INVESTIGATING AND WRITING ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY: SUBJECTS, METHODOLOGIES AND FRONTIERSPapers from the Third EAHN International MeetingEdited by Michela Rosso

Published thanks to the contribution of

INVESTIGATING AND WRITING ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY: SUBJECTS, METHODOLOGIES AND FRONTIERS

Michela Rosso (ed.)INVESTIGATING AND WRITING ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY: SUBJECTS, METHODOLOGIES AND FRONTIERSPapers from the Third EAHN International Meeting

3

Contents

Preface, Michela Rosso 15

1. EARLY MODERN

1.1. Fortified Palaces in Early Modern Europe, 1400–1700, 33Pieter Martens, Konrad Ottenheym, Nuno Senos

1.1.1 Fortified Palaces in Early Modern Sicily: Models, Image Strategy 35Functions, Emanuela Garofalo, Fulvia Scaduto1.1.2 The Castrum Sanctae Crucis in Cremona: From Fortified Castle 48to Courtly Residence, Jessica Gritti, Valeria Fortunato1.1.3 From Old to New: The Transformation of the Castle of Porto de 62Mós, Luís Serrão Gil1.1.4 Symphony in Brick: Moscow Kremlin at the Time of Ivan III, 72Elena Kashina1.1.5 Seventeenth-Century Fortified Villas in the County of Gorizia, with 81 Residences Modelled on the Type of a Venetian Palace with Corner Towers,Helena Seražin

1.2. Piedmontese Baroque Architecture Studies Fifty Years On, 92Susan Klaiber

1.2.1 The Exchange of Architectural Models between Rome and Turin 94before Guarini’s Arrival, Marisa Tabarrini1.2.2 Guarino Guarini: The First ‘Baroque’ Architect, Marion Riggs 1021.2.3 The Multifaceted Uses of Guarini’s Architettura Civile in 1968, 109Martijn van Beek1.2.4 Idealism and Realism: Augusto Cavallari Murat, Elena Gianasso 1151.2.5 A Regional Artistic Identity? Three Exhibitions in Comparison, 121Giuseppe Dardanello1.2.6 Wittkower’s ‘Gothic’ Baroque: Piedmontese Buildings as Seen 122Around 1960, Cornelia Jöchner

EditorMichela Rosso

English editingAdrian FortyJosephine KaneSusan KlaiberDaniel MilletteNancy Stieber

Editorial proof-readingStudio Associato Comunicarch

Cover ImageMauro Melis

LayoutElisa Bussi

CopyrightThe authors

PublishingPolitecnico di Torino

ISBN978-88-8202-048-4

4 5

1.3. On the Way to Early Modern: Issues of Memory, Identity and 130Practice, Open Session, Valérie Nègre

1.3.1 Quadrature and Drawing in Early Modern Architecture, Lydia M. Soo 1311.3.2 Some Observations on Andrea Palladio, Silvio Belli and the Theory 132of Proportion, Maria Cristina Loi1.3.3 Moralizing Money through Space in Early Modernity, Lauren Jacobi 1441.3.4 Staging War in Maghreb: Architecture as a Weapon by the 1500s, 152Jorge Correia

1.4. Architects, Craftsmen and Interior Ornament, 1400–1800, 153Christine Casey, Conor Lucey

1.4.1 Architecture Before the Architects: Building S. Theodore’s 154Chapel of S. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, 1486-93, Maria Bergamo1.4.2 Decoration in Religious Architecture of the Eighteenth Century 163in the South Eastern Part of Central Europe, Dubravka Botica1.4.3 Architects of the Islamic Work and Phrasing Concepts in Geometry, 174Mohammad Gharipour, Hooman Koliji1.4.4 Architects, Craftsmen and Marble Decoration in Eighteenth-Century 183Piedmont, Roberto Caterino, Elena di Majo

2. REPRESENTATION AND COMMUNICATION

2.1. Public Opinion, Censorship and Architecture in the Eighteenth 195Century, Carlo Mambriani, Susanna Pasquali

2.1.1 Public Opinion in Amsterdam: Building the Society Felix Meritis, 197Freek Schmidt2.1.2 An Architect’s Reputation: Libel and Public Opinion in Britain, 208Timothy Hyde2.1.3 Theater Acoustics in the Late Eighteenth-Century Press, Joseph Clarke 218

2.2. The Published Building in Word and Image, Anne Hultzsch, 229Catalina Mejia Moreno

2.2.1 Catalogues and Cablegrams, Mari Lending 2312.2.2 Illustrated Picturesquely and Architecturally in Photography – 232William Stillman and the Acropolis in Word and Image, Dervla MacManus, Hugh Campbell2.2.3 Lost for Words: How the Architectural Image Became a Public 233Spectacle on Its Own, Patrick Leitner2.2.4 In Wort und Bild: Sigfried Giedion, Walter Gropius and the Fagus 242Factory, Jasmine Benyamin2.2.5 Juxtapositions and Semantic Collisions of Text and Image in 247Architectural Magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, Hélène Jannière

2.3. Layers of Meanings: Narratives and Imageries of Architecture, 259Open Session, Cânâ Bilsel

2.3.1 The Plan as Eidos: Bramante’s Half-Drawing and Durand’s marche, 260Alejandra Celedon Forster2.3.2 ‘What do Pictures Really Want’? Photography, Blight and Renewal 271in Chicago, Wesley Aelbrecht2.3.3 Content, Form and Class Nature of Architecture in the 1950s-China, 272Ying Wang, Kai Wang

2.4. Architecture, Art, and Design in Italian Modernism: Strategies of 283Synthesis 1925-60, Daniel Sherer

2.4.1 ‘Fantasia degli Italiani’ as Participatory Utopia: Costantino Nivola’s 285Way to the Synthesis of the Arts, Giuliana Altea2.4.2 Carlo Mollino’s Enchanted Rooms: Face-to-Face with Art in a 296Company Town, 1930-60, Michela Comba2.4.3 The Logics of arredamento: Art and Civilization 1928-36, 307Ignacio González Galán2.4.4 The Synthesis of the Arts as a Critical Instrument for Modern 308Architecture. The Role of Ernesto Nathan Rogers: 1944-49, Luca Molinari2.4.5 Gio Ponti’s Stile, Cecilia Rostagni 316

2.5. The Medium is the Message: The Role of Exhibitions and 326Periodicals in Critically Shaping Postmodern Architecture, Veronique Patteeuw, Léa Catherine Szacka

2.5.1 Charles Moore’s Perspecta: Essays and Postmodern Eclecticism, 328Patricia A. Morton2.5.2 Between Language and Form: Exhibitions by Reima Pietilä, 1961-74, 329Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen2.5.3 Bau Magazine and the Architecture of Media, Eva Branscome 3302.5.4 Entertaining the Masses: IAUS’s Economy of Cultural Production, 331Kim Förster2.5.5 Image, Medium, Artifact: Heinrich Klotz and Postmodernism, 332Daniela Fabricius

3. QUESTIONS OF METHODOLOGY

3.1. Producing Non-Simultaneity: Construction Sites as Places of 335 Progressiveness and Continuity, Eike-Christian Heine, Christian Rauhut

3.1.1 Mixing Time: Ancient-Modern Intersections along the Western 336Anatolian Railways, Elvan Cobb3.1.2 Steel as Medium. Constructing WGC, a Tallish Building in Postwar 347Sweden, Frida Rosenberg

6 7

3.1.3 Between Technological Effectiveness and Artisanal Inventiveness: 355Concreting Torres Blancas (1964–69), Marisol Vidal3.1.4 The Glocal Construction Site and the Labour of Complex Geometry, 366Roy Kozlovsky

3.2. The Historiography of the Present, Andrew Leach 3763.2.1 Proclaiming the End of Postmodernism in Architecture, 378Valéry Didelon3.2.2 Architectural Discourse and the Rise of Cultural Studies, Antony Moulis 3873.2.3 After Nature: Architectural History and Environmental Culture, 395Daniel Barber3.2.4 Looking Back, Looking Now: Architecture’s Construction of History, 406Inbal Ben-Asher Gittler, Naomi Meiri-Dann3.2.5 Radical Histories and Future Realities – NOW, Lara Schrijver 416

3.3. On Foot: Architecture and Movement, David Karmon, Christie Anderson 4243.3.1 Porticoes and Privation: Walking to Meet the Virgin, Paul Davies 4263.3.2 Defining the Boundaries of London: Perambulation and the City in 437the Long Eighteenth Century, Elizabeth McKellar3.3.3 Walking through the Pain: Healing and Ambulation at Pergamon 448Asklepieion, Ece Okay3.3.4 Raymond Unwin Tramping the Taskscape, Brian Ward 460

3.4. ‘Bread & Butter and Architecture’: Accommodating the Everyday, 477Ricardo Agarez, Nelson Mota

3.4.1 Humdrum Tasks of the Salaried-Men: Edwin Williams, a LCC 479Architect at War, Nick Beech3.4.2 Third Text: Albert Kahn and the Architecture of Bureaucracy, 492Claire Zimmerman3.4.3 The Architect, the Planner and the Bishop: the Shapers of ‘Ordinary’ 493Dublin, 1940-70, Ellen Rowley3.4.4 Layers of Invisibility: Portuguese State Furniture Design 1940-74, 501João Paulo Martins, Sofia Diniz3.4.5 Bureaucratic Avant-Garde: Norm-Making as Architectural Production, 514Anna-Maria Meister

3.5. The Architecture of State Bureaucracy: Reassessing the Built 515Production of (Colonial) Governments, Rika Devos, Johan Lagae

3.5.1 SOM, 1939-46: From ‘Engineered Dwelling’ to the Manhattan 517Project, Hyun-Tae Jung3.5.2 Unmonumental Buildings, Monumental Scale: Santiago Civic District, 527Daniel Opazo

3.5.3 Architecture’s Red Tape: Governmental Building in Sweden 5391964-72, Erik Sigge3.5.4 Provisional Permanence: the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, 549Sven Sterken3.5.5 The Jewish Agency for Israel - the Constructions of a Civic Frontier 559in Tel Aviv (1955-66), Martin Hershenzon

3.6. Revolutionizing Familiar Terrain: The Cutting Edge of Research 573in Classical Architecture and Town-planning, Round Table, Daniel Millette, Samantha Martin-McAuliffe

3.6.1 Residency Patterns and Urban Stability: A Theory for Republican 574Rome, Lisa Marie Mignone3.6.2 The Pompeii Quadriporticus Project 2013: New Technologies and 581New Implications, Eric Poehler3.6.3 Reconstructing Rhythm: Digital Modelling and Light at the Parthenon, 587Paul Christesen, Aurora Mc Clain3.6.4 The Urban Development of Late Hellenistic Delos, Mantha Zarmakoupi 5933.6.5 Classical Architecture, Town Planning and Digital Mapping of Cities: 599Rome AD 320, Lynda Mulvin3.6.6 Digital Modelling in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace 607 Bonna D. Wescoat

4. THEORETICAL AND CRITICAL ISSUES

4.1. Histories of Environmental Consciousness, Panayiota Pyla 6174.1.1 Environmental Counter Narratives in India c. 1960, Ateya Khorakiwala 6194.1.2 We Want to Change Ourselves to Make Things Different, 629Caroline Maniaque Benton4.1.3 Zoo Landscapes and the Construction of Nature, Christina 640Katharina May4.1.4 Experiments on Thermal Comfort and Modern Architecture: 651The Contributions of André Missenard and Le Corbusier, Ignacio Requena Ruiz, Daniel Siret4.1.5 The United Nations Headquarters and the Global Environment, 663Alexandra Quantrill

4.2. Architecture and conflict, c. 300 – c. 1600, Lex Bosman 6644.2.1 The Palace Hall of Chrysotriklinos as an Example of Emulation and 666 Contestation in the Early Byzantine Period, Nigel Westbrook 4.2.2 Building Identity and Community in the Post-Crusade Greece: 683The Architecture of Interaction in the Thirteenth-Century Peloponnesos, Heather E. Grossman

8 9

4.2.3 Sienese Fortifications in the Age of the Guelph Commune, 684Max Grossman4.2.4 ‘Faciendo sette et sedicion’: Architecture and Conflict in 697Sixteenth-century Verona, Wouter Wagemakers4.2.5 Political Power through Architectural Wonder. Parma, Teatro 706 Farnese, Susanna Pisciella

4.3. How It All Begun: Primitivism and the Legitimacy of Architecture 715in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Maarten Delbeke, LindaBleijenberg, Sigrid de Jong; Respondent: Caroline van Eck4.3.1 On the Colonial Origins of Architecture: Building the ‘Maison Rustique’ 717in Cayenne, French Guiana, Erika Naginski, Eldra D. Walker4.3.2 Out of the Earth: Primitive Monuments between Prehistoric and Gothic 718Ambitions, Jennifer Ferng4.3.3 Viel de Saint-Maux and the Symbolism of Primitive Architecture, 727Cosmin C. Ungureanu4.3.4 Primitivism’s Return: Theories of Ornament and Their Debt to 728Eighteenth-century Antiquarianism, Ralph Ghoche4.3.5 Cultural Transformations and Their Analysis in Art and Science: 729Anthropological and Curatorial Concepts Stimulated by the Great Exhibition of 1851, Claudio Leoni

4.4. Socialist Postmodernism: Architecture and Society under Late 730Socialism, Vladimir Kulic

4.4.1 A Dialectic of Negation: Modernism and Postmodernism in the 732USSR, Richard Anderson 4.4.2 When Tomorrow Was Cancelled: Critique of Modernism in the 7331970s, Daria Bocharnikova, Andres Kurg 4.4.3 The Friedrichstadt Palace, Florian Urban 7344.4.4 Neither Style, nor Subversion: Postmodern Architecture in Poland, 735Lidia Klein, Alicja Gzowska 4.4.5 Sources of Postmodern Architecture in Late Socialist Belgrade, 736Ljiljana Blagojevic

4.5. Histories and Theories of Anarchist Urbanism, Nader Vossoughian 7474.5.1 The Legacy of the Anti-urban Ideology in Bruno Taut’s Architectural 748Practice in Ankara (1936-8), Giorgio Gasco, Meltem Gürel 4.5.2 Henri Lefebvre’s Vers une architecture de la jouissance (1973): 760Architectural Imagination after May 1968, Łukasz Stanek 4.5.3 City of Individual Sovereigns: Josiah Warren’s Geometric Utopia, 761Irene Cheng4.5.4 Architectural Aporia of the Revolutionary City, Peter Minosh 7714.5.5 ‘Housing Before Street’: Geddes’ 1925 Anarchist Plan For Tel Aviv, 780Yael Allweil

5. TWENTIETH CENTURY

5.1. In-Between Avant-Garde Discourse and Daily Building Practices: 795The Development of the Shopping Centre in Post-War Europe, Tom Avermaete, Janina Gosseye

5.1.1 Shopping à l’américaine in the French New Towns, Kenny Cupers 7975.1.2 From Million Program to Mall: Consumerism in the Swedish Town 798Centre, 1968-84, Jennifer Mack5.1.3 Reinventing the Department Store in Rotterdam: Breuer’s Bijenkorf 7991953-57, Evangelia Tsilika5.1.4 Chilean Commercial Snail Buildings: Typology, Shopping and the City, 812Mario Marchant5.1.5 Building European Taste in Broader Communities: The Role of the 824David Jones Stores in the Promotion of Design and Architecture in Australia, Silvia Micheli

5.2. Ideological Equality: Women Architects in Socialist Europe, 833Mary Pepchinski, Mariann Simon

5.2.1 GDR Women Architects between Emancipation and Professional 835Obstinacy, Harald Engler5.2.2 Women in Hungarian Industrial Architecture between 1945 and 8461970, Péter Haba5.2.3 Famous or Forgotten: Women Architects in Communist Poland, 855Piotr Marcinak5.2.4 Emancipated, but Still Accompanied, Henrieta Moravcíková 8675.2.5 Female Students of Jože PleCnik between Tradition and Modernism, 876Tina Potocnik

5.3. Missing Histories: Artistic Dislocations of Architecture in Socialist 885 Regimes, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Carmen Popescu

5.3.1 Scene(s) for New Heritage?, Dubravka Sekulic 8875.3.2 Radical Space for Radical Time: The Intersections of Architecture 888and Performance Art in Estonia, 1986–91, Ingrid Ruudi5.3.3 Appropriation, Commemoration, and Resistance: A Shifting Discourse 898on Political Space in Socialist China, Yan Geng5.3.4 ‘Our House’: The Socialist Block of Flats as Artistic Subject-Matter, 908Juliana Maxim

5.4. The Third Life of Cities: Rediscovering the Post-Industrial City 910Centre, Round Table, Davide Cutolo, Sergio Pace

5.4.1 When Turin Lost Its Myths, Cristina Accornero 9125.4.2 The Case of Paris, Joseph Heathcott 916

10 11

5.4.3 Prague – Buildings, Spaces and People in its Re-discovered Centre, 920Petr Kratochvíl5.4.4 Turin to Naples, Stopping in Milan: Urban Transformations between 925Heritage and Theme Parks, Guido Montanari5.4.5 Rediscovering a Port-City: Genoa’s New Waterfront, Luca Orlandi 9325.4.6 A Return to Growth, Ted Sandstra 940

5.5. Strategies and Politics of Architecture and Urbanism after WWII, 941Open Session, Adrian J. Forty

5.5.1 From Visual Planning to Outrage: Townscape and the Art of 942Environment, Mathew Aitchison5.5.2 Germany’s ‘Grey Architecture’ and its Forgotten Protagonists, 953Benedikt Boucsein5.5.3 Process Above All: Shadrach Woods’ NonSchool of Villefranche, 964Federica Doglio5.5.4 Sacred Buildings in Italy after World War II: The Case of Turin, 976Carla Zito5.5.5 Architecture Resisting Political Regime: The Case of Novi Zagreb, 986Dubravka Vranic

6. CIRCULATION OF ARCHITECTURAL CULTURE AND PRACTICES

6.1. Afterlife of Byzantine Architecture in the Nineteenth and 1007Twentieth Century, Aleksandar Ignjatovic

6.1.1 Suburban Byzantine: Tradition and Modernity in the British Catholic 1009Church, Robert Proctor6.1.2 To Find the Right Style: Byzantine Revival Synagogues in America, 1010Michael B. Rabens6.1.3 France-Byzantium: The Authority of the Sacré-Cœur, Jessica Basciano 10196.1.4 Architectural Explorations of Byzantine Revival in 1920s Greece, 1031Kalliopi Amygdalou

6.2. Building by the Book? Theory as Practice in Renaissance 1042Architecture, Francesco Benelli, Sara Galletti

6.2.1 ‘Restauramenti e Restitutioni di Case’. Book VII on Architecture by 1044Serlio and the Dissemination of Classical Order in the Language of Monumental Architecture and Basic Building in Ferrara, Alessandro Ippoliti, Veronica Balboni6.2.2 ‘Libri tre nei quali si scuopre in quanti modi si può edificare vn 1058Monast. sÿ la Chiesa’: Architectural Treatise of Capuchin Friar Antonio da Pordenone, Tanja Martelanc

6.2.3 Foundations of Renaissance Architecture and Treatises in Quentin 1072Massys’ S. Anne Altarpiece (1509), Jochen Ketels, Maximiliaan Martens, 6.2.4 An Invented Order: Francesco di Giorgio’s Architectural Treatise 1084and Quattrocento Practice, Ageliki Pollali 6.2.5 Donami tempo che ti do vita – Francesco Laparelli (1521-70). 1085Envisioning the New ‘City of the Order’, Valletta, Conrad Thake

6.3 European Architecture and the Tropics, Jiat-Hwee Chang 10956.3.1 The Afro-Brazilian Portuguese Style in Lagos, Ola Uduku 10976.3.2 Tectonics of Paranoia: The Matshed System within the First 1098Fabrication of Hong Kong, Christopher Cowell 6.3.3 Architecture of Sun and Soil. European Architecture in Tropical 1119Australia, Deborah van der Plaat 6.3.4 Health, Hygiene and Sanitation in Colonial India, Iain Jackson 11316.3.5 Climate, Disaster, Shelter: Architecture, Humanitarianism and the 1141Problem of the Tropics, Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi

6.4 Lost (and Found) in Translation: The Many Faces of Brutalism, 1142Réjean Legault

6.4.1 When Communism Meets Brutalism: The AUA’s Critique of 1144Production, Vanessa Grossman6.4.2 Gravitas and Optimism: The Paradox of Brutalism in Skopje, 1145Mirjana Lozanovska6.4.3 Bringing it All Home: Australia’s Embrace of ‘Brutalism’ 1955-75, 1146Philip Goad 6.4.4 African Ethic, Brutalist Aesthetic: Vieira da Costa in Huambo, 1158Ana Tostões, Margarida Quintã6.4.5 Hard Cases: Bricks and Bruts from North to South, 1159Ruth Verde Zein

6.5 Southern Crossings: Iberia and Latin America in Architectural 1160Translation, Marta Caldeira, Maria Gonzaléz Pendás

6.5.1 Southern Readings: Lucio Costa on Modern Architecture, 1162Carlo Eduardo Comas6.5.2 Avant-Garde Crossings between Italy, Argentina and Spain: From 1174Gropius and Argan to Nueva Visión and Arte Normativo, Paula Barreiro López6.5.3 Shells Across Continents, Juan Ignacio del Cueto Ruiz-Funes 11756.5.4 Emili Blanch Roig and Modern Architecture: Catalonia and Mexico, 1180Gemma Domènech Casadevall6.5.5 Re-entry: Antonio Bonet’s Return to Spain, Ana Maria León 1186

12

7.1 Architectural History in Italian Doctoral Programs: Issues of Theory and Criticism, PhD Round Table, Mary McLeod, Maristella Casciato

7.1.1 Meyer and Paulsson on Monumentality: The Beginning of a Debate, 11981911-40, Giacomo Leone Beccaria 7.1.2 A relational issue: towards an international debate on habitat from 1200 the 9th Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne, Giovanni Comoglio7.1.3 The Urban Landscape as Cultural Heritage. The Contemporary 1203Debate in France and Italy, Elena Greco7.1.4 ‘A Home’: Östberg’s search for the total artwork, Chiara Monterumisi 12057.1.5 Order and Proportion: Dom Hans van der Laan and the 1207Expressiveness of the Architectonic Space, Tiziana Proietti7.1.6 The Use of the Convenzioni Urbanistiche in the Historic Centre 1209of Milan: Negotiation and Planning Instruments in the Second Post-War Period, Nicole De Togni

7.2 Architectural History in Italian Doctoral Programs: Histories of Buildings, Architects and Practices, PhD Round Table, Mari Hvattum

7.2.1 Ahmedabad. Workshop of Modern Architecture: The National 1213 Institute of Design, Elisa Alessandrini 7.2.2 Transformations of Public Space in Paris. From Infrastructure to 1215Forme urbaine, Daniele Campobenedetto7.2.3 Layers of Narration: The Architecture of Piero Bottoni in Ferrara, 1217Matteo Cassani Simonetti7.2.4 Architecture that Teaches. Swiss School Buildings During the 1950s 1219and 1960s, Marco Di Nallo7.2.5 Star-Shaped Rib Vaulting in the Church of San Domenico, Cagliari, 1221Federico M. Giammusso7.2.6 The Evolution of Domestic Space in Southern Italy and Sicily, 1223Serena Guidone7.2.7 From the South. Ernesto Basile’s Routes and Destinations, 1225Eleonora Marrone7.2.8 The Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Paradigm of Modern Architecture 1227in Postwar Germany, Benedetta Stoppioni7.2.9 Magnificentia. Devotion and Civic Piety in the Renaissance 1229Venetian Republic, Emanuela Vai

INVESTIGATING AND WRITING ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY: SUBJECTS, METHODOLOGIES AND FRONTIERS

2. R

EPR

ESEN

TATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

2. R

EPR

ESEN

T ATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

284 285

Far from reflecting any unified set of artistic choices or rigid theoretical assumptions, the Italian experiments with aesthetic synthesis describe a field of competing valorizations. These experiments will be situated histori-cally and critically by examining the various strategies – formal, structural, symbolic, and spatial – through which the intra-aesthetic dialogue was con-tinually reinvented. Finally, the session will explore the possibility that this dialogue paved the way for theses of architecture’s relative autonomy formu-lated from the late 1960s to the early 1980s by Rossi and Tafuri, insofar as architecture’s links to the other arts could dialectically reveal the limits of its disciplinary foundations and its role within the wider aesthetic sphere.

2.4.1 ‘Fantasia degli Italiani’ as Participatory Utopia: Costantino Nivola’s Way to the Synthesis of the Arts

GIULIANA ALTEAUniversità degli Studi di Sassari, Italy

ABSTRACTThe work of the sculptor, Costantino Nivola (1911-88) reflects the twofold nature of the 1950s Italian approach to the relationship between art and architecture in which the interest for applied decoration coexisted with the search for environmental expansion. Gio Ponti referred to both attitudes as equally acceptable manifestations of the ‘fantasia degli Italiani’, a somewhat innate capacity for creative freedom which he associated with the decorative projects of Piero Fornasetti as well as with Fontana’s spatialist experiments. Nivola’s work – seen by Ponti as another example of this disposition – en-compasses the two aspects of the “Italians’ fantasy”. Best known nowadays for his participation in the BBPR project of the Olivetti showroom in New York (1954), a widely acclaimed case of integration of architecture, art and design, Nivola came to international recognition in the 1950s as a “sculptor for architecture”; but at the same time he developed a more original ver-sion of the synthesis of the arts, one that, looking beyond the collaboration of architecture, painting and sculpture, centered on the environmental and social dimensions. Considering some largely forgotten projects, such as the garden of the artist’s house in Springs, designed with Bernard Rudofsky (1949-50), and the unrealized project for his hometown in Sardinia, Orani (1953), the paper analyzes Nivola’s utopian tendency to the aestheticization of the built environment. This approach – which might remind a contempo-rary observer of the recent trend of relational and participation art – co-existed with a more traditional, modernist vision influenced by the artist’s mentor and friend, Le Corbusier. The two perspectives seem to overlap in the 1958 exhibition organized in the streets of Orani with the involvement of the residents and, in a more indirect way, in Nivola’s collaboration with Eero Saarinen in the Morse and Stiles colleges at Yale University (1959-62).

KEYWORDSSculpture, architecture, participation

2. R

EPR

ESEN

TATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

2. R

EPR

ESEN

T ATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

286 287

Post-war Italy has been described by Romy Golan as the country where the totalizing mandate of the synthesis of the arts was more radically cri-tiqued. Reacting to the use of the concept by the Fascist regime, Italian artists adopted an aesthetic of disappearance, mirrored by the use of light forms of decoration, such as painted velaria and concrete bas reliefs which tended to dissolve into the architecture.1 One example presented by Golan is Costantino Nivola’s sand-cast frieze covering an entire long wall in the Olivetti showroom in New York designed in 1954 by BBPR studio. Modelled in sand and cast in Paris of plaster, the huge relief unfolded before the spectator’s eyes as a gently undulated surface with minimal plastic projec-tions.2 It might be noted that, in spite of the work’s lack of assertiveness, contemporary critics consistently commented on it as the most striking fea-ture of the BBPR’s interior. 3 Indeed, Lewis Mumford, America’s most re-spected critic, accused it of stealing the scene from architecture.4 Looking at Nivola’s case, I would like to build on Golan’s notion of ‘disappearance’, to pursue the disappearance of both art and architecture into the spatial and social environment. In September 1951 Gio Ponti’s magazine Domus introduced its readers to the work of Nivola, ‘a young Italian painter and sculptor, living in New York.’5 Although recently Nivola’s name has been cropping up more frequently in the literature on the synthesis of the arts, his work and life are still rela-tively unknown to the general public.6 A former pupil of Giuseppe Pagano, Edoardo Persico and Marino Marini at the ISIA in Monza, Nivola worked as art-director at the Olivetti company in Milan, before his anti-fascist com-mitment forced him to leave Italy for New York in 1939. In 1946, an eye-opening encounter with Le Corbusier, who became his mentor and friend, marked his conversion to Modernism, prompting him to undertake a new path of formal research. He was further stimulated by the discovery of sand-casting techniques7 while playing with his children on the beach, of which the works published by Domus were early examples. The magazine featured three primitivist sculptures and one geometrical, post-cubist mu-ral painting. Rather than appear against the familiar backdrop of the studio or gallery, his works were photographed outdoors, in the Nivola garden in Springs, East Hampton, in the midst of what looked like a construction site, at least judging by the cement tank visible in one of the photos’ foreground. Intrigued by the unusual location of the works, the writer of the article (prob-ably Ponti himself) noted: ‘The exalting effect of this unroofed environment is the magic of the displaced objects in the open air, already discovered by Surrealism. Now fully realized by spatialist abstraction.’8 The estrangement created by de-contextualization – sculpture parks and gardens were still to come – was in the early 1950s uncommon enough to muster attention, and

Domus rightly pointed out its historical matrix, the Surrealist juxtaposition of incongruous objects.9

In addition, the article related Nivola’s sculptures to Spatialism, the handiest category then available in Italy to deal with works that took on an environ-mental dimension. A few months earlier, Lucio Fontana had suspended his grand neon arabesque over the Milan Triennale’s staircase, enthusiastically greeted by Ponti as an epitome of Italian genius.10 Already in 1949, when Fontana installed in the Milanese Galleria del Naviglio his Ambiente Spaziale a luce nera, Lisa Ponti hailed him as the initiator of a new kind of fusion of the arts.11 Two years later, confronted with the Triennale’s structure, her fa-ther elected Fontana as the flag bearer of a ‘fantasia degli Italiani’ opposing the foreigners’ severity, technical mastery, ‘civilized discipline of thought’.12 The expression ‘Fantasia degli Italiani’ recalled the title of a book by Raffaele Carrieri published in 1939 by the Domus editions, an anthology of fantastic and surreal art, spanning from Paolo Uccello to the twentieth century.13 According to Ponti, Italian fantasia was a shorthand for the qualities of freedom, independence, and improvisation, which he saw as inborn to the Italian people; qualities which were complementary, but also – he seemed to imply – somewhat superior to the order, simplicity and morality of Italy’s European and American competitors.‘Fantasia degli italiani’ was also the heading under which Ponti introduced Nivola’s works, next to the architects Mario Tedeschi and Giulio Minoletti. The magazine reproduced a ceiling painted by Tedeschi in his flat in Milan and a swimming pool designed by Minoletti for the Tagliabue house in Mon-za.14 In Ponti’s view, the common denominator between the three examples was the synthesis of the arts; however, since Nivola’s works were autono-mous from an architectural context (even the mural was painted on an inde-pendent wall), in his case this element wasn’t so obvious. The Domus article wrote that Nivola seemed to be saying ‘I don’t make my house in order to fill it with art pieces, I make it of art pieces.’ The author continued: ‘he solves the architecture-painting relationship in a direct way, by building his house as the homeless do, with billboards and shop signs. Or in the same way as Robinson Crusoe made his own tools to live and dwell.’15

For Ponti, what Nivola did was to ‘take Spatialism literally’; though, one won-ders what his sculptures had to do with Fontana’s research. Nivola’s works, as with those of Tedeschi and Minoletti, were far from Fontana’s tendency to dematerialize and blur technical boundaries.The notion of Italians fantasia, it must be said, was flexible enough to include both spatialist experiments and more traditional works. In Ponti’s eyes, it en-compassed Fontana’s environmental projects as well as the exuberant deco-rative expansion of the artist-designer Piero Fornasetti. A keen collector of

2. R

EPR

ESEN

TATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

2. R

EPR

ESEN

T ATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

288 289

geographical maps, illustrated albums, catalogues and other ephemera, Fornasetti drew inspiration from these materials and from higher sources, such as Metaphysical painting and the Renaissance, to compose a captivat-ing repertory of ornaments to be applied to any available surface.16 Ponti met Fornasetti in 1933, and during the following decade started a collabo-ration with him.With reference to Fornasetti, and already in the pre-War years, the architect had begun to think about Italians fantasia. In 1940 he published in Domus, under the title ‘Mobili di fantasia’, a glass cupboard designed by himself for Fontana Arte and painted by Fornasetti, vaunting its ‘freshness, brightness, vivacity, invention, personality’.17 In his opinion these were virtues of Italian art, since, he wrote, ‘if we want to grapple with patient execution, we’ll eas-ily find someone who can do it better than us.’ Ponti and Fornasetti’s furni-ture were presented as fantasy furniture, and the Lucano apartment in via Washington in Milan as a ‘casa di fantasia’.18 Ponti furnished it in 1952 in collaboration with Fornasetti and the painter, Edina Altara. Designer and art-ists gave themselves to an outright orgy of decoration, covering walls, doors and shelves with printed and painted motives, alternated to the fancy grain of the wooden surfaces. Through the proliferation of ornaments, which al-tered the perception of the space and made structures and objects appear weightless, architecture and art co-operated on the construction of a total environment.In short, the category of Italian fantasia could accommodate episodes of collaboration between artists and architects as well as research aimed at erasing technical specificity, decorative density as well as dematerialisation. Through it, Ponti outlined an ambivalent concept of a synthesis of the arts, in keeping with the post-war Italian situation, anchored in the past and while projecting toward the future. Nivola’s work reflected both sides of this two-fold orientation, although this was difficult to understand from the pieces documented in Domus. Indeed, the magazine didn’t disclose the context from which Nivola’s sculptures emerged: that of the garden, conceived as a situation in progress, where individual works lost importance to the whole environment, and the environment to its users’ life.19

In 1948 Nivola acquired a dilapidated farmhouse in Springs, then a still affordable destination for artists. The son of a mason, he had learned as a child his father’s trade, which allowed him to take in his own hands the restoration of the building. In 1950, together with the Austrian émigré architect, Bernard Rudofsky (an acquaintance from his years in Milan), he started working on the garden. Structured as a series of open-air rooms connected by pergolas, it included a fireplace, independent walls, benches, and a solarium, with many sculpted and painted interventions (Figure 1).20

The design focused on two key points: the union of architecture and nature, and the idea of a space capable of enhancing life. Both aspects were crucial in the thought of Rudofsky. An eccentric figure in the mid-century architec-tural scene, he was more important for his vision of architecture as part of what he called the ‘art of living’ than for the works he managed to realize. Rudofsky – who had spent the years 1932-8 in Italy, where on occasion he collaborated with Ponti – believed in architecture as a means to achieve an authentic, simple and harmonious existence, whose models he found in the Mediterranean tradition. His search for the continuity of indoor and outdoor spaces, most apparent in the themes of the patio and the pergola, also de-rived from Mediterranean vernacular architecture. Rudofsky has been seen as a maverick modernist, for whom the shape of the construction counted less than the experiences of the individuals who inhabited it; over time, his positions were to appear to be in tune with the criticisms launched against the formalism of the International Style, as it had been codified in the US since the 1930s.21

Although some sketches of the garden’s lay-out remain in the Rudofsky ar-chive, and in spite of the fact that in 1952 the architect was to claim for him-

Figure 1. Costantino Nivola in collaboration with Bernard Rudofsky, Garden in the Nivola house, Springs, East Hampton, 1949-50. Source: Fondazione Nivola.

2. R

EPR

ESEN

TATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

2. R

EPR

ESEN

T ATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

290 291

self the paternity of the design, it would be wrong to see Nivola’s intervention as limited to decoration. Indeed, the very ideas which inspired Rudofsky – a view of architecture as a life-enhancing tool, the search for a dimension of harmony in all aspects of daily existence – were also paramount to Nivola. Born in a small village in rural Sardinia, he had been raised in a traditional culture, where an order at the same time moral and aesthetic governed the smallest details of collective life, giving form to a sort of vernacular Gesamtkunstwerk. This background had shaped his personal attitude to the home: finding existentialist mess and bohemian chaos depressing, he needed a congenial environment around himself. Even when living in very poor lodgings, he was able to organize the space aesthetically by elementary means; starting by cleaning the floor, whitewashing the walls, and painting the ceiling blue, he succeeded in creating what Richard Ingersoll aptly called ‘a wonderful sense of frugal luxury’.22 Nivola’s interest for ‘the art of living’ and for simple and natural conditions of dwelling was not solely conditioned by his peasant roots. Equally important was his experience in Milan during the 1930s, in contact with the same Italian milieus which had influenced Rudofsky. In particular, his closeness to Pagano (with whom he collaborated in the Mostra dell’architettura rurale at the VI Triennale)23 had helped to reinforce Nivola’s vision of the value of the peasant domestic environment, to be set against modernist formalism.24 If the utopian fascination of Pagano and his colleagues with the vernacular tradition left its imprint on him, the same holds true for their concern with the integration of art and architecture, to which the aesthetics of spectacle promoted by the regime bore eloquent witness. Nivola’s involvement in the realization of several fascist propaganda exhibitions and commercial dis-plays, before and after his time at Olivetti, led him to an open approach to space and an attitude of mixing different media.25

The garden reflected such interests, which had been strengthened by Nivo-la’s friendship with Le Corbusier. Although by 1952 the main features of its lay-out were established, Nivola didn’t stop making changes to the spaces, building a traditional Sardinian oven and a modernist fountain, annually re-painting murals, and adding or modifying sculptures. This activity sprang from a conception of art as integral to daily existence. In contrast to the idea of the studio as a separate environment for individual creativity, so prevailant among his friends of the New York school, and in opposition to the modernist refusal of domesticity, 26 Nivola designed a space where no gap divided art-making from living and socializing. Visiting friends sometimes joined in working in and at the garden, from Corbu, who famously tried his hand at sand-casting, to Bruno Munari, who in 1954 re-painted a wall with one of his ‘negative-positive’ compositions.27 The garden was to remain at

the centre of Nivola’s creative life; indeed, he continued to work at it almost until his death in 1988. The private utopia of a space fusing art and life was to influence another Nivola project, his ‘pergola-village’, published in 1952 by Interiors.28 Orani, Nivola’s birthplace, was a poor settlement of around 4000 people in inner Sardinia; the artist imagined connecting its houses to each other by means of vine-covered pergolas, transforming the streets in intimate spaces for the collective existence of the inhabitants. Only the piazza would remain uncovered, becoming the site for a great sculp-ture as its focal point.

The pergola-village, described as ‘a lesson in the integration of civic setting, art and landscape,’ 29 reflected ideas long cherished by Nivola. Shortly after his arrival in New York, when discussing with antifascist leader Emilio Lussu and other Italian refugees what to do in Sardinia after the war, the artist had proposed whitewashing all the houses, and connecting them to each other by a blue baseboard.30 Both blue baseboard and green pergolas were designed to highlight and thereby strengthen the social link between individu-als, giving aesthetic form to the ideal of a cohesive community. Spurred by nostalgia for his homeland and for an inclusive – if poor – archaic society, Nivola anticipated artistic possibilities in advance of his time. In a period in which public art was understood as the integration of painting and sculpture into architecture, he envisaged a type of intervention which, putting aside distinctions of technique, already hinted at a post-media dimension: it wasn’t sculpture, it wasn’t painting, nor properly architecture; it dealt with interper-sonal relations in daily life.The ‘pergola-village’ was never realized, nor were other similar projects by Nivola. In a 1956 interview, he spoke of his intention of making a series of ‘monuments for enhancing life’ as tall as buildings.31 Besides the pergo-la-village, they included a huge outdoor fireplace with several fires, and a labyrinth with multiple visual surprises (probably related to the artist’s failed participation in the BBPR’s Labirinto dei ragazzi for the 1954 Triennale)32. These projects combined the ‘art of living’ with the sculptural research de-veloped by Nivola following his successful collaboration in the Olivetti show-room: an antimodernist emphasis on use and on communal life co-existed with the formal interests typical of modernist sculpture. He did succeed in partially realizing his dream of improving Orani, however, during a visit in 1958, which involved a three-day open-air show of his works in the streets of the village. Announced by the town crier and advertised by a self-produced leaflet in Sardinian dialect, the show featured a series of sculptures set on metal poles, which the villagers received with a mixture of mirth and curiosity (Figure 2). Nivola involved the entire community, not

2. R

EPR

ESEN

TATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

2. R

EPR

ESEN

T ATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

292 293

just because he had enlisted his brothers (trained as stonecutters, like him) and a team of local workers to help in the production of the pieces, but also because the event – breaking the daily routine of the village – became an occasion for a feast. Today, the Orani project might seem an uncanny anticipation of relational art.33 The care that Nivola took in ensuring extensive photographic coverage of the residents’ reaction indicates that in his eyes their participation was far from being unimportant.34 Still, at the core of the project were the mate-rial appearance of the artworks and the visual relationship between sculp-ture and architecture, not the relations between people. Later on, Nivola was to describe the project as an experiment in setting sculpture against ‘the accidentality of peasant architecture’, connecting it with a large com-mission realized in 1960-62 for Eero Saarinen, the decoration of the Morse and Ezra Stiles colleges at Yale University.35 Among the tower-like buildings inspired by the medieval towns of central Italy, the artist disseminated 43 sculptures, freestanding pieces, reliefs and fountains.36 Made of concrete, the same material used for the colleges, and in the same color, the pieces were perfectly integrated with the buildings.Saarinen had not wanted a series of sculptures but ‘a whole atmosphere created by sculpture and bas-relief in relation to architecture’;37 a view

which Nivola, who aimed at providing a backdrop for social life, could hardly disagree with. However, Saarinen’s idea succeeded so thoroughly that the artist was later to complain of his own contribution having been totally over-looked by the critics. As the staging of a disappearance in Golan’s sense, then, the Yale project seems to have worked better than the Olivetti show-room. Despite his slight disappointment, Nivola remained convinced of the neces-sity for sculpture to renounce its aggressiveness and become a discreet companion to architecture. This attitude cannot be explained with the re-fusal of the aesthetic of fascism: indeed, as we have seen, Nivola had been influenced by some aspects of that aesthetic, which was more complex than mere monumentalist bombast. The artist’s training in fascist Milan had increased his interest for communal life born out of a personal experi-ence with peasant society; it also had made him sensitive to the blurring of technical boundaries, encouraging him to experiment with the fusion of the arts. More urgently than an opposition to the rhetoric of fascist public art, Nivola during the post-war years shared an aversion to the assertiveness of modernist public sculpture and its indifference to the social dimension of artistic experience. His case contributes to a theory of a post-war Ital-ian design attitude, in which while reaction to the past played a role in the development of a search for a synthesis of the arts, projection toward the future also had a part in it.

Figure 2. Costantino Nivola, open-air exhibition at Orani, Sardinia, 1958. Photo Carlo Ba-vagnoli. Source: Fondazione Nivola

1 Romy Golan, “Chronicle of a disappearance foretold,” in Flavia Marcello and Anthony White (eds), Interspaces: Art + Architectural Exchanges from East to West (Melbourne, Vic.: The University of Melbourne, School of Culture and Communion, 2012), http://ar-tinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/541899/2.1_GOLAN,_Chronicle_of_a_disappearance_foretold.pdf2 On the Olivetti showroom: Daniel Sherer, “BBPR on Fifth Avenue: The Olivetti Show-room in New York City,” in Chiara Baglione (ed.), The Experience of Architecture. Er-nesto Nathan Rogers 1909-1969 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012), 255-60.3 Nivola’s relief, ‘the most successful and significant element of the design’ accord-

ing to Ada Louise Huxtable in “Olivetti’s Lavish Shop,” Art Digest (July 1954), 15, was given pride of place in the reviews: see “Typewriter palazzo in New York,” Architec-tural Forum (August 1954), 98-103; G. P. (Gio Ponti), “Italia a New York,” Domus 298 (1954), 3-10; “Olivetti New York,” Interiors (November 1954), 124-31; “Nouveau ma-gasin Olivetti à New York,” L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui (1958), 58-9.4 Lewis Mumford, “Charivari and confetti,” The New Yorker December 18, 1954, 114-9.5 “Fantasia degli italiani. Tino Nivola, Mario Tedeschi,” Domus 262 (1951), 46-7 (This writer’s translation, here and elesewhere).6 On Nivola, Fred Licht, Antonello Satta

2. R

EPR

ESEN

TATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

2. R

EPR

ESEN

T ATI

ON

AN

D C

OM

MU

NIC

ATI

ON

294 295

and Richard Ingersoll, Nivola. Sculture (Mi-lano: Jaca Book, 1992); Luciano Caramel and Carlo Pirovano (eds), Costantino Nivo-la. Sculture dipinti disegni (Milano; Electa, 1999); Micaela Martegani (ed.), Costan-tino Nivola in Springs (Southampton, N.Y. – Nuoro: The Parrish Museum-Ilisso, 2003); Carlo Pirovano (ed.), Nivola. L’investigazione dello spazio (Nuoro: Ilisso, 2010); Giuliana Altea (ed.), Seguo la traccia nera e sottile. I disegni di Costantino Nivola (Sassari: Aga-ve, 2011); Renato Miracco (ed.), Costan-tino Nivola. 100 years of creativity (Milan: Charta, 2012). More centered on Nivola’s relationship with architecture are Alessan-dra Como, Riflessioni sull’abitare. La casa-giardino a Long Island (1949-50) di Tino Nivola e Bernard Rudofsky (Rome: Aracne, 2011); Maddalena Mameli, Le Corbusier e Costantino Nivola. New York 1946-1953 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012); Letizia Tedes-chi, “Modanature e sand-casting. L’incontro newyorkese di Le Corbusier e Nivola,” in Marida Talamona (ed.). L’Italia di Le Corbusi-er (Milan: Electa, 2012), 313-29.7 Cement casting from modelled sand.8 “Fantasia degli italiani. Tino Nivola”, 47.9 The display of artworks outdoor wasn’t a complete novelty in 1951: the 1948 ex-hibition of open air sculpture at Battersea Park, London, had been the first of a se-ries of similar initiatives (a second edition was to follow in 1951, during the Festival of Britain) at Anversa, Harnem, Glasgow, Hamburg, Sydney, and Varese, Italy (with the show organized in the Villa Mirabello Park during the Città di Varese Prize). Any-way, the practice was far from enjoying the popularity it reached later.10 In closing his first article on the 1951 Triennale, Ponti assigned to Fontana the role of ideal representative of Italian creativ-ity: ‘We call one of our men, Lucio Fontana, to wave this flag, he who bent a lightning in the Triennale’s sky, and promised to us all a great fable for the doors of the Cathedral of Milan.’ Gio Ponti, “Insegnamento altrui e fan-tasia degli italiani,” Domus 259 (1951), 12.11 L. P. (Lisa Ponti), “Primo graffito dell’età atomica,” Domus 233 (1949), 44.

12 Gio Ponti, “Insegnamento altrui e fanta-sia degli italiani,” 10-13.13 Raffaele Carrieri, Fantasia degli italiani (Milan: Editoriale Domus, 1939).14 G.P. (Gio Ponti), “Fantasia degli Italiani. Piscina o lago?,” Domus 262 (1951), 40-5. Minoletti’s swimming pool was also repro-duced on the magazine’s cover.15 “Fantasia degli italiani. Tino Nivola”, 47.16 On Fornasetti there is a growing, mostly non-scholarly literature, including Patrick Mauriès, Fornasetti. Designer of Dreams (London-New York: Thames & Hudson, 1998); Mariuccia Casadio, Fornasetti, ed-ited by Barnaba Fornasetti and with a text by A. Branzi (Milan: Electa, 2009); Barnaba Fornasetti, Piero Fornasetti. Cento anni di follia pratica (Milan: Corraini, 2013).17 “Due mobili di fantasia con elementi naturali ed elementi decorativi,” Domus 151 (1940), 44-5.18 “Casa di fantasia,” Domus 270 (1952), 28-38.19 On the garden, see Giuliana Altea, “La stanza verde. Bernard Rudofsky e il giardi-no di Nivola,” in Pirovano (ed.), Nivola. L’investigazione dello spazio, 24-37; Ales-sandra Como, Riflessioni sull’abitare (the latter largely based on an interview with Nivola’s widow, Ruth Guggenheim).20 See Costantino Nivola, unpublished in-terview with Paolo Baggiani and Carlo Pinna Parpaglia, 1980, Ilisso Archives, Nuoro. A photographic documentation of the house in Springs, realized after the artist’s death, can be found in Michael Gotkin, Artists’ Handmade Houses (New York: Abrams, 2011), 168-85. House and garden under-went significant changes due to restoration in 2012.21 Andrea Bocco Guarnieri, “Bernard Ru-dofsky and the sublimation of the vernacu-lar,” in Jean-François Lejeune and Michelan-gelo Sabatino (eds.), Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean. Vernacular Dia-logues and Contested Identities (New York: Routledge, 2010), 235.22 Richard Ingersoll, “Tino the Giant. Re-flections On What Made Costantino Nivola Great,” in Renato Miracco (ed.), Costantino

Nivola. 100 Years of Creativity, 47.23 In the Mostra dell’architettura rurale, a series of rural landscapes by Nivola pro-vided a pictorial backdrop to Pagano’s pho-tographs.24 Michelangelo Sabatino, Pride in Modes-ty. Modernist Architecture and the Vernacu-lar Tradition in Italy (Toronto-Buffalo-London: The University of Toronto Press, 2010).25 On Nivola’s role in the preparation of a series of propaganda exhibitions during the 1930s, Roberto Cassanelli, “’Grande décoration’, muralismo, antimuralismo,” in Roberto Cassanelli, Ugo Collu, and Ornella Selvafolta (eds.), Nivola Fancello Pintori. Percorsi del moderno (Milan: Jaca Book, 2003), 173-91.26 On the artist’s studio in the post-war American context, see Caroline Jones, Machine in the studio: constructing the Post-War American artist (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1996); on modernist attitudes to domesticity, see Christopher Reed (ed.), Not at Home. The Suppression of Domesticity in Modern Art and Architecture (London: Thames & Hud-son, 1996).27 On Le Corbusier’s sand-castings, real-ized in 1951, see Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complète 1946-52, Willy Boesiger (ed.) (Zurich: Gisberger, 1953), 231-2. Munari’s mural was painted in 1954; see Bruno Mu-nari, “Antichissima storia dei negativi-positi-vi,” Domus 310 (1955), 44.28 O. G. (Olga Guelft), “The pergola-village,

vined Orani,” Interiors 6 (1953), 80-5.29 Ibidem, 85.30 Costantino Nivola, unpublished interview with Paolo Baggiani and Carlo Pinna Parpa-glia, 212.31 Dore Ashton, “Sand sculpture by Costan-tino Nivola,” Architectural Record (October 1956), 204.32 See Luigi Spinelli, “BBPR, Huber, Stein-berg, Nivola o ‘la sintesi delle arti’,” Domus 935 (2010), 97-106.33 The obvious reference is to Nicolas Bour-riaud, Esthéthique relationnelle (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 1998).34 Photographer Carlo Bavagnoli was com-missioned a full report of the event. See Marisa Volpi, Maria Luisa Frongia, Rita Ladogana, Carlo Bavagnoli, Costantino Nivo-la. Ritorno a Itaca (Nuoro: Ilisso, 2010).35 Costantino Nivola, Simposium of sculptor [sic] New Orleans 1977, typewritten notes for a speech given at the 9th International Sculpture Conference and Symposium, New Orleans, 1977, unpaginated; Constantino Nivola Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.36 On the Yale project, see Micaela Marte-gani, “Costantino Nivola in Springs,” in Mar-tegani (ed.), Costantino Nivola in Springs, 30; Altea, “Seguo la traccia nera e sottile,” 74-88.37 Eero Saarinen to Costantino Nivola, No-vember 2, 1959; Constantino Nivola Pa-pers, Archives of American Art, Smithson-ian Institution.