The years from 1520 to 1630 were crucial in the development of Western architecture, but to label as Mannerist the transition from Michelangelo's "licentious" New Sacristy in Florence to Borromini's innovative S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane is coming to seem unduly simplistic. In this carefully researched and original study, Andrew Hopkins examines the century's changing functional demands, the political forces, the patronage system, and local traditions. Exploring a wide range of Italian buildings (including those outside the major urban centers), he introduces us to dozens of neglected architects whose works will come as a revelation. By 1630, architecture had taken on a new dynamism that would soon conquer Italy, Europe, and the New World: the baroque. 209 b/w illustrations.

This is the first study of Renaissance architecture as an immersive, multisensory experience that combines historical analysis with the evidence of first-hand accounts. Questioning the universalizing claims of contemporary architectural phenomenologists, David Karmon emphasizes the infinite variety of meanings produced through human interactions with the built environment. His book draws upon the close study of literary and visual sources to prove that early modern audiences paid sustained attention to the multisensory experience of the buildings and cities in which they lived. Through reconstructing the Renaissance understanding of the senses, we can better gauge how constant interaction with the built environment shaped daily practices and contributed to new forms of understanding. Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance offers a stimulating new approach to the study of Renaissance architecture and urbanism as a kind of 'experiential trigger' that shaped ways of both thinking and being in the world.

Today, nearly a century after the National Fascist Party came to power in Italy, questions about the built legacy of the regime provoke polemics among architects and scholars. Mussolini’s government constructed thousands of new buildings across the Italian Peninsula and islands and in colonial territories. From hospitals, post offices and stadia to housing, summer camps, Fascist Party Headquarters, ceremonial spaces, roads, railways and bridges, the physical traces of the regime have a presence in nearly every Italian town. The Routledge Companion to Italian Fascist Architecture investigates what has become of the architectural and urban projects of Italian fascism, how sites have been transformed or adapted and what constitutes the meaning of these buildings and cities today. The essays include a rich array of new arguments by both senior and early career scholars from Italy and beyond. They examine the reception of fascist architecture through studies of destruction and adaptation, debates over reuse, artistic interventions and even routine daily practices, which may slowly alter collective understandings of such places. Paolo Portoghesi sheds light on the subject from his internal perspective, while Harald Bodenschatz situates Italy among period totalitarian authorities and their symbols across Europe. Section editors frame, synthesize and moderate essays that explore fascism’s afterlife; how the physical legacy of the regime has been altered and preserved and what it means now. This critical history of interpretations of fascist-era architecture and urban projects broadens our understanding of the relationships among politics, identity, memory and place. This companion will be of interest to students and scholars in a range of fields, including Italian history, architectural history, cultural studies, visual sociology, political science and art history.

This volume studies the architecture and urbanism of modern-era Italian colonialism (1869-1943) as it sought to build colonies in North and East Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Mia Fuller follows, not only the design of the physical architecture, but also the development of colonial design theory, based on the assumptions made about the colonized, and also the application of modernist theory to both Italian architecture and that of its colonies. Moderns Abroad is the first book to present an overview of Italian colonial architecture and city planning. In chronicling Italian architects' attempts to define a distinctly Italian colonial architecture that would set Italy apart from Britain and France, it provides a uniquely comparative study of Italian colonialism and architecture that will be of interest to specialists in modern architecture, colonial studies, and Italian studies alike.

Winner, category of Architecture and Urban Studies in the 1991 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc. and Winner, Alice Davis Hitchcock Award, Society of Architectural Historians. Richard Etlin's sweeping, generously illustrated study explores the changing idea of modernism in Italian architecture over the five crucial decades that saw the birth and crystallization of modern architecture. Systematically treating the major architects and movements of the period - such as Raimondo D'Aronoco and Art Nouveau, Antonio Sant'Elia and Futurism, Marcello Piacentini and the modern vernacular, Giovanni Muzio and the Novecento, Giuseppe Terragni and Italian Rationalism - this book also explores the ways in which the original ideals of the various movements were transformed by working for the Fascist state. Modernism in Italian Architecture examines the legacy of the romantic revolution, which confronted architects with the dilemma of how to create an architecture that was both modern and national. It challenges accepted opinion on a variety of issues. Etlin argues against too close an association of Sant'Elia's architecture and manifesto with Futurism by demonstrating a broader context for its themes. His study of Novecento architecture chronicles a movement whose use of classical detailing created a "postmodernism" contemporaneous with the pioneering buildings of the International Style elsewhere in Europe and preceding its arrival in Italy. Etlin undermines the notion that the architects of Italian Rationalism blindly followed an antihistorical credo, by bringing to fight the profoundly contextual nature of the abstract geometries of the best Rationalist architecture. The final section, devoted to Fascism, focuses on Terragni's famous Casa del Fascio in Como and the Danteurn project by Terragni and Lingeri. Etlin concludes with a consideration of the anti-Semitic attacks on modern architecture during the Fascist racial campaign of 1938. Richard Etlin is Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Maryland.

Reconnects ancient buildings with the people who made them, with their surroundings, and with practices in other times and cultures.

Focusing on buildings of the period between 1418 and 1580 and 35 key architects. Examines social context, religious beliefs, political power-structures, technical innovation, aesthetic judgement . Includes over 300 photographs, drawings, plans and reconstructions. Sure to be the recognized textbook for the foreseeable future.

“Modern Italy”may sound like an oxymoron. For Western civilization,Italian culture represents the classical past and the continuity of canonical tradition,while modernity is understood in contrary terms of rupture and rapid innovation. Charting the evolution of a culture renowned for its historical past into the 10 modern era challenges our understanding of both the resilience of tradition and the elasticity of modernity. We have a tendency when imagining Italy to look to a rather distant and definitely premodern setting. The ancient forum, medieval cloisters,baroque piazzas,and papal palaces constitute our ideal itinerary of Italian civilization. The Campo of Siena,Saint Peter’s,all of Venice and San Gimignano satisfy us with their seemingly unbroken panoramas onto historical moments untouched by time;but elsewhere modern intrusions alter and obstruct the view to the landscapes of our expectations. As seasonal tourist or seasoned historian,we edit the encroachments time and change have wrought on our image of Italy. The learning of history is always a complex task,one that in the Italian environment is complicated by the changes wrought everywhere over the past 250 years. Culture on the peninsula continues to evolve with characteristic vibrancy. Italy is not a museum. To think of it as such—as a disorganized yet phenomenally rich museum unchanging in its exhibits—is to misunderstand the nature of the Italian cultural condition and the writing of history itself.

Casa Malaparte "A house like me" -- announced Curzio Malaparte, a poet and egomaniac, describing his villa on Capri. There are only a few buildings in the world which illustrate such antique beauty and mystical charm; Karl Lagerfeld has photographed the most elegiac one. The first section of the book illustrates the perfect integration of the house within the environment. In the second part Lagerfeld documents the house's interior and furniture. Lagerfeld worked for five days in November 1997 to produce these photographs of architecture and nature. He used a special photographic technique to reproduce his pictures: Polaroid-transfers on a special paper. The House in the Trees A small piece of land, several trees, a dilapidated warehouse, uninhibited buildings in the neighbourhood...This is not the place where pretentious architecture is usually created. Yet in this small village near Rome, Karl Lagerfeld discovered an extraordinary building called 'La Casa Albero Nella Pineta di Fregene', designed by the architect Perugini in 1967. This experimental building is situated in the midst of a group of trees. The construction of wood, concrete and glass encloses one room, only a few doors exist, even the toilet can be seen from the bottom. Lagerfeld's book is more than a detailed photographic study about this subtle construction. It seems that the photographer uses this subject as a pretext to "paint with the camera" his own constructive pictures.

Considering the influence of the forms and tectonics of the Mediterranean vernacular on modern architectural practice and discourse from the 1920s to the 1960s.