No abstract

Using examples from the period of Italian fascism and the National Socialist era in Germany, the relationship of modernism and modern architects to power is examined. The focus is on the changing and in part contradictory connotations to which modernism was exposed. The field of state architecture in both totalitarian regimes provide the occasion to discuss a basic problem of modernism: The instrumentalisation of its formal language for any ideology. For the Italian context, Giuseppe Terrgani’s Casa del Fascio in Como and the Florentine railway station of the Gruppo Toscano are used as examples; for Nazi Germany, the positions of Wilhelm Pinder and the system-relevant role of industrial building, as well as the myth of the flight into industrial building as an outlook into the time after 1945.

Florence suffered heavy destruction due to blasting by the german Wehrmacht in the area around the Ponte Vecchio in 1944. On the question of how the historic, in the core medieval buildings should be rebuilt, a vigorous debate was ignited, which also was intensively conducted in public. The debates core was about the question of wether the old center should be reconstructed exactly as it was or should a modern and contemporary solution be given priority. The art historian Bernhard Berenson and the archeologist Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli exemplified the position in the debate for the Florentine context. Linked to this discussion was also the question, how Italy would present itself after war and fascism as a new and democratic society. The built result can be seen as a compromise of these positions, as the new architecture is added in the center emphasized inconspicuousDespite the consistently negative reception, it was possible to dissociate oneself in two respects from this locally located variety of post-war modernity: On the one hand, the international architectural scene and, on the other hand, its own architectural heritage which is contaminated by fascism. The reference to its own architectural heritage and the very independent appropriation of international influences should remain the basic characteristic of the »Scuola Fiorentina« until the mid-1970s

No abstract

No abstract