SPAZIO
Agosto 1950 [anno 1, numero 2]
Luigi Moretti [Editor]
Luigi Moretti [Editor]: SPAZIO [rassegna mensile delle arti e dell 'architettura diretta dall'architetto Luigo Moretti]. Rome and Milan: n. p. [Luigi Moretti], Agosto 1950 [anno 1, numero 2]. Text in Italian, with French, English and Italian summaries. Slim quarto. Perfect bound side stitched leterpress photo illustrated wrappers. 92 pp. Illustrated articles and advertisements. Multiple paper stocks. Textblock edges lightly sunned. Trivial wear to wrapper edges. Cover design by Angelo Canevari. A nearly fine copy. Rare.
10 x 12.75 magazine with 92 pages devoted to a "Festival of Arts and Architecture" masterminded by Italian architect Roman Luigi Walter Moretti and assisted by Felicia Abruzzese. Finely printed in Milan by E. Barigazzi.
Contents:
Genesis of Forms of the Human Body: Luigi Moretti
The Problem of Discobolus: Biagio Pace
French Painting at the Biennale in Venice: Gino Severini
Gaudi's Art: Juan Eduard Cirlot
Buildings in the Mountains: Agnoldomenico Pica
Refuges at the Seaside in Fregene: Luigi Moretti
A House On the Leric Beach designed by Carlo Mollino: Agnoldomenico Pica
A House of Adalberto Libera at Trento: Luigi Moretti
A Building for a Studio in the Greenness of Vegetation by Gaetano Minnucci: Luigi Moretti
Villa at the Lakeside by Luigi Zuccoli: Agnoldomenico Pica
Plan for a Little Church by Giuseppe Vaccaro: Luigi Moretti
A Library in the Home of Ignazio Gardella: Angelo Dell 'Aquila
A New Home in an Old House: Luigi Moretti
New Premises of a Bank Branch office in Milan: Sisto Villa
The Ceramics of Ugo Cara'
Moretti founded "Spazio" in 1950 and published seven issues until 1953, and served as editorial director and editor. His exploration of the connections between different forms of art -- from architecture to sculpture, from painting to film and theater -- were the hallmark of the short-lived journal. The first issue began with the essay "Eclecticism and Units of Language."
Luigi Walter Moretti (1907 - 1973) was an Italian architect who studied at the Royal School of Architecture in Rome. In 1929, Moretti graduated with honors, with a project for a college of higher education Rocca di Papa, where he won the Giuseppe Valadier award. In 1931 he won a three year scholarship for Roman Studies, established by the Governorate of Rome and the Royal School of Architecture. With this grant he worked with Corrado Ricci, in the arrangement of the areas east and north of Trajan's Market. In these years he also worked as assistant for the professorships of Vincenzo Fasolo and Gustavo Giovannoni.
In 1932, Moretti entered in competitions for the town planning of Verona, Perugia, and Faenza, for which he won second place. He also entered in a competition for a council house complex in Naples.
The next year, after ending the university career, with Giulio Pediconi, Mario Paniconi e Mario Tufaroli, attended at the fifth Triennale di Milano with a project for a country house designed for a scholar. In this year he also met Renato Ricci, at that time president of the Opera Nazionale Balilla, that, the following year, appointed Moretti ONB technical director, succeeding to Enrico Del Debbio. In this role Moretti designed some of the youth centres of Opera Nazional Balilla and Gioventù Italiana del Littorio: in 1933 in Piacenza and in Rome, Trastevere, in 1934 in Trecate, in 1935 a women centre in Piacenza and in 1937 another youth centre in Urbino.
In 1937 he took over, the design of the regulatory plan of the Foro Mussolini (renamed Foro Italico after the war), where he created some of his masterpieces, such as the Academy of fencing and the Duce's Gym (both 1936) and the commemoration cell (of 1940). His are also the major planner of the Forum, enriched in the 1937 with the square of the Empire and the Stadium of Cypresses (expanded in 1953 and 1990 of other architects to become the Stadio Olimpico).
In those years he participated in the competition for the construction of the Palazzo Littorio, a project harshly criticized by the magazine Casabella and progressive Italian architectural culture in general.
In 1938 he participated in the design of the E42, or EUR, Esposizione Universale Romana (standing for Rome World's fair) and won (with Fariello, Muratori and Quaroni) the competition for the design of the Imperial Square (now square Guglielmo Marconi). The large building fronting the square was never realized, but in the postwar structures already executed were used for the "skyscraper Italy" by Luigi Mattioni. He served in that period, in private practice, thanks mainly to his friendships with members of the Fascism and journalists.
In the period between 1942 and 1945 Moretti disappeared from public view, to reappear in 1945, when arrested for his collaboration with fascism, was briefly imprisoned in the prison of San Victor, where he met count Adolfo Fossataro. After release, with him in November of the same year, founded Cofimprese company.
With Cofimprese, he worked to develop house-hotel buildings. The original plan was for 20 hotels which only three were built and made, before breaking up in 1949. Also in Milan for Cofimprese, designed the complex between Corso Italia and Via Rugabella The house Il Girasole ("The Sunflower") designed in 1949, and built in Rome in viale Bruno Buozzi (near via Parioli) in 1950, is one of the best known projects of the period, and is considered an early example of postmodern architecture. The building is also mentioned in the essay by Robert Venturi, Complexity and Contradiction in architecture, as an example of ambiguous architecture, poised between tradition and innovation.According to Swiss architectural theorist Stanislaus von Moos, the Vanna Venturi House, one of Venturi's masterpiece, in its broken pediments recalls the 'duality' of the facade of Luigi Moretti's apartment house on the Via Parioli in Rome.
In 1957, he became a consultant of the Societa Generale Immobiliare ( SGI ) for which he designed, among other things, the buildings at the head of the EUR. In the same year he collaborated with the Municipality of Rome and the Ministry of Public Works, working on projects for inter-municipal plan of Rome (never adopted) and the Archaeological Park, from which arose the controversy with Bruno Zevi and Espresso on the devastation of Appia.
Also in 1957, he founded the Institute for Operations Research and Applied Mathematics Urbanism (IRMOU) with the express purpose of continuing studies on the so-called parametric architecture, a doctrine which drew on the application of mathematical theories in the design planning. He studied new dimensional relationships in architectural space and Urban area, relating to the design of the Built Environment, with mathematical analysis, like Le Corbusier had studied the Modulor and the golden ratio. These studies were represented in 1960 with huge éclat in the press, at the XIII Triennale di Milano.
In 1958, he later went on to design major residential neighborhoods, including the CEP of Livorno in that year also participated in the project of the Olympic Village designed for the XVII Olympiad scheduled in Rome in 1960. The design of the village in 1961 won the Prix IN / ARCH 1961 for the best achievement in the region Ontario. On the same urban-design director is the Tenth District of Rome, partly realized between 1960 and 1966 on behalf of Incisa.