ADALBERTO LIBERA
LıARCHITETTURA COME IDEALE

Vieri Quilici

8.5 x 8.75 softcover book with 238 pages with 570 illustrations, 17 in color and a biography and bibliography. Scarce monograph on an Italian Modernist master whose career spanned the streamlined moderne to internationalist style architecture. Includes color reproductions of early Italian Modernist Posters, including the poster for the MIAR "Architettura Razionale" exhibition, and extensive coverage of Libera's architecture, including the Palace of Congresses at the EUR (1930's); Post office in via Marmorata in Roma (1932); Villa Malaparte a Capri (1938); Housing units in Cagliari (1950-53); The pavillion for the Cassa del Mezzogiorno at the Fair in Cagliari (1953); and many others.

Adalberto Libera (1903­1963) was one of the preeminent Italian Rationalist architects of the 1930s and 1940s. Both a protagonist of Italian modern architecture and an important cultural organizer during the movement's genesis, he emerged as author of several key works built under the Fascist regime. Some of his best-known projects include Casa Malaparte, Palazzo dei Congressi, the post office in Rome, and single-story housing units in Rome's Tuscolano quarter. These and other projects­schools, auditoria, and master plans­display the range of his commissions. This volume covers the complete works of this prolific architect; over 70 projects are documented through more than 500 sketches, drawings, models, photographs, and brief descriptive texts, bringing this great architect long-overdue attention.

Libera was born in Villa Lagarina, near Trento in northern Italy. He graduated from Parma's Institute of Art in 1925 and then in 1928 from Rome's Scuola Superiore di Architettura He became acquainted with Futurism through his fellow Trentino Fortunato Depero. Even before graduating he was one of the founders of M.I.A.R. (Movimento Italiano per l'Architettura Razionale or ³Italian Movement for Rational Architecture²) and later became its secretary. Based in Rome, MIAR was a rival organisation to Gruppo Sette, which was based in Milan and Como. He was invited by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to the 1927 Stuttgart Exhibition (Werkbund). In 1928 and 1931 he organised the MIAR exhibitions of "Architettura Razionale" in Rome. MIAR then dissolved.

An extremely able and talented creative architect more influenced by Futurism than Rationalism, he was also politically astute. His activity as founder and secretary of MIAR enabled him to establish a close working relationship with the high-up officials of the Fascist regime in Rome, where all the big decisions were taken about funding public construction programmes, and who were responsible for commissioning the hundreds of new public buildings required for Mussolini's modernization programmes. Thanks to these connections he had a prolific career throughout the Fascist regime and designed many notable buildings during the 1930s, some of which are masterpieces of the international modern movement. One of the most important is his Palazzo dei Congressi (Palace of Congress) at the EUR in Rome. This building shows Libera's great ability to design ambiguously in a spare, metaphysical language that sits on a knife-edge between modernism and neo-classicism. His use of sail vaults in this building creates an innovative architectural space.

He also designed Villa Malaparte on the island of Capri (1938), although there is continuing controversy as to whether Malaparte himself was the main designer. During the Fascist period, all architects were legally forced to join the party; but the most successful went further and became important party members. Like his contemporaries Giuseppe Pagano and Giuseppe Terragni Libera's good fortune in this period was due to his close party links. After the fall of the Fascist regime and its defeat in World War II, Libera along with everyone else underwent a period of personal and professional crisis, but after living quiety for several years in his home town of Trento, he recovered and began again to work on numerous projects, including public housing and office buildings, in a new style that turned its back on Fascistic modes of expression. Many of his greatest projects are from this postwar period. In 1954­1962 he designed and built the Regional Government building for the Trentino Region in Trento.

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