Italian Rationalism
イタリア合理主義 / 1926–1943 / Style / Modern Architecture
An Italian movement that set out to make the abstraction of modern architecture and the classicism of the Mediterranean hold at the same time. What looks like a white box is in fact carrying ancient proportion in the rhythm of its bays, the depth of its overhangs and the planes of its marble. A textbook for refusing to set the modern against the traditional.
White volumes and a regular rhythm of bays / Deep overhangs and bands of shadow / Marble set against glass / Classical proportion, translated
%2002.jpg)
Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Architectural and interior identity that must feel contemporary and rooted at once, for hotels, cultural buildings and heritage brands · Grid design, where the rhythm of bays translates directly into a column structure that stays classical while reading as modern
- Type
- A geometric sans set to the same module as the bays, with the leading derived from the same proportion.
- Composition
- A strict frontal grid whose bays are equal and whose voids are not, so that the rhythm is regular and the reading is not.
- Material
- White render against polished marble and plate glass, with reveals deep enough to cast a real shadow line.
- Caution
- Keeping the white box and dropping the proportion: without the underlying ratios it is generic modernism, and the whole argument of these buildings was that the ratios were still present.
- Further study
- Terragni's Casa del Fascio / The programme of Gruppo 7 / The history of its assessment as architecture of the regime