin en dikkate değer örneklerinden biri olan Tiburtino yerleşimi esas alınarak yapılan değerlendirmeler tasarıma hakim olan dualist yaklaşımı ortaya koymaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: Neorealizm, Neorealist mimari, Tiburtino Yerleşimi ∗ [email protected] Didem BOYACIOĞLU 1. INTRODUCTION The immediate postwar period of the late 1940s in the history of the Italian art and architecture is dominated by the impact of Neorealism. The atmosphere that existed throughout the Italy after the war was depressing: the country was suffering from poverty, unemployment and alienation. Under such difficult economic and moral conditions Neorealism has taken the concept of “reality” in order to define a language that would address the poorer classes and rural immigrants who were viewed as the protagonists of the reconstruction of Italy after the Second World War (Tafuri and Dal Co, 1986). As described very well by Gianni Rondolino “In the face of a mutilated society there was a desire for a sincere art, capable of giving a voice to the defeated: an art to serve reality, to revive itself in the Neo-realism of the image” (Reichlin, 2001). Therefore, Neorealist design rooted in “everyday urban reality” and took the vernacular as the basis of its ideology as an attempt to regain an identity after the war (Curtis, 1996). However, it was not a formal or ideological program propagated through manifestos; on the contrary it was a sort of reaction against rhetoric which was embodied in the vocabulary of fascist propaganda. During the postwar years there was a collective desire to forget the dictatorship. Fascism was depicted as a period of “unreality” like a parenthesis inside the history and time or an “intellectual and moral disease” that infected Italians lives for years. Thus, avoiding all references to the regime but concentrating on the “reality” of the ordinary people was what the Neorealist art and architecture tended to do (Ben-ghiat, 1995). However what was done to achieve this reality involves some paradoxes*. The aim of this paper is to discuss these paradoxes of Neorealist architecture by focusing on the Tiburtino District as a case study. 2. NEOREALIST CINEMA Neorealist cinema is the most well-known product of this era and a kind of response to the films of the fascist era which are named as telefoni bianchi (white telephone) films because of the frequent inclusion of a white telephone in the bedroom as the status symbol of bourgeois wealth * Paradox is a statement that seems to be impossible but that is or may be true (Wehmeier, 1993). 50 İstanbul Ticaret Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Dergisi Güz 2014 (Piepergerdes, 2007). Telefoni bianchi films were the imitation of American comedies of the time and tended to be socially conservative, promoting family values, authority and the class hierarchy, including all political expressions of fascist ideology (www.en.wikipedia.org). Instead of that idealized depictions of telefono bianco genre, Neorealist filmmakers dealt with the social truths of the postwar period, emphasizing the difficult economic and moral conditions of poor and the working class (Piepergerdes, 2007). Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (Obsession, 1943), Roberto Rossellini’s Roma Citta Aperta (Rome, Open City, 1946) and Vittorio De Sica’s Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948) are the most famous films of the era (Piepergerdes, 2007). The techniques used for the portrayal of that social reality are the use of non- professional actors, sometimes even for principle roles; the use of actual locations, usually exteriors rather than studio sets; the use of natural lighting; the use of conversational speech rather than highly scripted dialogues and shot in a documentary-like style (Greenburg, 2010) (Figure 1). They preferred hand-held cameras for longer shots and easy mobility, as well as a documentary quality. Apart from the desire to create a kind of “planned spontaneity”, the conditions of the postwar period, law budgets and inadequate equipment, forced the filmmakers to work with what they had at the moment (Greenburg, 2010). All the techniques mentioned above were both situational and also perfectly compatible with the ideological character of Neorealism. Figure 1: Bicycle Thieves (1948) (Piepergerdes, 2007) 51 Didem BOYACIOĞLU Italian Neorealism rapidly declined after the 1950s with the beginning of the economic growth in the country, the period which is often named by the historians as the “Italian economic miracle”. Levels of income were gradually starting to rise and most Italians began to favor the optimism shown in American movies of the time (www.en.wikipedia.org). 3. NEOREALIST ARCHITECTURE AND TIBURTINO DISTRICT As an architectural movement derived from literature and cinema, Neorealist architecture had dealt with the social and economic needs of the postwar Italian society in a sense of ideologically oriented reality which found its subject in the state-sponsored housing projects or social center projects for the youth and the working class (Shiel, 2008). Italy’s most practically and symbolically important architectural problem of the post war period was the shortage of housing. It was a critical issue not only for the working class communities but also for the large numbers of people who became homeless after the war and for the immigrants as well (Shiel, 2008). In 1949, the government announced a program to provide subsidized public housing on a national basis under the aegis of Instituto Nazionale Assicurazioni (I.N.A.-Casa) (Doordan, 1989). Tiburtino District of Rome, chosen as a case study of this paper, is supposed to be the most notable example of Neorealist architecture. It was designed for the rural immigrants by a group of architects directed by Mario Ridolfi and Ludovico Quaroni and assisted by various younger collaborators including Carlo Aymonino, in the years of 1949-1954, within the context of that I.N.A.-Casa Program (Forty, 2000). The site is located 7 km. east of Rome and composed of 771 units in order to house a projected population of 4000 inhabitants (Lobsinger, 2012). The characteristic features of the Tiburtino project can be summarized as follows: • The environment must be known and understandable for the inhabitants. • A kind of architectural dialect was supposed to be created by using vernacular forms. • The buildings should appear happenstance, non-formal and realistic. When referring to their approach to design and choice of architectural language, one can say that the designers of the Tiburtino District had invoked 52 İstanbul Ticaret Üniversitesi Fen Bilimleri Dergisi Güz 2014 the neorealist cinematic techniques for the creation of the image of “reality” which caused a paradoxical effect on design. The paradoxes of Neorealist architecture are discussed with the titles of “designed history”, “erased architectural composition”, “studied happenstances”, “imperfection of religion” and “aesthetics of ugly”. 3.1. Paradox 1- Designed History Memory of the site is supposed to be an important criterion for the creative process of design. Roughly, it can be classified in two groups such as; material and immaterial memory. Location and context, including landscape, texture and topography constitute the material memory of the site, while the immaterial memory is the residue of all past life there; events, relations and reminiscences (Alvarez, 2009). Seen from this aspect, the design process of Tiburtino District has one more component, which can be named as “exported memory” of the site. According to the characteristics of Neorealist architecture, the space should be designed in a way that it had to appear to its new inhabitants, who were experiencing the most violent political and social shock of their lives, as the product of historic sedimentation (Reichlin, 2001). Moreover, the new inhabitants would come to consider themselves as being the ones who had built that “place laden with history”. The memory of what they had left behind is the exported memory of the site. At the end, paradoxically, a bit of a historic city or town was

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