Italy: Modern Architectures in History - Softcover

Ghirardo, Diane Yvonne

9781861898647: Italy: Modern Architectures in History

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1861898649 ISBN 13: 9781861898647

Publisher: Reaktion Books, 2011

Throughout the twentieth century, architects in Italy have attempted to define the role of architecture in a capitalist economy and under diverse political systems, from the monarchy of the first seventy years since Italian unification, to the twenty-one years of Fascist control, to the post-World War II parliamentary republic. Early modern architecture coincided with a sustained drive to transform a country that was still primarily rural into a modern industrial state. At the same time, Italy holds some of the most prized architecture and art in the world, from antiquity to the baroque, packed into its dense historic city centres, which planners and politicians have negotiated as they struggled to cope with massive migration from the countryside to the city. Diane Ghirardo addresses these and other issues by considering modern architectural production in Italy from the late nineteenth century to the present day within a clear presentation of the larger historical, social and political contexts. She examines the post-unification efforts to identify a distinctly Italian architectural language, as well as the transformation of the urban environment in Italian cities undergoing industrialization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She challenges received interpretations of modern architecture, and she also focuses on the subject of illegal building and responses to current ecological challenges. Her examples, which also come up to date with work by contemporary architects, are drawn not only from the work of widely published architects from the largest cities such as Rome, Milan and Florence, but from throughout the peninsula, including small towns and rural areas, which further helps to illuminate many things about the building industry in Italy. Italy: Modern Architectures in History provides a fascinating insight into the development of modern architecture and nuanced arguments about architecture and building practices, and it offers a new way of

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Review:

"This is an important book, which analyses modern Italian architecture in its social, economic and cultural context. Ghirardo's original and thought-provoking volume provides the reader with a wealth of information from housing and civic architecture to unauthorised building and the construction industry's impact on the environment. Highly recommended."--John Foot, author of Milan Since the Miracle

"This excellent history of architecture in Italy from unification to the present takes us on a fascinating journey through space and time, in which the built environment and man's traces on the Italian peninsula reveal the country's history, culture and life."--Francesco da Mosto, architect, historian, and television presenter

About the Author:

Diane Ghirardo is Professor of Architecture at the University of Southern California and also teaches at the Politecnico di Torino. She has published widely on Italian architecture.

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