Scapes n.6 (Fall 2007)

Department of Architecture,
Interior Design, and Lighting
scapes
Number 6, Fall 2007
contents
02 chair’s letter
Kent Kleinman
03 public works
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury
04 positions / practicing sustainability by design: global warming politics in
a post-awareness world
Department of Architecture,
Interior Design and Lighting
Parsons The New School for Design
www.parsons.edu/aidl
This issue of Scapes was edited by Joanna Merwood-Salisbury.
Scapes 6 was designed by Mariana Hardy and Rodrigo
Marchezine with the help of Marcelo Dante.
epacs
Correspondence may be sent to Scapes c/o Department of
Architecture, Interior Design and Lighting, Parsons The New
School for Design, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10011.
Cover image: Caricuao, Caracas. Summer 2006.
Photo courtesy Katharine Saxby.
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Cameron Tonkinwise
14 improvised urbanisms: democracy
and power in the informal city
Nader Vossoughian
26 architecture and revolution on the
street of empire
David Rifkind
42 race, space and architecture in
oakland cemetery
Benjamin Flowers
52 an interview with majora carter
58 how dark is our future?
Nathalie Rozot
Photographs by Katharine Saxby
60 departmental programs
architecture and revolution on
the street of empire
As the national headquarters of the fascist party, the Palazzo del Littorio would mark
the center of power in state affairs, and it would focus on the charismatic dictatorship
of Mussolini. Decrees from Mussolini’s balcony at his provisional headquarters in the
Palazzo Venezia carried greater significance than any parliamentary or ministerial action,
and the PNF intended its permanent seat to manifest the hierarchical structure of the
Fascist state, climaxing in the Duce’s arengario (rostrum) above the ruins of imperial
Rome. The nature of the commission compelled architects to form increasingly refined
arguments about the symbolic and rhetorical efficacy of modern architecture as a form
of political representation in fascist Italy.3
David Rifkind
“The polemic within architecture is a profoundly political polemic.”
Massimo Bontempelli1
“I want to state unequivocally that I am for modern architecture, for an architecture of
our time,” declared Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on 10 June 1934, adding, “and
I would be immensely displeased if you thought that work did not please me.”2
Mussolini was addressing a group of architects that included the designers of two
recently inaugurated and controversial projects: the Florence train station and the town
of Sabaudia in the Pontine marshes. But his intended audience was the jury that
would soon adjudicate the architectural competition for the Palazzo del Littorio, the
proposed headquarters for Mussolini’s National Fascist Party (PNF).
1. Massimo Bontempelli,
“L’architettura come morale
e politica,” (August 1933) in
L’avventura novecentista (Florence:
Vallecchi editore, 1972), 477-478.
2. Benito Mussolini, “Non
aver paura di avere coraggio,”
transcript of meeting 10 June 1934
distributed to the participants,
reprinted in Carlo Fabrizio Carli
Ed., Architettura e fascismo (Rome:
Giovanni Volpe Editore, 1980), 95.
The meeting was also reported
in the national press, based
on a press release by the Agenzia
Stefani. See for example, “Per
la giovane architettura italiana”
L’Italia vivente (10 June 1934).
Figure 1 The newly-constructed
Via dell’Impero (Street of Empire)
cut through the imperial fora
between Piazza Venezia (site of
Mussolini’s headquarters) and
the Colosseum. The triangular
lot formed to the left (partly
obscured by the hand) was the
proposed site for headquarters
of the National Fascist Party
(PNF). Pietro Maria Bardi,
“Questo non lo permetteremo,”
Quadrante 18 (October 1934), 7.
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This essay addresses two projects that used modern architecture to embody the values
and goals of the fascist regime. Both were associated with the most militantly polemical
and political of interwar Italian architecture journals, Quadrante, directed by art critic
and gallery owner Pietro Maria Bardi and novelist and playwright Massimo Bontempelli
between 1933 and 1936. One entry bore the signature of the “Gruppo Quadrante,” a
collaboration of partners Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini, with BBPR (Gianluigi Banfi,
Ludovico Belgioioso, Enrico Peressutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers) and engineer Arturo
Danusso, while the competition’s best known project was one of two designed by the
“Gruppo Milanese,” which included Quadrante co-founders Pietro Lingeri, Giuseppe
Terragni and Marcello Nizzoli, along with Antonio Carminati, Ernesto Saliva, Luigi
Vietti and Mario Sironi. The journal reprinted the Gruppo Quadrante’s project and
explanatory text in Quadrante 16/17 (August/September 1934), a double issue devoted
to their submission.4 The following issue, Quadrante 18 (October 1934) published the
Gruppo Milanese’s project.5 Here, as in the case of the later Casa del Fascio by Terragni,
Quadrante addressed the question of what, exactly, a fascist architecture should look like.
“The Most Meaningful and Important Artistic Fact of our Fascist Epoch”
The Gruppo Quadrante and Gruppo Milanese shared two fundamental convictions:
that Rationalism (the Italian branch of the modern movement) was uniquely
representative of fascism, and that Rationalism was continuous with the tradition of
classical architecture. “The spiritual aims of Italian modern architecture are intimately
tied to Fascism,” declared the Gruppo Quadrante in the first sentence of their text.6
Introducing their project, critic Carlo Belli wrote unequivocally, if enigmatically,
“Everyone today is convinced: only rationalist architecture can express the slender and
profound, agile and powerful spirit of Fascism.”7 “The project which must emerge
victorious in this contest,” concluded the Gruppo Milanese, “to close this polemical
phase, will open a constructive period of the highest political significance: the
Architecture of Fascism.”8
The designs for the Palazzo del Littorio by the Gruppo Quadrante and the Gruppo
Milanese demonstrate five common themes: they established the symbolic presence of the
Duce; they affirmed the hierarchical structure of the Fascist Party, with Mussolini at its
apex; they legitimized the single-party state by conflating state and party iconography;9
they represented the political values of the Fascist Party through the use of materials and
3. Good descriptions of the
Palazzo del Littorio competition
appear in Carol Rusche, “Ancient
and Modern: The Palazzo del
Littorio Competition,” Architecture
Today 3 (November 1989), 3033; Dennis Doordan, Building
Modern Italy: Italian Architecture
1914-1936 (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 1988), 134137; Richard Etlin, Modernism in
Italian Architecture, 1890-1940
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1991), 426-434; and Thomas
Schumacher, Surface and Symbol:
Giuseppe Terragni and the
Architecture of Italian Rationalism
(New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 1991), 173-188.
4. Gruppo Quadrante (Banfi,
Belgiojoso, Danusso, Figini,
Peressutti, Pollini and Rogers),
“Relazione al Progetto del Palazzo
del Littorio,” Quadrante 16/17
(August/September 1934), 13.
5. Quadrante 18 (October 1934)
also published several other
entries, including one by Gruppo 7
member Adalberto Libera. These
were accompanied by satirical
photomontages in which Bardi
criticized the academic solutions
to the competition and questioned
the jury’s integrity. Quadrante
further examined and expounded
upon the Palazzo del Littorio
competition in its three subsequent
issues.
6. Gruppo Quadrante, 13. See
also the coverage of the Gruppo
Quadrante project in Il Nuovo
stile littorio: I progetti per il
palazzo del littorio e della mostra
della rivoluzione fascista in Via
dell’impero (Milan/Rome: S. A.
Grafiche Bertarelli, 1936), 115-120.
7. Carlo Belli, “Atto di fede,”
Quadrante 16/17 (August/
September 1934), 10.
8. Gruppo Milanese (Carminati,
Lingeri, Saliva, Terragni, Vietti),
“Due altri progetti,” Quadrante 18
(November 1934), 18.
9. Doordan, 134.
architecture and revolution
27
formal relationships; and they constructed a uniquely fascist identity, stressing national
(rather than regional) allegiances and emphasizing the formation and exploitation of a
mass identity for the public.
in a ceremony replete with military parades evocative of the empire’s triumphant legions.
The Palazzo del Littorio would sit directly across from the remains of the fourth-century
Basilica of Maxentius, one of the largest extant imperial-era structures in the city.
The Palazzo del Littorio competition illustrated the Quadrante circle’s commitment to
collaboration, and reflected the collaborative production of the publication itself. The
two groups most closely associated with the journal were the largest design teams in the
competition; each had seven members, while most entries to the competition had one
or two designers. Their dedication to cooperation matched concerns expressed earlier
in the seminal Gruppo 7 manifesto of 1926-27 and “Un programma di Architettura,”
the journal’s first statement on architecture.10 Quadrante’s editorial structure, in which
large teams co-produced the publication without individual attribution, anticipated
and facilitated the Palazzo del Littorio competition entries’ collective design process.
To the Quadrante circle, artistic and editorial collaboration mirrored the fascist regime’s
promotion of political consensus.
The aesthetic stakes were high, both for Italian architecture and for the regime. Given
Mussolini’s notorious reluctance to alienate key constituencies by providing a precise
program for the fascist state, any attempt to represent the party or the state was fraught
with peril; to represent the fascist state meant to define it. Yet the competition elicited
great excitement among architects with its potential to answer definitively the question
of what a fascist architecture would look like. The anonymous editor of the volume
collecting the seventy-one entries echoed a popular sentiment, ”[…] nobody doubts –
and this conviction will become an ever greater certainty – that this competition is the
most meaningful and important artistic fact of our Fascist epoch.”13
Corollary to Quadrante’s concern with collectivity was the Rationalists’ desire to use
architecture to form a mass identity on the part of the public. Having taken power in
part through the selective employment of mob violence, the government recognized the
need to establish social order. Architecture and urban design could potentially offer tools
to transform unruly crowds into obedient masses. The Gruppo Quadrante and Gruppo
Milanese projects carefully defined exterior spaces in which architecture would gather,
embrace and direct the multitudes. These urban designs drew Rome’s sacred past; here
hordes became “congregations,” focused on Mussolini’s rostrum. By comparison, most of
the Neoclassical and Stile Littorio entries to the competition filled the site with buildings
whose bombastic forms spoke of “authority” in conventional terms, but stood aloof and
separate from, rather than engaging, the masses.
The building’s program included a range of party offices, both administrative and
ceremonial, and a series of meeting halls to host assemblies of 1,000, 500 and 200
persons. It specified a suite of offices dedicated to Mussolini’s use that would lead to
the arengario (balcony), from which he could address the masses gathered outside.
Separate from these facilities, the complex included a permanent home for the Mostra
della Rivoluzione Fascista (Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution) and a Sacrario (chapel
or shrine), which would accommodate religious observances, including Mass.11
The site chosen by the PNF for the Palazzo del Littorio reinforced the importance of
imperial Rome as a model for fascist Italy on numerous levels. The construction of the
Via dell’Impero (Street of Empire), which cut through the imperial fora between Piazza
Venezia (site of Mussolini’s headquarters) and the Colosseum, had formed the triangular
lot (Figure 1). “The Via dell’Impero is the center of the world,” wrote Bontempelli
soon afterward, adding, after a parenthetical statement, “Via dell’Impero is the solution
to the fundamental problem that taxes Fascism: to make the Rome of the past energize
the Rome of the present.”12 Mussolini dedicated the new road (and the Mostra della
Rivoluzione Fascista) on 28 October 1932, the tenth anniversary of the March on Rome,
28
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The Gruppo Quadrante
10. Piero Bottoni, Mario Cereghini,
Luigi Figini, Guido Frette,
Enrico A. Griffini, Pietro Lingeri,
Gino Pollini, Gian Luigi Banfi,
Ludovico Belgioioso, Enrico
Peressutti, Ernesto Nathan Rogers,
“Un programma di architettura,”
Quadrante 1 (May 1933), 5-6.
Ellen R. Shapiro translated the
four-part Gruppo 7 manifesto as
“Architecture” and “Architecture II:
The Foreigner,” Oppositions 6 (Fall
1976), 86-102; “Architecture III:
Unpreparedness-IncomprehensionPrejudice” and “Architecture IV: A
New Archaic Era,” Oppositions 12
(Spring 1978), 88-104.
11. The competition program
differentiated between the
Palazzo del Littorio, which referred
specifically to the offices and
assembly rooms dedicated to Party
use, and the public facilities for the
Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista
and the Sacrario. The competitors
maintained this distinction when
talking about the programmatic
elements within the complex, but
used the name Palazzo del Littorio
to describe the complex as a
whole in relation to its context.
I maintain this usage in my text.
12. Massimo Bontempelli,
“[Ristampe] Proposta per Via
dell’Impero,” Quadrante 18
(October 1934), 21. Originally
published in Gazzetta del Popolo
(13 December 1932).
“Purity and order intimately tie Fascism to our architecture;” explained the Gruppo
Quadrante, “both are realizations of an epoch that has felt the need for spiritual and
formal renewal.”14 The group sought to define a sacred precinct in which to celebrate the
“secular liturgy of fascism” amidst the ruins of imperial Rome. The solemn spaces, strict
geometries and traditional materials of their project exemplified what the team called the
“classical spirit” animating modern architecture and the spartan discipline that “binds
the aesthetic to the ethical.”15 No building in interwar Italy came closer to realizing the
“noble spirituality” Le Corbusier ascribed to the Parthenon.16
In his preface to the Gruppo Quadrante’s project, Carlo Belli emphasized the design’s
conceptual ties to the architecture of ancient Greece, reiterating the Gruppo 7’s earlier
contention that modern architecture could manifest the spirit of antiquity through the
harmonious use of proportions, rhythms, geometries and materials. “The day of the
great test has come,” declared Belli. He claimed that the competition for the Palazzo
del Littorio represented the turning point in the epochal battle for the renewal of
architecture in fascist Italy, and saw the Gruppo Quadrante’s project as definitive proof
of Rationalism’s devotion to fascism. Belli called the design an “act of faith.”
Reality, purity, intransigence, clarity, antirhetoric, daring, practicality, economy,
that is to say: beauty. Aren’t these elements of the new architecture just as much
principles of Fascist ethics? Who would dare to deny it?17
13. [Plinio Marconi],
“Presentazione,” in Il Nuovo
stile littorio: I progetti per il
palazzo del littorio e della mostra
della rivoluzione fascista in Via
dell’impero (Milan/Rome: S. A.
Grafiche Bertarelli, 1936), vii.
14. Gruppo Quadrante, 13-14.
The Gruppo Quadrante filled the triangular site with a seven-meter-high plinth, faced
with local tufa stone in an opus incertum pattern, atop which they placed elementary
volumes accommodating different programmatic functions (Figures 2 and 3).18 The
architects set the ashlar stone slab of the Sacrario toward Via dell’Impero and the hovering
mass of the Mostra della Rivoluzione (raised on piloti), housing the administrative
functions, in front of the glazed volume of the palazzo. These three elements surrounded
the piazza d’onore (plaza of honor) on the plinth, which the architects envisioned hosting
15. Gruppo Quadrante, 14.
16. Le Corbusier, Towards a New
Architecture, trans. Frederick
Etchells (New York: Payson &
Clarke, Ltd., 1927), 147.
17. Belli, 9.
18. Gruppo Quadrante, 13, 17.
architecture and revolution
29
Figure 2 The Gruppo Quadrante’s proposed design for the
Palazzo del Littorio (PNF headquarters) comprised elementary
volumes, each accommodating a different programmatic function,
atop a seven-meter-high plinth.
Figure 3 In the photograph of the model, the Basilica of Maxentius is at the bottom of the image. Quadrante 16/17 (August/
September 1934), 15.
Figure 4 The piazza d’onore of the Gruppo Quadrante scheme
resembled the nearby Campidoglio. The equestrian statue of
Mussolini faces the Basilica of Maxentius across via dell’Impero.
Quadrante 16/17 (August/September 1934), 35.
from antiquity. The Gruppo Quadrante located their statue off-center, though, in order
to facilitate the piazza’s use for mass rallies. It comprised the sole work of decorative art
in the complex. “No allegory, no rhetoric,” they wrote, echoing Bontempelli. “Only
the Duce on his horse, personification of dominance, will be on this piazza, where the
gathered masses constitute the vivid art within the architecture.”19
The project’s spare vocabulary, which Belli lauded for its “purity of expressions,” reflected
its designers’ belief that the spirit of classicism consisted of geometry, proportionality,
composition and refinement.20 Like Le Corbusier, they equated the visual refinement
of Hellenic architecture with the mechanical precision of contemporary engineering.
“The absolute mathematical relationships,” they wrote, “that have dictated the laws of
the pyramids, of the Parthenon and of the Colosseum, will tie together the masses of
the Palazzo del Littorio with a constant module.”21 Quadrante 5, the issue dedicated
to the 1933 CIAM, also featured numerous photographs from Greece, including the
Doric temple on the promontory at Cape Sunion – further inspiration for the Gruppo
Quadrante raising the museum on piloti above the piazza d’onore – and the theater at
Epidaurus, a model for the team’s assembly hall.22
mass rallies of 15,000 people. The piazza d’onore became a modern acropolis, elevated
above the surrounding city and dedicated to ritual participation in the collective myths
of Fascism. Yet this acropolis did not open toward the entire city; the backdrop of the
palazzo ensured that the view outward from the complex would focus on monuments
important to the party’s identification with imperial Rome, such as the Colosseum and
the Basilica of Maxentius, with whose “apse” the piazza aligned.
The desire to evoke simultaneously Periclean Athens and Constantinian Rome resulted
in a mixed metaphor of sorts. Although the Gruppo Quadrante prefaced their relazione
with a photograph of the Parthenon by team member Enrico Peressutti, their piazza
d’onore more closely resembles the nearby Campidoglio (Figure 4). Both spaces are
elevated above the city, enclosed on three sides by buildings and anchored by equestrian
statues. The mounted figure of Mussolini in front of the Palazzo del Littorio evoked
the Campidoglio’s sculpture of Marcus Aurelius, the only equestrian bronze to survive
30
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By placing the auditorium wing on the north side of the Palazzo, away from Via
dell’Impero, the architects accentuated the exterior gathering space of the piazza d’onore,
hierarchically emphasizing the site of mass public rallies. In the Palazzo del Littorio
design, the formal relationship between the rectangular office block and the cylindrical
assembly hall echoed that of the Basilica of Maxentius and its semi-circular apse, as
evident in the numerous aerial photographs and perspectives. In their relazione, the
architects implied that the cylindrical form also reflected that of the Colosseum, and
the two masses would be visible simultaneously along the Via del Colosseo on the north
side of the site.
The Gruppo Quadrante believed that formal relationships poetically evinced political
ones. The members described their project in terms of a series of visual relationships,
expressed through geometric forms and proportions, in which the complex’s pavilions
Figures 5 and 6
The airplanes and crowd collaged
into the “aerial photograph” of
the Gruppo Quadrante model
were taken from a contemporary
photograph of the inauguration of
Sabaudia on 15 April 1934.
Quadrante 16/17 (August/September 1934), 23.
19. Gruppo Quadrante, 18.
20. Belli, 9.
21. Gruppo Quadrante, 14.
Compare this statement with
Le Corbusier’s discussion of the
“legislation” at play in such Roman
monuments as the Colosseum and
the Pyramid of Cestius. “Simple
masses develop immense surfaces
which display themselves with a
characteristic variety according as
it is a question of cupolas, vaulting,
cylinders, rectangular prisms or
pyramids.” Le Corbusier, Towards
a New Architecture, 158.
22. Quadrante, 5 (September
1933), 21.
architecture and revolution
31
The project was thus unable to communicate to a broader public the rhetorical concerns
of the Fascist party. Thomas Schumacher has argued that the submission “remained
unpremiated, not because the fascist hierarchy was categorically against modern
architecture, but rather because a building of such abstract design, lacking as it did a clear
symbolic reading of its function, did not adequately carry the hierarchical message.”26
The project failed to effectively create a recognizable mass identity for its public through
the design of the piazza d’onore and arengario, despite the architects’ explicit concern
with this objective.
interacted with each other in a way that evoked fascism’s hierarchical structure.
More generally, they claimed that the party headquarters communicated with its
historical context in a manner that complemented the regime’s appropriation of
Rome’s imperial past.
The most intriguing of the group’s presentation images is an “aerial” photograph of the
model, into which airplanes and crowds have been montaged (Figures 5 and 6). The
source for these additional figures was a widely known press photograph, depicting
the inauguration of Sabaudia on 15 April 1934, which had just been published in
Quadrante 13 (May 1934). The image formed an ideal emblem of fascist urbanism: a
tight formation of military airplanes passes over an enormous crowd, focused on a single
orator. Incorporating at a glance technology, militarism and the masses in service to the
state, the image perfectly illustrated Mussolini’s motto, “BELIEVE, OBEY, FIGHT.”
Elsewhere in the double issue dedicated to the Gruppo Quadrante’s project, Peressutti
printed two stills from his film Volo a vela (Sail Plane), and Figini included eight aerial
photographs of Libyan housing.23 The aerial photography reproduced throughout the
issue demonstrated the Quadrante Group’s concern with surveillance and city planning
as tools for establishing order among urban populations. Figini and Pollini and BBPR
were deeply concerned with the design of cities according to “rational principles,”
and their collective project for the Palazzo del Littorio reproduces in microcosm
their vision of the modern metropolis: its program elements are clearly and discretely
differentiated, circulation is ordered and efficient, and architecture expresses political
content through symbolically-charged spatial relationships rather than ornamentation
applied to a structure. Banfi and Belgioioso published an article on “corporativist”
urbanism, influenced by CIAM doctrine, in the same issue, and they illustrated it with
aerial photographs comparing examples of “order–hierarchy” to “disorder–chaos.”24
Likewise, Figini’s captions of his pictures of Libyan settlements emphasize the orderly
nature of North Africa’s Roman-descended urbanism, “Mediterranean architecture–
straight, squared [and] rectangular lines.”25 The architects in the group recognized that
the Palazzo del Littorio, like the corporativist city, needed to bring order to the masses
and inspire their devotion to Fascism.
Yet these formal gestures were so abstract as to remain unintelligible without the aid
of the group’s extensive documentation in Quadrante. The balcony that comprised the
Duce’s arengario, for example, extended across the entire length of the Palazzo’s façade,
diffusing the symbolic power of the rostrum and leaving the assembled masses without
a clear object for their collective attention. Some gestures showed a spark of ingenuity,
such as the way the sacrario’s three travertine-lined walls oriented the space outward onto
the piazza d’onore, reproducing in miniature how solid boundaries turn the piazza d’onore
toward the Basilica of Maxentius, but the complex as a whole remained unrefined.
The severity intended to bestow the Palazzo del Littorio an appropriate solemnity yielded
instead a hollowness incapable of sufficient political symbolism.
32
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The Gruppo Milanese
If the Gruppo Quadrante design failed to convince the jury of its ability to generate a
mass identity, no such problem attended the designs of the Gruppo Milanese, whose
two projects celebrated the “cult of Mussolini” by heroically memorializing the fascist
seizure and consolidation of power, and by establishing a space in which the veneration
of the Duce by the masses was evoked even when neither was physically present. The two
schemes for the Palazzo del Littorio (called Project A and Project B by their designers)
express the party’s hierarchical and authoritarian structure, and the regime’s conflation
of imperial and contemporary Rome (Figures 7, 8 and 9).
No work by the Quadrante circle resembles less the architecture of the International
Style than Project A by the Gruppo Milanese. The project reads as a rich allegory of
dictatorial power seeking historical justification for its authority. The design’s iconic
element, an eighty-meter long curving wall of porphyry hovering over a piazza off the
Via dell’Impero, embraced the anticipated crowds below and transformed the entire
26. Schumacher, 178.
23. Peressutti, “Volo a vela,”
film stills from Volo a vela (Sail
Plane), Quadrante, 16/17 (August/
September 1934), 61. Luigi Figini,
“Case di Libia–aerofotografia,”
Quadrante, 16/17 (August/
September 1934), 43, 45, 49,
53, 57.
24. Gian Luigi Banfi and Ludovico
Belgioioso, “Urbanistica
corporativa,” Quadrante, 16/17
(August/September 1934), 41.
25. Luigi Figini, “Case di Libia–
aerofotografia,” Quadrante, 16/17
(August/September 1934), 49.
Figure 7 Project “A” for the Palazzo del Littorio by the Gruppo
Milanese (1934). Quadrante 18 (October 1934), 19.
architecture and revolution
33
Project A twisted back from the Via dell’Impero to align with the recently unearthed
remains of Trajan’s Forum, whose great semi-circular exedra prompted the scheme’s
half-round auditoria.29 The Gruppo Milanese stacked the assembly halls on the rear of
the Palazzo del Littorio, toward Via del Colosseo.30 The stepped profile of the auditoria
cantilevered above the street, corresponding inversely to that of the subterranean ruins
indicated on the site plan. The assembly halls employed semi-circular ranks of seating
to evoke the archetype of the Roman theater, while the uppermost chamber referred to
the recent examples of Le Corbusier’s projects for the League of Nations and Palace of
the Soviets by using a roof with a parabolic section. The resulting synthesis of Roman
typologies and contemporary technologies typified the group’s attempts to reconcile
antique and modern forms within a single timeless design.
Figures 8 and 9 Project “B” for the Palazzo del Littorio by the Gruppo
Milanese (1934). Quadrante 18 (October 1934), 23.
The Gruppo Milanese was unique in its use of archeological plans to show the Palazzo
del Littorio’s potential relationship to the remains of ancient Rome (Figure 12). The site
plan illustrates formal relationships between the proposed building and its neighbors,
including the alignment of the stacked auditoria with the exedra of a temple complex just
to the west of the Palazzo del Littorio. This ruin, however, was invented by the Gruppo
Milanese, which seems to have modified the nearby Forum of Augustus, but rotated it
ninety degrees.31 The fabrication of an antique context indicates the extent to which
the architects saw the building as rooted in the capital’s historical fabric, and capable of
making visible the ruins lying just below the surface of the city.
Figure 10 Elevation of Project “A” showing the eighty-meter-long curving wall of porphyry hovering over the
piazza, facing the Via dell’Impero. The wall is pierced by an arengario from which Mussolini was to make his
speeches. Antonio Carminati, et al., Concorso nazionale per il progetto del palazzo del littorio e della mostra
della rivoluzione fascista in via dell’impero a Roma (Milan: Società G. Modiano, 1936), 12.
building into an enormous stage for Mussolini’s speeches. The wall gathered the masses
and projected the voice of the Duce, whose arengario jutted forward through the sole
break in the façade (Figure 10). Curvilinear incisions in its stone surface manifested
invisible isostatic structural forces as a metaphor for the dictator’s irrepressible volition.
While the porphyry wall floated above the street level of the contemporary city, an
adjacent granite cylinder suspended from two enormous trusses plunged downward to
stand on the “soil of imperial Rome.”27 The round structure contained a top-lit circular
chamber housing the sacrario, from which a helicoidal ramp spiraled down to the
permanent home of the Mostra dell Rivoluzione Fascista, set among the excavated
ruins of ancient Rome.28 The cylinder sat within a half-cube void in the ground,
giving the sacrario the appearance of a Roman mausoleum emerging from some newly
discovered forum (Figure 11).
34
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29. Terragni (25 October 1934),
reprinted in Mantero, 125.
30. See site plan published in
Carminati, Lingeri, Saliva, Terragni,
Vietti, Nizzoli, Sironi, Concorso
nazionale per il progetto del
Palazzo del Littorio e della Mostra
della Rivoluzione Fascista in via
dell’Impero a Roma (Milan: Società
G. Modiano, n.d.). Reprinted in
Fabio Mariano, Terragni, poesia
della razionalità (Rome: Istituto
Mides, 1983), 52.
31. The “invented” ruins appear
on no maps or reconstructions
of the imperial fora, including R.
Lanciani’s Forma Urbis Romae
(Milan, 1893-1901). My thanks to
Andrew Manson for helping me
decode the Gruppo Milanese’s
archeological plan.
Figure 11 Model of Project
“A” showing the top-lit circular
chamber housing the sacrario,
from which a helicoidal ramp
spiraled down to the permanent
home of the Mostra della
Rivoluzione Fascista, set among
the excavated ruins of ancient
Rome. Carminati, et al., 10.
27. Terragni, four-page
mimeograph letter addressed
“agli amici del Gruppo Milanese
Espositori al Concorso Nazionale
del Littorio, Carminati, Lingeri,
Saliva, Terragni, Vietti, Nizzoli,
Sironi,” (25 October 1934),
Archivio Pietro Lingeri, Milan (APL).
Reprinted in Mantero, 126.
28. Ada Francesca Marcianò,
Giuseppe Terragni, opera
completa 1925-1943 (Rome:
Officina, 1987), 139-145.
architecture and revolution
35
32. Gruppo Milanese
[Carminati, Lingeri, Saliva,
Terragni, Vietti, Nizzoli, Sironi],
“Due altri progetti,” Quadrante,
18 (October 1934), 18.
Figure 12 The Gruppo Milanese showed the proposed Palazzo del
Littorio’s relationship to the neighboring ruins of ancient Rome,
including an “invented” temple precinct to the west of the site.
Carminati, et al., 9.
33. The competition presentation
board describes the bands as
“bandoni in ferro.” Etlin and
Schumacher describe the iron
band structure and isostatic line
patterns. See Etlin, 432; and
Schumacher, 183. Doordan cites
the ancient construction technique
of opus reticulatum as a source
for the isostatic lines. Francesco
Tentori notes that the type of iron
Figure 13 The lines incised in the giant wall held catenary and radiating
iron bands, which gripped the porphyry panels and rendered visible
the unseen structural forces coursing through the suspended façade.
The joint pattern was translated from polarized light studies of phenolic
resin. Carminati, et al., 20.
Three lithic, arcing forms – the shallow crescent of the arengario wall, the cylinder of
sacrario, and inverted-half-cone of the auditoria – performed temporal operations, the
first speaking of an ever-present Duce, the other two to a transhistorical continuity
between antiquity and modernity. Most remarkable of these was the enormous arc of
porphyry, which collected the crowds attending Mussolini’s speeches and magnified his
voice. The arengario projected forward through a slot cut at the top of the wall, providing
a clear focus for the attentive masses and offering an index of the dictator’s presence even
during his absence. The relationship of piazza, wall and rostrum embodied “this principal
idea: to create a background worthy of the idea of the great leader.”32
What a background it was. The lines engraved in the wall’s surface held catenary and
radiating iron bands, which gripped the porphyry panels and rendered visible the unseen
structural forces coursing through the suspended façade (Figure 13).33 The group
worked closely with engineer Italo Bertolini, who developed the pattern of isostatic
stress lines based on his experiments with fenolite (phenolic resin) models photographed
under polarized light at the architecture school of the Milan Polytechnic.34 The convex
curvature of the wall and elevated rostrum may even have made reference to the
photographs of the Duce’s speeches inside the Colosseum, and the issue that published
the Gruppo Milanese projects, Quadrante 18, opened its coverage of the Palazzo del
Littorio competition with a transcript of Mussolini’s speech to the “workers of Milan,”
illustrated with a full-page photograph of the Duce speaking from a rostrum.35
36
scapes
specified – 99.9% pure –
was chosen for its ability to resist
corrosion in perpetuity. Francesco
Tentori, “La Mostra dell rivoluzione
fascista e alcuni progetti romani
di Giuseppe Terragni,” in Giorgio
Ciucci, ed., Giuseppe Terragni,
Opera completa (Milan: Electa,
1996), 253.
34. Etlin, 648. I discuss Bertolini’s
work and relationship to the
Quadrante circle further in
Quadrante and the Politicization of
Architectural Discourse in Fascist
Italy (PhD dissertation, Columbia
University, 2007), 369.
35. Mussolini’s 1926 speech to
young Avanguardisti (Fascist
youth) inside the Colosseum
is discussed in Etlin, 428. See
photographs of Mussolini
speaking to representatives of the
corporations in the Colosseum in
Diane Y. Ghirardo, “Architecture
and Theater: The Street in Fascist
Italy,” in Stephen C. Foster, ed.,
“Event” Arts and Art Events (Ann
Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988),
193-194. “Mussolini agli operai di
Milano,” Quadrante, 18 (October
1934): 1-5. Bernardo Giovenale
appended a lengthy editorial
comment to Mussolini’s speech.
architecture and revolution
37
atop the party hierarchy (Figure 16).42 A gap left between the floors of these offices and
the piers spoke further to their singular purpose: the support of the porphyry wall and
Mussolini’s arengario. In this regard the designers emulated a gesture Terragni used in the
Casa del Fascio in Como, which was then under construction; in the middle of the local
party secretary’s office, Terragni stripped the cladding from a concrete column, which
he then enshrined in a glass vitrine as a sign of the structure’s political resonance.43 The
Palazzo del Littorio’s structural supports dominated the ground-floor entrance hall facing
the Via dell’Impero, and appeared in the site plan as mirror images of the four isolated
piers at the center of the Basilica of Maxentius. Their dimensions varied, with the
front two much larger than the ones behind; taking advantage of Saliva’s structural
expertise, the Gruppo Milanese understood that the two rear members would largely
sustain tensile forces.
Figures 14 and 15 The southwest-facing wall of porphyry was to
bathe the piazza and its “oceanic masses” in reflected blood-red light.
Carminati, et al., 15.
Porphyry signified empire, and its use in the project carried great symbolic importance.36
Roman emperors first exploited the volcanic stone and restricted its use to Imperial
projects.37 “Imperial Porphyry,” whose name, from the Latin word for “purple,” is
metonymic of royalty, came from a single quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, north
of Thebes, then a part of the Roman Empire.
The Palazzo del Littorio competition program called attention to the “colore ambientale,”
which, taken literally, would refer to the material palette of the surrounding area.38
Terragni, however, recognized an opportunity to reproduce the dramatic use of color in
the interiors of the Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista. The southwest-facing wall
of porphyry would have bathed the piazza and its “oceanic masses” in reflected blood-red
light evoking the somber atmosphere of Adalberto Libera and Antonio Valenti’s sacrario
at the heart of the Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista (Figure 14 and 15).39 Terragni’s
own installation at the exhibition, Sala O, demonstrated a similar effect as light reflecting
off the room’s red furnishings washed over the photomontaged image of enormous
crowds covering one long curved wall.40 Such was Terragni’s concern with chromatic
atmospheric effects, that he later asked Belli to visit the Casa del Fascio in Como prior to
writing about the project, since black and white photographs didn’t adequately convey
the important role color played in the building.41 At the Palazzo del Littorio, Terragni’s
team baptized the assembled Fascists in the red glow of the Imperial stone.
The four enormous steel-reinforced granite piers that supported the trusses from which
the curving wall hung were not buried in the poché of the building; they would have
stood obtrusively in the center of each office used by the party’s leadership, including the
Secretary of the National Fascist Party, as an ever-present reminder of the Duce’s position
38
scapes
36. The symbolic importance of
porphyry in the Gruppo Milanese’s
Project A is discussed further in
Schumacher, 183; Doordan, 134;
and Etlin, 432.
37 A. A. Vasiliev, “Imperial
Porphyry Sarcophagi in
Constantinople,” Dumbarton Oaks
Papers, 4 (1948), 3-7.
38. Fabio Mariano, Terragni,
poesia della razionalità (Rome:
Istituto Mides, 1983), 52.
39. Doordan describes as “blood
red” both the entrance façade
of the Mostra della Rivoluzione
Fascista and the pedestal
supporting the enormous crucifix
at the center of its sacrario.
Doordan, 132-134. Richard
Etlin notes the “Pompeian red”
entrance façade of the Mostra as
a source for the porphyry wall.
Etlin, 432.
40. Dino Alfieri and Luigi Freddi,
eds. Mostra della rivoluzione
fascista. Guida storica. (Rome:
Partito Nazionale Fascista, 1933),
174-191.
41. Terragni, letter to Belli (Fall,
1936), Fondo Carlo Belli, Archivio
The subtle reference to the Basilica’s piers, like the translation of the Trajan’s Forum
exedra into the stacked assembly halls, exemplifies the architects’ sophisticated
understanding of historical context and their desire to forge an association between
the Rome of the Caesars and that of the Duce. In contrast to Mussolini, who wielded
excavation as a blunt tool to equate the two epochs, the Gruppo Milanese employed
architecture as a heuristic instrument capable of demonstrating transhistorical
relationships. A palimpsest of opaque surfaces, Project A revealed presences beyond,
behind and below: the porphyry wall expressed structural forces and the site plan
depicted the building as a piece of the subterranean ruins of the ancient city.44
The site plan illustrated, for example, how the retaining wall at the base of the Basilica
of Maxentius – the same wall on which Mussolini had just hung four marble maps
depicting the growth of the Roman empire – was duplicated, rotated and submerged
(to touch the “soil of imperial Rome”) to form the foundation of the sacrario and the
display wall of the Mostra dell Rivoluzione Fascista.45 No other team represented their
project in relation to the surrounding ruins or were so conscious of making reference
to them in their designs.
Conclusion
Project A by the Gruppo Milanese was selected as one of 14 designs admitted into the
competition’s second stage, but nothing came of the work. A change of site necessitated
the building’s complete re-design, resulting in the loss of much of its allegorical content.
Nonetheless, the lyrical and experiential qualities of the project informed later works,
especially Terragni and Lingeri’s Danteum, designed for the same site in 1938. Similarly,
members of the Gruppo Quadrante continued to explore themes first elaborated in their
entry, most notably Figini and Pollini’s addition to the Olivetti factory in Ivrea (19341935) and in their 1935 design for the Brera Academy’s studio building in Milan (with
Terragni and Lingeri).46
In their designs for the PNF the Quadrante architects sought to translate Mussolini’s
concerns into a prospective theory of architecture. They proclaimed a revolutionary
architecture in service to a revolutionary movement. But how can architecture speak to
del ‘900, Museo di arte moderna
e contemporanea di Trento e
Rovereto, Rovereto.
42. I read the published
plans differently than Thomas
Schumacher, who writes, “The
piers that carry these giant trusses,
hidden in the interstices of the
groundplan, would have made
it impossible to perceive how
the suspended wall would be
supported.” Schumacher, 183. See
for example the plan in Mariano,
52.
43. I discuss the Casa del Fascio’s
interiors in, “Furnishing the Fascist
Interior: Giuseppe Terragni, Mario
Radice and the Casa del Fascio,”
Arq – Architectural Research
Quarterly vol. 10, no .2 (June
2006), 157-170.
44. Terragni (25 October 1934),
reprinted in Mantero, 126,
45. Heather Hyde Minor,
“Mapping Mussolini: Ritual and
Cartography in Public Art during
the Second Roman Empire,”
Imago Mundi 51 (1999), 147-162.
46. Vittorio Savi, ed., Luigi Figini
e Gino Pollini/architetti (Milan:
Electra Editrice, 1980), 28-29.
See also Savi, Figini e Pollini,
architetture 1927-1989 (Milan:
Electra Editrice, 1990), 35.
architecture and revolution
39
permanence while embodying a movement that proclaimed itself a perpetual revolution?
When the Duce extolled order and authority, the Quadrante architects proclaimed
the primacy of classical rhythms and proportions. When the dictator railed against
entrenched elites, the Quadrante architects assailed the ghost of Vignola roaming
the halls of the academies. Where Mussolini praised both modern technology
and cultural traditions, the Quadrante architects argued for the essentially traditional
foundations of modern architecture. The Quadrante architects distinguished their
program from those of their peers in other countries by emphasizing principles that
resonated with Fascism’s growing symbolic lexicon, such as hierarchical composition
(as an expression of order) and the imperial associations of certain materials. For
all their internationalism, the Quadrante writers remained dedicated to the pursuit
of a specifically Italian modern architecture, reflecting an intense nationalism innate
to Fascism but inimical to most modern architecture outside Italy. Theirs was not
simply an opportunistic formulation – the authors of “Un programma di Architettura”
enthusiastically supported the fascist regime, and saw in Mussolini’s “revolution” an
analog to their “revolutionary” modernism.
Mussolini clearly recognized the sincerity of the Rationalists’ positions and the quality
of their designs. Yet when the dictator declared, “I want to state unequivocally that I am
for modern architecture, for an architecture of our time,” he was not entirely forthright.
The Duce extended his patronage to numerous movements representing a broad spectrum
of aesthetic and ethical concerns. Nonetheless, the modernists’ work resonated with him.
“It would be absurd to think that today we could not have our own architectural thought
and absurd to not want a rational and functional architecture for our time,” Mussolini
asserted. “Every epoch has produced its own functional architecture.”47
Figure 16 The four enormous
steel-reinforced granite piers
that supported the trusses from
which the curving wall hung
stood obtrusively in the center
of each office used by the
party’s leadership, as an everpresent reminder of the Duce’s
position atop the party hierarchy.
Carminati, et al., 17 and 19.
47. Mussolini, “Non aver paura di
avere coraggio,” 95.
David Rifkind teaches architectural history and theory in the School of Architecture at Florida
International University, and formerly taught architectural theory at Parsons The New School for Design.
He recently completed his dissertation, “Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse
in Fascist Italy,” at Columbia University. A practicing architect, he is a graduate of McGill University’s
program in architectural history and theory and the Boston Architectural Center.
40
scapes
Caricuao, Caracas. Summer 2006.
Photo courtesy Katharine Saxby.