ARCHITECTURE IN THEORY AND HISTORY
FORM, STRUCTURE, SPACE NOTES ON THE LUIGI MORETTI’S ARCHITECTURAL THEORY
Federico Bucci
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ARCHITECTURE IN THEORY AND HISTORY
Federico Bucci
FORM, STRUCTURE, SPACE NOTES ON THE LUIGI MORETTI’S ARCHITECTURAL THEORY
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ON UNIFYING FORM, STRUCTURE AND SPACE José Manuel Pedreirinho
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ARCHITECTURE, ART AND HISTORY
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A THEORY OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE
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ARCHITECTURE IS FORM
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THE CONCEPT OF SPACE
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STRUCTURE AND FORM
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IMAGE GALLERY
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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
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CREDITS
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index
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ON UNIFYING FORM, STRUCTURE AND SPACE José Manuel Pedreirinho
For Luigi Moretti, establishing a theory of architecture was a quest to understand and produce a synthesis of the various forms of artistic expression and the way them manifest themselves over time. It is a synthesis that is built around the concepts of form, structure and space and that is described in post-war texts, which, in the cultural environment in Italy at the time, came with a certain political context, as well as the weight of historical memories – which for a Roman like him would always be considered omnipresent witnesses of the past. There is history and a memory of the past, but they are always perceived as factors to be utilised in order to be able to define the future. One of the aspects that characterised this post-war Italian generation well was the close relationship between a strong theoretical background and the professional implementation of projects. A professional career that Luigi Moretti initiated during the thirties, after a brief experience at university, in the midst of a fascist regime. But it is only in the post-war period that the writings that give this work its title were published, in the context of Spazio magazine, which he founded and of which he was the director and main editor. Published in Rome between 1950 and 1953, it was the main vehicle for him to communicate his theoretical ideas. In addition to the 7 issues presented here, Moretti would continue his work as an editor, sharing his viewpoints and his projects, albeit in a very sporadic way, until 1968. These were essays about tradition and modernity, but, above all, they were looking to unify the languages of the various art forms. 07
These writings express well what at the time were some of the major topics of international debate. Discussions that, naturally, for Italian architects focused to a great extent on understanding how the teachings of a past that they had lived through could be a starting point for the creations of the present – a present which was also full of doubts and new question marks. From the very beginning, he was the author of unmistakably modern buildings. Like many others – or we could even say, like almost all of the most important modern architects – Luigi Moretti was not an orthodox character within the movement. Not least because it has become increasingly clear that the modern movement itself, far from being united, is characterised above all by its many elements of heterodoxy. These are inevitable results of being confronted with a society that itself is going through a complex process of profound changes, often contradictory, numerous and almost always divergent. Moretti was one of the figures in Italian culture who played a decisive role in the large and intense debate on European and world architecture that, in the midst of a destroyed world, had come to a standstill. But perhaps he is – outside of Italy – also one of the least-known. Not because of the lesser interest in his proposals, which were very much centred around the relationships between the three concepts of form, structure and space, but because the way he understood architecture and his concerns about the practice of isolating each art form from the others had been less publicised. The way in which Federico Bucci's text approaches these three concepts is of great clarity and simplicity, complemented with images taken by Moretti himself, thus forming a reciprocal discourse, albeit aesthetically almost autonomous from the text. These are the images that in 1968 were the starting point for a book with 50 pictures of his work and that by themselves also embody an example of his ever-present interest in the diligent quest to understand what he referred to as the “unity of languages” – these images being used in a selective manner to document and better lay out the concepts of this architectural theory. This search for a synthesis, of which his stance on the need of a connection between architecture, urbanism and society is also an example, is based on references to the humanist principles of the Renaissance, or on the multiple references and connections made to the Baroque or to the work of Caravaggio, of whom he had extensive knowledge, or even the 08
care with which text and graphics were combined and complemented one another in each of his publications. For Moretti, as for many others in those post-war years, this was also one of the ways to try to understand the absurdity of the events he had experienced and to find the means of reacting to them, by reaching a deeper understanding and reflecting upon the new possibilities of self-expression that came with unprecedented technological development. These were developments that opened up expressive possibilities that were previously unimaginable, where the structure and materials allowed for experimentation with the most diverse of shapes, and where the movement or succession of spaces now took on a level of importance for the interpretation of architecture and its history that was previously neglected or almost forgotten. It was a search for a deeper understanding of the multifaceted entity that is architecture, a reality that is much more complex than the sum of its parts. It is an understanding, or perhaps a hypothesis, that in a period of great uncertainty such as the one we are experiencing today, whilst being aware of the complexity of interrelationships, the more we know, the more chaotic things appear to be, so we have to seek meaning in areas of knowledge that are increasingly broader. Disciplinary areas, ranging from economics to sociology or what he referred to as "the nature of each artist" were already part of Moretti's considerations, to which we could add ecology, psychology and many other sciences. Knowledge that we know has to be found more and more often within every single one of us, as the result of each individual's experiences, in our perceptions, feelings and culture. It is also because of all these changes in the way we are getting closer to (or moving away from?) observing and understanding this reality that surrounds us, that it is essential to be aware of other approaches taken and observations previously made on these subjects. And the simpler and clearer the way to communicate them, the better. This is without a doubt a good contribution that came from this text by Federico Bucci about Luigi Moretti's musings on space, structure and form. Lisbon, April 2021
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ARCHITECTURE, ART AND HISTORY
In Das Sanduhrbuch (The Hourglass Book), the writer and philosopher Ernst Jünger (1895-1998) rests his gaze on a famous engraving by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), from the early sixteenth century, depicting Saint Jerome in his Study. The saint is in his monk’s cell, intent on writing by the sunlight filtering through large windows. In front of his desk, in the foreground, there is a lion (a mark of strength), sleeping. Behind Saint Jerome, we see an hourglass, which measures the time spent on intellectual work with the slow slipping of the sand. “For generations”, Jünger writes, “this picture has enchanted contemplative souls. (...) Indeed, even today, many such intellectuals live and work under similar conditions in Europe and, when looking at Dürer’s picture, each one of us will be reminded of the fairly modest room of a friend – a man of letters or an artist - whom this image brings to mind”. The workplaces of such geniuses include the studio of Luigi Walter Moretti (1906-1973), which the architect himself displayed at the exhibition La casa abitata in Florence, in 1965. Tables, books and ancient and modern artworks crowded the space. There was no hourglass, yet I like to imagine the device that marked the architect’s time, dedicated to the art of building and to the research that nourished each project. Moretti, Roman by birth and temperament, was the embodiment of the intellectual architect with his gaze always open and fixed on new horizons.
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In the same issue, cities enter the stage, as Moretti conducts a detailed study of the architectural chromatism of the urban form, taking Rome and Venice as models. Rome, with its aggressively plastic urban face is a “monochrome city” while, in Venice, colour “is a fabric laid with extreme sensitivity and wisdom over the tectonic volumes”. The plastic elements and the different colour tones give a cadence to the rhythm of the relationships between space and time. However, it is in the light that the architectural forms reveal their structure. Moretti took the opportunity presented by the Caravaggio e i caraveggeschi (Caravaggio and the Caravaggesques) exhibition, at Palazzo Reale in Milan in 1951, to discuss the determining role of light in defining form, explained in his article Discontinuità dello spazio in Caravaggio (Discontinuity of Space in Caravaggio) published in the fifth issue of Spazio. “Caravaggio’s light might appear reflected, and it is, actually, as a first step in his works just prior to the Conversion and the Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. However, in these two canvasses, he does not distinguish a form and a light. The light does not reflect back, resting on a form; the light is the form”. The iconographic elements illustrating this article are magnificent, once again rich in details of Caravaggio’s works and of Baroque architecture, which Moretti laid out, as always personally determining the frames. On the last pages, however, there is a small, vertical photograph that does not belong to the historical period in question. It is a cropped image of Moretti’s Casa-Albergo (House-Hotel), built in Milan in 1949, through which the author is highlighting the value of “light-form” in modern architecture, too. The point where light becomes form is in the architectural cornices, in the pleats of the material. Hence, mouldings are the abstract elements of architecture, in which temporal gaps and spatial sequences are deepened. Moretti wrote: “To create the geometric skeleton of an architectural space, which is always metrically conspicuous, is also, in living reality, to scan the time in which it is viewed, marking its individual beats. A cornice 20
therefore assumes the value of an element of transit, of connection between one time or space and another. (...) Cornices thus provide a precise punctuation which shapes the unique syntax of an architectural space”. In this way, he identifies the “values of moulding”, underlined in the seminal article, published in issue 6 of Spazio, which seems to anticipate several themes of that beautiful praise for the pleats which Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) would write more than 30 years later. According to Moretti, the surface of a building must describe the relationship between the abstraction of its form and the reality of its structure and space. To transfigure a surface is to glorify solid materials through their form; “to intensify” reality. Only this “jump” produces a work of art or, indeed, a masterpiece like the Casa Il Girasole (Sunflower House), Villa Saracena in Rome, the complex on Corso Italia in Milan or the Tour de la Bourse (Stock Exchange Tower) in Montreal. We have therefore formulated a complete synthesis of Moretti’s architectural theory, which revolves around the concept of space.
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Caption for text. (...) [1]
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STRUCTURE AND FORM
“An interesting analysis - I would say among the fundamental ones, for the history of architecture (…) - must be that of ascertaining the relationships between representative or ideal structure and actual (technological) structure”. Thus, Luigi Moretti summarised his thesis on the concept of architectural structure, in a sentence from the article Le strutture ideali nell'architettura di Michelangelo e dei barocchi (Ideal Structures in the Architecture of Michelangelo and the Baroques), published in his book, 50 immagini, and meaningfully dated “Rome, 1930 and 1964”, a sign of the ongoing nature of research into the discipline’s fundamental principles. Yet a structure, Moretti affirms, is a form, and this thesis contains the broad skein of references that comprise his highly elaborate theoretical construction. Why, then, do we consider structure as form? In formulating this definition, Moretti was influenced by the theories of Évariste Galois (1811-1832), the great French mathematician who died in a duel at the age of 20, which sparked a series of profound and extremely sophisticated studies. Based on Galois’s theory of mathematical groups, that is, on the concept of understanding a form “through difference”, Moretti defined the structure of form as a “set of pure relationships”. In the production, and conclusion, of a work of art, “a progression and a certain series of progressions, to which the artist’s spirit is propelled, materialise”, 33
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IMAGE GALLERY
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IMG 04
Spazio, N° 1 (July 1950).
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IMG 05
Spazio, N° 2 (August 1950).
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IMG 11
Biagio Pace, "Il Problema del Discobolo" Spazio, N° 2, (August 1950): 14-15.
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IMG 12
Luigi Moretti, "Forme astratte nella scultura barocca." Spazio, N°3, (October): 14-15.
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IMG 17
Luigi Moretti, "Valori della modanatura." Spazio, N°6, (December 1951 - April 1952): 10-11.
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IMG 18
Luigi Moretti, "Strutture e sequenze di spazi." Spazio, N°7, (December 1952 - April 1953): 16-17
IMG 19
Luigi Moretti, "Strutture e sequenze di spazi." Spazio, N°7, (December 1952 - April 1953): 14-15.
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IMG 20
Luigi Moretti, "Strutture e sequenze di spazi." Spazio, N°7, (December 1952 - April 1953): 10-11
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IMG 21
Luigi Moretti, "Strutture e sequenze di spazi." Spazio, N°7, (December 1952 - April 1953): 18-19
IMG 22
Luigi Moretti, "Colore di Venezia." Spazio, N°3, (October 1950): 36-37.
IMG 23
Charles Conrad, "Considérations sur l'esthétique spatiale virtuelle." Spazio, N°7, (December 1952 April 1953): 22-23
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IMG 26
"Casa GIL", Roma, 1932-1937.
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IMG 27
"Casa delle Armi", Roma, 1933-1936.
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IMG 39
Residencial and Office Building, Milano, 1949-56.
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IMG 40
Residencial and Office Building, Milano, 1949-56.
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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception. A Psychology of the Crative Eye. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954. Rudolf Arnheim, Toward a Psychology of Art. Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966. Rudolf Arnheim, The Dynamics of Architectural Form. Berkeley-Los Angeles- London: University of California Press, 1977.
Henri Focillon, Vie des Formes. Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux, 1934 Hermann von Helmholtz, Handbuch der physiologischen Optik. Hamburg-Leipzig: Voss, 1896. György Kepes, Language of Vision. Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1944 and 1964. Louis Kollros, Évariste Galois. Basel: Birkhaüser Verlag, 1949.
Renato Bonelli, Moretti. Roma: Editalia, 1975. Milutin Borissavliévitch, Prolégomènes à une esthétique scientifique de l’architecture. Paris: Fischbacher, 1923. Milutin Borissavliévitch, Les théories de l’architecture. Paris: Payot, 1951. Milutin Borissavliévitch, Traité d’esthétique scientifique de l’architecture. Paris, 1954. Cesare Brandi, Struttura e architettura. Torino: Einaudi, 1967. Cesare Brandi, Elicona III-IV. Arcadio o della Scultura. Eliante o dell’Architettura. Torino: Einaudi, 1956.
Lancelot Law Whyte (ed.), Aspects of Form. A Symposium on Form in Nature and Art. London: Lund Humphries, 1951. Agnoldomenico Pica, Architettura italiana ultima. Milano: Edizioni del Milione, 1959. Giovanni Pozzi, La parola dipinta. Milano: Adelphi, 1981. Alois Riegl, Spatrömische Kunstindustrie. Wien: Osterreichische Staatsdruckerei, 1901. Alois Riegl, Die Entstehung der Barockkunst in Rom. Wien: Kunstverlag Anton Schroll, 1907. Cecilia Rostagni, Luigi Moretti 1907-1973. Milano: Electa, 2008.
Albert E. Brinckmann, Plastik und Raum als Grundformen kUnstlerischer Gestaltung. München: R. Piper & Co., 1922.
Salvatore Santuccio, Luigi Moretti. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1986.
Federico Bucci and Marco Mulazzani, Luigi Moretti. Works and Writings. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.
Eliel Saarinen, Search for Form. A Fundamental Approach to Art. New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1948.
Carlo De Carli, Architettura. Spazio primario. Milano: Hoepli, 1982.
Hans Sedlmayr, Die Architektur Borrominis, Berlin: Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt, 1930.
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CREDITS
IMAGES FROM, "SPAZIO" image 04 - p. 038 - Nº 1
IMAGES FROM, "50 IMMAGINI DI ARCHITETTURE DI LUIGI MORETTI"
image 05 - p. 039 - Nº 2
image 24 - p. 052
image 06, 07, 08, 09 - p. 040 - Nº 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
image 25 - p. 053
image 10 - p. 041 - Nº 7
image 26 - p. 054
image 11 - p. 042 - Nº 2
image 27 - p. 055
image 12 - p. 043 - Nº 3
image 28 - p. 057
image 13 - p. 044 - Nº 4
image 29 - p. 058
image 14, 15 - p. 045 - Nº 3 - 4
image 30 - p. 059
image 16 - p. 046, 047 - Nº 6
image 31 - p. 060
image 17 - p. 048 - Nº 6
image 32 - p. 061
image 18, 19 - p. 049 - Nº 7
image 33 - p. 062
image 20, 21 - p. 050 - Nº 7
image 34 - p. 063
image 22, 23 - p. 051 - Nº 3 - 7
image 35 - p. 064 image 36 - p. 065 image 37 - p. 066 image 38 - p. 067 image 39 - p. 068 image 40 - p. 069 image 41 - p. 071 image 42 - p. 072 image 43 - p. 073 image 44 - p. 074 image 45 - p. 075
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SPECIAL THANKS TO Barbara Bogoni Luca Dal Corso
PUBLISHER AMAG publisher
PRINTING lusoimpress
EDITOR Ana Leal
LEGAL DEPOSIT 475406/20
EDITORIAL TEAM Carolina Feijó Filipa Ferreira João Soares Tomás Lobo
ISBN 978-989-54938-7-6
PUBLISHER COLLECTION Pocket books
RUN NUMBER 1000 numered copies
PUBLICATION DATE april 2021
COLLECTION CONCEPT Tomás Lobo DESIGNER Carolina Feijó COLLECTION architecture in theory and history SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Federico Bucci, professor of politecnico di milano Emilio Faroldi, professor of politecnico di milano Andrew Berman, architect in new york Luigi Spinelli, professor of politecnico di milano José Manuel Pedreirinho, architect phd in lisbon VOLUME II Form, Structure, Space notes on the luigi moretti’s architectural theory AUTHOR Federico Bucci, professor of politecnico di milano
OWNER AMAG publisher VAT NUMBER 513 818 367 CONTACT info@amagpublisher.com FOLLOW US AT www.amagpublisher.com
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FORM, STRUCTURE, SPACE NOTES ON THE LUIGI MORETTI’S ARCHITECTURAL THEORY
Luigi Moretti (1906-1973), Roman by birth and temperament, was the embodiment of the intellectual architect with his gaze always open and fixed on new horizons. Throughout his career, right from his professional debuts, he interwove art and architecture and, after the Second World War, he wrote a reflection on the relationships between form and structure, space and time. Moretti’s architecture is among the most original of Italian modernism and this book reveals the complex traits of his theory.
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Federico Bucci (Foggia, 1959) is full professor of History of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano, where he is also Rector’s Delegate for Cultural Policies, Vice Rector for Mantua Campus and Chair Holder of UNESCO Chair in “Architectural Preservation and Planning in World Heritage Cities”; he is also a member of the Board of the PhD in “Architecture, Built environment and Construction engineering” of Politecnico di Milano. He has been Visiting Professor at University of Adelaide, South Australia; Texas A&M University; Moscow Institute of Architecture; Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela; Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile; University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona. He has delivered speeches in national and international conferences and he is currently member of the Casabella editorial board. He has published extensively in journals and books; among his monographs, Albert Kahn: architect of Ford (1993); Luigi Moretti. Opere e scritti, with Marco Mulazzani (2000); Magic city. Percorsi nell’architettura americana (2005); Franco Albini (2009); The Italian debate 1940s-1950s: an Anthology (2018).