Italian Art & Architecture - Italy - page 1812

The Industrial & The Rational
Upstaged by political and social upheaval, architecture took a back seat in 19th-century
Italy. One of the few movements of note stemmed from the Industrial Revolution and saw
the application of industrial innovations in glass and metal to building design. Two monu-
mental examples of the form are Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan and its southern
sibling Galleria Umberto I in Naples.
By century's end, the art nouveau craze sweeping Europe injected the local scene with a
new vibrancy. The Italian version, called ' Io Stile Floreale ' or 'Liberty' in Italian, was
notable for being more extravagant than most - just check out Giuseppe Sommaruga's
Casa Castiglione (1903), a large block of flats at Corso Venezia 47 in Milan, for proof.
Italian modernism took two forms. The first was purely theoretical and was based on
Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto of 1909. The second form was rationalism, which was pro-
moted in Italy by two groups. The first was known as the Gruppo Sette and consisted of
seven architects inspired by the Bauhaus; its most significant player was Giuseppe Ter-
ragni, whose outstanding work is the 1936 Casa del Fascio (now called Casa del Popolo)
in Como. The second, and rival, group was MIAR (Movimento Italiano per l'Architettura
Razionale, the Italian Movement for Rational Architecture), led by Adalberto Libera. This
influential architect is best known for his Palazzo dei Congressi in EUR, a 20th-century
suburb of Rome studded with a number of architecturally significant buildings. Like many
Italian architects of their time, Libera and Terragni designed their uncompromisingly
modernist buildings for the Fascist authorities, and their work is sometimes described as
'Fascist Architecture'. The most iconic Fascist creation in EUR is the gleaming, arched
Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro (Palace of the Workers). Designed by Giovanni Guerrini,
Ernesto Bruno La Padula and Mario Romano, its arches and gleaming Travertine skin re-
call a pared-back, square Colosseum - an ode to the classical ideals of stoicism and glory
that inspired the Fascist ideal.
Andrea Palladio did more than simply produce great architecture, he wrote about it too. His
treatise I quattro libri dell'architettura (The Four Books On Architecture, 1570) provides a set of rules
and principles based on the buildings of Roman antiquity. It remains a sacred text in the archi-
tectural canon.