Paper Spaces. A Sentimental Inquiry into Architectural Publishing in the Long Italian Postwar Period
1964: Editorial by Ernesto Nathan Rogers for “Casabella”, n 294-295 (Ph. Agnese Divo)
Trieste Contemporanea opens on 14 February at 6 pm Paper Spaces. A Sentimental Inquiry into Architectural Publishing in the Long Italian Postwar Period. Curated by architect Giulio Polita, this is a very special exhibition that does not showcase art but instead books – objects that today can be considered cult items not only for architects and architectural historians.
Some of the most famous books printed in Italy on contemporary architecture will be shown. From the 1950s and 1960s these books played a crucial role in promoting the international architectural debate in Italy.
This rich Italian bibliography includes texts on theory, history and popularisation (by authors such as Bruno Zevi, to the great Trieste-born Gillo Dorfles and Ernesto Nathan Rogers), monographs on international masters (such as the Italian translations of Maestri dell’Architettura Contemporanea from 1960 of the New York series George Braziller Inc. commissioned by Alberto Mondadori as part of the commitment of his Il Saggiatore to deprovincialize the country: “to spread books of great importance in the history of culture, the arts, doctrines and customs” and which get dressed in the wonderful dust jackets by an exceptional woman of Milanese publishing and graphics such as Anita Klinz, a native of Abbazia), and even essential “manuals” for the study of architecture (such as those of the Milanese Libreria Editrice Politecnico Tamburini, directly commissioned by the Associazione Libera Studenti Architetti of the Faculty of Architecture of the Milan Polytechnic).
The volumes on display are ideally placed between 1945 and 1964. 1945 is the year of the Einaudi’s publication of Verso un’architettura organica (Towards an Organic Architecture) by Bruno Zevi (which is followed five years later, again by Einaudi, by his Storia dell’architettura Moderna (History of Modern Architecture)). It was also followed by the connective tissue work of the Milanese publishing house Rosa and Ballo, which in that same year published the Italian edition of Nikolaus Pevsner’s Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius, as well as Architettura e Democrazia, the translated collection of lectures delivered by Frank Lloyd Wright at Princeton in 1930. 1964 instead refers to the last editorial by Ernesto Nathan Rogers, “Discontinuity or Continuity?” for the magazine “Casabella” which he had directed for the previous 11 years, succeeding Pagano and Persico, and helping to make it one of the most widely read architecture magazines in the world.
Paper Spaces is made possible with the contribution of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (and under the collective brand of Io Sono Friuli Venezia Giulia) and benefits from the collaboration of Visual Hub and the Seminario Vescovile Library of Trieste.
A special collaboration of Edilmaster-La Scuola Edile di Trieste was started, thanks to the proposal of the architect Marco Svara, for the creation of the exhibition setup: a training workshop was in fact specifically organised with students. The Edilmaster director Walter Lorenzi comments on the results as follows: ‘I am truly proud to see how, in a very short time, the students of the 2nd year of the Professional Education and Training course for Artistic Construction Workers funded by the FVG Region through AT Effepi, have managed to create these temporary wooden installations that are so beautiful from an aesthetic point of view and so effective from a functional point of view. Masterfully coordinated by the teacher Lorenzo Medici, they have demonstrated once again how the skills learned during laboratory lessons can immediately be transformed into useful and concrete tools to positively deal with the contemporary challenges that are launched every day by the world of work.” The exhibition marked the inception of the libraryline series of events, launched in 2022 by the Trieste Contemporanea Library (active since 2018 and specializing in 20th and 21st century art from Central and Eastern European countries), and dedicated to architecture publishing and architectural photography.
The relationships between the editorial popularisation of architecture, architectural photography, and studies and catalogues of Italian post-World War II architecture, especially intertwined in FVG, will also be the focus of a study seminar that will be held in the exhibition setting: up-to-date contributions and conversations by leading Italian scholars and photographers from FVG will make up a rich and unprecedented libraryline programme on Friday 21 February, starting at 5 pm.
Read more about the seminar program and the participating speakers.
Inauguration of the exhibition: Paper Spaces. A Sentimental Inquiry into Architectural Publishing in the Long Italian Postwar Period (Photograph by Agnese Divo)
Inauguration of the exhibition: Paper Spaces. A Sentimental Inquiry into Architectural Publishing in the Long Italian Postwar Period (Photograph by Agnese Divo)
Inauguration of the exhibition: Paper Spaces. A Sentimental Inquiry into Architectural Publishing in the Long Italian Postwar Period (Photograph by Agnese Divo)
