Cultural Politics: Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Date and Time
Location
"The Architectural Legacy of Fascism in Postwar Italy"
Speaker:
Lucy M. Maulsby, Visiting Scholar, Center for European Studies, Harvard University; Assistant Professor of Architectural History, School of Architecture, Northeastern University.
Contact:
Heather Conrad
hconrad@wcfia.harvard.edu
Chair:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the Second World War and against the backdrop of the polarizing politics of the Cold War, Italian architects, like others, who had established their professional reputations under a discredited totalitarian regime, were faced with the need to redefine their work in terms appropriate for post-war realities. For some, the denial or obscuring of their involvement with the regime provided a means of moving forward. For others, perhaps especially the younger generation of architects aligned with the Italian variant of the avant-garde, the reframing of modernism’s engagement with fascism provided the most expedient means of complying with the new cultural landscape and securing a foothold from which to contribute to the reconstruction of Italy. The resulting historical distortions have not only, as scholars have shown, obscured the dynamic between architectural modernism and fascist politics but also, I argue, inhibited a frank assessment of the legacy of interwar modernism in the post-war period.