During the fascist years in Italy, architecture and politics enjoyed a close alliance. Benito Mussolini used architecture to educate the masses, exploiting its symbolic prowess as a powerful tool for achieving political consensus. Mussolini, Architect examines Mussolini in Italy from 1922 to 1943 and expands the traditional interpretations of fascism, advancing the claim that Mussolini devised and implemented architecture as a tool capable of determining public behaviour and influencing opinion. Paolo Nicoloso challenges the assertion that Mussolini was of minimal influence on Italian architecture and argues that in fact the fascist leader played a strong role in encouraging civic architectural development in order to reflect the totalitarian values of the period. Drawing on archival documents, Nicoloso lists the architects who gave Mussolini ideas and describes the times when the dictator himself sometimes picked up a pencil and suggested changes. Examining the political, social, and architectural history of the fascist period, Mussolini, Architect gives careful attention to the final years of fascist rule in order to demonstrate the extent to which Mussolini was intent on shaping Italy and its citizens through architectural projects.
During the fascist years in Italy, architecture and politics enjoyed a close alliance. Benito Mussolini used architecture to educate the masses, exploiting its symbolic prowess as a powerful tool for achieving political consensus. Mussolini, Architect examines Mussolini in Italy from 1922 to 1943 and expands the traditional interpretations of fascism, advancing the claim that Mussolini devised and implemented architecture as a tool capable of determining public behaviour and influencing opinion. Paolo Nicoloso challenges the assertion that Mussolini was of minimal influence on Italian architecture and argues that in fact the fascist leader played a strong role in encouraging civic architectural development in order to reflect the totalitarian values of the period. Drawing on archival documents, Nicoloso lists the architects who gave Mussolini ideas and describes the times when the dictator himself sometimes picked up a pencil and suggested changes. Examining the political, social, and architectural history of the fascist period, Mussolini, Architect gives careful attention to the final years of fascist rule in order to demonstrate the extent to which Mussolini was intent on shaping Italy and its citizens through architectural projects.
At the end of the Second World War, America’s newly acquired status of hegemonic power- together with the launch of ambitious international programs such as the Marshall Plan- significantly altered existing transatlantic relations. In this context, Italian and American architectural cultures developed a fragile dialogue characterized by successful exchanges and forms of collaboration but also by reciprocal wariness. The dissemination of models and ideas concerning architecture generated complex effects and frequently led to surprising misinterpretations, obstinate forms of resistance and long negotiations between the involved parties. Issues of continuity and discontinuity dominated Italian culture and society at the time since at stake was the possible balance between allegedly long-established traditions and the prospect of a radical rupture with recent history. Architectural culture often contributed to reach a compromise between very diverging attitudes. Situated in the larger realm of studies on Americanization, this book questions current interpretations of transatlantic relations in architecture. By reconsidering the means and effects of the dialogue that unfolded between the two sides of the Atlantic during the postwar years, the volume analyzes how cultural and formal models were developed in one context and then modified when transferred to a new one as well as the fortune of this cultural exchange in terms of circulation, amplification, and simplification.
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