Imagining the Mediterranean House- VV.AA. [Antonio Pizza (ed.), Museo ICO (coeds.)]

IMAGINING THE MEDITERRANEAN HOUSE
Italy and Spain in the 50s

This catalogue focusses on the subject of “the Mediterranean house” researching its operative presence in a limited historical background: the 50s. This period is characterised by the decisive influence of two international masters of architecture in Spain —Gio Ponti and Alberto Sartoris—, whose ideology is based on a careful mediation between tradition and modernity.

It deals with a wide-ranging cultural project that was mainly divulged through a contemporary idea of the domestic, emphasising the well-known typology of the “Mediterranean house”; a paradigm that outlines its identity from the singularity of its interrelations with the surrounding environment, from the use of certain materials, from a peculiar distribution of the interiors and from the resource —also symbolic— of some figurative guidelines; strategies implemented with the aim of satisfying the basic demands of contemporary existence, nevertheless in polemic opposition to the alienating uniformity of a mechanised urban civilization.

Through various documental resources of diverse nature —projects, drawings, magazines, letters, publications and photographs— we comprehend the implications of a reflection on architecture which integrates historical, landscaping and anthropological approaches, as well as the personal and professional contacts established amongst renowned protagonists of modern architecture.