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Ugliness in architecture in the Australian, American, British and Italian milieus: Subtopia between the 1950s and the 1970s

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The article examines the reorientations of the appreciation of ugliness within different national contexts in a comparative and relational frame, juxtaposing the Australian, American, British and Italian milieus. It also explores the ways in which the transformation of the urban fabric and the effect of suburbanization were perceived in the aforementioned national contexts. Special attention is paid to the production and dissemination of how the city’s uglification was conceptualized between the 1950s and 1970s. Pivotal for the issues that this article addresses are Ian Nairn’s Outrage: On the Disfigurement of Town and Countryside, Robin Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness, Donald Gazzard’s Australian Outrage: The Decay of a Visual Environment, and the way the phenomenon of urban expansion is treated in these books in comparison with other books from the four national contexts under study, such as Ludovico Quaroni’s La torre di Babele and Reyner Banham’s The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?. Particular emphasis is placed on Boyd’s articles in The Architectural Review between 1951 and 1970. At the core of the article is the analysis of the debates around ugliness between the 1950s and 1970s within the British, Italian, American and Australian contexts.
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Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
https://doi.org/10.1186/s40410-022-00152-7
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Ugliness inarchitecture intheAustralian,
American, British andItalian milieus: Subtopia
betweenthe1950s andthe1970s
Marianna Charitonidou1,2,3*
Abstract
The article examines the reorientations of the appreciation of ugliness within different national contexts in a compar‑
ative and relational frame, juxtaposing the Australian, American, British and Italian milieus. It also explores the ways in
which the transformation of the urban fabric and the effect of suburbanization were perceived in the aforementioned
national contexts. Special attention is paid to the production and dissemination of how the city’s uglification was
conceptualized between the 1950s and 1970s. Pivotal for the issues that this article addresses are Ian Nairn’s Outrage:
On the Disfigurement of Town and Countryside, Robin Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness, Donald Gazzard’s Australian Out-
rage: The Decay of a Visual Environment, and the way the phenomenon of urban expansion is treated in these books
in comparison with other books from the four national contexts under study, such as Ludovico Quaroni’s La torre di
Babele and Reyner Banham’s The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?. Particular emphasis is placed on Boyd’s articles in
The Architectural Review between 1951 and 1970. At the core of the article is the analysis of the debates around ugli‑
ness between the 1950s and 1970s within the British, Italian, American and Australian contexts.
Keywords: Subtopia, Featurism, Austerica, Arboraphobia, Outrage, ugliness, Australia, Italy, United States of America,
UK, The Architectural Review, New Brutalism, Tendenza, Neorealism, Aldo Rossi, Ludovico Quaroni, Robin Boyd, Reyner
Banham, Ian Nairn, Gordon Cullen, Townscape movement, Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, Ernesto Nathan Rogers
© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which
permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the
original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or
other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line
to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory
regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this
licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/.
Introduction
To better grasp the exchanges between the four different
cultural and socio-economic contexts under study, par-
ticular emphasis should be placed on a relational analy-
sis of the production and dissemination of the ways in
which the city’s uglification was conceptualized between
the 1950s and 1970s. e methods of transnational his-
tory are useful for addressing the tension that exists due
to the fact that architecture as a field of knowledge is
related to an international culture, while its practice is a
local experience. e article departs from the conviction
that an analysis of RobinBoyd’s conception of ugliness is
useful for better understanding the debates on ugliness
within the four contexts under study in this article (Char-
itonidou 2021c). At the core of the article is the idea that
the evolution of the debates around ugliness in archi-
tecture and urbanism in the British, Italian, American
and Australian milieus should be interpreted in relation
to the social changes in relation style, building technol-
ogy, scale of construction, and the expansion to subur-
ban areas. During the period under study in this article
a particular emphasis was placed on debates concerning
the emergence of new aesthetic models, as in the case of
New Brutalism within the British context and the debates
around the notion ‘continuity’or ‘continuità’ within the
Italian context. To better understand the reasons behind
the diverging paths within the different national contexts,
it is of pivotal importance to relate them to the changing
Open Access
*Correspondence: mchariton@ethz.ch
1 Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design, Institute for the History
and Theory of Architecture (GTA), Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich,
Stefano‑Franscini‑Platz 5, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
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Page 2 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
social structures of post-war societies within the different
contexts under study.
An aspect that should also be taken into account when
we study the evolution of the concept of ugliness in archi-
tectural discourse is the social status of the readers of
the architectural and urban magazines in the pages of
which the debates around ugliness were developed. For
instance, it would be useful to examine to what extent
the authors and readers of eArchitectural Review
belong to specific social groups. Another aspect that
should also be taken into consideration when we exam-
ine the conception of ugliness in architectural and urban
design is the fact that architectural design address differ-
ent scales. is multiplicity of scales invites us to wonder
to what extent the conception of ugliness in architecture
and urban design is transformed when interpretations of
architecturaland urban design move from scale to scale.
erefore, a question that emerges is the following: to
what extent the conception of ugliness in architecture
differs when we evaluate urban fabric, a given building
layout and shape, an interior space, or a choice of spe-
cific materials and connecting details? To respond to this
question in relation to the Italian context, we should bear
in mind that Italian post-war craftmanship in the con-
struction industry is an underrated component of archi-
tectural quality. A project like Torre Velasca by Ludovico
Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers
(Studio BBPR) is useful for investigating how provocation
at different scales was achieved. A tension that is useful
for recognizing what was at stake in post-war debates
concerning the notion of ugliness in relation to the ques-
tion of morality in architecture is that between New Bru-
talist anti-art and anti-beauty aesthetics in the UK and
Tendenza’s anti-aesthetic and anti-elitist stance in Italy.
Australian ugliness and‘Featurism’: ‘Austerica’
and‘Arboraphobia’
Of great importance for understanding the evolution of
the debates around ugliness in architecture in Australia
between the 1950s and 1970s is the impact of Robin
Boyd’s work, and more particularly of his seminal book
e Australian Ugliness (Boyd 1960, 1963a, 1968, 1971;
Baracco etal. 2017; Phillips and Raisbeck 2020), but also
of his articlesin eArchitectural Reviewon architectural
and urban epistemology. As Andrew Leach remarks,
in “e Gold Coast Moment”, Boyd used the term ‘Aus-
terica’ to interpret the ‘Tiki aesthetic’ characterising the
neon signs and a “rainbow of plastic paint’ mere exten-
sions of a cultural surface that captured, too deep suntans
and what one writer called a ‘climate dictated exposure”
(Leach 2015a). Informative for understanding Boyd’s
conception of ugliness are the photographs of Austral-
ian photographer Nigel Buesst thatwere included in the
1968 and 1971 editions of e Australian Ugliness (Boyd
Fig. 1 Front cover and back cover of Boyd (1960) © Estate of Robin Boyd, courtesy Robin Boyd Foundation. https:// robin boyd. org. au/
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Page 3 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
1968,1971) (Fig.1), as well as the photographs taken by
Boyd during the late 1950s when he spent some time
as visiting professor at MIT and travelled in the United
States of America, and the illustrations he included in
e Australian Ugliness (Boyd 1960, 1963a, 1968, 1971)
(Fig.2).
Of particular interest for the reflections developed in
this articleis an ensemble of neologisms that Boyd used
in e Australian Ugliness, such as ‘Featurism’, ‘Auster-
ica’, and ‘Arboraphobia’(Boyd 1960, 1963a,1968, 1971).
‘Featurism’ referred to “the subordination of the essen-
tial whole and the accentuation of selected separate
features” (Boyd 1960, 1963a, 23,1968, 1971, 2013). As
JohnMacarthur argues, Boyd agreed with the distinction
that Kant draws between aesthetic judgment and pleas-
ure (Macarthur 2019, 51; Stead etal 2021). e assess-
ment of the Australian post-war urban development
seems less about how to design than about the delusion
of modern design. Boyd remarked regarding the value of
appreciating ugliness or the unbeautiful: “A capacity to
appreciate the unbeautiful is a quality which no Featur-
ist would envy and few would be interested in cultivating;
yet this is the key to depth in appreciation of architec-
ture…”(Boyd 1960, 224, 1963a, 1968, 1971). According to
Mirjana Lozanovska, “[t]he term ‘Featurism’ was coined
by Boyd in [e Australian Ugliness] […] to denote what
he believed was an Australian habit to “cloak and camou-
flage”: shallow formal and decorative excess in architec-
tural design and unthinking, ill-considered signage, hence
visual pollution of the urban environment” (Lozanovska
2015, 2018). InMacarthur’s view, “Featurism is an inter-
nationally observable aesthetical and ethical failing, but
one that Boyd claims to reach an apogee in the Australia
of the 1950s”. Macarthur, in “Robin Boyd’s e Australian
Ugliness, ugliness, and liberal education”, analyses Boyd’s
critique of popular taste, comparing his understanding of
ugliness in the aforementioned book with that developed
in the pages of eArchitectural Review (Macarthur
2019, 51; Stead etal 2021). Naomi Stead has described
e Australian Ugliness (Boyd 1960, 224, 1963a, 1968,
1971) as “a kind of taxonomy of local ugliness”, and as “an
account of the social and cultural elements that this ugli-
ness was intended to hide”(Stead 2017; Stead etal 2021).
During the post-war years, a reorientation from the
cross-cultural exchanges between Australia and the UK,
as far as architectural discourse is concerned towards
the cross-fertilization between Australia and the United
States of America took place. is shift should be taken
into account when we try to decipher the specificities of
the understanding of ugliness in Boyd’s thought. Boyd
was influenced by the ideas of the so-called “Townscape
movement” and Ian Nairn and Gordon Cullen’s concepts
of ‘subtopia’ and ‘outrage’. In parallel, Boyd’s understand-
ing of ugliness was informed by Reyner Banham’s analy-
sis of New Brutalism, in hiswell-known article “e New
Brutalism” published in 1955ineArchitectural Review
(Banham 1955) towhich Boyd casually contributed. Ban-
ham, in the aforementionedarticle, examined the anti-
aesthetics of the exhibition “Parallel of Life and Art” held
at the Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) in London
in 1953. is exhibition was curated by Alison and Peter
Smithson, Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi, who
among others were members of the Independent Group.
More specifically, Banham described the New Brutal-
ist aesthetics characterising this exhibition “as being
anti-art, or at any rate anti-beauty in the classical aes-
thetic sense of the word.”(Banham 1955, 359). As I have
mentioned in “Autopia as new perceptual regime: mobi-
lized gaze and architectural design”, “Alison Smithson
saw ‘New Brutalism’ as a gesture against academicism”
(Charitonidou 2021a, 15). At the centre of New Brutal-
ismwas the intention to redefine the way of life. Despite
Fig. 2 Illustration from Boyd (1960, 174). Credits: Roy Simpson
Collection, RMIT Design Archives. Illustration by Robin Boyd © Estate
of Robin Boyd, courtesy Robin Boyd Foundation. https:// robin boyd.
org. au/
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Page 4 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
the divergences between the way theSmithsons and Ban-
hamunderstood New Brutalism, they shared an interest
in "the transformation of the way of life, the reinvention
of the experience of inhabitation and the ethical implica-
tions of the way of life was central for both.”(Charitoni-
dou 2021a, 15).
In “e Sad End of New Brutalism”, Boyd criticised Rey-
nerBanham’s understanding of New Brutalism. He argued
that his analysis of New Brutalism, due to his effort to
legitimise Alison and Peter Smithson’s work, neglected the
importance of several buildings and architects that could
have been described as New Brutalist. Characteristically,
he remarked: “the only straightforward and consistent rule
followed by Dr. Banham was that New Brutalism was any-
thing the Smithsons permitted” (Boyd 1967, 11). e afore-
mentioned article, which could be interpreted as published
in eArchitectural Review in 1967, was critique of Ban-
ham’s book entitled e New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?
published a year earlier (Banham 1966). Despite his criti-
cism of Banham’s conception of New Brutalism, Boyd was
supportive of certain ideals of New Brutalism, and believed
that it was among the very few post-war movements that
were revolutionary. is becomes evident in his follow-
ing words: “e greatest hope of every evangelical move-
ment like New Brutalism is that it will lead the world away
from seductive aesthetic pleasures to the pure intelligence
of building”(Boyd 1967, 11). Boyd also remarked that “the
New Brutalism was certainly the most articulate of all the
attempts to re-establish the original integrity and strength of
modern architecture that occurred after the soft decade fol-
lowing the war” (Boyd 1967, 9). He argued that New Brutal-
ism was unoriginal in the sense that its ideals were not new.
He argued that “unoriginality is of course the weakness of
the argument for New Brutalism as an independent move-
ment” (Boyd 1967, 10).
Another important book for understanding the evolu-
tion of the debates around ugliness in Australia is Aus-
tralian Outrage: e Decay of a Visual Environment
edited by Donald Gazzard (Gazzard 1966) (Fig.3). is
book, which was forwarded by J.D. Pringle, brought
together the photographs that were displayed in an exhi-
bition held in Sydney in 1964, that is to say four years
after the publication of Boyd’s eAustralian Ugli-
ness(Boyd 1960, 1963a, 1968, 1971). At the core of this
exhibition, which was supported by the Royal Australian
Institute of Architects, was the decay of the Australian
visual environment.
From debacle ofpopular taste todeferred
judgement: AmericanSuburbia
An author that played a significant role in the evolu-
tion of the debates around ugliness in the United States
of America was Mary Mix Foley, who published “e
debacle of popular taste” in Architectural Forum in 1957
(Foley 1957). Foley introduced the aforementioned article
with the following question: “Why are there so many bad
buildings in America?” (Foley 1957, 141). Foley argued
that “the people who build, buy, sell, live, and work in
the suburbias, the Main Streets, and the roadtowns of
America were eminently satisfied with the established
uglinesswithout realising it is ugly (Foley 1957).” Peter
Blake, who served on the editorial staff of Architectural
Forum between 1950 and 1972, published God’s Own
Junkyard: e planned deterioration of America’s land-
scape(Blake 1964) seven years after Foley’s“e debacle
of popular taste” (Foley 1957). Boyd wrote some articles
for Architectural Forum, including “Has Success Spoiled
Modern Architecture?” published in 1959 (Boyd 1959).
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown published “Sig-
nificance for A & P Parking Lots, or Learning from Las
Vegas”(Venturi and Scott Brown 1968), and Denise Scott
Brown published “An Alternate Proposal that Builds on
the Character and Population of South Street” (Scott
Brown 1971a) in Architectural Forumduring the period
that Blake was part of its editorial staff. Denise Scott
Brown moved to Philadelphia to study Planning at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1958 after having studied
at the Architectural Association where she was influ-
enced by Alison and Peter Smithson’s approach and New
Brutalism. Scott Brown has described the New Brutal-
ists as “a movement of the 1950s and 1960s that related
Fig. 3 Cover of Gazzard (1966)
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Page 5 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
architecture to social realism” (Scott Brown 2004, 109;
Charitonidou 2022b). She has mentioned regarding the
British context when she relocated in London in 1952:
“I landed in post-World War II England amidst the look-
back-in-anger generation, in a society in upheaval, where
social activism was part of education” (Scott Brown 2004,
109; Charitonidou 2022b).
During her studies at the University of Pennsylvania,
Scott Brown attended the courses of urban sociologist
Herbert Gans, who a year before her resettlement in
the United States of America conducted an insitu study
in West End in Boston, a slum cleared area. e study
of Gans in West End concluded in hisbook entitled Us
ine Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of
Italian-Americans (Gans 1962; Charitonidou 2022b),
which investigated the everyday life of the inhabitants.
A book by Gans that is important for analysing the crite-
ria according to which an urban or architectural artefact
is evaluated as ugly or beautiful is Popular Culture and
High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste(Gans
1974; Charitonidou 2022b). Scott Brown’s fascination
with Gans’s ‘new objectivity’ goes hand in hand with her
interest in the so-called non-judgemental perspective.
Regarding this, she has noted: “But we don’t say we don’t
judge. We say we defer judgement. In deferring it, we let
more data into the judgement, we make the judgement
more sensitive” (Scott Brown in Cook and Klotz 1973,
254; Charitonidou 2022b). e photographs that Scott
Brown took at South Street west of Broad Street in Phila-
delphia, one can discern the impact of Gans’s approach
on her perspective. Another seminal book by Gans is e
Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Subur-
ban Community (Gans 1967; Charitonidou 2022b). ree
years after the publication of the latter, in 1970, Robert
Venturi, Steven Izenour and Denise Scott Brown coor-
dinated the study “Remedial Housing for Architects or
Learning from Levittown”, which was held in collabora-
tion with their students at Yale University (Figs.4, 5).
In the themes addressed in the course entitled “Learn-
ing from Levittown Studio” that Robert Venturi, Denise
Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour taught during the fall
semester in 1970, we can easily discern the influence
of Herbert Gans’s work. In the framework of the afore-
mentioned course, special emphasis was placed on the
analysis of the following aspects concern the profile of
the citizens of Levittown: family organisation, education,
ambitions and values, attitudes, leisure, use of house,
occupation, social contacts, media, possessions, orbits
Fig. 4 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, learning from Levittown Studio, Fall 1970. Life styles expressed in the house. Credits:
Venturi, Scott Brown Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. https:// www. design. upenn. edu/ archi tectu ral‑ archi ves/ ventu
ri‑ scott‑ brown‑ and‑ assoc iates
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Page 6 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
of mobility, and central investments. Of great interest
is the way the groups of citizens were categorised in the
posters produced. ese groups were the following: (a)
a first group concerning low income-black matriarchal
families with 7 years of education, which were occupied
mainly as workers and unemployed and corresponded
to approximately 7% of the population New Haven, (b)
a second group concerning low income-Italian origin-
urban families with 8 years of education, which were
occupied mainly as operatives and labourers and corre-
sponded to approximately 10% of New Haven (c) a third
group concerning suburban-working class families with
8–11 years of education, which were occupied mainly as
operatives and labourers and corresponded to approxi-
mately 10% of the population of New Haven, (d) a fourth
group concerning suburban-low-middle class families
with High School and 2 years College education, which
were occupied mainly as craftsmen, salesmen and clerical
and labourers and corresponded to approximately 35% of
the population of New Haven , and (e) a fifth group con-
cerning upper-middle class families with 4 years College
education, which were occupied mainly in business and
corresponded to approximately 20% of the population
of New Haven, (Fig.6). Telling is Scott Brown’s remark
that architects, instead of trying to adopt the perspective
of sociologists, should try “to look at the information of
sociology from an architectural viewpoint”(Scott Brown
in Cook and Klotz 1973, 252; Charitonidou 2022b, 2022c,
2021e). At the core of the ‘Learning from Levittown Stu-
dio’ that Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Ste-
ven Izenour taught during the fall semester in 1970 were
the ideas of advocacy planning and New Left critiques,
which had an important impact on the pedagogical
approaches at the Department of City Planning at the
University of Pennsylvania during the 1950s (Charitoni-
dou 2021e, 2022c).One of the aspects that makes Scott
Brown’s viewpoint original is the fact that it aims to bring
together her interest in the non-judgmental viewpoint of
the “new objectivity” of Gans’s understanding of urban
sociology and her passion for the aesthetics of pop art.
Regarding this issue, she has highlighted: “I like the fact
that the influences upon us are the pop artist on one side
and the sociologist on the other”(Scott Brown in Cook
and Klotz 1973, 252; Charitonidou 2022b). Enlightening
regarding how the sociological perspective meets the pop
artist viewpoint are Scott Brown’s following words:
e forms of the pop landscape […] speak to our
condition not only aesthetically but on many levels
of necessity, from the social necessity to rehouse the
Fig. 5 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, learning from Levittown Studio, Fall 1970. Life styles expressed in the house. Credits:
Venturi, Scott Brown Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. https:// www. design. upenn. edu/ archi tectu ral‑ archi ves/ ventu
ri‑ scott‑ brown‑ and‑ assoc iates
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Page 7 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
poor without destroying them to the architectural
necessity to produce buildings and environments
that others will need and like. (Scott Brown 1971b,
28).
Of great importance for understanding the evolution of
the debates around ugliness in architecture in Australia is
the impact of the debates developed in the United States
of America, and more particularly in the West Coast,
on the approaches in Australia. To better grasp the con-
cept of ‘Austerica’ and its evolution within the Australian
context, it would be useful to examine its relation to the
aesthetic appropriation of the Gold Coast Infrastructure
during the late 1950s and the 1960s (Bosman etal. 2016).
During the 1970s, the ideas developed in Learning from
Las Vegas (Scott Brown etal. 1972)were imported to
the Australian architectural discourse. As Andrew Leach
reminds us in “Leaving Las Vegas, Again”, some debates
developed in e Papua New Guinea University of Tech-
nology played an important role during this process
(Leach 2015b). A trip coordinated by John Gollings,
Malcolm Horner, Tony Styant-Browne and Julie Jame
organised in January 1974 included a study of Surfers
Paradise in Gold Coast, which was based on the model
of the “Studio LLV: Learning from Las Vegas or Form
Analysis as Design Research (e Great Proletariat Cul-
tural Locomotive): Final Presentation” directed by Rob-
ert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour in
Fall 1968 (Smith 2009, 126). An investigation of what the
aforementioned research team examined during this trip
could help us better understand the impact of the Ameri-
can discourse around ugliness on how the aesthetic of
“Gold Coast” was perceived.
‘Subtopia’ withintheBritish context: ‘Outrage’
andugliness
e debates around “Townscape movement” are impor-
tant for grasping the conception of ugliness within
the British context during the 1950s. e activities of
Hubert de Cronin Hastings as editor of e Architec-
tural Review are of great significance for understanding
Fig. 6 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, learning from Levittown Studio, Fall 1970. Life styles expressed in the house. Credits:
Venturi, Scott Brown Collection, The Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania. https:// www. design. upenn. edu/ archi tectu ral‑ archi ves/ ventu
ri‑ scott‑ brown‑ and‑ assoc iates
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Page 8 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
the context within which the ideas of “Townscape move-
ment” emerged. John Macarthur has related Hastings’s
approach in e Architectural Review concerning ugli-
ness to liberalism, arguing that Hastings “would accept
modernist featurism alongside meretricious historicism
and vernacular mis-appropriations of style” (Macar-
thur 2019, 56; Stead etal 2021). An ensemble of articles
aiming to explain the guiding principles of “Townscape
movement” appeared in the pages of eArchitectural
Review starting in October 1948 (Cullen 1948a, b; Erten
2009). Gordon Cullen was along with Ian Nairn one of
the main authors of the so-called “Townscape move-
ment” articles until 1959, when he stopped collaborating
with eArchitectural Review (Engler 2016). Ian Nairn
started collaborating with eArchitectural Review later
than Gordon Cullen, that is to say in 1954, but departed
ten years later than Cullen, that is to say in 1969.
Despite the fact that the ideas at the coreof the “Town-
scape movement” were already present in an ensemble of
articles published in eArchitectural Review since 1948,
an important turning point was the issue of December
1949. is issue included not only Hastings’s “Town-
scape: A Plea for an English Visual Philosophy”, which
was published under the pseudonym Ivor de Wolfe (de
Wolfe1949; Aitchison 2011, 2012; Macarthur and Aitch-
ison 2012), but also Gordon Cullen’s Townscape case-
book (Cullen 1949). An article entitled “Civilia. e End
of Sub Urban Man” authored by Hastings in 1971 is of
great importance for understanding his critique of subur-
banization (Wolfe 1971). Another text that was published
during the 1970s in eArchitectural Review and is use-
ful for revisiting the concepts of‘outrage’ and ‘subtopia’ is
Ian Nairn’s “Outrage Twenty Years After” (Nairn 1975).
As Nairn remarks, in “Outrage”, “[w]ithin the town the
agents of Subtopia are demolition and decay, buildings
replaced by bijou gardens, car-parks and underscale
structures” (Nairn 1955) (Fig.7).
According to Mathew Aitchison, “Townscape’s pro-
ponents saw ugliness, sprawl and blight as symptomatic
of the general collapse of the design professions’ ability
to engage with real-world problems” (Aitchison 2013a,
415). e “Townscape movement” should be interpreted
in relation to the critiques of the newly built New Towns
and the suburbanization effect that accompanied their
creation (Charitonidou 2021f, 2021g, 2021h). Another
aspect that is of great significance for comprehending the
ideology of “Townscape movement” is the impact that
the generalised use of the car on the urban and suburban
landscapes (Charitonidou 2021a; 2021c, 2021d, 2022d).
Another aspect that should also be taken into account
when we try to understand the specificities of the concep-
tion of ugliness within the British context is the Anti-Ugly
Action (AUA), which was a group formed by students at
the Royal College of Arts (RCA) to protest against the
buildings that they considered ugly (Fig. 8). As Gavin
Stamp remarks in Anti-Ugly: Excursions in English Archi-
tecture and Design, “[i]n December 1958, […] Anti-Ugly
Action demonstrated outside two new buildings they
found offensive: Caltex House in the Old Brompton Road
and Agriculture House (the monumental Neo-Georgian
Fig. 7 Gordon Cullen’s illustrations enlivened the ‘Outrage’ special issue of The Architectural Review of June 1955
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Page 9 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
headquarters of the Farmers’ Union, since demolished)
in Knightsbridge” (Stamp 2013, vi). According to Timo-
thy Hyde, AUA’s critique of ugliness “was an unabash-
edly aesthetic critique rather than a moral or material
one” (Hyde 2019, 64). However, Ken Baynes, who was the
Chairman of AUA, has related the approach of the AUA
to the ideas of the Independent Groupof which Alison
and Peter Smithson were members along with Lawrence
Alloway, Reyner Banham, Colin St John Wilson, Richard
Hamilton, Nigel Henderson, John McHale and Eduardo
Paolozzi (Stamp 2015). As Hyde reminds us, in Ugliness
and Judgment: On Architecture in the Public Eye, “Ian
Nairn […] addressed the embers of Anti-Ugly Action in
a lecture just after the group was founded” (Hyde 2019,
65).
During the 1950s, within different contexts an ensem-
ble of terms emerged to describe the new features of
urban and suburban landscapes related to the phenome-
non of suburbanization and the generalised use of the car.
Such a term within the British context was ‘subtopia’ used
by Ian Nairn, in Outrage: On the Disfigurement of Town
and Countryside, which collected several articles written
for e Architectural Review during the early 1950s and
was published in 1956 (Nairn 1955). Nairn defined ‘sub-
topia’ as “the annihilation of the site, the steamrollering
of all individuality of place to one uniform and mediocre
pattern”, as well as “the legalization of the urge to dump
on a national scale” (Nairn cited in Parnell 2014). As
Mathew Aitchison remarks, in “e Boyd Ultimatum”,
“[t]oday, many of the developments Nairn observed are
commonplace but in the mid 1950s they were distinct
enough to be grouped under one Nairn term, ‘subtopia’
(Aitchison 2013b, 61).
Of great significance for the dissemination of Nairn’s
ideas were the illustrations by Gordon Cullen (Fig. 7),
which have many similarities with Boyd’s own illustra-
tions in e Australian Ugliness (Boyd 1960; 1963a; 1968,
1971). Particularly informative regarding Nairn’s under-
standing of ‘subtopia’ and ‘outrage’ are the episodes of the
series Nairn Across Britain1, which were released by BBC
the same year as Reyner Banham’s film Reyner Banham
Loves Los Angeles, that is to say in 1972 (Dimendberg
2006).
The conception ofarchitecture withinthepost‑war
Italian context: Ugliness inTendenza
andNeorealism
Pivotal for understanding the conception of ugliness
within the Italian context are the debates around Ten-
denza and Neorealist architecture. Taking as main actors
Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Aldo Rossi, for the former,
and Ludovico Quaroni, for the latter, my aim here is to
clarify their respective positions regarding post-war city
and explains how they perceived the relation of post-war
(sub)urbanization to city’s uglification. e objective is
to shed light on how ugliness was instrumentalized as
a productive category in post-war Italian architecture
and on how Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Ludovico Quaroni
and Aldo Rossi’s aesthetic views towards ugliness incor-
porated post-war urban reality. It also reveals how the
anti-aesthetic and anti-elitist stance of Tendenza and
Neorealist architecture were applied in Torre Velasca
(1950–1958) by Ludovico Belgiojoso, Enrico Peres-
sutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers (BBPR) and Tiburtino
district (1949–1954) by Ludovico Quaroni and Mario
Ridolfi, in collaboration with certain young Roman archi-
tects, such as Carlo Aymonino (Charitonidou 2020). Ten-
denza and Neorealist architecture shared the effort to
reformulate the ways we judge architecture through new
models, corresponding to urban expansion, and estab-
lishing criteria that take into consideration the struggle
Fig. 8 Anti‑Ugly Action (AUA) manifesto, March 1959. Source: Stamp
(2015)
1 Series Nairn Across Britain, 1972, BBC: https:// www. bbc. co. uk/ progr
ammes/ p01q1 km2/ episo des/ player
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Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
for social reconstruction, characterizing post-war Italian
cities. e emergence of new models of city’s aesthetic
evaluation are interpreted as a symptom of the debate
regarding identity’s reconstruction after the fascist years.
Within this context where continuity was understood as
antidote to modernism’s crisis, Ernesto Nathan Rogers,
Ludovico Quaroni and Aldo Rossi argued that architects
are responsible for society.
e term ‘tendenza’ was originally employed by Ernesto
Nathan Rogers in “Elogio della tendenza”, in 1946 (Rogers
1946). Rogers also referred to ‘tendenza’, in “Ortodossia
dell’eterodossia”, in 1957 (Rogers 1957, 4) and in Espe-
rienza dell’architettura, in 1958(Rogers 1958). He drew
a distinction between the concepts of ‘tendenza’, style and
coherence, defining ‘tendenza’ as “an act of modesty that
integrates the activity of each individual in the culture of
their own epoch, inviting them to consider their selves
before anything else as parts of society” (Rogers 1958;
Charitonidou 2020). Rossi first employed the term “ten-
denza” in 1969, in the introduction to the second Italian
edition of L’architettura della città (Rossi 1969a) and in
“L’architettura della ragione come architettura di Ten-
denza”, in the catalogue of the exhibition Illuminismo e
architettura del ’700 veneto (Rossi 1969b). His definition
of architecture of reason as tendenza architecture lied
on the need for a concept at the crossroads of realism
and rationalism, which challenged the concept of avant-
garde, rejecting utopia.
Rogers’s temporally-driven aesthetic model, which
lied on the concept of continuity and the idea of “sens-
ing history”, is the result of his encounter with Enzo Paci’s
phenomenological approach. Rogers believed that a bal-
ance between utility and beauty should be found, while
Paci considered that architects should not conceive soci-
ety as “theorized or ideologized or structured before-
hand according to the perspectives of a given sociology
(Paci 1957). Instead, they should “make alive and real
social relationship of […] [their] country, with its needs
and miseries, with its illusions and hard sense of real-
ity, of the limits and conditions of life.” (Paci 1957) Paci
was convinced that, to achieve such an engaged view, it
is indispensable to see the things the way they are. In his
Diario Fenomenologico, he defined as phenomenon “what
appears, what we see as we see it and we can faithfully
describe, without judging it before we can see it precisely
as it is” (Paci 1961). Rogers’ view in “e Image: e
Architect’s Inalienable Vision” (Rogers 1966) drew on
Paci’s phenomenological approach.
e adjective neorealist connoted an anti-abstract
attitude. Neorealist architecture, as “collective and
timeless mode to building” (Casciato 2000, 48), could
be interpreted in relation to Antonio Gramsci’s invi-
tation to formulate “a new way of feeling and of seeing
reality” (Gramsci cited in Casciato 2000), which is close
to Paci’s call to “see the things the way they are”. Neore-
alist architecture was a “Roman School” product, with
protagonists Mario Ridolfi and Ludovico Quaroni, both
participants of Associazione per l’Architettura Organica
(APAO), founded by Bruno Zevi in 1944 and driven by
the conviction that modern architecture’s liberation
from rigid functionalism would permit to humanism and
democracy to serve as liberating forces in post-war Ital-
ian society. Organic architecture’s impetus was based on
“social, technical and artistic activity directed towards
creating the climate for a new democratic civilisa-
tion” (L’Associazione per l’architettura organica 1945).
Jacques Rancière’s conception of democracy could elu-
cidate organic architecture’s relation to democracy. For
Rancière, democracy is neither “a form of government
nor a style of social life”, but “an act of political subjec-
tivization that disturbs the police order by polemically
calling into question the aesthetic coordinates of per-
ception, thought, and action” (Rancière 1999, 87). His
understanding of democracy is useful for grasping how
aesthetic and political coordinates contributed to the
reformulation of the criteria of evaluation of post-war
Italian cities’s ugliness.
eNeorealist stance in architecture should berelated
tothe context of the process of city creation in a new
Italy after the WWII damages. As Maristella Casciato
underlines, “[i]t was in the south that the new national
architectural language of Neorealism found its concrete
expression” (Casciato 2000, 29). e contrast between
south and north Italy is important for grasping the dif-
ferences between Neorealist and Tendenza architecture.
e context par excellence of Neorealist architecture
is Rome, while the milieu par excellence of Tendenza is
Milan. For instance, “[m]ilanese architectural culture
had maintained a sense of the continuity of the mod-
ern movement and the rationalist European experience”
(Casciato 2000, 31). is can explain Rogers’s choice to
give Casabella, which he directed since 1953, the subtitle
“continuità”.
BBPR’s Torre Velasca is a thought-provoking case study
for reflecting on Tendenza’s aesthetic theory (Figs.9, 10,
11). Given that it provoked several reactions and has been
often characterized as ugly, its examination could illumi-
nate Tendenza’s stance towards ugliness. A common pre-
occupation of Tendenza and Team 10 was the concern
for architecture’s moral dimension. Despite the affinities
between Team 10 and Ernesto Nathan Rogers’s aesthetic
views, which have been highlighted by Luca Molinari
(Molinari 2016), Peter Smithson and Jaap Bakema criti-
cized sharply BBPR’s Torre Velasca, when it was presented
at the 1959 CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture
Moderne) conference in Otterlo. Smithson argued that it
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Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
was aesthetically and ethically wrong and “a bad model to
give because there are things that can be so easily distorted
and become not only ethically wrong but aesthetically
wrong” (Smithson cited in Newman 1961). He described it
as a model with dangerous consequences and blamed Rog-
ers for not being aware of his position in the society. Before
this controversy, Torre Velasca had received an equally
negative critique in France, in LArchitecture d’aujourd’hui,
where it was regarded as an effect of the Italian apprecia-
tion for “ugliness, baroque inflammation, exaggeration,
false originality, the strange, and the bizarre” (Charitoni-
dou 2020). Casabella responded to the ironic title “Casa-
bella... casus belli?” of L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, which
attacked BBPR’s aesthetics, publishing a text with the
equally caustic title “Si vis pacem demain... para bellum...
aujourd’hui” (Charitonidou 2020).
e double stance of embodying cultural values with-
out literally imitating past forms is emblematic of BBPR’s
posture. Rogers underlined that the significance of Torre
Velasca’s design strategy lied “in its intent to epitomize,
culturally speaking—while avoiding repetition of the
expressive language used in any of its buildings—the
atmosphere of the city of Milan, its ineffable yet percepti-
ble character.” (Rogers 1997) is endeavour to transcribe
through architectural composition a given culture’s char-
acteristics without imitating an existing visual language
brings to mind Neorealist approach, which also aimed
to invent an architectural language, based on cultural
points of reference. A difference between Tendenza and
Neorealist architecture is that the latter, in contrast with
the former, developed an architectural language based on
a set of mimetic devices. Neorealism’s paradox lies in its
double vocation to imitate and re-invent cultural identi-
ty’s points of reference.
Tendenza and Neorealist architecture shared their
interest in the intensification of architects’ responsibility,
the reestablishment of the relationship between reality
and utopia and the critique of modernist homogenised
and impersonal functionalism. Rogers invited architects
to understand their “responsibilities towards tradition”
(Rogers 1954), shaping an aesthetic view based on the
understanding of tradition as “life-world”. e notion of
responsibility was also central for Quaroni, who believed
that architects’ role in society should embrace the task
of urban design. In 1956, in his keynote lecture “e
architect and town planning” at the CIAM International
Summer School, held at the Istituto Universitario di
Architettura di Venezia (IUAV), analysed how architects
could be society’s part. In 1979, he wrote: “Today, skilful
architects console themselves by designing “their” archi-
tecture, and leave others the responsibility for a city”.
He maintained that it is in architects’ responsibility to
reflect on city’s future and shape it. He believed that cit-
ies had become “too anonymous, too ugly, too inefficient”,
because architects did not try to change this situation,
and left “political friends […] [and] city planning cous-
ins” (Quaroni 1979) to decide about their future. For him,
city’s ugliness was a result of losing the sense of archi-
tects’ responsibility for city’s transformation.
Quaroni and Rogers aimed to reinvent the relation-
ship between utopia and reality. Quaroni’s approach is
characterized by the belief in the potential of imaginary
reality to revitalize urban design. In La torre di Babele,
he expressed his belief “in the creative value of utopia—
of an imaginary reality […] which […] holds the seeds for
revitalizing a process like urban planning that has lost its
capacity for energetic response.” (Quaroni 1967) Quaro-
ni’s conception of utopia’s creative force as imaginary
reality, capable of revitalizing urban planning processes,
brings to mind Rogers’ understanding of “utopia of real-
ity” as “teleological charge that projects the present into
the possible future”. Rogers underscored utopia’s capacity
“to transform reality in its deepest essence, in the moral
and political, as well as in the didactic and pedagogical
fields.” (Rogers 1962, 1, 1965). e existential aspects
of his perception of architecture’s “experience” draw on
Paci’s phenomenological perspective, who associated
the problem of “e Heart of the City”, the 1951 CIAM’s
theme, to the necessity of a “synthesis of permanence and
emergence”(Rogers 1958;Paci 1947, 1954, vii).
e critique of modernist functionalism and the
reformulation of the models of evaluation of what ugly
Fig. 9 BBPR’s Torre Velasca featured on the cover of the issue 232 of
Casabella Continuità published in October 1959
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Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
architecture and city is are parameters of the same episte-
mological shift. For instance, both Quaroni and Rossi criti-
cized modernist functionalism for being reductive, naïve
and homogenizing. Quaroni blamed modern architects
for reducing form-making to the response to functional
problems and for understanding function in a simplistic
way. He blamed them for neglecting the psychological and
moral factors related to the way in which space is experi-
enced. He also underlined that “function cannot be deter-
mined by means of mere square or cubic meters, since it is
a compound of physical, special, psychological, moral fac-
tors.”(Quaroni cited invan Bergeijk 2010, 123).
In La torre di Babele, Quaroni argued that “the mod-
ern city is really ugly” (Quaroni 1967), claiming that the
lesson of historic cities, which was neglected in modern
cities, is the well-integrated synthesis of functional, tech-
nological and aesthetic aspects. For him, the quality of
architectural and urban artefacts depends on the extent
to which the synthesis of these aspects is based on “an
immediate, direct, good-natured relationship” (Quaroni
1967). Quaroni placed particular emphasis on the tension
between historic and modern city, assimilating historic
city to beautiful city and modern city to ugly city. He
associated historic city’s beauty with its “clear design […]
[and] structure” (Quaroni 1967). For Quaroni, modern
city was ugly because it was chaotic. La torre di Babele
opens with the following phrases: “e architect tends by
its nature, and by professional deformation, to the total
Fig. 10 Torre Velasca (1950–8) by Ludovico Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers (BBPR). Photograph taken by Marianna
Charitonidou, 13 June 2018
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Page 13 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
control of the city, as if it were a single building. But the
mythical Tower of Babel, you know, never came to frui-
tion.” (Quaroni 1967).
Quaroni adopted Henry Miller’s definition of confu-
sion as “an order that you do not understand” (Miller
2015, 176) to explain the non-possibility of modern
city’s control with the non-capacity of architects to
understand the order of post-war cities and their trans-
formation and expansion. He related the inability to
comprehend the order of contemporary city’s urban
fabric to his belief that modern city is ugly. As Rossi
mentions, in his introduction of La torre di Babele,
“Quaroni’s theory […] revolves around the significance
of the city and of architecture, and the fundamental
question: what does it mean for us architects if the mod-
ern city is ugly?” Rossi also argued that Quaroni failed
to recognise modern city’s potential beauty, because he
blamed modern architecture itself instead of specula-
tion and ignorance. Rossi, instead, considered that mod-
ern city’s ugliness is the result of “an absurd mechanism
which operates on several different levels”(Rossi 1967;
O’Regan and Rossi 1983).
Quaroni’s aesthetic approach could be explained
drawing a distinction between architects’ disinterested
view vis-à-vis beautiful architectural and urban arte-
facts and architects’ engaged view vis-à-vis ugly archi-
tectural and urban artefacts. To clarify what I mean, I
would claim that in the case of the beautiful, the rela-
tionship between object and subject is of a different
order than that in the case of the ugly. e spectator of
beautiful objects is disinterested, in contrast with that
of ugly objects. When a viewer is confronted with ugly
objects a desire to intervene emerges. e subject can-
not be disinterested any more. Such an interpretation
can help us explain post-war Italian architects’ engage-
ment vis-à-vis the re-invention of conceptual tools seek-
ing to reshape the ugly aspects of urban and suburban
formations. e belief that the problem of urban expan-
sion should be part of architects’ task became a com-
mon demand of different post-war Italian approaches.
Fig. 11 Torre Velasca (1950–8) by Ludovico Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers (BBPR). Photograph taken by Marianna
Charitonidou, 13 June 2018
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Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
e spectator became engaged vis-à-vis post-war Italian
cities’ reality.
In contrast with Karl Rosenkranz’s thesis that ugliness
is the active negation of beauty(Rosenkranz 2015). Mark
Cousins maintains that the ugly cannot be thought of as
the opposite of the beautiful and defines ugly “as a mat-
ter of place” and the ugly object as “an object which is
experienced both as being there and as something that
should not be there”(Cousins 1994, 93, 1995). is sense
of not belonging to one’s place could be related to Gilles
Deleuze’s interpretation of Neorealism as a profound
stage of confusion that had led to the loss of feeling of
belief in this world (Deleuze 1989). WW II underpinned
divergent taxonomies, leading to a post-war era charac-
terized by situations in which we are faced with spaces
we no longer know how to describe, to which we longer
know how to react. is stage of confusion, accord-
ing to Deleuze, is not something negative, but consti-
tuted an opportunity to invent new signs in cinema
(Deleuze 1989). is could be valuable for architecture
too. Deleuze’s understanding of confusion could be com-
pared to Quaroni’s conception of post-war Italian city’s
confusion. Even if Deleuze is affirmative, while Quaroni
is negative towards confusion, both share the conviction
that such a confusion makes necessary the invention of
new modes of relating creative processes with reality.
Tafuri described Quaroni’s compositional method as
“poetic of non-fabulation”(Tafuri 1975, 17). is distinc-
tion between poetic of fabulation and poetic of non-fabu-
lation could help us grasp the perceptual mechanisms of
Quaroni’s design processes.
Neorealist approach constitutes an endeavour to con-
ceive ugliness as a path to the real putting forward the
reality of post-war Italian city. Neorealism’s intention to
recuperate the immediacy of reality instrumentalized and
aestheticized urban ugliness. Such a point of view vis-à-
vis the connection between ugliness and reality is appar-
ent in post-war Italian Neorealist Cinema, as in Roberto
Rossellini’s Roma città aperta (1945) and Vittorio de
Sica’sLadri di biciclette (1948). André Bazin, a major the-
orist of Neorealism in cinema, highlighted the opposition
between “aesthetic refinement and a certain crudeness,
a certain instant effectiveness of a realism which is satis-
fied just to present reality”(Bazin 1971, 25; Charitonidou
2022d, 2022a). He related this conflict between aesthetic
refinement and crudeness to the enlightening power of
reality. is crudeness to which he refers could be associ-
ated with ugliness. e attachment of neorealism to the
aesthetic of ugliness has been also highlighted by Bruno
Reichlin, who shed light on the relation of neorealism
to “the propensity for an aesthetic of the ugly.”(Reichlin
2001, 83).
e endeavour of transforming ugly features of the
urban landscape into architectural instruments of social
and moral engagement was at the heart of Neoreal-
ist approach. In the context of post-war Italy, architects
often aimed to transform ugly elements into devices of
reflection about how one’s aesthetic criteria interferes
with the meaning they give to reality.Tiburtino district,
designed by Ludovico Quaroni and Mario Ridolfi, is often
interpreted as a Neorealist expression in architecture. In
this case, Quaroni and Ridolfi conceived the construc-
tion of social housing in a suburban neighbourhood of
post-war Rome as a way to contribute to citizens’ moral
engagement towards life. is transformation of the
norms according to which a city is judged as beautiful or
ugly was paralleled with a shift from aesthetic criteria to
politic, ethic, moral, social and civic criteria. e moral
implications of aesthetic evaluation are apparent in Aris-
totle’s Poetics, where ‘aischros’ (ugly) has moral as well as
aesthetic implications (Aristotle 1997, 62). Characteristic
of this moral engagement linked to Tiburtino district’s
spirit is Tafuri’s description of it as a “manifesto of a state
of mind, of an impelling need to communicate, to build a
reality together with society and not simply for society.
(Tafuri 1964, 94).
In terms of formal expression, neorealist architecture is
characterized by a shift from a pre-established concept of
compositional unity to one obtained by means of super-
position and expressed through the aggregation of suc-
cessive elements and the obsessive fragmentation of walls
and fences, as in the case of Tiburtino district’s (Fig.12).
Furthermore, it is characterized by the elaboration of for-
mal discontinuities and the rediscovery of streets’ value.
It is also based on the surgical examination of the sin-
gularities of the visible world and everyday life. Quaroni
wrote, in 1954, regarding Rome’s character: “e baroque
spirit is the spirit of Rome. It is a spontaneous genera-
tion, a creature of the site: autochthonous. It uses, even
in the order of architecture, the vital disorder of the life of
Rome” (Quaroni cited in Tafuri 1964, 190). is remark
is penetrating for grasping Tiburtino district’s intention
to capture Rome’s vitality (Fig.13). Quaroni’s appraisal
of Rome’s vital disorder is indicatory of Neorealism’s
transformation of city’s ugly features into architectural
instruments of social and moral engagement. e aes-
thetic project of Neorealist architecture lies in the double
vocation to render architectural composition mundane
and renounce the artificiality of the new. Quaroni wrote
in 1957 regarding Tiburtino district’s vitality and aes-
theticization of ugliness: “ere was life, in any case, in
the neighborhood. Beautiful or ugly, it lived as best it
could.” (Quaroni 1957, 24). e vitality is more impor-
tant than anything else, for him, and, for this reason, he
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Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
replaced the antagonism beautiful/ugly by that of vital/
non-vital.
According to Kant, aesthetic judgments are judgments
made about beauty. Kant focuses on the subject’s experi-
ence of the feeling of pleasure or displeasure and conceives
beauty, not as a property of objects, but as related to the
subject’s feeling of pleasure. He notes: “Fine art shows its
superiority precisely in this, that it describes things beau-
tifully that in nature we would dislike or find ugly.”(Kant
1987, 180). Kant’s conception of beauty as related to the
subject’s feeling of pleasure brings to mind Aldo Rossi’s
remark that architecture’s “capacity to be transmitted and
to give pleasure” is part of technics, that is to say archi-
tecture’s “means and principles” (Rossi 1982, 127). e
distinction that Zevi drew between beautiful and ugly
architecture wasbased on the idea that “ [b]eautiful archi-
tecture [is] […] architecture in which the interior space
attracts us, elevates us and dominates us spiritually […]
[while] ugly architecture would be that in which the inte-
rior space disgusts and repels us.”(Zevi 1957).
Rossi noted, in 1977, in the introduction of the Portu-
guese edition of L’Architettura della città: “Topography,
typology, and history come to be measures of the muta-
tions of reality, together defining a system of architecture
wherein gratuitous invention is impossible. us, they are
opposed theoretically to the disorder of contemporary
architecture.” (Rossi 1977). As it becomes evident, Rossi
understood typology as an instrument for measuring
reality and resisting to contemporary architecture’s dis-
order. His conception of typology as antidote to disorder
and means to evaluate the real explain why Rossi believed
that the “choice of typology at the beginning of the design
process” was the means to avoid ugliness. He maintained
that a “lot of architecture is ugly because it cannot be
traced to a clear choice; without one, it is left deprived
of meaning.” (Rossi cited in Kirk 2005). For Rossi, “the
individuality of the urban artifact was the moment of
decision in which typological principles were applied
to the real city” (Aureli 2008,2009, 59). Rossi declared
in 1974: “If the modern city is ugly, as Quaroni says, it
Fig. 12 Plan of the Tiburtino district, Rome, 1949–54. The main architects of the project were Ludovico Quaroni and Mario Ridolfi . Other architects
who worked on this project were Carlo Aymonino, Mario Fiorentino, Federico Gorio, Maurizio Lanza, Piero Maria Lugli, Giulio Rinaldi, Michele Valori,
Carlo Aymonino, Carlo Chiarini, Sergio Lenci, Carlo Melograni, Gian Carlo Menichetti and Volfango Frankl. Credits: Associazione archivio storico
Olivetti, Fondo Quaroni Ludovico, Serie Progetti e corrispondenza, fasc. 130
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Page 16 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
means that the models of reference have gradually worn
out […] rationalism that arose from the Haussmannian
solutions has been lost; the capitalist modern city has,
in its instability, the inability to give itself a face”(Rossi
1974, 61). If we juxtapose the above thesis with Rossi’s
assertion a year before, in the catalogue of the XV Tri-
ennale di Milano devoted “Architettura razionale”, where
he declared that “there is no longer any ideological shield
for ugly architecture” (Rossi 1973, 13), we would be con-
fronted with the paradox of Rossi’s declaration of the
non-effectiveness of the very notion of rational architec-
ture, just a year after his choice of e title “Architettura
razionale” for the XV Triennale di Milano.
Rossi considered ugly the architectural artefacts
that are not characterized by a clearly defined indi-
viduality and the architectural artefacts that were not
formed according to precise typological choices. Piv-
otal for understanding what Rossi understood as clearly
defined individuality is the notion of ‘locus’, which is
distinct from the notion of context, and concerns the
“relationship between a certain specific location and
the buildings that are in it [and] is at once singular and
universal” (Rossi 1982, 103). Rossi understoodthe city
as the “locus of the collective memory” (Rossi 1982,
130). According to Rossi’s theory of the city, the defin-
ing parameters of an architectural artefact are “the
autonomous principles according to which it is founded
and transmitted.” (Rossi 1982, 130, 127).What is at the
coreof his conception of architectural and urbanarte-
facts is his double understanding of them as individual
and social works. Rossi was not critical ofcommon archi-
tecture,given that his research […] [was] “focused on the
whole city, and not just on authored architecture”(Aureli
2012). Rossi’s interest in non-authored architecture is
pivotal for understanding how his perspectiveappropri-
ated in an affirmative way characteristics that in a differ-
ent context could be treated as ugly.
Rossi’s aesthetic view towards ugliness in Architettura
della città (Rossi 1966; 1982) and A Scientific Autobi-
ography are distinct (Rossi 1981). In the approach, he
developed in Architettura della città, he identified of
ugly architecture with architecture that does not derive
from a clear choice of typology and understood disor-
der as necessarily negative. He adopted as criterion for
judging if architecture is ugly or not the extent to which
form-making was based on clear choices of typologies.
Progressively, his approach incorporated an elective affir-
mation vis-à-vis disorder. In contrast with his disapproval
of disorder in Architettura della città (Rossi 1966; Rossi
1982) in A Scientific Autobiography, Rossi is more posi-
tive towards disorder(Rossi 1981). He drew a distinction
between arbitrary and non-arbitrary disorder, aiming to
understand the space of encounter between order and
disorder: “I felt that the disorder of things, if limited and
somehow honest might best correspond to our state
of mind. But I detested the arbitrary disorder that is an
indifference to order, a kind of moral absurdness, com-
placent well-being forgetfulness”(Rossi 1981, 83).
Rossi distinguished two types of disorder: one that
derives from honesty and one that comes from indiffer-
ence and moral absurdness. For Rossi, disorder that is
provoked by the desire of honesty was appropriate, in
contrast with disorder that is produced due to the lack
of moral engagement. Rossi explained his interest in the
boundary between order and disorder as follows: “e
union of different techniques resulting in a sort of reali-
zation-confusion has always impressed me. It has to do
with the boundary between order and disorder; and the
boundary, the wall, is a fact of mathematics and masonry.
us, the boundary or wall between city and non-city
establishes two different orders.”(Rossi 1981, 50).Rossi
associated the schism order/disorder to the distinction
urban/non-urban, while Zevi related the question of
whether a building is beautiful or ugly to the distinction
Fig. 13 Mario Ridolfi and others, Quartiere Ina‑Casa Tiburtino a
Roma. Lotto B, case con ballatoio, riproduzione fotografi ca. Credits:
Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, Roma. Archivio del Moderno e del
Contemporaneo, Fondo Ridolfi‑Frankl‑Malagricci, www. fondo ridol fi.
org
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Page 17 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
architecture/non-architecture. e distinction architec-
ture/non-architecture and city/non-city are at the centre
of the debate around ugliness within the post-war Italian
context.
Analogy’s relationship with a de-familiarization process
is an important aspect of Rossi’s approach towards ugli-
ness. His growing interest in the notion of analogy cor-
responds to his distancing from any literal or mimetic
correspondence. Rossi employed the term “analogy” to
describe the “unforeseen results” of the encounter with
architectural artefacts that intensify semantic ambigu-
ity. In “An Analogical Architecture”, Rossi adopted Carl
Jung’s definition of analogical thought as “sensed yet
unreal, […] archaic, unexpressed, and practically inex-
pressible in words” (Rossi 1976a,Rossi cited in Charito-
nidou 2020, 239). In “e Analogous City”, he referred
to the importance of the dialectics of the concrete and
underscored the “capacity of the imagination born from
the concrete”(Rossi 1976b, 6). He believed that the con-
crete is capable of activating imagination. If we adopt
the view that the spectator towards beautiful objects is
disinterested, while the spectator towards ugly objects
is engaged, we could assume that ugly objects activate
imagination. Such a hypothesis shows that Rossi’s dialec-
tics of the concrete and the aestheticization of post-war
Italian cities’ ugliness are close. Kant’s claim that “ugli-
ness is constituted by the free imagination being unre-
strained by the understanding’s need for order” (Kuplen
2013, 275) could be associated with Rossi’s interest in
this kind of disorder described above. Rossi’s belief in the
creative force of the concrete could be associated with
Kant’s conviction that “ugliness pushes the freedom of
the imagination to a high degree” imagination to a high
degre (Kuplen 2013, 275). Both positions interpret ugli-
ness as a powerful source of creativity. Kant’s connection
of free imagination with ugliness and Rossi’s belief in the
capacity of the concrete to activate imagination are useful
for understanding ugliness’ imaginative potential.
In “e Analogous City”, Rossi referred to Nuova
Società’s issue dedicated to the question of “how beau-
tiful the city is” in order to argue that “beauty is use-
ful” (Vertone 1976, 18). Nuova Societàs issue devoted
to question of “how ugly the city is”, opened with Carlo
Aymonino’s paradoxical assertion that “ [t]he beauty of
the city is that it was always ugly”(Aymonino 1979, 25).
e link between beauty and use brings to mind Henri
Lefebvre’s remark regarding Bruno Zevi’s adoption of
use as aesthetic yardstick’s primordial value in order to
judge a space as “beautiful” or “ugly”(Lefebvre 1991, 128,
1974). Zevi rejected architecture’s evaluation according
to purely aesthetic criteria, questioning: “What, then,
is architecture? And, perhaps equally important, what
is non-architecture? Is it proper to identify architecture
with a beautiful building and non-architecture with an
ugly building? Is the distinction between architecture
and non-architecture based on purely aesthetic crite-
ria?”(Zevi 1957, 24, 1948). He believed that “the content
of architecture is its social content” and gave primacy to
the experience of interior space, defining architecture as
“the way space is organized into meaningful form” (Zevi
1957, 49, 1948). Both Zevi and Rossi put into question
the adoption of purely aesthetic or purely functional
criteria and searched for the junction between use and
aesthetic fulfilment. Zevi proposed a conception of use
that intended to replace impersonal functionalism by an
organic architecture placed at the service of democracy,
while Rossi disapproved any ex nihilo aesthetic or func-
tional models applied to new cities, and believed only in
concrete opportunities, which could only be tested hic et
nuncand emerge through understanding and comparing
concrete problems.
When confronted with Torre Velasca, we are in face of
a paradoxical parallel effect of estrangement and familiar-
ization, which lies on the tension between ‘continuità’ and
‘preesistenze ambientali’ and can be explained through
Paci’s view of the relationship between past and present:
“It is while questioning the past (but not by becoming the
past) that I understand the present and the interest of the
present for its own transformation” (Paci 1972, 24). Simi-
larly, what is at stake in Aldo Rossi’s concept of analogy is
a process of de-familiarization, which provokes an inten-
sification of semantic ambiguity. Quaroni’s replacement
of beautiful/ugly by vital/non-vital shows that his con-
cepts of the ‘città meravigliosa’ and the ‘qualità diffusa’
cannot be understood without untying their existential
load, which as in Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Aldo Rossi’s
case, moralizes ugliness. is appropriation of estrange-
ment and de-familiarization and their existential implica-
tions justify Neorealism and Tendenza’s aestheticization
of post-war Italian cities’ ugliness.
Towards aconclusion: Around
thecross‑fertilisation ofthedebates
aroundugliness inarchitecture andurbanism
Transnational historical research focuses on how connec-
tions function as central forces for historical processes.
e “transnationalization” of historical discourse is based
on the effort to understand the impact of cross-border
relations on the transformation of certain concepts and
ideas in each of the national contexts under study (Chari-
tonidou 2016). e transnational approach in social
sciences aims to take into consideration the historical
dimension when analysing how international exchanges
of ideas and values evolve.
Insightful for comparing Boyd’s ‘Featurism’ with the
“Townscape movement” is Macarthur’s remark claiming
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Page 18 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
that “Hastings would accept modernist featurism along-
side meretricious historicism and vernacular mis-appro-
priations of style, on the grounds that buildings of very
varied architectural quality could be composed by an
architectural eye at an urban level” (Macarthur 2019,
56; Stead etal 2021). On the one hand, the “Townscape
movement” related ugliness to the difficulty to distin-
guish urban features of the town and those of the coun-
tryside. On the other hand, Boyd related ugliness to the
lack of capacity to eliminate what he called “the neuter
type”. More specifically, Boyd wrote in e Australian
Ugliness: “e solution then is to recognise that there is
an appropriate time and place for both the technology of
space-enclosure and the architecture of expression, and
to work to eliminate the neuter type: neither scientific
nor artistic” (Boyd 1960, 188,1963a, 1968, 1971).
Of great importance for better grasping the cross-cul-
tural exchanges between Australia and the UK regarding
the concept of ugliness in architecture and urban design
is the article entitled “e Sad End of New Brutalism”
authored by Robin Boyd. Brutalist ethic functioned as
an antidote against architecture and city’s ugliness(Boyd
1967). Moreover, Boyd in e Australian Ugliness,
referred to New Brutalism (Boyd 1960, 1963a, 1968,
1971). e exchanges between the UK and Australia, as
far as the conception of ugliness is concerned, are more
evident given that Robin Boyd wrote several articles for
eArchitectural Review (Boyd 1951, 1952, 1956, 1958,
1963b, 1967) and referred to Ian Nairn’s work in e Aus-
tralian Ugliness(Boyd 1960, 1963a, 1968, 1971). In par-
allel, the exchanges between Italy and the UK played an
important role for the evolution of the debates around
ugliness in architecture and urbanism. Another case
that is enlightening regarding the debates between the
Italian and British architectural theorists is the contro-
versy between Reyner Banham, who was enthusiastically
defending Alison and Peter Smithson’s aesthetic view, in
1959, and Ernesto Nathan Rogers’s approach. More spe-
cifically, Banham attacked Rogers’s approach using the
label “Neoliberty”(Banham 1959).
Romaldo Giurgola played an important role in the
exchanges between Italy and Australia, but also in the
cross-fertilisation between the United States of America
and Australia (Giurgola 1965, 1973,1980). Before migrat-
ing to Australia, he was a professor at Cornell Univer-
sity and University of Pennsylvania, and the chair of the
Architecture Department of Columbia University. He
was appointed as assistant professor of architecture at
the University of Pennsylvania in 1954, where he taught
Architectural eory” (Williamson 2015) until 1966,
when he joined Columbia University’s Architecture
Department. e reason for his migration to Australia
was his winning entry to international competition for
the landmark Australian Parliament House in Canberra
in 1980. After winning the competition, Giurgola reset-
tled in Australia in 1980. When Scott Brown resettled
in Philadelphia, Giurgola was teaching there. Giurgola
contributed along with Piero Sartogo, Costantino Dardi,
Antoine Grumbach, James Stirling, Paolo Portoghesi,
Robert Venturi, Colin Rowe, Michael Graves, Robert
Krier, Aldo Rossi and Leon Krier to the exhibition “Roma
Interrotta” held in 1978 (Sartogo 2014, Sartogo and Cer-
ruti 1978).
Aldo Rossi’s proposal for a tower in Melbourne in 1979
(Fig. 14), which is known as the Tower of Memories
and has been described as a landmark for Melbourne,
is a case that could serve for exploring whether there is
any common ground between Australian Featurism, as
Boyd understood it, and Rossi’s understanding of typol-
ogy and the analogous city. e Tower o Memories by
Rossi is an unsuccessful competition entry for a land-
mark building in Melbourne. Rossi’s proposal for this
tower in Melbourne could be interpreted as a typical
expression of “international culture” aiming to promote
Fig. 14 Aldo Rossi, The Tower of Memories, A Landmark for
Melbourne, Australia, 1979. Credits: Fondazione Aldo Rossi, Milan
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
Page 19 of 21
Charitonidou City, Territory and Architecture (2022) 9:20
local aspirations. As an example of “made in Italy” within
the Australian context (Micheli and Macarthur 2018), it
could be conceived as an attempt to assert a social posi-
tion of architecture, challenging the tension between
local and global discourse.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Architectural Archives of University of Pennsylvania for the
authorization to use Fig. 4, 5 and 6. I am thankful to Robin Boyd Foundation
for the authorization to use Fig. 2 and to Associazione archivio storico Olivetti
and Accademia Nazionale di San Luca for the authorization to use Fig. 12 and
Fig. 13 respectively. I would also like to thank the Fondazione Aldo Rossi for
the authorization to use Fig. 14. The reflections developed in this article are
related to the postdoctoral project The Trave lling Archi tect’s Eye: Photo graph
y and Autom obile Visio n” that I conducted at the Department of Architecture
of ETH Zurich, the seminar “The City Repre sented: The View from the Car” that
I taught at the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich, and the exhibition
The View from the Car: Autop ia as a New Perce ptual Regime that I curated at
the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich. I would like to thank Prof. Dr.
Tom Avermaete for our insightful exchanges in the framework of the afore‑
mentioned postdoctoral project and Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen for our great
collaboration for the preparation of the aforementioned exhibition. Finally,
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of their insightful comments. I
would like to thank ETH Zurich, ETH Zurich Foundation and Stavros Niarchos
Foundation for supporting my project entitled The Travelling Architect’s Eye:
Photography and the Automobile Vision”, the anonymous reviewers, and the
Editor‑in‑Chief of City, Territory and Architecture Prof. Dr. Giovanni Maciocco for
their enriching comments. I am also grateful to Prof. Dr. Jean‑Louis Cohen for
his stimulating feedback while working on this article, and to Dr. David Kroll
and Dr. James Curry for the organisation of the 38th Annual Conference of
the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ)
(10‑13 November 2021), where I was invited to present a paper related to the
reflections developed on this article. Many thanks also go to the very moti‑
vated students of the seminar “The City Repre sented: The View from the Car as
a New Perce ptual Regim e” that I taught at the Department of Architecture of
ETH Zurich during the spring semester 2021 for our insightful exchanges.
Authors’ contributions
The author read and approved the final manuscript.
Funding
Open access funding provided by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Zurich.
Availability of data and materials
Not applicable.
Declarations
Competing interests
No competing interests.
Author details
1 Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design, Institute for the History
and Theory of Architecture (GTA), Department of Architecture, ETH Zürich,
Stefano‑Franscini‑Platz 5, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland. 2 School of Architecture,
National Technical University of Athens, 42 Patission Street, 106 82, Athens,
Greece. 3 Faculty of Art Theory and History, Athens School of Fine Arts, 42 Patis‑
sion Street, 106 82, Athens, Greece.
Received: 17 September 2021 Accepted: 22 February 2022
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Dr. Ing. Marianna Charitonidou is architect Engineer, Urban Plan‑
ner, and historian & theorist of architecture and urbanism. She is a
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resea rch and the postdoctoral project “Architecture between Nature
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pretation and Elaboration of Architectural Form: Investigating the
Mutations of Architecture’s Scope” (jury: Jean‑ Louis Cohen, Bernard
Tschumi, George Parmenidis, Pippo Ciorra, Constantinos Moraitis,
Kostas Tsiambaos, Panayotis Tournikiotis), which she is currently edit‑
ing into two books. In her PhD dissertation she examined the muta‑
tions of the modes of representation in contemporary architecture
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architecture. Apart from her PhD Degree, she also holds an MPhil
Degree in History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism (Inter‑
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the School of Architectural Engineering of the National Technical
University of Athens (2013) (MPhil Dissertation Project: “From Semiol‑
ogy to Deconstruction: Metaphysics and Subject”), an MSc Degree in
Sustainable Environmental Design from the Architectural Association
in London (2011), and a Master Degree in Architectural Engineering
from the Department of Architectural Engineering of the Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki (2010). She has more than 85 scientific pub‑
lications focused on architecture and urban planning, and has taught
in various schools in Europe – especially in Zurich, Paris and Greece.
She is a licensed architect engineer since 2010 and the founder and
principal of THINK THROUGH DESIGN architectural and urban design
studio. Website: https:// chari tonid ou. com. Email: m.charitonidou@
icloud.com.
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... Ludovico Quaroni's aforementioned keynote lecture and his critique of Le Corbusier and the functionalism of modernist architecture and urbanism constituted an early encounter of Scott Brown with an analysis of the risks that a rigid understanding of the concept of function in architecture and urban planning entails, on the one hand, and the drawbacks of separating the practice of architecture and the practice of urban planning, on the other hand. Quaroni, eleven years later, in La torre di Babele, 'Quaroni argues that "the modern city is really ugly" and that the neglected lesson of historic cities is the wellintegrated synthesis of function, technology and aesthetics' (Charitonidou 2022a;2022b;2020, 231;Quaroni 1967). Despite the commonalities between some aspects of Quaroni's critical view of modernist functionalism and Scott Brown's deferred judgment, Quaroni's analysis of 'the tension between the historic and the modern city', and his choice to relate 'the historic city's beauty to its "clear design . . . ...
... .] the modern city [to the fact that it is] [. . .] "chaotic"' (Charitonidou 2022a;2022b;2020, 231;Quaroni 1967;Chowkwanyun 2014) differs a lot from Scott Brown's posture, who seems to desire to understand the logic behind the complexity and patterns characterising the post-war urban and suburban fabric. ...
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The article examines the impact of the study for Levittown of urban sociologist Herbert Gans on Denise Scott Brown’s thought. It scrutinizes Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steven Izenour’s ‘Remedial Housing for Architects or Learning from Levittown’ conducted in collaboration with their students at Yale University in 1970. Taking as its starting point Scott Brown’s endeavour to redefine functionalism in ‘Architecture as Patterns and Systems: Learning from Planning’, and ‘The Redefinition of Functionalism’, which were included in Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time (2004), the article sheds light on the fact that the intention to shape a new way of conceiving functionalism was already present in Learning from Las Vegas, where Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour suggested an understanding of Las Vegas as pattern of activities. Particular emphasis is placed on Scott Brown’s understanding of ‘active socioplastics’, and on the impact of advocacy planning and urban sociology on her approach. At the core of the reflections developed in this article is the concept of ‘urban village’ that Gans uses in US in The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (1972) to shed light on the socio-anthropological aspects of inhabiting urban fabric.
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Objectives: This research aims to study the development of smart cities in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) area from the perspective of the industrial business sector and develop a structural equation model. Theoretical framework: The study is based on the 20-year National Strategy, which emphasizes smart city development as an approach to distribute economic, social, and technological prosperity, particularly in areas of economic importance to the country, such as the EEC. Methods: The research was conducted using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Quantitative data was collected from questionnaires administered to 500 executives in the target industrial businesses of the EEC, employing descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and multivariate statistics. Results and Conclusion: The research findings reveal that the development priorities are ranked into four components: 1) Enterprise Management (= 4.34), 2) Community Operation (= 4.33), 3) Public Administration (= 4.32), and 4) City Regulation (= 4.26). The hypothesis testing results show that existing high-potential industrial businesses (First S-Curve) and future industrial businesses (New S-Curve) place significantly different importance on the development of smart cities in the EEC area at a statistical significance level of 0.05. The developed structural equation model meets the assessment criteria and is consistent with the empirical data. Implications of the research: The findings of this study can inform policymakers and stakeholders in the EEC area about the key components and priorities for smart city development from the perspective of the industrial business sector. The structural equation model can serve as a framework for guiding smart city development efforts in the region. Originality/value: This research contributes to the understanding of smart city development in the context of the EEC area in Thailand, focusing on the perspective of the industrial business sector. The developed structural equation model provides a novel approach to analyzing the relationships between various components of smart city development in the region.
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The article examines the impact of the study for Levittown of urban sociologist Herbert Gans on Denise Scott Brown’s thought. It scrutinizes Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and Steven Izenour’s ‘Remedial Housing for Architects or Learning from Levittown’ conducted in collaboration with their students at Yale University in 1970. Taking as its starting point Scott Brown’s endeavour to redefine functionalism in ‘Architecture as Patterns and Systems: Learning from Planning’, and ‘The Redefinition of Functionalism’, which were included in Architecture as Signs and Systems: For a Mannerist Time (2004), the article sheds light on the fact that the intention to shape a new way of conceiving functionalism was already present in Learning from Las Vegas, where Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour suggested an understanding of Las Vegas as pattern of activities. Particular emphasis is placed on Scott Brown’s understanding of ‘active socioplastics’, and on the impact of advocacy planning and urban sociology on her approach. At the core of the reflections developed in this article is the concept of ‘urban village’ that Gans uses in US in The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (1972) to shed light on the socio-anthropological aspects of inhabiting urban fabric.
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This paper aims to present a new theoretical framework that would permit historiographies of architecture and urban design to take into consideration the impact of the car-oriented perception of the city. Its main objective is to shed light on the epistemological reorientations provoked by the advent of motorized transport in a transnational perspective. Special attention is paid to the decipherment of how the points of divergence in terms of cultural context provoked diversified responses to the epistemological shift related to the impact of the car on the transformation of the ways we perceive buildings when traversing urban fabric at speed. A key issue of this comparative transnational analysis is the examination of the ways in which the transformation of the urban fabric and the effect of suburbanization were perceived in the different cultural and national contexts under study. 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Departing from the writings of Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch, John Myer, Reyner Banham, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown – but also from John Lautner, Alison and Peter Smithson, Denise Scott Brown and Aldo Rossi’s interest in taking photographs from the car – the paper establishes a broader conceptual framework for tackling the issues related to the impact of the automobile on architectural and urban thought, treating the different aspects of architects and urban designers’ automobile vision as expressions of the emergence of a new episteme. Particular emphasis is placed on explaining the relationship between the new episteme and the new perceptual regime that emerged thanks to the car. Telling regarding the understanding of car travel as a new episteme is Reyner Banham’s following remark, in Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies: “like earlier generations of English intellectuals who taught themselves Italian in order to read Dante om the original, [he] learned to drive in order to read Los Angeles in the original”. The paper also analyses an ensemble of photographs that architects such as John Lautner, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Aldo Rossi took while travelling by car. It scrutinizes how new visual regimes in photography from the car by the architects under study informed in various ways their design strategies. The interexchange between the ways of capturing the views from the car and the formation of new design methods can explain the necessity to establish a new theoretical framework offering the possibility to historians of architecture and urban design to address in a sharp and concrete way the reciprocal relation between automobile vision and design approaches. The new theoretical framework that is suggested is based on two pairs of concepts: firstly, that between intentionality and causality; and secondly, that between stimulatory and documentary image. An understanding of these two tensions are useful for exploring to what extent the act of taking photographs by the architects under study is related to their desire to challenge these tensions. These tensions are closely connected to the dilemma regarding the capacity of photography or film to more concretely capture what I call “snapshot aesthetics” or “auto-photographic grasp” referring to the act of taking photographs from the car. The expression “autophotographic grasp” is employed to describe the “snapshot aesthetics” concerning the rapid, sequential and fragmentary perception of the urban territory from the car. Additionally, the paper explains why the view from the car is important for understanding the specificity of the gaze of the architects. It intends to render explicit that there is a necessity to shape interpretative tools that would make possible to diversify the ways of viewing the landscape and urban contexts while travelling by car. An aspect regarding the special status of the gaze at stake when the architects take photographs from the car while travelling is its “semi-directedness”. This “semi-directedness” refers to fact that their act of taking photographs is neither totally based on their intentionality nor absolutely connected to a spontaneous capture, but could be understood as placed somewhere in between. The architects’ act of taking photographs is neither totally instrumental nor absolutely spontaneous. This in-betweenness makes the photographs that the architects take while travelling by car a terrain or a nexus able to reveal the concreteness of their thought and design strategies
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The article explores the place of women and migrants in Italian Neorealist and New Migrant cinema, arguing that New Migrant cinema continues and reworks key Neorealist tropes and tendencies. It intends to render explicit how an ensemble of films challenge the stereotypes concerning gender, national and cultural identities. Among the figures that are scrutinized are the borgatari, extracomunitari, popolane and terrone. Its main objective is to demonstrate how the cinematic expression of these figures in Italian Neorealist and New Migrant cinema enhanced the reinven-tion of italianità and the generalised understand of gender. It also aims to explain why cross-fertilisation between migration studies, urban studies and gender studies is indispensable for comprehending this reinvention. Particular emphasis is placed on the shared interest of Roberto Rossellini's Roma città aperta and Vittorio De Sica's Il tetto in the plight over housing and the special character of the urban landscape of Rome. The article also sheds light on certain common concerns of Italian Neorealist and New Migrant cinema, especially as far as national and gender narratives are concerned. Pivotal for the reflections developed here are the roles of Anna Magnani
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The article scrutinizes the impact of the 1968 student protests on architectural education and epistemology within the Italian and American context, the advocacy planning movement and the relationship of architecture and urban planning with the socio-political climate around 1968. It aims to demonstrate how the concepts of urban renewal and ‘nuova dimensione’ were progressively abandoned in the USA and Italy respectively. It presents how the critique of these concepts was related to the conviction that they were incompatible with socially effective architecture and urban design approaches. The article sheds light on the complexity of the reorientations that took place in both contexts, taking into consideration the impact of student protests, and the 1968 Civil Rights Action the architects and urban planners’s task on the curricula of schools of architecture. It also investigates certain counter-events and counter-publications in the USA and Italy, shedding light on how they reinvented the relationship between architecture and democracy. It reveals the tensions between enhancing equality in planning process and local bureaucracy in the case of advocacy planning strategies.
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This article examines the role of architecture and urban planning in shaping connections between European land-based mobility, cities and landscapes. It investigates the development of spaces aiming to link automobility to the everyday experience of European citizens. The planning and funding of the E-road network is related to the promotion of trans-European mobility for commodities and individuals. This attempt to link the different European nations and to overcome their separate plans has reshaped the urban landscape and the territory. The article aims to show how urban planning and architecture play a key role in implementing new types of mobilities promoting environmental sustainability. Taking into account that the EU aims to overcome regimes of petroleum-based mobility and associated architectures, it intends to demonstrate how the land-based transportation of both individuals and commodities in the E-Road network functions as an actor of planetary urbanization. It investigates three kinds of nodes within the E-Road network-the nodes encountered on the E-Roads, those to be found at the gates to cities and the new structures aiming to imitate the urban dimension but proposing a novel articulation of pedestrian and automobile circulation-and relates them to over-arching approaches in the design of mobility.
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The article examines an ensemble of gender and migrant roles in post-war Neorealist and New Migrant Italian films. Its main objective is to analyze gender and placemaking practices in an ensemble of films, addressing these practices on a symbolic level. The main argument of the article is that the way gender and migrant roles were conceived in the Italian Neorealist and New Migrant Cinema was based on the intention to challenge certain stereotypes characterizing the understanding of national identity and ‘otherness’. The article presents how the roles of borgatari and women function as devices of reconceptualization of Italy’s identity, providing a fertile terrain for problematizing the relationship between migration studies, urban studies and gender studies. Special attention is paid to how migrants are related to the reconceptualization of Italy’s national narrations. The Neorealist model is understood here as a precursor of the narrative strategies that one encounters in numerous films belonging to the New Migrant cinema in Italy. The article also explores how certain aspects of more contemporary studies of migrant cinema in Italy could illuminate our understanding of Neorealist cinema and its relation to national narratives. To connect gender representation and migrant roles in Italian cinema, the article focuses on the analysis of the status of certain roles of women, paying particular attention to Anna Magnagi’s roles.
Chapter
Die Anthologie zum Städtebau ist eine thematisch und chronologisch gegliederte Textsammlung zur Theorie des Städtebaus, in der die Geschichte der Städtebautheorie als zusammenhängender Diskurs nachvollziehbar wird. Die Texte des vorliegenden dritten Bandes der Anthologie zum Städtebau umfassen den Zeitraum von den Nachkriegsdebatten der CIAM bis zu den aktuellen Positionen des Städtebaus. Dokumentiert sind Fragestellungen von den Problemen des Wiederaufbaus über regionalistische Ansätze des italienischen Neorealismo bis hin zu solchen der Situationistischen Internationale. Die Schriften aus den 1960er und 70er Jahren, aber auch die technologischen Stadtutopien der Metabolisten, kritisieren die modernistische Funktionstrennung. Gleichzeitig bezeugt der typologische Ansatz das Interesse an der historischen Dimension der Stadt. Mit dem Ende des Glaubens an ein unbegrenztes Wachstum werden seit den 1980er Jahren neue Perspektiven formuliert. Die Anthologie zum Städtebau ist eine thematisch und chronologisch gegliederte Textsammlung zur Theorie des Städtebaus, in der die Geschichte der Städtebautheorie als zusammenhängender Diskurs nachvollziehbar wird. Die philologisch sorgfältige Präsentation der Texte, die in der Originalsprache als Erstausgabe vorliegen und mit ergänzenden Kommentaren zur Editionsgeschichte versehen sind, macht die Anthologie zu einem präzisen und zuverlässigen Kompendium zur Städtebautheorie vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart.
Chapter
Die Anthologie zum Städtebau ist eine thematisch und chronologisch gegliederte Textsammlung zur Theorie des Städtebaus, in der die Geschichte der Städtebautheorie als zusammenhängender Diskurs nachvollziehbar wird. Die Texte des vorliegenden dritten Bandes der Anthologie zum Städtebau umfassen den Zeitraum von den Nachkriegsdebatten der CIAM bis zu den aktuellen Positionen des Städtebaus. Dokumentiert sind Fragestellungen von den Problemen des Wiederaufbaus über regionalistische Ansätze des italienischen Neorealismo bis hin zu solchen der Situationistischen Internationale. Die Schriften aus den 1960er und 70er Jahren, aber auch die technologischen Stadtutopien der Metabolisten, kritisieren die modernistische Funktionstrennung. Gleichzeitig bezeugt der typologische Ansatz das Interesse an der historischen Dimension der Stadt. Mit dem Ende des Glaubens an ein unbegrenztes Wachstum werden seit den 1980er Jahren neue Perspektiven formuliert. Die Anthologie zum Städtebau ist eine thematisch und chronologisch gegliederte Textsammlung zur Theorie des Städtebaus, in der die Geschichte der Städtebautheorie als zusammenhängender Diskurs nachvollziehbar wird. Die philologisch sorgfältige Präsentation der Texte, die in der Originalsprache als Erstausgabe vorliegen und mit ergänzenden Kommentaren zur Editionsgeschichte versehen sind, macht die Anthologie zu einem präzisen und zuverlässigen Kompendium zur Städtebautheorie vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart.