Space of Criticism: Exhibitions and the Vernacular in Italian Modernism

Abstract

In Italy during the Fascist regime as well as after the Second World War, a few seminal exhibitions and related publications challenged the status quo and redirected debates central to architecture and politics. Two exhibitions installed at the Milan Triennale valorized the study of vernacular buildings in opposition to the dominant classicizing tendency of state-sponsored architecture. Rural Italian Architecture: Functionality of the Rural House (1936), curated by Giuseppe Pagano and Guarniero Daniel, and Spontaneous Architecture Exhibition (1951), mounted by a team of architects, including Enzo Cerutti, Giancarlo De Carlo, and Giuseppe Samonà, demonstrated critical curatorial practices that prompted divergent design responses. They represent what Bruno Zevi called “architectural criticism in architectural forms” and, conversely, what Manfredo Tafuri dismissed as “operative criticism.”