Professor in Residence, Department of Architecture, GSD, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, USA
Carlo Aymonino. Progetto Città Politica
By Orazio Carpenzano, Federica Morgia
and Manuela Raitano (eds.)
Proceedings of the conference at
Sapienza Università di Roma, 23-24 june 2021
With essays by Rafael Moneo, Franco Purini, Jean-Louis Cohen et al.
Macerata, It.: Quodlibet, 2023
6 x 1 x 85/8 in. [15.1 x 2.4 x 21.9 cm]
131 illustrations (70 b&w, 61 color)
384 pages (paperback)
€28.00
April 26, 2023
ISBN-10: 8822920635
ISBN-13: 978-8822920638
…the idea of an architecture sculpted,
without details or different materials,
finds its reason for being simply itself.
(Carlo Aymonino)
Carlo Aymonino (1926-2010) wrote these words some twenty years before his death, yet they characterize his work, and his essence, in just a short sentence. The recently published book, Carlo Aymonino. Progetto Città Politica (2023),which appeared around ten years after his death, allows us to explore Aymonino in all his contributions in life: an architect, a writer, a designer, and a politician. He began life as the aristocratic son of two wealthy families, and he ended with three wives, four children, and a host of works and drawings. In between he became a professor at IUAV, and a dean of the same School of Architecture, an Alderman for Interventions in the Historic Center for the city of Rome, president of the Accademia di San Luca, holder of the Medaglia d’Oro, among many other things.
Architecture and politics ran together, from his time as Alderman and from his conviction that, as son of a woman of the Busiri-Vici clan (Marcello Piacentini, 1881-1960, being his uncle), he could join and, at the same time, be as far removed as possible from them, becoming a fervent communist and a neo-realist at the same time. Through all these circumstances and through the ups-and-downs of politics, he remained cool above the fray, a position quite remarkable for a man of his class. And his class, above all, spoke volumes about who he was. Promptly out of architecture school, he went to work for his uncle, a man who retained his post and his position largely untouched by the turmoil of the twenty-year rule of fascism and his own deep involvement in it. Aymonino refused to have anything to do with that, to be sure, but former ex-fascists largely “hid” in open refusal of their apparently collective guilt from the masses. It was exactly from them that he received his first major project, the Quartiere INA Casa Tiburtino, as part of a team led by Ludovico Quaroni (1911-1987). Although the debates about this and other projects caught fire, it remained clear that among all the projects, something special occurred with this one. At the time far removed from the center of Rome, the Tiburtino neighborhood gave the residents what they wanted: a pure, simple, engaging, piece of architecture that they could call home, however with the debits that it lacked bus service, for example. It remains quite striking to see this project illustrated, yet none of the discussions begins to take on this herculean task – and Carlo, to be sure, both loved the project and yet he took his stand, and yet firmly stood against it.
This perhaps best expresses his view – his contradictory view, to be sure – that not all was well with post-Fascist Italy. Without a resistance that insisted on making fascism come to terms with society, remarking in the minds of many that repudiating fascism openly was “going too far.” They refused, to the point that even Giulio Andreotti, a moving young star in the fascist hierarchy, shifted easily from one regime to the next with ease – he and many others. For someone like Aymonino, it perpetuated the failure of culture and society to shake things up, and he quietly but firmly stood against it. At the same time, these men occupied positions of great power, so he declared himself a communist, for the class free society that it invoked – but also because it irritated them. Aymonino held to that charge for his entire life, even when it became less fashionable to have that position, perhaps because he drew considerable, he dismayed at the fact that his uncle dropped the matter entirely. For him, this kind of dealing with the powerful issues that came from Mussolini’s program could not be easily changed. So he proposed others, and held them firmly until he died.
There are a number of things that I would like to direct attention to Aymonino, and indeed, the book consists of a series of essays by a group of architects, critics and co-architect students, each of whom merits some attention, but here I can only cover a few of them. Luca Reale offers information about what Aymonino chose to work on, always keeping the big picture in mind. Reale uses the metaphor of the Janus figure, looking both outwards and inwards for his architecture, as Aymonino too looked both alone and in the broad view of others, specifically leading teams for his most successful works. In this respect he likens Aymonino to Aldo Rossi and to Renato Nicolini, however different their approaches were, as they nonetheless stood to gain from the architect’s autonomy.
Franco Purini commented that architecture, as desired by Aymonino (as for so many others, including Carlo Scarpa, Mario Ridolfi, Paolo Portoghesi), hung on a vision of their work something like secret visions, or personal relevance, and even empathy, by contrast with a second group such as Ludovico Quaroni, Saverio Muratori, Giorgio Grassi and others, including Purini himself, who detach themselves from the work, and conduct instead a formal search that eliminates all subjective work. I am not so sure about this gross generalization, as I believe that Aldo Rossi did neither, but I digress. Aymonino, perhaps, both held himself apart from the dictates of reason and other equally and potentially alarming situations, yet bore an aristocratic bearing that followed him his entire life. He held himself aloft from the debates about architecture, a genuine sprezzatura for the role, yet he cared deeply for his architecture.
Perhaps his most distinctive trait, this love for his architecture, always represented the best in him, for, at the same time, it was an inevitable consistency in his art and his design. For every related form there are always others, and he strove with insistence to develop the best ones for the site. I have a vivid memory of him genuflecting laughingly to Paolo Portoghesi at a dinner party at the Venice Biennale in 1982, but he could do that knowing that his designs stood the test of times as few others did. The new plan for the heart of Rome, with the subtle connection between his drawings and the statue of Marcus Aurelius, let us know that in addition to planning, he developed a particular fascination with conservation, to which he took great care. He certainly completed a number of drawings which revealed that same preoccupation, nonetheless his greatest aspiration was to show the wonderful mix of his houses in contrast and yet blended with those of others.
From the start of his teachinbg career, as Luca Reale notes, he adopted a robust way of dealing with students. Like Nicolini and Rossi, he viewed architecture as a project to be played with, to guess wrongly, to then make it right again. He held the view that architecture could not be played with, but the designer could find his/her way by exploring different methods to arrive at a happy conclusion. Although the results over the long haul were striking, he nonetheless bore the resistance with some good grace. The result, given the range of students who responded to the request to write about him and to draw for him, as displayed in the book, was remarkable. Perhaps this remains the most indelible streak, for he opened his students to the wonder of architecture.
He worked with a number of architects of great talent, but his best role was guiding students toward their futures as architects. For example, his visit to one of my classes with Aldo Rossi set the tone for the conversation between the two as they discussed the role of the architect in the future: they teased and laughed about it, almost as if they were having fun. The real issue, however, concerned the role of the architect in the late 1980s, and they displayed wit and intelligence about the subject. The future was never about the city of the past, they both remarked, but for what it would become, leaving the issue of living it today a serious question, but that the young architects would struggle, in their own way, to come to terms with that fact.
Perhaps the most striking thing that he built was the exhibition hall on the former “Roman Garden” of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, within the Musei Capitolini complex of the Campidoglio. A group of students pressured me to go, and I wondered at the absolute clarity of the picture unfolding before me. The statue of Marcus Aurelius stood there, untouched by pigeon poop, a call to imagine Rome two thousand years ago. The Museum brilliantly exposes the soft ceiling lights, the slender columns that arise to keep the space as open as possible, and the beautiful sights that surround as you walk through them. Much to my surprise, the drawings by Aymonino date back to 1993, and the realization to 2005. His vision? An accomplishment of rare beauty. This translation from drawing to built reality evokes profound recognition, for to envision something and then erect it, seems to characterize his designs.
Perhaps the story of Aymonino relates best to his drawings and the way they exposed students to his vision. They stand uniquely as testament to a world in which drawings mattered, that the circumference of the built reality constitutes the gentle tugging of a vision that remains uncompromised by today. It envisions tomorrow as a future – and that is already something. In the opening quote Aymonino remarked that architecture can simply be itself, but perhaps we long to add that it does this for the future and not the baggage of the past.
Diane Ghirardo is a Professor of History at the University of Southern California. She is the author of numerous articles and presentations, in particular Building New Communities, New Deal America and Fascist Italy (1989); Architecture after Modernism (1996); Italy. Modern Architecture (2013); Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Modern Architecture (2019); Lucretia Borgia d’Este. Le lettere 1494-1519 (2020). E-mail: ghirardo@usc.edu