diana barillari

The conference proceedings collect the articles of scholars who during the symposium held in Gorizia on 10 and 11 December 2014, contributed to share the results of the researches and studies dedicated to the architect Antonio Lasciac ( 1856-1946), who for many years worked in Egypt between the  XIXth and XXth century. He was appointed as the chief architect of the Khedivè and refined his knowledge in the stimulating cultural framework of Central Europe architecture. Like his colleague Raimondo D’Aronco who was born in the same northeastern region of Italy, Lasciac worked in the territories which at the time were ruled by the Ottoman Empire: D'Aronco in Istanbul while Lasciac in Cairo and Alexandria.
The presence of medieval Egyptian and Arab architecture in Lasciac’s works is a crucial topic, therefore, the villa he built as its private home on the Rafut’s hills in the native town, represents through the minaret tower a tribute to the priceless Cairene and North African architectural heritage where the great Arab culture flourished.
Nowadays the critical fortunes of Lasciac are ascribable to a renewed approach to the topic of the relationship between Italian and European architecture within the Mediterranean, where the millennial cultural and artistic dialogue between the Western and Arab worlds during the 20th century increased the exchanges through artworks, buildings, and urban settlements. The geographical issue also played a crucial role for Lasciac, as well as for his villa on the Rafut’s hills, which today is located in the nearness of the cross-border territory  between Gorizia Italy and Nova Gorica Slovenia, a region that at the time of its construction belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Lasciac’s Villa became the icon of the conference and the astonishing destination of a guided tour held during the sunny afternoon of December 11th amidst the enthusiast scholars who were participating in the conference.  Some of them visited for the first time the building which could be considered the building self-portrait of Lasciac at the same time a cosmopolitan architect, but even a localist one, as his poems in Friulano -  the language spoken in the native village of San Rocco in Gorizia -
confirms.

The building has been studied from the structural point of view in the face of a future anti-seismic renovation by Marjana Lutman and thoroughly investigated by Bernard O'Kane who has analyzed its rich decoration, setting up an accurate series of comparisons with ornaments of Egyptian medieval Arab architecture. Alberto Sdegno focused his contribution to the graphic representation through the transcendent and evanescent models of today's digital tools.
The context of XIXth century  Central European architecture was the theme of Andrea Nerozzi's article, which focused on some Hungarian buildings influenced by eastern and Ottoman art, while Diana Barillari dedicated a broad range overview to many different themes triggered by the evocative concept of "Babel-Bibel".
Alessandra Marin dealt with Gorizia’s urban evolution at the time of Lasciac, while Breda Mihelich illustrated Ljubljana’s planning projects in comparison with other Central European cities. Edino Valcovich reported the evolution of theories and related applications of reinforced concrete between the XIX and XXth century, focusing upon its applications in Egypt and the Rafut’s Villa. In his essay, Ezio Godoli confirmed, on the base of documents and unpublished sources, the authorship of Lasciac concerning the summer residence of Khedivé's mother in Bebek on the Bosphorus, one of the Art Nouveau landmark buildings in Istanbul. Milva Giacomelli traced a refined and well-documented analysis of the modernist elements in the Eclectic buildings designed in the early XXth century by Lasciac in Egypt, with special attention to floral decoration. The connections between the architects who worked in the Habsburg Litorale and a general sight was offered by Bogo Zupancic, who confirmed, too, that Lasciac and Plecnick had a mutual knowledge of their activity in Ljubljana.
Thanks to thorough and systematic research at the State Archive of Gorizia Diego Kuzmin could re-read and illustrate a large series of Lasciac’s early projects, until then completely unpublished, which were realized between 1876 and 1882, the year he left Gorizia to Egypt.
The rediscovery of Anton Lasciac’s work and its consequently international knowledge is primarily due to the French scholar Mercedes Volait, who at the conference held her Lectio magistralis to students of the degree course in Architecture in Gorizia, in the prestigious Assembly Hall of the Faculty, designed in 1908 in the neo-Gothic style by the architect and Benedictine friar Anselmo Werner. Her contribution to the proceedings contains a selection of Lasciac’s drawings kept in her private collection, many unknown and published for the first time in this volume. The proceedings collect only the articles that have been delivered to the editors.

La storia del nuovo Palazzo comunale di Udine realizzato su progetto  dall’architetto Raimondo D’Aronco (1911)  si intreccia con quella dell’antica “Domus comunis” ricordata dai documenti a partire dal 1261 e ubicata ai piedi del colle del Castello di fronte al terrapieno di piazza Libertà: un edificio che dal principio fa parte di quello che viene considerato il cuore della città dove si concentrano i monumenti più importanti. Deliberata nel 1441 la costruzione di un nuovo edificio il progetto fu affidato a Nicolò Lionello che trasse ispirazione dalle architetture del gotico veneziano, creando l’armonioso insieme che ancora oggi ammiriamo.  In seguito gli uffici dell’amministrazione trovarono posto nell’isolato adiacente che venne collegato alla Loggia grazie a un passaggio sopraelevato detto “il ponte”. In questo edificio si tenevano le riunioni del consiglio cittadino nella sala poi denominata dell’Ajace. La progettazione per il nuovo Palazzo comunale impegna D’Aronco dal 1888 al 1930 quando consegna gli ultimi elaborati per il completamento di alcuni ambienti. Una vicenda complessa talora difficile che consegna alla città e al territorio friulano un edificio icona dell’architettura Liberty, ancora oggi sede dell’Amministrazione comunale.
Dopo la prima monografia edita nel 2006 dall’editore Senaus corredata dai contributi di Gabriella Bucco Liliana Cargnelutti oltre che degli autori del presente volume, questo libro propone un testo che ha la funzione di guidare il visitatore oltre che il cittadino, attraverso un’opera d’arte che offre una panoramica concisa e allo stesso tempo esaustiva, in una forma agile e accurata.
Diana Barillari, Giuseppe Bergamini