Architecture of the longue durée: Vittorio Gregotti’s reading of the territory of architecture

Abstract

In the post-Second World War period, Italian architects opened up a debate on the role of history and time in architectural discourse that resulted in multiple interpretations of historical time in their work. Vittorio Gregotti, one of the main protagonists of the discussion, offered an interpretation of time based on an assemblage of intellectual tendencies, from phenomenology to structuralism and the history of the longue durée. This paper traces ideas that Gregotti developed in his less known and as-yet un-translated texts such as Il territiorio dell’architettura from 1966 as well as in his project for the University of Calabria from 1972. In these, Gregotti makes an original contribution to the problem of history in relationship to urban and natural environments.