The Artistic Legacy of Le Corbusier’s machine à habiter,

ed. by Anna Novakov and Elisabeth Schmidle (2008)

Maria Elena Versari, “Inhabiting Ideology: Quadrante and the paradigm of the machine à
habiter in Fascist Italy”: 73-88.
 73

Inhabiting Ideology: Quadrante and the shifting

paradigm of the machine à habiter in Fascist Italy.
Maria Elena Versari

The journal Quadrante was founded in 1933 by the art and architecture critic Pier
Maria Bardi and the writer Massimo Bontempelli as a venue of discussion for
“art, architecture, literature and all the problems of modern life.” Based in Milan,
the journal was intended to showcase the projects of one of the newest and most
progressive groups of architects in Italy, the so-called “Rationalists.”1 Whereas
several studies have addressed the influence of Le Corbusier’s theories on the de-
velopment of modern Italian architecture, reconstructing in great depth the con-
tacts and exchanges that he had with the Quadrante group, no serious study has
been devoted to his influence on the specific language and visual strategies em-
ployed by the journal in its battle for modern architecture in Fascist Italy. This
contribution aims to fill this gap by showing how Le Corbusier’s theories not only
shaped modern Italian architecture, but were also used as a tool in its promotion
and dissemination.
In the second half of the 1920s, architecture becomes a central topic of de-
bate and confrontation in Italy. This renewed interest clearly stems from the in-
creases in investment made by the Fascist State in the sectors of infrastructure and
in the construction of government buildings and public housing. Within this
framework, the Futurists are the first to restructure their aesthetic ideology ac-
cording to the new opportunities created by State sponsorship; but in terms of ar-
chitecture, however, their unfocused vision limits their influence. At the end of
the 1920s, Le Corbusier had risen as the main reference point for a new genera-
74

tion of architects in Italy, the self-named “Group 7.” “You have somehow come
to preside over the founding of this group,” Carlo Enrico Rava, one of the leaders
of the group and representative to the Congrès International d’Architecture Mod-
erne (CIAM), writes in a letter to him in 1927. In the same letter, he describes
himself as a discontented young man, who, freshly out of architecture school,
“was enlightened by two books, Le Rappel à l’ordre and Vers une architecture,
[. . .] which showed the way to follow.”2 This new path seemed to diverge, at least
in appearance, from the one that the Futurists had defined over the years in their
numerous manifestos.
Making “new” houses, the young Italian architects of the Group 7 assert in
one of their first public statements, does not mean “mechanizing them, building
edifices that resemble cruisers and planes.”3 Dismissing the “deplorable mistake”
of an architecture potentially modeled on the structure of the machine, they im-
plement the discursive strategies codified by Vers une architecture: “the new ar-
chitecture must adhere to new necessities in the same way in which the new
machines are born from new necessities and are perfected with the augmentation
of those same necessities.”4 Group 7 is indirectly pointing the finger at the Futur-
ists’ longtime celebration of machine aesthetics, which had often been awkwardly
limited theme-driven exercises in iconology. Trying to counterbalance its own his-
toricization and dismissal, Futurism, for its part, reverts to the primacy of Sant’Elia
and his Manifesto of Futurist Architecture (1914). Writing to Mussolini in 1928, a
year after Group 7’s haughty declaration of intent, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
presents his new plans for the architectural field in the following terms: “The
Edilizia d’Arte Fascista, of which I’m the president and artistic director, aims to
continue the artistic revolution initiated by the architect Sant’Elia, who renewed
the world’s architecture eighteen years ago, died gloriously on the Carso moun-
tains, and is nowadays imitated everywhere by Le Corbusier, Mallet Stevens etc.”5
Even Le Corbusier realizes the centrality of this Futurist figure in the contem-
porary battle for modern architecture, but quickly dismisses the idea of his possible
influence on the theorization of the machine à habiter.6 The historian Reyner Ban-
 75

ham, however, has reconstructed the specificities of the Futurists’ positions on ar-
chitecture and has convincingly demonstrated the close connections between Le
Corbusier’s theories with those of Sant’Elia.7 In 1914, the Futurist architect broke
with the past by presenting the evolution of architecture as not simple changes in
fashion or cultural references, but as the development of specific technical innova-
tions. It is for this reason that Saint’Elia believes that architecture, in the modern
epoch, necessarily detaches itself from tradition and starts anew. His discourse
mixes technical and cultural arguments, equating the psychological evolution of
modern man with the need for new forms in architecture. In his Manifesto, he
writes: “We feel that we are not the men of cathedrals, palaces, public tribunes
anymore, but of big hotels, train stations, immense roads, colossal bridges, covered
markets, bright galleries, straight stretches, sanitary demolitions. We must invent
and rebuild ex-novo the modern city as an immense tumultuous construction site
[. . .] and the modern house as a gigantic machine [. . .], a house made of cement,
glass, iron, with no painting nor sculpture, rich only of the beauty congenital to its
lines and reliefs, extraordinarily ugly in its mechanical simplicity.”8
Sant’Elia’s reflection is devoted not only to a new architecture responding to
a new cultural imagery, but also to the new set of values connected with it, rooted
and nurtured in the present by all the new technical appliances and innovations of
modern life. Defining his aim, he describes “an architecture that has its justifica-
tion only in the specific conditions of modern life, and its correspondence as aes-
thetic value in our new sensibility. This architecture cannot be subject to any law
of historical continuity. It must be as new as the state of our soul.”9
In the late 1920s, the legacy of Sant’Elia becomes an adaptable instrument
used to mix Futurist machine aesthetics and newer political themes. But it also
offers the opportunity of a singular renewal of those codes. New Futurist architec-
ture, in Marinetti’s vision, will foster the “harmonious equilibrium of plan and
masses, the technical utilization of all the new materials and of electricity, the per-
fect agreement between interior and exterior, between goal and form-color of the
building.”10 These technical specificities, which characterize the most significant
76

architectural realizations of the last ten years in Europe, are also portrayed by the
head of Futurism as the main principles of an “absolutely Italian and absolutely
new architectural style,” a style that is functional to “our needs of national pride,
powerful and optimistic virility, hygiene and comfort.”11
In an article published in La città futurista in 1929, the architect Alberto Sar-
toris uncovers the inner organization of this rhetorical strategy, reuniting the aims
of the Futurists and of the Group 7 in the merger of “Architecture and the new
spirit.” Sartoris stages a well-orchestrated controversy, in which the celebration of
a new society is drawn against the current system of selection and appointment
for the architects who will design the new buildings of the new State. “Italy too,
traditional for so long, has finally understood the greatness of the present hour and
raises the flag of the new spirit,” he writes, lamenting yet again the deplorable
monopoly of the backward-looking academies and their monopoly on the educa-
tion of young architects.12 In a few lines, Sartoris summarizes the codes that will
mold the shifting language of architectural debates for the following ten years.
The conceptual references are significantly multifold: the repeated, even gripping
celebration of the “new” restates the formulaic rhetoric of the Regime but also
overtly reverts to the demands of the Futurists for a cultural “tabula rasa.” “A na-
tion like ours,” he writes, “which has an independent and complete life, has the
right to demand a new architecture, far from the past and reflecting the full devel-
opment of a vital originality [. . .] We still lack a Fascist architectonical style that
represents Italy before history.”13
But the core of Sartoris’ discourse does not develop from a simple question
of historical representation. Significantly, he stresses the pedagogical potential of
architecture, an appealing theme within the political framework of the time.
“From the moral point of view,” he adds, “the effect would be of the utmost im-
portance since architecture is ‘what is seen”; it creates the face of the nation and
molds the character of the citizens. A civic élan may originate from a living and
solid architecture.”14
 77

In these months, Sartoris is touching up the final proofs of his book on mod-
ern architecture. He summons many friends to ask Le Corbusier for an introduc-
tion, which the architect will reluctantly write after some years. The linguistic
choices of Sartoris, who, after some indecision, names his anthology Gli elementi
dell’architettura funzionale,15 clearly cannot suit Le Corbusier’s sensitive defense
of the principles of creation against the diktats of functionalism.16 It is however a
false contrast, since Sartoris himself conceives the canons of functionalism along
the characteristics outlined by Le Corbusier, when he defined architecture as “le
produit des peuples heureux et ce qui produit des peuples heureux.”17
Le Corbusier’s cunning circular reasoning on modernity in architecture finds
eager ears at the beginning of the 1930s, when the debate on modern architecture
in Italy is filtered through the codes of political propaganda. Architects from the
major stylistic currents are competing with one another for the same public com-
missions, aspiring to gain the official recognition of the State, posing as the ideal
interpreters of the image of the Regime.
Within this framework, the path chosen by Pier Maria Bardi and the group of
Rationalist architects reunited around the journal Quadrante is the overt spectacu-
larization of the cultural debate surrounding architecture in Italy. As Massimo
Bontempelli puts it in the opening pages of the journal, the image of architecture
may become the paradigm of a new sensibility, capable of “imposing a type of
language onto an epoch.”18 Constantly shifting between demands of architectural
modernity and artfully selected citations of Benito Mussolini, Quadrante builds a
rhetorical strategy that paints an ideal correspondence between the Regime and
these new architects, erasing the real, convoluted conduits of juries and systems of
powers at work behind the public architectural selections and appointments.
This peculiar attitude of appropriation and definition brings the journal to a
paradoxical request of autonomy, positioning itself between, as Massimo Bon-
tempelli puts it, the “interpretation” and “propaganda” of Fascism. Defining the
program of Quadrante, he writes: “Mussolini alerts us that we must try to be true
and deep interpreters of this time (that is his time). His teaching must be found
78

especially in those two words. Works of art perform a kind of ‘interpretation’ of

an epoch that is of a high and spiritual level; it’s not a literal translation from poli-
tics into art. Many excellent fascists ask the writer or the painter to make ‘propa-
ganda’ for Fascism in their works. Mussolini never gave us this goal. He says
‘interpretation,’ not ‘propaganda.’ The interpretative relations between the work
of art and its political achievement are mysterious, almost always invisible, if not
after a long time.”19
Moving the codes of reference for the architects from “representation” to
“interpretation,” Quadrante leaves a wider space to the workings of rhetoric, and
for the creation of a specific language capable of binding Rationalist architecture
to Fascism. Significantly, this idiom is modeled on the example of the one at work
in Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture.
The parallels of content between the writings of Le Corbusier and those ap-
pearing in Quadrante are countless. The celebration of technology, for instance, is
strongly detached from the content-driven precedent of Futurism. Pier Maria
Bardi turns instead to Le Corbusier’s specific conflation of values, binding the
moral qualities of the new aesthetics to those of its protagonists. In Vers une ar-
chitecture, the Swiss architect had suggested a link from the current needs of the
modern man, the contemporary dweller, to the spiritual characteristics of the en-
gineers. The new spirit and its creator were therefore defined in the same terms.
“We are wretched for living in houses that do not adequately serve us, because
they ruin our health and our spirit,” he wrote, adding a few lines later, “The engi-
neers are healthy and virile, active and useful, moral and happy [. . .] We don’t
have money anymore to erect scaffoldings for historic souvenirs. We need to
bathe. [. . .] Nowadays, the engineers are the ones that know, that know the way to
hold, heat, ventilate, illuminate. Is it not?”20
Bardi reworks Le Corbusier’s montage of values, inserting a more clear ref-
erence to the political climate of 1930s Italy. In the pages of Quadrante, he states:
“The work of the engineers is the core of modern life, and this work extends in
thousands of initiatives and realizations, thousands of solutions that get diffused
 79

in what we generically call techniques. And technology is the only form of con-
temporary politics, it is to technology and to its good administration that a nation
owes its well-being, and therefore its order and prosperity.”21
Some have read Bardi’s (and Le Corbusier’s) celebration of the technician
as a prefiguration of a technocratic society, as proof of the architect’s blind trust
in the social potential of his work and of his moral indifference in front of his dic-
tatorial Maecenas.22 However, the reference to the figure of the technician is re-
vealing for what it shows about the various rhetorical strategies used within the
ever-shifting political identity of Italian Fascism. If we turn away from the idea of
a dictatorial Regime as an ideological monolith generating autonomous, immacu-
late iconologies and we retrace instead the battles waged by the many groups of
intellectuals and artists competing for the role of ideal interpreter of the Regime,
we are able to redress the system of codes and alliances at work behind the screen
of the dictatorship.
The glorification of the engineer as the embodiment of a new generation of
Italians shaped by Fascism, in particular, is a theme popularized by several intel-
lectuals reunited around the politician Giuseppe Bottai. Mussolini himself uses
several metaphors taken from the world of building and construction, associating
the alacrity of the State-financed public works with the ideal of a nation to edify
and re-build. It is within this mixed terminology that Bardi shapes his call for a
new architecture as “art of the State,” which is the ideal counterpart of this world
populated by “figures of engineers, of flying men, of builders of any type.”23 If the
new architecture must mirror the moral values of the new victories of the Regime,
it must do so by adhering to its goal, to use Bontempelli’s expression, of interpret-
ing Fascism and embodying its iconic potential. This binding association between
the new form and function of architecture and the interpretation of Fascism opens
the way to a recontextualization of the discursive elements employed by Le Cor-
busier in his cultural battle for modern architecture. Selecting among the many
trends of the propaganda jargon of the time, Bardi portrays Fascism as a moderniz-
ing force that is changing the Italian people. Depicting the ideal of an epochal goal
80

that justifies the mechanization and rationalization of the principles of living, Le

Corbusier had written: “In any modern man, there’s a mechanics. The sentiment of
mechanics exists, justified by everyday activities. This sentiment is, in relation to
mechanics, of respect, gratitude, esteem.”24 And, more clearly, he stated: “Me-
chanics brings in itself the principle of economy, the principle that selects. There’s
a moral sentiment in the sentiment of mechanics. The intelligent man, cold and
calm, has gained wings. We need intelligent men, cold and calm, to build the
house, to trace the city.”25 Similarly to the sentiment of mechanics at work in the
modern man for Le Corbusier, Fascism operates as an almost impersonal force of
the times. And to this rationalizing force, people react with a sentiment of “respect,
gratitude, esteem.” Inside this framework of values, Bardi simply equates the co-
ordinates offered by Le Corbusier with the ones embedded in the paternalistic
codes of Fascist modernity: the perfect dweller of the machine age becomes the
perfect fascist, shaped by the renewing influx of Mussolini’s times.
In order to establish this new vision of architecture, that is, this new interpre-
tation of Fascism through architecture, Bardi needs to disembody the contradic-
tory set of iconologies that clutter the many images of Fascism. And, again, it is
from Le Corbusier that he derives the peculiar mix of visual and linguistic ele-
ments suitable for this goal.
In 1931 at the famous first exhibition of Rationalist architecture, he had cre-
ated a chaotic photomontage, cutting and pasting images of historicist architec-
tural styles recently built in Italy, surrounded by figurines dressed in 19th-century
clothes and kitschy decorations. Named the “Table of the Horrors,” this huge pho-
tomontage was shown to Mussolini, as a denunciation of the state of current archi-
tecture in the country.
When he decides to re-print the “Table” in the second number of Quadrante,
Bardi offers a clear reading of the “historic souvenirs” that, in the words of Le
Corbusier, entangle the architect’s victim: “Any man has in his mind his own
paradise, composed of his ideal preferences, his loves, his tortuous and gratifying
moral conquests [. . .] It went this way: we killed the culture-vulture architect, we
 81

opened his skull and we carefully took out all his mental paradise. We recom-
posed it minutely and photographed it, in order to give accurate news of it to our
readers.”26 Bardi’s ridiculed taxonomy of the architect’s mind plays on the moral
attack against the debauchery of bourgeois culture, a common theme of Fascist
propaganda. Turning current darlings of the Regime, such as the architect
Marcello Piacentini, whose work is reproduced in the “Table of the Horrors,” into
active participants and proponents of the mores of the pre-Fascist era is a strong
political statement for Bardi. His choice of purveying the modern image of the
Regime is sustained by the same discursive strategy defined by Le Corbusier in
his call for the abandonment of superfluous luxury and decoration. “It’s in the
general production that we find the style of the epoch and not, as people believe
too much, in some ornamental production, simple overabundance that ends up
weighting down a spiritual system, which is the only one that offers the elements
of a style,” the architect had written.27 Years later, he denounces the profusion of
ornamental decoration in even clearer term, criticizing it on moral grounds. Bor-
rowing the syndicalist ideology of Hubert de Lagardelle,28 with whom he redacts
the journal Plans, Le Corbusier envisions an economical structure guided by a
fatherly force, which can shift industrial production from the manufacture of use-
less objects that congest our houses to the rational reconstruction of the city. “We
need to build the spaces of the renaissance of the being,” he states.29
In December 1934, in Bardi’s journal, the accent is placed on the occupancy
of public spaces by inadequate, backward-looking symbols of Fascism. Decrying
the proliferation of decorative garlands and architectural arrangements that fill up
the streets on the occasion of political celebrations, Bardi widens his polemical
stance against the imaginary world of the culture-monger architect. He selects
some of the most pathetic experiments in Fascist iconography and glues them to-
gether in a photomontage, stigmatized by the comment: “Comrades who evidently
use sacred symbols and words lightly.”
If in the “Table of the Horrors” the chaotic conflation of 19th-century visual
references was the product of an unfitting individual choice, that of the retrograde
82

architect, these decorations betray an “ornamental” conception of Fascism enacted

by the very agents of its (presumed) historical revelation: the masses. Symboli-
cally, Bardi insists, Fascism should not be equated with a removable decoration
shaped in the forms of 19th-century public furnishings. Two months later, he
would spell this conviction out: “We did not interpret the expression “Fascist
Art,” as many doomed ones did, as ancient art encrusted with lictorian bundles to
the highest degree; that is, same old substance, new packaging.”30 His discourse
stresses the need to rectify a “mis-interpretation” in which the presumably good-
willed people have fallen. It is therefore the role of the architect, again, to amend
and guide the masses’ inner drive toward tasteless manufactural consumption and
historical decoration. Concurrently, in Bardi’s perspective, it is the architect’s role
to correctly interpret Fascism and furnish it with a style that reflects its spiritual
revolution.
Fostering the definition of the modern architect as the “interpreter” of the Re-
gime, the Italian writer stages a discursive as well as visual pedagogy that is based
on an ideological morality similar to Le Corbusier’s. Perfecting a formal model
already used by the Swiss architect in Plans, Bardi, in most of the illustrations of
Quadrante, adopts a more articulate style than that found of the “Table of the hor-
rors.” He juxtaposes two or three photographs, connecting them with an ironic
commentary. The montage of the photographs is semantic, based on the relation
between text and image. It can consist in putting side by side two independent im-
ages bound by a remark, that exasperates a latent contraposition or, vice-versa, by
a note that alludes to their unexpected and ironical consonance. Bardi imposes un-
common associations, taken from different semantic fields, on the viewer. In 1934,
for instance, criticizing the projects presented for the development of the Via
dell’Impero, he creates a photomontage of some of the proposed buildings. These
are set upside down and inserted in a frame that mimics the typographic layout of
the puzzle-books of the time. In the upper left corner, the title of the most popular
crosswords and rebus weekly in Italy, La settimana enigmistica, sets the stage for
the ironic caption at the bottom: “Are there any errors?”
 83

The errors, naturally, are the monumental and heavy forms of the palaces
proposed for the modern Rome of Fascism, but also, more openly, the symbolic
interplay of the third and last building, rendered obvious by its upturned view.
While its architect, Palanti, had tried to summarize a certain vision of Fascism,
transforming a governmental building into a trireme from Ancient Rome, Bardi
disengages the metaphoric associations of the project, erasing any rhetorical over-
tone. “What has an ancient boat to do with Fascism?” his photomontage asks, re-
inforced by the caption at the bottom of the page, that clarifies the issue in the
following way: “A great number of contestants have presented projects of the
strangest shapes to the Competition for the Palazzo del Littorio. It seems that
many have worked to offer material to the good-willed, who frequent the rebuses
in the pages of the weekly papers.”31
Once again, the stress is placed on the issue of interpretation and on the
codes of reference that accredit that specific iconographic interpretation of Fascist
architecture. Reworking Le Corbusier’s classic theorization of the new house as a
machine à habiter, Bardi’s discourse points to the distinction between iconology
and functioning, formal chrysalis and internal organization. He ridicules Palanti’s
icon-driven language, suggesting that he shift to the project of a palace resem-
bling “a great dynamic locomotive” for his next public competition.32 Still, need-
ing to reinforce the centrality of the machine as a powerful, conceptual force
within the current epoch, he writes: “Right when architecture was on the verge of
being refreshed and revived through new forms and a new morality, in the middle
of the advent of the machine, a sort of sarcastic diffidence and of paralyzing fear
subtracted it to its final goal [. . .] Today, in the full age of the machine, architec-
ture remains behind, terribly behind.”33 Interestingly, for Bardi, this regressive
situation is mainly caused by the freedom conceded to the bourgeois customer,
who “blows, bawls, boils of libido for living in a fake castle, with so many inani-
ties inside, with so many merlons on the roof, and decorated towers, sundials, iron
gratings, drawbridges and frogs croaking around.”34 Even in more recent times, as
84

taste undergoes some changes, a fake aura of modernity has, for him, concealed a
substantially old practice in the production of forms.35
Incapable of finding new commissioners who embody his own interpretation
of Fascism, Bardi calls for an ideal removal of the bourgeois element in the proc-
ess of selecting the projects for new public constructions. In reality, he calls for the
elimination of any commission, since all of them, like the one for the new building
on the via dell’Impero, “are formed by architects from a bygone era who are inca-
pable of judging a time that has been born against them.”36 “Better said,” he con-
cludes, “we hope that the judgment will be given by only one judge: Mussolini.”37
Concurrently, Guido Fiorini, the engineer-inventor of the tensistruttura for
sky-scrapers and probably the nearest to Le Corbusier among the Italians of the
time, offers in the pages of Quadrante a new, more optimistic reformulation of
the principles underlying the machine à habiter. 38 Presenting his project for sin-
gle-resident housing, to be built in series, he stresses an achieved uniformity in
the modern man, leading up to the simplification and standardization of tastes.
“Now all men are dressed in the same way,” he writes. “A grey intonation is
common and the difference between the rich and the poor is granted by impercep-
tible details in the quality of the cloth, the cut and subtle trimmings. Everyone
owns a watch and the number of those who cannot have a gramophone or a radio
is getting smaller and smaller. The autos, owned by a growing number, are of
quite different value, but the internal organism of the auto of the rich is absolutely
identical to that of the poor. Both are precise and perfect because they are built in
series and they are the fruit of an intelligent and patient mise au point. These sub-
tle improvements are copied by the less wealthy class, which desires and wants to
conquer them. [. . .] So the rich man’s house must be built in series like the poor
man’s. We’ll have types of houses of different production and they will form an
entire assortment, distinguished by their commercial value. Substantially and su-
perficially the organism will be the same. But it will be the question of employing
the most developed materials, of little costly devices, of awe-inspiring enhance-
ments. These very interesting peculiarities will be the expensive ones.”39
 85

Envisioning the application of his architectural solution to the housing issue,

the Italian engineer portrays an ideal society of classes divided only by slight dif-
ferentiations (“peculiarities”) in the production of their objects of consumption.
The reason for this progressive evolution, for Fiorini, is rooted in the principle of
convenience, which is, as he states, “numerical.” As it happened with the car, the
problem of modern housing can be solved by reaching “the minimum cost per
person.”40 Significantly, even this vision, apparently simply established by an
economical rationale, is rooted in a strict ideological substantiation. In addition to
the increase in standardization, which reduces the building’s construction costs,
stronger savings can be achieved by increasing the number of inhabitants in each
structure. And this goal is reached by “a better, more rational, less bourgeois un-
derstanding of contemporary life in relation with the functioning of the house it-
self, of the necessities, organization and finalization of each space.”41 Once again,
this “more rational, less bourgeois understanding of contemporary life” must be
shared by the designer and by the inhabitant. Like Bardi’s aviators and techni-
cians, Fiorini’s ideal dweller must somehow be shaped by the principles of the
machine age, in order to fit into the harmonic codes of a house that grants him a
machine-like functionality. Compared to the old ones, his new apartment, Fiorini
states, is “built for the same number of people but is organized for a more intelli-
gent and substantial order of life.”42
Inaugurating the publication of Plans, Le Corbusier had created a slogan:
“Machine House: Satisfying the latent necessities of modern consciousness.”43 In
Quadrante, the necessities of ideology seem to burden Le Corbusier’s reasoning
with a series of extraneous considerations. It is however the core of his definition
of the machine à habiter, and the ideological principles on which it is based, that
work as a paradoxical indication of the conceptual quandaries of defining modern
Fascist architecture.
Shaped by an atmosphere continuously shifting between a “machine age”
and “the age of Mussolini,” the ideal dweller of Le Corbusier’s machine à habiter
becomes the embodiment of the ideal Fascist. In his quest to interpret Fascism
86

through architecture, Pier Maria Bardi stages a psychological continuum between

the principles of the constructor and those of the inhabitant, the beauty of the ar-
chitect and the sentiments of the dweller. In Bardi’s self-reflecting, pedagogical
vision of modernity, the latent necessities of contemporary consciousness are duly
satisfied by an architecture that envisions itself as the moral guarantee of a
“higher order of life,” that of Mussolini’s totalitarian homeland.

Notes

1
For an introduction to Quadrante and the architectural debates surrounding its life, see Peter Eis-
enman, “Dall'oggetto alla relazionalità: la Casa del Fascio di Terragni,” in Casabella, n. 344, gen-
naio 1970, pp. 38–41 and “From Object to Relationship II: Giuseppe Terragni's Casa Giuliani
Frigerio,” in Perspecta, n. 13–14, 1971, pp. 36–65; Maria Mimita Lamberti, “Le Corbusier e
l’Italia,” in Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, vol. II, 1972, pp. 817–871; Manfredo
Tafuri, “Il soggetto e la maschera. Una introduzione a Terragni,” in Lotus, n. 20, settembre 1978,
p. 5–29; Giorgio Ciucci, “A Roma con Bottai,” in Rassegna, n. 3, luglio 1980, pp. 66–71; Diane
Yvonne Ghirardo, “Italian Architects and fascist politics,” in Journal of the Society of Architec-
tural Historians, n. 2, May 1980, pp. 109–127 and “Politics of a Masterpiece: the ‘vicenda’ of the
facade decoration for the Casa del Fascio, Como,” in The Art Bulletin, n. 62, September 1980, pp.
466–478; Franco Biscossa, “Quadrante: il dibattito e la polemica,” in La costruzione dell'utopia.
Architetti e urbanisti nell'Italia fascista, edited by Giulio Ernesti, Edizioni Lavoro, Rome 1988,
pp. 67–89; Giorgio Ciucci, Gli architetti e il fascismo. Architettura e città 1922–1944, Einaudi,
Turin 1989; Riccardo Mariani, Razionalismo e architettura moderna. Storia di una polemica,
Edizioni di Comunità, Milan 1989; Francesco Tentori, P.M. Bardi. Con le cronache artistiche de
‘L'Ambrosiano’ 1930–1933, Mazzotta, Milan 1990; Richard A. Etlin, Modernism in Italian Archi-
tecture 1890–1940, The MIT Press, Cambridge & London 1991; Panos Koulermos, 20th Century
European Rationalism, Academy Editions, London 1995; Giuseppe Terragni, catalogue, Triennale
di Milano, 11 May–3 November 1996, edited by Giorgio Ciucci, Electa, Milan 1996.
2
Letter of Carlo Enrico Rava to Le Corbusier, 20 January 1927, Archives Le Corbusier, Paris, cit.
in Marida Talamona, Le Corbusier e l’Italia. Vent’anni di rapporti letterari, artistici e architetto-
nici (1921–1940), PhD dissertation, Università di Roma Tre, p. 43.
3
See Group 7, “Architettura,” in La Rassegna Italiana, December 1926, reproduced in Architettu-
ra Italiana del ‘900, edited by Giorgio Ciucci and Francesco Dal Co, Electa, Milan 1993, p. 101.
4
Ibidem.
5
Letter of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to Benito Mussolini, 22 January 1928, cit. in María Isabel
Navarro Segura, Eduardo Westerdahl y Alberto Sartoris: Correspondencia (1933–1989). Una
maquinaria de acción, 2 voll. Istituto Óscar Domínguez de Arte y Cultura Contemporánea—
Organismo Autónomo de Museos y Centros Cabildo Insular de Tenerife, p. 83.
6
In a letter of 1934 to Pier Maria Bardi, he writes: “Vous m’amusez seulement énormément lor-
sque, à chacun de vos articles sur moi, vous pensez nécessaire de me faire faire des déclarations
politiques que je n’ai jamais faites et des affirmations sur Sant’Elia qui est un homme certaine-
ment de haute valeur, mais dont je n’ai entendu parler que depuis le réveil architectural italien, il y
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a a deux ou trois ans.” See Le Corbusier to P. M. Bardi, 7 August 1934, reprinted in Marida Ta-
lamona, Le Corbusier e l’Italia, cit., pp. 222–223.
7
Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, it. translation Architettura della
prima età della macchina, Edizioni Calderini, Bologna 1970, in particular, chapters 9, 10, 17 and
18.
8
Antonio Sant’Elia, “Manifesto dell’architettura futurista (1914),” reproduced in Architettura
Italiana del ‘900, cit., pp. 84–85.
9
Ibidem, p. 84.
10
Letter of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to Benito Mussolini, 22 January 1928, cit., p. 83.
11
Ibidem. For the rediscovery of Sant’Elia in relation to late 1920s architectural debates in Italy,
see “Spiritualité et artifice. La fortune critique de A. Sant’Elia, interprétée par G. C. Argan et com-
mentée par A. Sartoris,” in Amphion. Etudes d’histoire des techniques, edited by Jacques Guiller-
me, vol. 2, L’Officine du functionnalisme, Paris 1987, pp. 22–37.
12
A. Sartoris, “Architettura e Spirito Nuovo,” in La città futurista, n. 2, May 1929, p. 1.
13
Ibidem.
14
Ibidem.
15
Sartoris will finally insert, as an introduction to his book, a letter in which Le Corbusier criti-
cizes his definition of “architettura funzionale.” See Giuliano Gresleri, “La costruzione degli ‘E-
lementi dell'architettura funzionale’ e l’italianità della modernità,” in Alberto Sartoris. Novanta
gioielli, edited by Alberto Abriani and Jacques Gubler, Mazzotta, Milan 1992, pp. 74–84.
16
See his polemics with Teige, reported in Le Corbusier, “Defense de l’acrchitecture” in
L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, n. 10, December 1933, pp. 39–45 and discussed in Thomas Mc
Quillan, Edouard among the Machines. A discussion of Le Corbusier’s technological agenda, PhD
dissertation, AHO The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Oslo 2006, pp. 23–24.
17
Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture (1924), Flammarion, Paris 1995, p. 7.
18
Massimo Bontempelli, “Principii,” in Quadrante, n. 1, May 1933, p. 1
19
Massimo Bontempelli, “Certezza nelle forze dello spirito e dell’intelligenza italiana,” in Qua-
drante, n. 2, June 1933, p 2.
20
Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, cit., p.p. 6–7.
21
P. M. Bardi, “Per una coscienza tecnica nazionale,” in Quadrante, n. 25, May 1935, pp. 36–39.
22
See Maria Mimita Lamberti, “Le Corbusier e l’Italia,” cit., p. 842.
23
These are the subjects of a new, popular literature for the modern times, as defined by the writer
Francesco Monotti in Quadrante. See Francesco Monotti, “Antiletteratura,” in Quadrante, n. 1,
May 1933, pp. 4–5. See also P. M. Bardi, “Ingegneri,” in Quadrante, n. 21, January 1935, pp. 39–
40.
24
Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, cit., p. 100. [Italics added]
25
Ibidem.
26
P. M. B., “Tavolo degli orrori,” in Quadrante, n. 2, June 1933, p. 10.
27
Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, cit., p. 69.
28
On the relationship between Lagardelle’s positions and Mussolini’s Italy, see Hubert Lagardelle,
“Précisions,” in Plans, n. 8, Septembre 1931, p. 130. And in particular the following citation: “En
ce qui concerne l’Italie: Ce que nous avons voulu montrer avant tout, c’est la nécessité de donner à
la jeunesse impatiente de l’Europe:
a) une œuvre haute, enthousiaste et constructive, à édifier;
b) un ésprit héroïque et joyeux, tenat compte de ses goûts sportifs et violents;
c) une équipe animée d’une volonté collective et travaillant à une grander qui la dépasse.
88

[. . .] Nous avons voulu montrer qu’au dessus des partis verticalement opposés à l’intérieur des
frontières d’un pays, et entre les différents pays, il y avait une coupure plus nette qui est la cou-
pure horizontale entre deux générations à travers tous les pays et tous les partis.
[. . .] Devant la catastrophe provoquée par l’impuissance des anciens, nous croyons à l’union
prochaine de toute cette jeunesse divisée par des malentendus mais qui veut en commun la cos-
truction d’une Europe rationnelle.”
29
Le Corbusier, [No title], in Plans, n. 10, October 1931, p. 101.
30
P. M. Bardi, “Libro verde della polemica dell’architettura italiana,” in Quadrante, n. 22, Febru-
ary 1935, p. 22.
31
P. M. Bardi, “La settimana enigmistica. 5304. Ci sono errori? (photomontage),” in Quadrante, n.
18, ottobre 1934, p. 11.
32
Anonymous [identified as P. M. Bardi], “Il concorso del Palazzo su Via dell’Impero,” in Quad-
rante, n. 21, January 1935, p. 10.
33
P. M. Bardi, “Libro verde della polemica dell’architettura italiana,” cit., p. 21.
34
Ibidem.
35
Criticizing Gio Ponti, director of the journal Domus and designer turned architect, Bardi writes:
“They instituted the ‘Novecento-Style. The furniture makers became Novecento-architects. And
the ladies said, in front of the little piece of furniture, which sports chromium plated tubes instead
of lion paws: « Cute » (We went from swindle to swindle),” ibidem, p. 23.
36
Anonymous [P. M. Bardi], “Il concorso del Palazzo su Via dell’Impero,” cit., p. 10.
37
Ibidem.
38
Fiorini introduces his projects with two citations from Le Corbusier, taken from the journal
Prelude: .”..des maisons avec des organes aussi efficaces que ceux dont sont dotés l’auto, le
paquebot, etc. etc” and .”..La maison se construira en usine, par pièces détachées, dans l’economie
et la précision . . .” See Guido Fiorini, “(Tensistruttura) Progetto di casa di abitazione in serie,” in
Quadrante, n. 9, January 1934, p. 17 and Guido Fiorini, “Progetto di casa in serie per scapoli,” in
Quadrante, n. 9, January 1934, p. 18.
39
Guido Fiorini, “Lettere a Quadrante: Sul problema della casa,” in Quadrante, n. 9, January
1934, pp. 48–49. Fiorini’s apartments, organized on two floors connected with a spiral staircase,
offer a reworking of the model of the unité d’habitation.
40
Ibidem, p. 48.
41
Ibidem.
42
Ibidem. A complete trust in the psychological automatisms of tastes created by the machine age
is expressed by another engineer, Pier Luigi Nervi, in the pages of Quadrante: “It’s improbable
that a man, used to the natural forms of the airplanes or of the immense bridge, or of the quick
ship, or of the car, may then find pleasure in seeing his objects, or his house-furniture or the façade
of his home articulated in complicated and artificial forms, that are not inspired by that elemental,
geometric harmony to which he has been contrived in so many other fields.” P. L. Nervi, “Arte e
tecnica del costruire,” in Quadrante, n. 2, June 1933, p. 28.
43
Le Corbusier, “Invite à l’action,” in Plans, n. 1, January 1931, p. 61. The original French reads:
“L’habitation machiniste: satisfaire à des besoins latents de la conscience moderne.”