This book explores the relationship between architecture and race that lingered beneath the surface of my previous research–beginning with my dissertation on modernity and indigenous culture in Italy’s North African colonies in the History, Theory and Criticism Section in the Department of Architecture at mit, and continuing through my first book project on the architecture of tourism in Italian colonial Libya, completed during my initial years of teaching at the University of Washington. It is also a reaction to that prior research in investigating how the colonial and imperial attitudes that were developed in Italy’s overseas possessions, and especially those that were tied to racial difference, appeared in the metropole. In addition, this research marks a return to a more general concern for the relationship between architecture and politics during the Fascist ventennio, though with a particular interest in the late-Fascist era and the wartime. In beginning this project, I had several questions: What was the relationship between the issue of identity in modern Italian architecture and the parallel concern for the public face of Italy’s presence in its colonies? How did the political and scientific discourses on race impact architecture and the built environment? How did the relationship between modern architecture, empire, and race evolve over the course of the 1930s and into the wartime?
The initial stages were supported by a Visiting Senior Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (casva) at the National Gallery of Art–which involved a two-month period of research in Washington, dc during the summer of 2009. I worked in the library of the National Gallery of Art, while also drawing on resources from the Library of Congress, to examine the architectural and racial discourses of the late-Fascist era. I am grateful to Associate Deans Peter Lukehart and Therese O’Malley as well as Sue Cohn, Elizabeth Kielpinski, and Helen Tangires for their assistance. This work was also supported by a Research and Development Grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts–which funded a three month stay in Rome during the fall of 2009. I worked at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato (acs) and the Archivio Storico Diplomatico of the Ministero degli Affari Esteri (asmae), with additional research being done in the Archivio Storico of the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (ansl) in Rome and the Archivio Storico of the Mostra d’Oltremare (asmo) in Naples. Special thanks to Francesca Albani of the acs; Stefania Ruggeri of the asmae; Elisa Camboni, Francesco Moschini, and Valentina Oodrah of the ansl; and Giovanni Arena and Marisa Zuccaro of the asmo.
This research was presented in April 2010 at “in print: Buell Conference on the History of Architecture” at the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University in New York. I participated, along with eleven other recent authors in architecture and related fields, in a lively series of moderated panels that covered a broad spectrum of topics and methodologies of history writing on modernity. I am thankful to Reinhold Martin, director of the Buell Center, and Felicity Scott, now director of the PhD program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (gsapp), for this opportunity. I also benefited from the input of other participants, including Can Bilsel, Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Edward Eigen, Mary Louise Lobsinger, Jonathan Massey, David Smiley, Hadas Steiner, and Claire Zimmerman.
Over the course of the next several years I continued this project with a two-month research trip to Washington DC during the summer of 2011 and research trips to Italy during the fall of 2013 and 2014. During these visits, beyond continuing my work in the acs and asmae in Rome, I was able to consult the Archivio Federico Patellani in the Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea (mfc) in Cinisello Balsamo (Milan), and the Archivio Marcello Piacentini in the Biblioteca Centrale of the Facoltà di Architettura di Firenze (bc-faf) in Florence. Many thanks to Kitti Bolognesi, Giovanna Calvenzi, Maddalena Cerletti, and Maura Dettoni of the mfc and Gianna Frosali of the bc-faf. These structured research visits also helped identify a number of key books, journals, and publicity materials that I was eventually able to acquire through a combination of the Sunday market at the Porta Portese in Rome, eBay Italia, and the Advanced Book Exchange.
The second phase of this project was facilitated through a combination of paper presentations at academic conferences and publications in journals and books. The first presentation, “Modern architecture, colonialism, and war,” was in a session on “Spatial Violence” organized by Andrew Herscher and Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi for the 2014 annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians in Austin, Texas. This paper was published in 2015 as “Architecture during Wartime: The Mostra d’Oltremare and Esposizione Universale di Roma,” in a special themed issue of the Architectural Theory Review. I am grateful to Andrew and Anoo for their input on my presentation and published essay, which directly impacted Part 3 of this current book project. I was next invited by colleagues David Rifkind and Lucy Maulsby to present a paper, “Public Space in Italy and its Colonies in the late-Fascist Period,” in a special session on “Public Space in Fascist Italy” at the 2014 annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association in Atlanta. I drew upon this paper in the broad framing of Part 1 of this project. In February 2015, I presented “Fascist imperialism and racial politics in Rome’s Universal Exposition and the Italian Overseas Exhibition,” in a session on “Art at the Expositions: An Art History of National Displays of Culture, Technology, Design,” organized by Victoria Rovine for the annual meeting of the College Art Association in New York. A final paper, “Colonial Networks and Geographies at the Mostra d’Oltremare,” was presented in a session on “Watery Networks” organized by Sheila Crane and Mark Hinchman for the 2015 annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians in Chicago. These two presentations directly impacted Parts 1 and 2 of this book.
The presentation phase of this project culminated with my participation in the Race and Modern Architecture Project (r+map)–an interdisciplinary research group that was initiated by Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis ii, and Mabel O. Wilson. This collaboration has recently led to the publication of a book, Race and Modern Architecture. A Critical History from the Enlightenment to the Present (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). The two-day r+map conference was held at the gsapp at Columbia University in February 2016. My own presentation and eventual book chapter, “Modern Architecture and Racial Eugenics at the Esposizione Universale di Roma,” was part of the session on “Race and Nationalism” and was a central portion of Part 2 of this current project. I am grateful to Irene, Charles, and Mabel for their efforts in putting this research group together as well as for their input on my essay. I am also appreciative for the feedback of a number of the participants, including Esra Akcan, Luis E. Carranza, Andrew Herscher, and Reinhold Martin.
The final development of this project took place immediately following the r+map conference and during the summers of my 5-year term as Chair of the Department of Architecture in the College of Built Environments at the University of Washington. For this writing phase, I would like to acknowledge the encouragement and support of Deans John Schaufelberger and Renée Cheng. In addition, I would like to thank former architecture chair Dave Miller for providing me with the time and the resources to do some of the initial work on this project, including granting me the Norman “Bud” Aehle and Charlotte A. Aehle Faculty Award in 2008. I am also grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Architecture for their input on formal and informal presentations of this work. Beyond those I have already acknowledged, I am indebted to the following people who variously impacted this project: the late Stanford Anderson, Libero Andreotti, Sibel Bozdoğan, Maristella Casciato, Zeynep Çelik, Robert Cowherd, Diane Ghirardo, Rick Haldenby, Sandy Isenstadt, Janna Israel, Mark Jarzombek, Carla Keyvanian, D. Medina Lasansky, Réjean Legault, Juliana Maxim, Adnan Morshed, Lorenzo Pignatti, Panayiota Pyla, Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, Nasser Rabbat, Kishwar Rizvi, Michelangelo Sabatino, and Paolo Scrivano.
The refinement of this manuscript and production of this volume is due to the efforts of Brill Press. In particular, I want to acknowledge the support and good humor of Christa Stevens, who talked me through the proposal and review process as well as the final manuscript submission. Thanks also to the staff at Newgen KnowledgeWorks for their handling of the final production of the book. I am deeply appreciative of the professionalism that Brill has shown at every step in this process. I would also like to thank the following individuals and archives for providing some of the final images for the book–Giulia Donini and Muriel Prandato of the Archivi Alinari; Patrizia Regorda of the Archivio Museo di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto; Giovanni Liverotti and Maria Luisa Palmucci of the Biblioteca Statale di Macerata, Macerata; Cristina Concu of the Museo Casa Deriu, Comune di Bosa; and Matteo Fochessati and Gianni Franzone of the Wolfsoniana–Palazzo Ducale Fondazione per la Cultura, Genoa.
Finally, I would like to recognize the contribution of my family–and especially my mother, Lois, and mother-in-law, Josephine Iarocci–whose encouragement throughout this time has been immensely important. To my wife Louisa and daughter Lucia, I want to thank them for supporting my various travels and time spent researching and writing. This book is dedicated to them.
Seattle, Washington, 6 November 2020