Rational City (Part I)

Rational City (Part I) LUCIO VALERIO BARBERA1 Abstract: Can Giuseppe Pagano’s city, in which, with little effort, we could imagine being realized many of the architectural ideas of the young Italian rationalists who came from the Gruppo 7 and the MIAR, be called the Rational City (if with some audacity)? As in fact Rational Architecture was what everyone called what was presented in the Prima Esposizione (First Exhibition) of 1928 in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and the subsequent one in 1931, also held in Rome, in the Galleria Bardi. The problem arises, therefore, of clarifying the meaning, first of all, that those young people intended to attribute to the adjective Rational – and its derived noun Rationalism. Key words: Rational City, Rational Architecture, Gruppo 7. Premise 1) These notes arise from a question seemingly long since answered. Or perhaps, not even (or no longer) to be posed. But I am fortunate, at my age, to be able to participate comfortably, only as an observer, in some well-aimed critical elaborations on modern Italian architecture which young people of undoubted worth try to formulate their PhD thesis, the inaugural stone of their academic dream. They are a joyful and difficult age which I also remember having been and was for me an age of broad, endless discussions among us youth, struggling with a discipline (or an art?), which we had begun to really know only at the university. Some in our group, as often happens, had come to architecture having become passionate about some other art, learning painting or modeling clay or even chipping at stone in the first burst of adolescent creative passion, well before enrolling at university. But no one would have really been able to try architecture except through scholastic drawings copying photographs and some bold sketches of the imagination, with no notion 1. Lucio Valerio Barbera: Professor of Architecture and Urban Design, Sapienza University of Rome; email: [email protected]. 99 L’ADC L’architettura delle città. The Journal of the Scientific Society Ludovico Quaroni, n. 9/2016 of perspective and statics, very little of history, and extremely little of criticism. Yet we were there, in a school that, with its strongly conservative attitude – especially in the freshman years – spurred our reaction to read magazines and books, very old or up to date, still practically forbidden – in any case, not recommended – in a passionate attempt to rebuild by ourselves, by reading and discussing, the birth of modern architecture, especially Italian architecture. Competing among ourselves, with the passionate young people’s propensity to favor critical creativity over philology, we applied in turns – or together – daring brushstrokes of thoughts imperfectly learned onto the large canvas over which we were struggling. And as we studied it and discussed it, the uncertain image that seemed to take shape on that canvas seemed evermore heroically imbued with contradictions and with politics, with beauty and drama, with faith and error, so much so that present in architecture and in the city appeared to be a a dull entr’acte, which undeservedly filled the proscenium of history. So in each one of us – each so different – a common feeling was formed: that of having to contribute in some way so that, finally, the curtain could open again on real life; the one in which architecture was once again the vanguard – struggle and hope – of a better world. Our world. We read a lot and discussed a lot; in the ordeal, from the words of the best we learned the need to study more to return to the most ironclad comparison in order to formulate unusual critical and unprecedented interpretations in the competition, so that we could become, for once, victorious. They were years of ‘crazy and desperate’ self-training. To those who were not part of our group, we certainly must have looked like an unfriendly and closed presumptuous elite. And we were; at the same time absolutely inelegant, competitive, presumptuous, selective. But some were really chic, some truly good. Not me. However, each of us owes a lot to those years. To me of that time has remained, indeed, the nostalgia of our interminable discussions on the architecture of the first Italian modernity, while – I realize now – in my memories the traces of our endless investigations are still intact; itineraries that seem ready to reopen the paths of the discussion if I but step onto them. So, when Ilaria Bernardi, Italian architect and PhD student at the University of Madrid (now already brilliantly graduated), a few months ago wanted to have me read the draft of her PhD thesis entitled: Il Gruppo 7 nella formazione dell’architettura razionalista italiana (Group 7 in the formation of Italian rationalist architecture), the games of past days seemed truly to come back to me. And I, who am certainly not a critic nor a historian, succeeded in attracting Giorgio 100 LUCIO VALERIO BARBERA Rational City Ciucci to play the part of the most talented of those times, as he is today. Above all others. I’m truly grateful. And I also schemed to call into the game Antonino Saggio, of whom the passionate ‘Terragni’ is known to us all, to represent the link between Ilaria’s generation and mine, introducing into the debate the sense of modern communication, informal, intuitive, certainly refined by the customary to the most spectacular spectacle of digital instruments, brilliant in his speech that is almost journalistic in the anxiety of being well understood by young people today. The conversation encounters on the topic were few for me, maybe few even given the topic. But the taste for dissertation, of the critical hazard for those who, like me, not a critic, once rekindled is difficult to extinguish. So today I can not resist the temptation to resume – with myself – the new conversation starting from a question that emerged in those very recent talks and which – as I said at the beginning – has long since been exhausted, perhaps it is not even a real question, but simply an excuse. So, just like those our ancient conversations, crazy and desperate, this monologue of mine will be a coming and going between ideas and texts and facts of history as only those affected by “passionate incompetence”2 – like me now and us all in those times – can afford to propose. But due to my shortness of breath we will go slowly. In stages, of which the text published here is but the first. Reason 2) One question: can the modern city proposed by young Lombard architects under the guidance or enthusiastic protection of Giuseppe Pagano really be said, the Città Razionale (rational city)? Let me clarify: the projects of Milano verde (1938) and of the Horizontal City (1940) where, with little effort and somewhat superficially, we could imagine the architectural ideas of the young Italian rationalists who founded the Group 7 a few years earlier to be realized on an urban scale considered the continuation of that idea of Architettura Razionale (Rational Architecture) that the young people of that avant-garde group presented in the First Exhibition of 1928 in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome (and then, in 1931, in the new Galleria Bardi in Rome)? To answer the question, therefore, we ought to first clarify the meaning that these young innovators intended to attribute to the adjective Rational – and its derived noun: Rationalism. A problem that I do not think is 2. Appassionata incompetenza is the title of one of the last, if not the last, book edited by Massimo Bontem- pelli, which I had the privilege of receiving directly from his own hands in 1949, in my teen years. 101 L’ADC L’architettura delle città. The Journal of the Scientific Society Ludovico Quaroni, n. 9/2016 easily solvable in these few paragraphs, since one of the reasons for the choice of that adjective – rational – to signify the new architecture, I believe, was precisely in the communicative power of polysemic nature, as linguists would say, that it acquired once applied to the world of architecture; where it could draw upon itself different interpretations, each with its own and varied roots – from philosophy, history, to the history of architecture. But a second and related reason for the choice of that adjective would undoubtedly have been its ability to transmit, easily, to a large audience, the idea of some geometric clarity of architectural thought and of the forms chosen to make it real. Finally, in the first half of the twentieth century in a country such Italy, which sought its modernity with ardor and error, that term so full of nuances must also seem the most suitable to mean the wish to adhere, in the project, the social reason of the mass city and the economic reason of modern industrial production of architecture and its apparatus. Untangling such a rich and elusive skein is certainly a matter for the historical and critical illustrious of modern architecture, already well versed and who will continue, I am sure, without questioning, I believe, the agreed and shared conviction that that adjective, rational, used to signify the architecture of modernity, both an all-Italian creation and referring to Italian architecture. Which also justifies the not uncommon uncertainties in its use by those young Italian architects when they intended to compare their thinking more closely with that of international modernist currents. Less probed, however, it seems to me, has been the assessment of how much, in the choice of that adjective of great identity value, played the exalted cultural controversy, between German civilization and Franco-Latin civilization that accompanied the First World War since the beginning and indeed, for Italy – late in entering the war – began prior to our initial entry into the war.

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