Bruno Zevi Research Articles

Seven Steps to Organic Modernism: Alvar Aalto’s Civic Centre in Seinäjoki Seen through the Lenses of Bruno Zevi

Some scholars point out that modern architecture has been comprised of two parallel currents from its very beginning: rational and organic. Although many interpretations of modernism highlight industrial standardisation and mass production, Bruno Zevi suggested that the basic ideas of functionalism already included the principles of organic architecture. Here organic does not refer to nature’s forms but to human life. In the 1970s, Zevi published his theory of seven invariants of modern architecture, which received mixed reviews. This study aims to update these invariants for being viable in our time by comparing them to Zevi’s former writings dealing with organic architecture and the role of space in architecture. The invariants will be tested and elaborated in empirical analysis of Aalto’s Civic Centre in Seinäjoki, Finland.

Architecture between heteronomy and self-generation

Architecture between heteronomy and self-generation

Michelangelo in 1964: The Critical Model as Dialectical Image in Bruno Zevi’s Renaissance Architecture

In 1964 Bruno Zevi and Paolo Portoghesi launched an ambitious retrospective of Michelangelo’s oeuvre to commemorate the fourth centenary of his death. Held at Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, the exhibition, titled Mostra Critica delle Opere Michelangiolesche, offered a comprehensive experience of Michelangelo’s work entirely through replicas and reproductions. A controversial aspect of Zevi’s didactics were the inclusion of student designed critical models that were intended to support a visual criticality alongside Oscar Savio’s photographs. The models operated as a touchstone for Zevi’s larger investigation into the representational possibilities for architectural history, and student photographs of the critical models appeared in a special editorial that was published in Zevi’s periodical, L’architettura: cronache e storia. Using installation photographs, unpublished preparatory photographs, and the final published images, this essay examines the unique indexicality constructed through a remediation of the critical model as it evolves from the exhibition to the pages of Zevi’s journal. By working through the photographic archive of the Fondazione Bruno Zevi and the personal archive of Paolo Portoghesi, this essay argues that the lens(es) used to frame Michelangelo’s architectural theory operated through a type of Benjaminian dialectics; one that reveals the “modern key” used by Zevi to approach Renaissance architecture at mid-century.

Frank Lloyd Wright según Bruno Zevi: crónica de dos proyectos editoriales (1947-1979)

<p>Entre toda su vasta producción editorial, Bruno Zevi dedicó dos libros en exclusiva a Frank Lloyd<br />Wright, el primero en 1947 y el segundo en 1979. Ambos fueron traducidos al español y forman parte<br />importante de la historiografía de la arquitectura moderna en el contexto hispanohablante. Generalmente<br />considerados como un mismo libro que sólo evolucionó a lo largo del tiempo, la revisión de<br />sus procesos editoriales y de sus contenidos demuestra lo contrario. Explicar la historia de cada uno de<br />ellos y comparar sus argumentos es el objetivo del presente escrito.</p>

Bruno Zevi, the continental European emissary of Geoffrey Scott’s theories

In the late nineteenth century, Bernard Berenson revived the analytical methodologies employed in art history by proposing new methods of pictorial analysis, such as space-composition and life-enhancement. In the twentieth century, his pupil Geoffrey Scott transferred these new methodologies from their original context, Renaissance painting, to architecture. Though Scott was a recognised critic within English aesthetic circles, he was largely ignored in Continental European academic communities. The influence of his book The Architecture of Humanism (1914) was limited to the Anglo-American world before the 1940s. This essay depicts the key role that the Italian architect Bruno Zevi played after the Second World War, by becoming the primary architectural historian to introduce and diffuse Scott’s forgotten masterpiece in many non-English-speaking countries. Zevi defended a critical methodology based on spatial, empirical, and sensory analysis of architectural works, an attitude that is observed in his theoretical corpus written immediately after his return from the United States. This paper proposes an examination of Zevi’s reception of Scott’s theories and the debates that it propagated, and aims to contribute to the understanding of the methodological approach followed in the years after the Second World War on both sides of the Atlantic.

IT TECHNOLOGIES IN ARCHITECTURE AND SPACE REPRESENTATION. BRUNO ZEVI METHODS REVISED

Abstract Space representation methods as described by Bruno Zevi in “Architecture as space” are still valid today. Projections, elevations, models, photos and films are commonly used and all of them define the space in a specific way, yet none defines it completely. The development of IT technologies caused emergence of new methods which shape the picture of today’s architecture. Originally, a conventional technical drawing was adapted to the computer environment, but it was the 3D technology that revolutionized spatial representation, by restoring priority to the three-dimensional aspect of reality. Models allow us to explore the virtual reality, which is a huge progress in spatial representation. Thanks to advanced software, buildings of complex structure are formed, bearing testimony of their times – times of IT technologies. A flawless spatial representation method that perhaps will be known in the future should satisfy multi-plane needs of the observer, who experiences the represented space with all senses and impacts it as well.

A lightning bolt. The activity of Bruno Zevi in post-war Italy

This essay focuses on Bruno Zevi’s working period immediately after Second World War, coming back to Italy after his stay in London and in the USA. He starts right away his impressive attempt of popularizing contemporary architecture through “Metron”, the first magazine to be printed in Italy after the war, from 1945 to 1954. In this crucial phase he founded the APAO (Association for Organic Architecture), he contributed to the editing of the Manuale dell'Architetto (an handbook with all the new construction and ready-assembly techniques), he published Verso un'architettura organica (1945), Saper vedere l'architettura (1948) and Storia dell'architettura moderna (1950), he curated the first Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit in Italy and he greatly contributed to the spreading of modern architecture and urbanism all around the country. Zevi also paying special attention to social issues, raised the question of inner spaces where man lives and where the collective theme is expressed, and stressed the need of shaping the building in the name of human use and enjoyment.

Writing the history of Spanish modern architecture: texts by Flores and Fullaondo from the 1960s

It was in the 1960s when architects interested in organising the past had sufficient historical perspective to present different narratives for Spanish modern architecture. This paper discusses the writings of Carlos Flores and Juan Daniel Fullaondo, which were fundamental in the revision and reconstruction of the assimilation and evolution of modern architecture in Spain. Flores’s book Arquitectura Española Contemporánea stands out because of its spirited defence of modernity. Recognition of the iconographic value of architectural photography and the use of José Ortega y Gasset’s ‘The idea of the generations’ are the two main characteristics of this book. Whereas Fullaondo, who was in charge of a magazine, Nueva Forma, was a faithful advocate of the critical work of Bruno Zevi. He published different special issues in which he discussed the connection of German expressionism and Italian futurism in Spain, and defended organicism as the most influential tendency in Spanish architecture in the 1960s. This paper relates the main ideas of these authors with previous writings that began analysing modern buildings erected on Spanish soil, and with other remarkable books also published in the 1960s, such as those of Cesar Ortiz-Echagüe, Lluís Domènech and Oriol Bohigas. All in all, they established the principles of Spanish modern historiography, and influenced European magazines that were starting to pay attention to Spanish architecture by publishing special issues, such as the Swiss Werk or the Italian Zodiac.

La lectura de Jorge Oteiza de «Saber ver la Arquitectura» a través de sus reflexiones dibujadas: influencia en sus trabajos arquitectónicos

<p>En el año 1953 Jorge Oteiza lee el libro <em>Saber ver la Arquitectura</em> de Bruno Zevi, dibujando y anotando reflexiones en su ejemplar, conservado en su biblioteca personal. Esta lectura le influye directamente en sus trabajos que estaba realizando en la arquitectura, bien en el interior, como en la Cámara de Comercio de Córdoba, o bien en la fachada exterior, como en la Basílica de Aránzazu. A partir de su análisis, se establece que esta lectura es uno de los punto clave en la evolución de la relación del escultor con la arquitectura, que le lleva a la compresión del espacio como material común, permitiéndole avanzar en ambas disciplinas.</p>

Review: Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia, by Gregory L. Heller and Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape, by Elihu Rubin

Gregory L. Heller Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013, 320 pp., 25 b/w illus. $39.95 ISBN 9780812244908 Elihu Rubin Insuring the City: The Prudential Center and the Postwar Urban Landscape New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012, 256 pp., 50 b/w illus. $30.00, ISBN 9780300170184 On 9–10 April 1956, the Harvard Graduate School of Design convened a landmark conference on urban design, the intention of which was “to be exploratory, not didactic, and to try to find a common basis for the joint work of the Architect, the Landscape Architect and the City Planner in the field of Urban Design. In the minds of its sponsors, Urban Design is wider than the scope of these three professions, though all have vital contributions to make.”1 Many argue that this convocation initiated urban design as a discipline distinct from both architecture and planning and that the conference solidified the notion that urban design is a radically interdisciplinary field in which foregrounding public needs takes precedence over issues of beauty and scale. One invitee to that conference was the executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, Edmund N. Bacon, whose plangent call for a more humanistic and holistic approach to urban design underscored the need for a new specialization: “Planners have traditionally considered the design of physical structures as detail. Administrators almost invariably think in terms of specific projects and procedures rather than the underlying correlative relationships. What we need is the architect-planner-administrator, and if we ever get it we will then really have an urban designer.”2 Bacon’s prescient plea for comprehensive interpersonal cooperation in the success of urban renewal was consistent with the views of others at the conference, but Bacon remained isolated in the larger context of American postwar urban policy. He had a history of iconoclasm but also of advocating for community participation as a way of supplementing the work of professional planners with input from members of the public.3 He instinctively understood not only that people make cities but also that cities make people. As simple as that formulation may …

The avant-garde in the architecture and visual arts of Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Commenting on an exhibition of contemporary Mexican architecture in Rome in 1957, the polemic and highly influential Italian architectural critic and historian, Bruno Zevi, ridiculed Mexican modernism for combining Pre-Columbian motifs with modern architecture. He referred to it as ‘Mexican Grotesque’. Inherent in Zevi’s comments were an attitude towards modern architecture that defined it in primarily material terms; its principle role being one of “spatial and programmatic function”. Despite the weight of this Modernist tendency in the architectural circles of Post-Revolutionary Mexico, we suggest in this paper that Mexican modernism cannot be reduced to such “material” definitions. In the highly charged political context of Mexico in the first half of the 20th Century, modern architecture was perhaps above all else, a tool for propaganda. In this political atmosphere it was undesirable, indeed it was seen as impossible, to separate art, architecture and politics in a way that would be a direct reflection of Modern architecture’s European manifestations. Form was to follow function, but that function was to be communicative as well as spatial and programmatic. One consequence of this “political communicative function” in Mexico was the combination of the “mural tradition” with contemporary architectural design; what Zevi defined as “Mexican Grotesque”. In this paper, we will examine the political context of Post-Revolutionary Mexico and discuss what may be defined as its most iconic building; the Central Library at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico. In direct counterpoint to Zevi, we will suggest that it was far from grotesque, but rather was one of the most committed political statements made by the Modern Movement throughout the Twentieth Century. It was propaganda, it was political. It was utopian.

The Italian Memorial At Auschwitz: An Approach Through Conservation Theory

Abstract According to Bruno Zevi, the Italian Memorial housed at Block 21 of the Auschwitz concentration camp is among the most significant works of contemporary architecture. Recently, it has become the focus of a political and cultural conflict that is itself worthy of study. The memorial was designed as a post-war symbol of the anti-Fascist movement. It is thus heavily influenced by the politics of the Resistance, which characterized the First Republic and influenced the Italian Constitution. However, this sort of politics is incompatible with the post-Berlin-Wall narrative that the Museum of Auschwitz on the international level, along with various Italian governments on the national level, have decided to promote in the twenty-first century. Yet the Italian Memorial is an integral part of the World Heritage UNESCO site at Auschwitz, and its removal or transfer elsewhere, besides constituting a loss for Italian cultural identity, would also vitiate and downgrade the history of Auschwitz. This study looks at the memorial in terms of the discipline of conservation, applying principles elaborated by the Vienna School (Alois Riegl and Max Dvořák) to show how new exhibitions for the pavilions threaten to transform Auschwitz from a monument and historical document into a museum-style fairground, and to reveal the political motivation behind claims of the Memorial’s contemporary irrelevance.

Č possibile riformare le scuole di architettura in Italia?

- The crisis of architectural schools in Italy and the profound uncertainty running through practices and the teaching of architectural and planning disciplines has roots which date back a long time. If we re-read today some of the texts and public actions of some of the greatest Italian architects or critics of architecture such as Giovanni Michelucci, Giancarlo De Carlo, Leonardo Benevolo and Bruno Zevi, in dissent with the scientific and academic communities to which they belonged, it is hard not to grasp, with the benefit of hindsight, the lucidity of their intellectual positions and the urgency of their arguments. Four episodes are presented which allow us to return to the issue of training architects in their relationship with the professional dimension and also with society and to consider more generally the crisis of inherited models of university education, which no longer seem able to meet the challenges of today.

Space of Criticism: Exhibitions and the Vernacular in Italian Modernism

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.”

Arquitetura e a imagem em movimento

Bruno Zevi ha publicado Saber ver la arquitectura (Saper vedere l'architettura) en 1948. Caracterizando la naturaleza espacial de la arquitectura, él encuentra su afinidad con el lenguaje cinematográfico por medio de la articulación entre el tiempo y el imagen. Este trabajo presenta los resultados de una recolección realizada en el acervo de videos de la biblioteca de la Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo de la Universidad de São Paulo (FAUUSP). Se ha investigado el empleo de ese lenguaje en nuestros días - considerando sus posibilidades con la implementación de la tecnología de la información - para la producción, la utilización de los nuevos recursos y su empleo en la didáctica, la documentación y la difusión del conocimiento de la arquitectura y el urbanismo.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Europe and beyond

Wright, Influence, and the World at Large, Anthony Alofsin Wright and Japan, Margo Stipe Kindred Spirits: Holland, Wright, and Wijdeveld, Mariette van Stralen Wright and Italy: A Recollection, Bruno Zevi Wright and Italy: The Promise of Organic Architecture, Maristella Casciato Useful Hostage: Constructing Wright in Soviet Russia and France, Jean-Louis Cohen Wright and Great Britain, Andrew Saint Wright and South America, Alberto Sartori Towards an Organic Architecture in Mexico, Keith Eggener Wright's Baghdad, Mina Marefat

Buber on (looking at) architecture

Martin Buber (1878-1965), the eminent Jewish theologian and social philosopher, would probably prefer to be described as the founder of philosophical anthropology. He is perhaps best remembered today as author of the highly influential I and Thou (first published in 1923). This paper sets out to introduce his ideas on architecture. Buber's interest in architecture has hitherto been overlooked, probably because his only published utterance specifically on this subject dating from the final period of his life was hitherto available exclusively in Hebrew. Considerable insights into Buber's thinking about architecture can be obtained from studying this short, published text of 1957, his Foreword to Within the Space of Architecture [ BeHalalah shel Ardichalut ], the Hebrew edition of Bruno Zevi's Saper Vedere l'Architettura [ Architecture as Space: How to look at Architecture ], first published a decade earlier in Italian. For the Hebrew edition not only was the title modified but also Zevi added a special introduction as well as Buber's Foreword. Despite its brevity this Foreword enables one to deduce Buber's fundamental ideas about architecture and about our perception of it. Furthermore, their foreword also casts new light on Zevi's ideas, as enunciated in this book.

Reinventing Reality: Reconstructing Architecture

This article is based on a paper originally given as keynote address at the Ontario Association of Architects Convention, Toronto, March, 1988. Three issues are explored in this article: the historical background to the present situation in architecture and architectural education, with special reference to the work of Christian Norberg-Schulz, Robert Venturi, Colin Rowe, Bruno Zevi, Peter Eisenman and Michael Graves; the value of focussing again on the agenda of Norberg-Schulz's Intentions in Architecture (1962) as being a more reliable guide than the scattered opinions offered by other architects; a strategy for redesigning architectural education to reflect Norberg-Schulz's fundamental concerns about the role of architecture and architects, offering an integrated curriculum based upon a vertical rather than a horizontal structure of learning.

The Political Content in Italian Architecture during the Fascist Era

The relationship between architecture and politics, and in particular, the relationship between Rationalist architecture and politics, is one of the dominant themes of the literature devoted to Italian architecture between the First and Second World Wars. One of the earliest postwar accounts of modern architecture in Italy, Giulia Veronesi's Difficolta politiche dell' architettura in Italia 1920–1940, was devoted largely to a discussion of this theme. Bruno Zevi's Storia dell' architettura moderna included a section describing the attempt of progressive architects in Italy to integrate political and architectural ideologies.

Review: The Modern Language of Architecture by Bruno Zevi

Review: The Modern Language of Architecture by Bruno Zevi