The Mediterranean and Modern architecture: the dissemination of a myth in architectural media

Abstract

This article reviews the influence of the media on the configuration and international dissemination of certain architectural models inspired by Mediterranean vernacular architecture. Exhibitions and catalogues, architecture books and magazines, as well as trips and personal contacts of architects, writers, artists, and intellectuals contributed to forging a mythical image of the ways of life, traditions, and popular architecture of the countries of the European South. This interest in popular culture peaked in the context of global efforts to recover an anti-elitist dimension of the discipline. New concepts such as humanisation, democratisation, and organicism, which were devised to render the ‘crisis’ of Modern architecture productive, began to displace Rationalist and functionalist references. This was when interest in popular culture, the vernacular tradition, and the domestic spaces of Mediterranean architecture were instrumentalised. The experiences of architects such as Josep Lluís Sert, Gio Ponti, or Bernard Rudofsky were intertwined with those of intellectuals from Northern Europe who sought a way of dwelling in the South that would afford ethical meaning and social values to life, in contact with the local community, nature, and history itself.