Fascist Architecture

This article seeks to explore the relationships between heritage and identity by drawing on analytical discussions of material culture and historical consciousness and focusing on an empirical case of ‘undesirable heritage’, that is, a heritage that the majority of the popula- tion would prefer not to have. The case is that of the Nazi or fascist past in Germany, with specific reference to the former Nazi Party rally grounds in Nuremberg. By looking at some aspects of the ways in which this vast site of Nazi marching grounds and fascist buildings has been dealt with post-war, the article seeks to show both the struggle with the materiality of the site and changing forms of historical consciousness. It focuses in particular on some of the post-war dilemmas associated with the perceived agency of architecture, the sacralising and trivialising of space, the role and implications of musealisation, and the growth of a more reflective identity-health form of historical consciousness.

Giuseppe Terragni was among the modern Italian architects the most rooted in the European avangarde and the most inclined toward abstraction, deconstructing his building in layers upon layers of materials, architectural elements and strata conjuring to achieve a delicate and unstable equilibrium between plastic values and dissolution of architectural masses.
His buildings as famously testified by Peter Eisenman- are critical texts of the possibilities of decomposition of architectural forms and typologies as well as they are machines for the contextual transformation of the historical urban form in a subtle, unrethoric but contemporary way.
We analyze two unbuilt projects of the late creative season of the Italian master, two projects where the overlay of the sleekest, most dissonant, modernist language ever and the grid, textures and sense of Roman Como reaches a dramatic peak: the restoration of Casa Vietti and the Cortesella building (both 1940).