Massimiliano Savorra

Il fenomeno di costruire facciate di chiese antiche e monumentali, da secoli senza "volti", nel secondo Ottocento conosce nuovi significati a partire dal primo concorso per la cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore a Firenze (1861), giungendo all'acme in piena età umbertina, con i concorsi irrisolti per la basilica di San Petronio a Bologna e per il duomo di Milano, e con le innumerevoli facciate di chiese realizzate (Amalfi, Savona, Napoli, Arezzo, Pavia e molte altre). Tale fenomeno coinvolse non solo validi architetti, raffinati eruditi e critici attenti, ma anche uomini politici, amministrazioni civiche e soprattutto cittadini, mediante i comitati promotori e le tante associazioni di raccolta fondi, chiamati a discutere di temi artistici centrali per la cultura identitaria. Esito di una pluriennale ricerca, condotta in numerosi archivi e biblioteche, il libro offre una inedita chiave di lettura del fenomeno, indagando la complessità dei rapporti tra Stato e Chiesa, tra gruppi antipapali e gruppi clericali, e analizzando le singole vicende nel contesto più ampio della rifondazione laica del sistema politico, che da oltre quarant'anni, fin dall'affermarsi del liberalismo cavouriano risorgimentale, stava tentando di imporsi.
Tra ricerca del passato, controversie sulla conservazione, finalità politiche e senso della storia nazionale, il fenomeno si esaurisce nei primi anni del Novecento, quando il dibattito sui monumenti della Terza Italia, quali simulacri del pensiero e dell'identità civile, si sposta verso altre questioni. Analizzando documenti inediti e fonti a stampa poco note, il libro "affronta - come scrive Fabio Mangone nella prefazione - un tema di grande importanza e di grande rilevanza nella vicenda storica dell'architettura post-unitaria, rimasto nel suo complesso - al di là di encomiabili approfondimenti monografici - negletto e inesplorato".

Outcome of a multidisciplinary knowledge path, this book on the Certosa of Trisulti near Collepardo presents for the first time a series of studies, carried out by a research group coordinated by the Università del Molise, on an extraordinary architectural asset.
Developed within the seismic verification project of the State Museums, promoted by the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali e Turismo  and by ARCUS S.p.A. in collaboration with the ReLUIS Interuniversity Consortium, this path, created as part of the seismic risk prevention and mitigation policies, also allows a rereading of the Carthusian monastery, thanks also to the contributions of scholars who have dealt with the theme of the Charterhouse, not only in Italy, through crossed looks and wider contextualizations.
Multiform and exceptional architectural palimpsest inserted in an uncontaminated landscape, the monastic complex of the Certosa of Trisulti, with the church, the cells, the cloisters, the pharmacy, the refectory, the grange and other functional structures, also revives in the drawings and the poetics photographic images of intense evocative value.

Autore del celeberrimo teatro Massimo Vincenzo Bellini di Catania, inaugurato nel 1890, il milanese Carlo Sada (1849- 1924) è stato uno dei protagonisti della cultura architettonica siciliana, tanto da diventare tra Otto e Novecento il più importante professionista al servizio della borghesia e dell'aristocrazia catanese.
Formatosi prima all'Accademia di Brera e poi a Roma presso l'Accademia di San Luca, Sada acquistò notevole esperienza con Andrea Scala, all'epoca il più autorevole architetto di teatri ed edifici per lo spettacolo: al suo seguito, il giovane Sada arrivò a Catania per collaborare con il maestro alla realizzazione dell'importante teatro cittadino allora denominato “Nuovaluce”. Nella città etnea, dove trascorrerà il resto della sua vita, e in tutta la Sicilia orientale, ottiene ben presto numerosissimi incarichi: dalle residenze private ai palazzi pubblici, dai completamenti di chiese al disegno di cappelle ed edicole funerarie. Sada partecipò anche a prestigiosi concorsi nazionali e internazionali inserendosi, con il suo linguaggio eclettico, in quegli orizzonti culturali cosmopoliti che gli consentirono – al pari dei Basile e di Damiani Almeyda – di affermarsi come uno dei più aggiornati architetti operanti nella Sicilia fin de siècle.
Il libro propone una visione di sintesi – finora mai tracciata – della sua biografia, restituendo al contempo un quadro di ampio respiro della sua attività professionale. Grazie allo studio dei materiali documentari, iconografici e a stampa, editi e inediti, conservati in diversi archivi, nonché attraverso la riproduzione di immagini (d'epoca e attuali), si ricostruisce qui l'affascinante vicenda della realizzazione di molte sue opere e la genesi di importanti progetti rimasti sulla carta.

The pensionnaires produced not only the “envois” – official watercolor drawings in large format, well known and widely studied – but also preparatory drawings and many “personal” drawings, some of which represent, in a similar way, the same subjects. The opportunity to compare numerous albums, in particular thanks to several new digital archives, provide a broad overview of the phenomenon. It is possible to trace almost identical copies, sometimes to the point of complete uniformity of some travel portefeuilles. The phenomenon of “exchanges”, and the resulting copies, has been explained, in some cases, by the collaboration between the pensionnaires, who work together in the preparation of the envois.
Yet is it possible to consider copying as a practice determined purely by convention, even when referring to private drawings? First of all, how the drawings reproducing monuments and places were selected to be copied? Were the copies made by the apprentice architects in Paris before the trip, or only after arriving in Rome? Why the work was carried out with so much care and precision, when the private drawings were not intended to be displayed in public and were therefore not subject to any judgment?
Starting from the analysis of the “private” drawings and travel notebooks of the French architects, who operate between the end of the First Empire and the beginning of the July Monarchy, the contribution will answer these questions. Furthermore, by presenting the results of a research on the didactic methods and knowledge practices of Italian archaeological sites and monuments, the contribution aims to understand the dissemination of the images of Italy, and to evaluate how the drawings, through direct observation or serial reproductions, have provided multiple suggestions, useful in the professional and academic future of the French architects.

In the manifestos of “dreaming” architects, synthetic materials gave a new formal connotation to house, at least until the energy crisis of the early 1970s. Starting from the prototypes by Ionel Schein, such plastic cells could later be hooked, as had been envisioned in cluster cities, to vertical structures or set side by side until they formed complex housing units. The circulation of ideas and images produced, between the early 1960s and 1970s, a number of comparable hypotheses similar in purpose and building technique. But were they intriguing opportunity or naïve vision? The paper intends to reflect on how the biological metaphor was used to widen the field of experimentation, sometimes based on debatable theories, including that of plastic as a suitable material for the new visions of the habitat of the future.

In New York, the intertwining of architecture and identity, based on the business sense and on the image, has always been indissoluble. Since the seventies of the nineteenth century, the so-called “city of the anarchies” prepares a believable mis en scene of the nation’s spirit with the spectacular growth of its buildings. Referring to the number of new constructions between 1870 and 1905, the maga- zine «American Architect» publishes impressive numbers, an av- erage of 2,694 per year (with a minimum peak in 1873 of 1,311 and a maximum of 4,894 in 1899). The paper analyzes how, in the space of a century, the perceptions of urban identity have changed, and re-reads the cultural meanings of the image of certain buildings or “iconic” places, interpreting them in the light of their ability of pro- ducing change, even when – once destroyed – only memory remains.

Within the broad scientiic and professional production of the famous city planner Luigi Piccinato, the theme of the theater would seem marginal, as well as limited in terms of time. Yet, we ind it useful to deepen this aspect, which was never explored before, to add an element to the understanding and evaluation of a complex and multifaceted igure with his multiple cultural interests.
Piccinato is interested in theater from professional beginning until the early ifties, conducting studies, giving lectures on the radio, in clubs and in universities, writing articles on stagecraft and on the sense of the modern prose theater. He does this by showing a full knowledge of the subject and the needs of the actors, enactment, and the new theater of dramatized. Moreover, for a few years, just after the Second World War, he also teaches Stagecraft at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome. Moreover, while he is focused on the study and the realization of many plans, Piccinato has the opportunity to conceive a variety of projects for theaters and places for the show.
The “re-establishment” of the theater in which Piccinato made reference was to enhance the environment which was uniformly understood as “space of relationship and experience”, for the viewer as well as for the actor. But mostly the fusion of difer- ent types should lead to a new theater architecture to serve as the essential element of drama. He was rejecting the idea that space was an a priori unchangeable, external to the staging factor, almost like an indiferent to the possible content neutral contain- er. Indeed, the spatial dimension of a show could become part of the creative process of the show itself; theatrical container could be designed so every time in a diferent way and ad hoc.

In the post-war, Italian industry feels the need to identify what has been called a “cultural policy”, while, following U.S. models, it attempts to define an authoritative and recognizable corporate identity. Since the early fifties in some large companies arises the idea of being able to combine the renewal programs of the neo-capitalist theories about public institution with the aesthetic sense of fine artists or cultured engineers. Therefore, in a wide variety of activities, the corporate image is also expressed through spectacular “advertising architecture”. In particular, the Milan Fair, considered the largest Italian exhibition of postwar, became big business for the main site to show the new facies. Since 1951, communication skills and modern visions of corporate identity are shaped in temporary structures. However, how stunning advertising architectures are designed? How architects and engineers meet customer demands? How does the "image" of the industry for the general public is built? These works can be considered milestones of structural short lived technology? The contribution aims to answer these questions by analyzing the forms, techniques and decisions taken by the industry in developing large complex systems, temporary facilities, with new pavilions. The contribution also aims to investigate the technical construction of the architecture of Baldessari (Breda, Sidercomit), but also of Bianchetti and Pea (Montecatini, Italviscosa), Scoccimarro (Fiat), Zavanella (OM) Bacciocchi (ENI). These architects built stunning pavilions from the technological point of view (no longer existing), which are part of a network composed of words and visual images with a background full of rhetoric and of the “architectures to communicate”.

In the early Fifties Enrico Mattei asked Mario Bacciocchi to realize “Metanopoli”, a company town for the Agip-Snam (later Eni), following the principles of the “rational” design solutions. In order to understand the project motivations, it is necessary to retrace the biographies of its protagonists and the background within which certain choices matured. But, if the life of the founder of the energy corporation and its links with the Catholic world have been the subject of a copious bibliography, the intense “professional journey” of Bacciocchi, a leading architect of the past century, is still to be investigated, also considering the dispersion of a large part of his private archive and the absence of primary sources and personal writings. Bacciocchi was not only Enrico Mattei's architect. Since 1925 he starts an intense activity characterized by the creation of architectures that reflect significantly the climate of the Italian professional culture of the Twentieth Century. Thanks to the study of the few unpublished materials from the archive held by the heirs, the contribution focuses on the figure of Bacciocchi, framing it in the historical context and trying to explain the genesis of some of his projects, developed before, during and after the war, in other words, before, during and after Mattei. This article is the first attempt to articulate a critical reconstruction of the biography of Mario Bacciocchi (1902-1974).

Born from the transformation of the former complex of San Giovanniello, the Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Naples by Enrico Alvino, described as “one of the most happy of all production Neapolitan Nineteenth century”, has been analyzed, both in reference to urban transformations and conversion of the monastery in the academy, and in relation to the next, intricate construction phases. Yet, despite the important studies have appeared, remain many areas in the knowledge of the most important work of the Neapolitan Architect. We do not know the final plans drawn up by the Professor of Architecture. Nor it has survived the many elaborate preparatory drawings signed by Alvino that would allow an overall interpretation of the sequence of the different project phases. For these reasons, the discovery of a project at the Central State Archive of Rome - than was actually built - takes on considerable importance.

Autumn 1963-Winter 1964: a reflection on the genesis of a renewed historiography of design should begin by analyzing this period of time. During the preparation of the XIII Triennale di Milano, dedicated to the topic of Leisure time, the need arose to systematically deal with the study of Design, identifying it – as Vittorio Gregotti wrote – in a unitary project method, not only in the exclusive field of the decorative and industrial arts. But above all, the need was felt to “attack the problems” of the young discipline of Design, far from a “definitive settlement” as stated by Gregotti, who was among the protagonists, with Umberto Eco, of the spectacular Milan event of the summer 1964. So, in this period the idea of a monographic issue of the magazine “Edilizia Moderna”, exclusively dedicated to Design issues, was developed. During this period an attempt was made to build an “alternative” to the historical narrative of the industrial product. This article explores the influence of the “experimentalism” of the Gruppo 63 in the historiographical construction of Design.

The article focuses on the Beaux-Arts pedagogic model – as it is known, based on the knowledge of the history of architecture through travel in Italy – and the influence exercised in American architecture schools. In particular, the contribution explores the figure of Alfred Dwight Foster Hamlin, among the most important architectural historians in US, and his teaching at the Columbia University School of Architecture.

Law and nature. Institutional strategies for the safeguard of the panorama at Naples (1922–1939)

The impact of legislative measures aimed at the safeguard and conservation of sites of scenic beauty remains a question relatively little investigated by the otherwise copious literature on the policies of the institutional organs during the two decades of the fascist regime in Italy; especially if we consider that 1922, the year of the birth of the “new era”, coincided with the year in which the first Italian law on the protection of natural beauties was promulgated. The Law in question was no. 778 of 11 June 1922: “For the protection of natural beauties and properties of particular historical interest”. In this context, the case of Naples in the period 1920–1940 appears particularly significant for understanding the strategy adopted by the Italian state institutions for the safeguard of the panorama, since it is at once exceptional and paradigmatic.
Naples in fact is the one Italian, and perhaps even European, city where the problem of the protection of scenic beauties was strongly felt as early as the first half of the nineteenth century.
In the light of unpublished documentation uncovered during research conducted by the author in the Archive of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Ambientali e Architettonici in Naples, the present contribution illustrates in particular the procedure for the implementation of the environmental constraints imposed by Law no. 778 of 11 June 1922 and evaluates their effectiveness in a city like Naples through the analysis of some significant urban episodes.
The paper also tries to clarify how a decentralized organ of the Ministry entrusted with the task of safeguard tried to manage the unresolved conflicts between public and private interests generated by a law largely based on an abstract principle such as that of “panorama”.
(BOLLETTINO D'ARTE - ESTRATTO DAL FASC. 115)