heralds of their own gospel
‘Architects, more often than artists are heralds of their own gospel,’ said Henry-Russell Hitchcock,‘and faith and works are not always of the same value or consistency.’
by hector abarca
1 In 1946, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, wrote in the editorial of Domus magazine, ‘the problem is one of forging a taste, a technique, a morality, a different manifestation of the same problem: the problem of building a society’. This editorial was part of one of the first issues published after the end of World War II, and Rogers, like all the other professionals that had lived through the horrors of war, was immersed in the project of reconstruction, of the city and of the man. Metron was another important Italian magazine that under the editorship of Bruno Zevi led the reconstruction debate by focussing on planning and building issues that corrected the ideological mistakes made by the first Italian modernists (the rationalist movement) which fell under the spell of Benito Mussolini and the spectacle of crisp volumetric compositions of fascism. 1 The new Italian postwar architecture, aesthetically built upon Zevi’s writings, found in architectural space an answer that unleashed the independence of architecture from materiality, understood as an evolution of the European functionalism. Like Rogers and Zevi, architects emerged as public figures embracing their technocratic role Q: Just out of interest, were these figures well known when they were laying down their manifestos in words? Were they read because they had already built significant and recognised projects, or was the writing part of their own personal avant-garde? The question for me is whether the absence of the avant-garde journal is because of the absence of an avant-garde, or because it is an archaic publishing model. HA: Rogers and Zevi were starting their careers. Rogers’ time as editor of Domus was short-lived, and even if he was a key figure when the CIAM meetings were re-established, in 1949 he had to take a teaching job in Argentina to make ends meet. Highlights were the Velasca Tower in Milan and the 1953-65 editorship of Casabella that included famous editorial fights with The Architectural Review and Reyner Banham, and with Peter Smithson within CIAM; both called him and his students (Aldo Rossi and Gae Aulenti) ‘neo-liberty’. Rogers answered labelling them ‘defenders of refrigerators’. Rogers is not much known in North America even if his role was fundamental in the 1951 CIAM and its book, The Heart of the City , and he lectured at Harvard. He designed the tipi-like Canadian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale and was a juror, with Saarinen and Pratt, for Toronto City Hall. Nathan Phillip Square is his input. Zevi was a Harvard graduate – this helped to break a cultural barrier; even if his books initially were meant for the Italian scene, they gave him a prominent position in Europe and Argentina. And when Saper vedere l’architettura (1948) was translated to English in 1957, he hit stardom. 2 It had been translated earlier, in 1951, to Spanish, however nothing compares to the American academic system. In both cases they united, with all the Italian architects,
first as authors. Le Corbusier compiled the lectures he held in Argentina in his 1930 ‘Precisions: On the Present State of Architecture and City Planning’, which later led to the engagement to lead the design workshop that created the Ministry of Education and Health in Rio de Janeiro of 1936, the first truly modem high-rise ever built. Josep Lluis Sert, years before being appointed the dean of Harvard GSD, was an illegal alien who had abruptly left Spain to escape Francoist persecution and had toured America with the mock-up of Can Our Cities Survive? An ABC of urban problems their analysis, their solutions , the visionary 1942 book that changed America’s understanding of urban design. In Europe, Sert had been the editor of AC, Actividad Contemporánea , a leading avant-garde architectural magazine published in Barcelona. Like Le Corbusier with L’Esprit Nouveau , Lina Bo Bardi also started her career as an architectural journalist in Milan before moving to Brazil, where she helped define the Paulista School and their scrupulous view of architecture and public space that unfolded in the ingenious structural work of Paulo Mendes da Rocha, 2006 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate.
1 Zevi, B. Verso una Architettura Organica . Turín: Einaud, 1945 2 Zevi, B. Sapere Vedere l’Architettura . Turín: Einaudi, 1948
developers and publishers, to embrace reconstruction: they understood that among the atrocities of war there was an opportunity for a new fresh beginning. And for this they depended on radio and print media.
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L’Esprit Nouveau (April 1921). Celebrated journal founded by Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant. Their essays were later compiled and rearranged to become Vers une Architecture (1923). Collection of the Getty Research Institute.
Hector Abarca
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