"Half God and half architects made Italy," he once said Gio Ponti one of the fathers of 900th century Italian architecture. Architects have always been a particular category: half technicians and half creatives. The most truthful confirmation of Ponti's definition now comes from «Census of Italian architecture from 1945 to today» announced by the Ministry of Culture. A map about 5 buildings and urban areas that have marked Italy from the post-war period to the present day. It took two years of work supervised by the Ministry's Contemporary Creativity Directorate in collaboration with local universities and institutions. The project saw the light when it was at the MIC Dario Franceschini. The Minister set himself the goal of filling a documentary gap in contemporary Italian history. On the other hand he was also the only one who also favored the development of projects usustainable urban planning for the most disadvantaged cities.
The post-war period to rethink architecture and urban planning
Through the buildings built and the ideas that have interested architects and their studios over time, today we read with other tools the story of a country that in the mid-40s wanted to recover from the ruins of war and the disasters of fascism. 1945 is therefore set as "zero point" for a survey of what has been built. A memory to be cultivated for the benefit of young people but also of those who want to understand what and how it was done. The year 1945 marks the start of post-war reconstruction yes, but it also marks the turning point in building production, technological innovation, housing policies, « the rethinking of the architectural and urban planning discipline». Creativity should not conflict with the values, urban and social contexts and with the ambitions of a people bent by horrors and rubble. Italy needed to be redone from top to bottom, starting with the places of production and the economy. It is no coincidence that architects will for a long time be at the service of builders, visionary industrialists, bourgeois families and politicians of a new course. Italy was an extraordinary opportunity to experiment with models, materials, occupation of spaces. The new creators will also make urban planning, aesthetic and environmental errors, but they will establish themselves as the protagonists of a process that will go on for decades. In the catalog there are projects by names that later became celebrities of world architecture such as Gae Aulenti who designs, among other things, the Forlì waste-to-energy plant; Renzo Piano renovating the Lingotto in Turin; Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini who build the Olivetti complex in Ivrea; Oscar Niemeyer who designed the Mondadori headquarters in Segrate; Ludovico Quaroni with the village "La Martella" in the Matera dei Sassi. And then, Carlo Aymonino, Pier Luigi Cervellati, Bruno Zevi, Vittorio Gregotti, Alvar Aalto, , Massimiliano Fucksas, Santiago Calatrava and many, many others.
The distance between North and South
The 5 thousand cataloged works are the quintessence of the economic boom which was beginning to dig the separation of the South from the North. A physical and intellectual separation destined to drag on to the present day. The works in the catalog are divided by Regions: more in the North, less in the South, from 750 in Lombardy to 116 in Basilicata. In designing there was no single thought of fascist rationalism. Far from it. There was a desire to turn the page with the philosophical and political influences of a new Renaissance. The America of the New Deal, of usable collective spaces, signs of democracy and power at the same time made planning in a less invasive way, more functional to the needs of a population that enjoyed widespread well-being, even though half of Italy remained fearfully behind. The cities were laboratories for new residential complexes, factories, sports facilities, libraries, business centers, skyscrapers, schools, parks. “Today we are very pleased to be able to make the Census platform available to the public. It is the result of two intense years of review, update and implementation that have brought the platform to the census architectures of historical-artistic interest throughout the national territory”, said the Director General of Contemporary Creativity Onofrio Cutaia. He must be acknowledged for the work done, without neglecting his future commitment. In fact, the architecture catalog will be updated with the inclusion of other works that have made Italy a model to be studied. Perhaps other works will be found in the South, which escaped the first cataloguing, with the hope of seeing a less divided country represented.
