Fabrizio Ballabio

Fabrizio Ballabio

The ‘Living Picture’ Notes on Architecture and Representations in the Universal Exposition

History & Critical Thinking MA, 2012 Architectural Association

Two pictures lie together as preamble to what follows: the first, designating the departure of our reasoning; the second, instigating a few thoughts to its conclusion. A current illustration of the Expo 2015 in Milan, reruns the all-too-known allegory of development and hope which has ever since constituted the practice’s leitmotif. An extract from Fellini’s Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio sacrilegiously ridiculizes whatever underlying notion, the architecture of an exposition could have possibly expressed. Clearly they both fall in a determined field of research which the title has suggested: both of them show excerpts from what will (or could have been) a specific panorama of a particular exposition; even more, both of them have architecture as the backdrop of a storyline. For the writer of a catalogue it would fairly be enough. And yet, to go beyond the blunt categorizations which would fit them in one bracket and to further manufacture what the structure of this bond is, is precisely what this essay designates as its objective.

Figure 1. Expo 2015, Milano

Figure 2. Still from Federico Fellini, Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio in Boccaccio ’70, 1969

Contents

Inception

p. 1

Un Unmissable Opportunity

p. 6

The Image of a Civilization

p. 13

The Living Picture

p. 20

Architecture as Symbol

p. 30

Atermaths

p. 37

List of Illustrations Bibliography

p. 45 p. 47

Change as we experience it in our everyday lives is normally homogeneous. As if scaling rungs on a ladder, we appear to progress upward, trading one idea for another in a series of closelyintegrated steps. That is, as long as our most basic concepts (grounds) remain intact and continue to provide us with an orderly progression of answers for our practices, and so long as the grounds of our practices remain constant (successful) long enough, a set of curious transformations in our understanding will take place over a period of generations, allowing the grounds of our most basic assumptions, over extended time, to take on the character of hidden orthodoxies (concepts in effect become beliefs, contingent facts become truths, etc.).1 Robert Irwin, ‘Being and Circumstance’

Inception 1. Whilst the ghost of a ‘recession’ casts dark shadows on our paths and as all kinds of desperate measures are beginning to be taken, it is curious to acknowledge how, despite their inappropriateness, determined social practices continue to confirm themselves as modernday obsessions. As societies plead guilty for the breadth of their ambitions and as a feeling of resentment has already taken grounds, surprisingly (but not too much), certain customs still pay tribute to modernity’s fond hopes, by relentlessly re-enacting it, in its most classical observances. It might sound fatuous to claim that in a climate of austerity (as is Italy’s today) it takes a quantum of insanity to insist on being optimist; and yet, when it comes to great occurrences like universal expositions, all these issues become of secondary importance. It is exactly in this verve that after 2010 in Shanghai (Better City-Better Life) and 2012 in Yeosu (The living Ocean and Coast), Milan will be the next city in which the Expo will be hosted—a climax of enthusiasm and aspiration, anxiety and faith. As investors rub their hands in contemplation of its imminence and politicians fill their mouths with proclamations and avowals, the pressmen (on their part) already start performing the celebratory functions, by incessantly reminding us of the soon-to-come parade.

Of course, the news has already been around for a while by now; it was in 2008, when the BIE decided that Milan would be elected over its Turkish competitor, Smirne. And yet, it is only since more recent times that the mediatic pandemonium has began to be so present it is impossible to ignore it. No need to be distressed, though. The world has already heard the story many many times by now…The sensational debut in London; the flamboyant editions on the Champ de Mars in Paris; New York’s utopian eccentricity in the fairs at Flushing Meadows; the record-breaking successes of Montreal ‘67; the exuberance of the latest editions in Asia…the list could literally go on forever (and indeed, its endlessness is truly the whole point of it). From the initial commitment to industrialization to the most recent preoccupations on the relationship man/planet; from the obsession with technology to the concerns on the environment. In less than two centuries, the event has become the natural accompaniment of society’s advancing, to the point that its consistency, is not even put in question anymore. And at the end of the day, we’re all quite happy to accept, that as the edition in Milan is not the first we have experienced, it also won’t be the last we will encounter in the future.

1 Robert Irwin, ‘Being and Circumstance’ in Notes Toward a Conditional Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 2011, p. 204

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But what if one starts questioning whether a system of ideas which was born over a century ago, can still claim to be projective although practically unchanged? And moreover, how can a practice based on prospects come to terms with its own pledges when its prognostications, are inevitably bound to the conditions they’ve been formulated in? As cunning as it gets, these questions might even have an answer. And it would possibly hypothesize that hope tends to renew itself no matter how fallible its previous endeavors. Let us not forget though that Expositions cropped up at time in which progress was envisioned optimistically; a time in which technology was regarded as the universal cure to the misfortunes of humanity; and indeed, a time in which exposition had the power to reflect it2. And after more than a 100 years from the Expo’s first performance and in spite of the occurrences the last century has seen, are we still in the position to encourage such beliefs?

Today, in Milan, the answer would be the following: “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life.” The big questions linked to nutrition and the politics of food production, the imbalances in food distribution and of seed ownership are the key themes for Expo 2015. Milan, the European city which will host the next Expo after Shanghai, has decided to create a new kind of space in order to represent and discuss these themes. This will not simply be a series of pavilions and commercial products, but a place which will be able to encapsulate the very essence of the challenges facing the planet today.3 Stefano Boeri, ‘Arguments for a Planetary Garden’

2. As it has been said, Milan will not only take advantage of the establishment’s prestige to start a number of initiatives which will amount to local benefits; even more, and through the issues represented, it will contribute to the protraction of a philanthropist tradition, through which ‘mankind’ has had the chance to understand its driving forces. This text is an attempt to come to terms with this proposition by investigating issues around the architecture of the event. At the heart of it, lies the general assumption that an exposition is “perhaps the only internationally recognized occasion”4 in which progress is represented as a consistent, and undeniable, path. Hence the first thing we shall look into is how the current exposition, has eventually been promoted as if an ‘unmissable opportunity’ to make a significant contribution to this long-lasting tradition. By looking into its beginnings, the current edition will be confronted with its ancestry, highlighting how despite the change in content, and the considerable leap in time, certain notions have persisted in confirming themselves as orthodoxies.

Since the primary editions, education has remained amongst the Expos moving principles.

As Anne Jackson has put forward in her text on expositions, the event “provided a means through which the public could be acquainted with, and reconciled to, the social and psychological changes”5 of a particular time. By providing pictures (or as we’ll see, ‘living pictures’) of a particular set of issues around which the interests of humanity converged, its commissioners could make reality comprehensible to the masses, by constructing representations of it. Correspondingly, representations have always been the means through 2

Cfr. with Ernesto N. Rogers, ‘Un Errore Nazionale’ in Casabella-Continuitá, Vol. 252, 1961, p. 3 Stefano Boeri, ‘Arguments for a Planetary Garden’ in Abitare, Vol. 503, 2010, p. 8 4 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Chapter 2, p. 41, http://en.expo2015.org/downloaddocuments (accessed 31-06-2012) 5 Anna Jackson, Expo: International Expositions 1851-2010, V & A Publishing, London, UK, 2008, p. 15 3

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which the Expo has been able to express its propositions. Conceived as if an “interpretation of the world that amounts to a change in the world”6, the exposition has been the place in which the “cultural constructionism” of the nation-state has met “a particular form of representational practice”7 in which architecture, needless to say, has come to play a crucial role. Throughout the second part of the essay we will explore how over time (and with a curious set of implications), the architecture of the exposition became the elected medium through which nationalities have been able to express the “values of a culture”, or why not, “the image of a civilization”8.

Mussolini’s exposition in Rome is surely one of such occasions; even more, it is an instance in which the status of our practice as an ‘instrument of representation’ has reached its highest level of ambiguity. Relying on W. J. T. Mitchell’s definition of representation as a “multidimensional and heterogeneous terrain”9, the E42 will serve as exemplar of how the ‘fracturedness’ internal to the architectural scenario in Italy at that time, has given birth to a situation where representation had become contested between two difficultly reconcilable viewpoints. Substantiating the fact that expositions are also the places where nationalities present (or represent) themselves as cohesive and intelligible entities (or even more, identities) in which discrepancies and conflicts are systematically smoothed out, the event will help us question how at a particular moment in time, certain canons (in this case, architectural canons) are appointed as representative, and others unavoidably discarded.

These canons are what, in his text A Theory of Expositions, Umberto Eco refered to as symbols. In the assumption that architecture could be considered as “an act of communication…of which the parts or the whole can perform the double action of every communication” 10 (namely, denotation and connotation), the author gives account of how allegory and symbolism, came to be the rhetorical devices through which the architecture of the exposition could ultimately become expressive. Relying on his formulations, in the third part of our essay, we will not only underline how these procedures have been phrased within the Expo in Milan (by placing emphasis on the mastering of the landscape and of the individual buildings), but also bring in other cases in which this process has been evident.

Bearing in mind that expositions are the places in which ‘portraits’ of societies are presented to the crowds, and bearing in mind that these portraits are to be seen as if both pictures from the present (the ‘living picture’) as well as prospects for the future, Eco’s line of reasoning will help us understand how this two-sidedness, has eventually brought forward a compendium of inconsistencies the resolution of which becomes particularly troublesome.

And it is exactly in this light that, in the final part of our discussion, attetion will be given to the question of the ‘aftermaths’.

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W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on verbal and visual representation, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA, 1994, p. 419 7 Penelope Harvey, Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition, Routledge, London, UK, 1996, p. 37 8 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, UK, 1995, p. 299 9 W. J. T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on verbal and visual representation, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA, 1994, p. 419 10 Cfr. with Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, UK, 1995, p. 296

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Figure 3. Expo 2015, Milano, Roberto Formigoni

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Figure 4, Expo 2015, Milano, Letizia Moratti

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Culture-as-representation helps to remind us that culture itself is a fractured concept, a suturing of convention and nature and not a homogeneous terrain. It also provides an analyitic model for cultural forms, one which emphasizes semiotic, aesthetic, epistemological, and political relationships embedded in these forms. It leads us to ask not merely what these forms “mean”, but what they do in a network of social relations; who or what represents what to whom with what, and where and why?

J.W.T. Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, p. 423

An Unmissable Opportunity 1. In its preliminary phases, an Expo can be said to be primarily the outcome of the relationship established between three categories of actors: those who pay, those who organize, and those who execute. As simple as it seems, in a text on expositions11 published in 1941, renowned architect and editor of Casabella-Costruzioni Giuseppe Pagano makes it clear how it is ‘encounters’ amongst men which makes the course of the events; and indeed, there is a whole history of alliances which substantiates the statement: one could quote the famous collaboration between the Prince Albert, Henry Cole, and Joseph Paxton, in the set up of the Great Exhibition in London; or the felicitous duetto between Fiorello Laguardia and Robert Moses in New York’s 1939 World Fair; the affinity between Mussolini and Piacentini in the E42 (a.k.a. EUR) in Rome; or why not, the current cooperation between Letizia Moratti, Roberto Formigoni and leading member of the Architecture Advisory Board, Stefano Boeri, for the Expo 2015 in Milan. What remains is that, if on the one hand, an exposition is a moment of political importance, in which nationalities confront themselves by representing their achievements. On the other hand (and we shall take the risk of being reckless), an Expo is also a project of restricted group of individuals which at a certain moment in time, decide not only that the event has to take place, but also under what circumstances it is to be brought forward to the candidacy.

In the case of Milan (and indeed as in all other cases in contemporary democracies), the event falls under direct authority of the government in force which, represented by an elected member, is “responsible for preparing or undertaking the legal, financial and other measures necessary to ensure the success and prestige of the exposition”12. At this stage of the process, the public has little or no voice on the matter, as it is political representatives which take initiatives in the name of their constituents both in relation to the location of the event, and in relation to its theme13. A particularly interesting figure amidst the organizing committee, is surely that of the Commissioner General of the Exposition, which in the case of Milan is Roberto Formigoni. Elected by the government, the Commissioner not only is in charge of the “preparation, organization, operation and management” of the event, but also has the right to “exercise disciplinary powers over the exposition” as that of stopping or suspending 11

Giuseppe Pagano, ‘Parliamo un pó di esposizioni’ in Casabella-Costruzioni, Vol. 159-160, 1941, p. 3 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Appendix to Chapter 6, p. 156, http://en.expo2015.org/download-documents (accessed 31-06-2012) 13 Of course, there have been polls and surveys nation-wide, but as the ones mentioned in the Candidacy Dossier for the edition in Milan date back to 2007, when the project had already been around since four years, and even more as they don’t bring forward the number of people surveyed, it is difficult to rely upon them whatever their outcome might be. Beyond that, the depictions the Dossier gives both in terms of political consensus on the initiative, which obviously sound suspiciously ‘brilliant’, and in terms of Italy being a “stable political and institutional system”, which after the last 4 years of political occurrences sounds like a rather positive description, seem to be widely overstated—but that’s another story, and indeed one in which it’s better not to enter.

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any activity which is found to be “incompatible”14 with the standing of the exposition itself.

Having direct authority, he is responsible of both of the commitment of the government and of the judiciousness of the procedures; and provided that his functions are both “purely disinterested and non-profit making” 15, it is he who must ensure that the event is brought forward in the full interest of the country represented.

2. Of course, in the abstract, it is a standard that political representatives act directly in the nation’s interest—democracies are governed by this principle. It’s just that if one questions what ‘interests’ a nation might have in organizing an exposition, a clear-cut answer is difficult to provide. In regard to the Olympics for instance, many have put forward that “there are probably more reasons for a city or a country to not host” the event, “than there are reasons to do so”16. And indeed, when accounting to the considerable efforts (both financial and human) required to host such large-scale events (both in terms of services and liabilities), it is not difficult to imagine how demanding it might be. Divergently though, there is a whole series of postulations which give credit to the Expo as an unmissable occasion to produce immediate advantages, which indeed, go well beyond the delightment of the crowds or the gathering of political consensus: some say it can trigger “spatial and social agendas” which “outlast the event” itself (the much discussed ‘legacy’), such as infrastructural improvements or state-of-the-art facilities to be re-used; others say it can facilitate investors in the real-estate market or support local businesses such as shops, restaurants, hotels and so on; others claim that through it, nations can “construct and present images of themselves for recognition to other nations”17 thus accounting to international visibility (the so-called ‘soft power’)18. But to bring it to a closure, and to come back to our own context, when in 2008 Milan’s Candidacy Dossier was submitted to the BIE, the very first sentence which would open the report laid the following aspiration as the candidacy’s objective: World Exposition Milano 2015, Italy” offers Milan and the surrounding area an opportunity to place itself at the service of the national economy to showcase the excellence of Italian industrial, cultural, scientific, technological and social achievements worldwide.19 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy

The exposition is thus promoted as a unique possibility to bring up economic benefits (it places itself “at the service of the national economy”), by reasserting “the country’s international image” 20 in its various fields of excellence—industry, culture, science, technology and social achievements. Besides the question of the ‘legacy’, to which indeed we will come back later, its main goal is to enhance the country’s profile by “highlighting its abilities to exchange knowledge” with other countries whilst at the same time “launching a

14 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Appendix to Chapter 6, p. 156-157, http://en.expo2015.org/download-documents (accessed 31-06-2012) 15 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Appendix to Chapter 6, p. 156-157, http://en.expo2015.org/download-documents (accessed 31-06-2012) 16 XML Architecture Research Urbanism, Olympic Cities, XML, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2012, p.19 17 Maurice Roche, Mega-events and modernity: Olympics and expos in the growth of global culture, Routledge, London, UK, 2000, p. 6 18 See Joseph S. Nye Jr., Soft Power: The means to success in world politics, Public Affairs, New York, USA, 2004 19 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Abstract Chapter 1, p. 4, http://en.expo2015.org/download-documents (accessed 31-06-2012) 20 Ibid., Abstract Chapter 2, p. 40

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far-reaching debate” 21 on the question of sustainability. Being the Expo “a privileged opportunity for dialogue on matters of pressing concern”, the Candidacy commits itself to the sustainment of the practice, which “is perhaps the only internationally recognized occasion to meet and take stock of man’s progress on any specific theme”22. In this light, Italy’s application can be seen both as a service to humanity (as quirky as it sounds, “Italy is ready to make its contribution, to extend its depth of experience and skills to all participating countries” 23 ) as well as an occasion to produce immediate benefits on a local scale, suggesting that the two may even come to be complementary to each other. And the grounds on which this dalliance is to take place, is that of contemporary technologies in the service sustainable solutions to food production: Achieving sustainable development represents a complex yet unavoidable challenge for the planet and one which is closely linked to the question of sustainable food policy…We are facing a challenge that is essential to humanity, as is any challenge to the full exercise and recognition of a basic human right that pertains to man as such and to all men equally.24 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy

3. That the contemporary Expo should be centered on sustainability follows the same evolutionist logic which has characterized expositions all the way throughout. As a tribute to Baudrillard in his caricature of the Gulf War, one could claim that after the century of progress (the industrial exposition) and the century of exchange (the cultural exposition), the time has arrived for the century of balance (the sustainable exposition) 25. In the last 150 years, expositions have kept track of the most essential transformations which have characterized societies (or that is their claim, at least), reflecting more or less successfully its most heartfelt preoccupations. It doesn’t surprise that, as the ‘environmental catastrophe’ has become the world’s most pending phobia, the discourse on ecology has finally creeped in26.

In the same way though, it also shouldn’t surprise that Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life is the title of the next Expo. Italy’s prominence in the food-business is a cliché which needs little explanation; and to a certain extent, Milan’s candidacy exploits the stereotype by heavily transmogrifying its operational potential. “Italy is the perfect venue for a debate on food”, titles a chapter of the Candidacy Dossier; as not only it is “home to major international food agencies” such as FAO, WFP, IFAD and EFSA (European Food Safety Agency) but it is also widely renowned for its territorial excellences both in terms of “attention to quality and unique local characteristics” as in terms of an increasingly growing organic sector (10% a year)27.

With these premises, the committee compiles an acrobatic explanation to why the question of nutrition is amongst mankind’s most imminent concerns. Following a formula which has been typical to expositions, the relevance of the theme is monumentalized to the point that its significance would almost seem impending. As if every n amount of years, the world was 21

World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Abstract Chapter 2, p. 40, http://en.expo2015.org/download-documents (accessed 31-06-2012) 22 Ibid., Chapter 2, p. 41 23 Ibid., Chapter 2, p. 44 24 Ibid., Chapter 4, p. 88 25 Jean Baudrillard, “The Gulf War will not take place” in The Gulf did not take place, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, USA, 1995, p. 23 26 Besides, Milan is not even the first.

27 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Chapter 2, p. 45, http://en.expo2015.org/downloaddocuments (accessed 31-06-2012)

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facing a profound moment of transition in which all current strategies would require immediate assessment, the exposition presents (and re-presents) itself as if the ultimate messiah, whose revelations not only have the title to establish new trajectories (which is already quite a claim) but also have the power to initiate them. As such, expositions share attributes with how Umberto Eco has depicted mass medias, as they are both “genealogical, and they have no memory”28. They are genealogical because every new edition adds on a new layer of values to the previous whilst mutually relying on an affirmed common language (the mega-event, innovation, progress, etc.)29. They have no memory because the current edition, always turns a blind eye to the insolvencies of its progenitors30. Making the most of this incongruity, the Expo in Milan proclaims the mandatory assessment of sustainable nutrition by vindicating its centrality in the worlds upcoming future. And as the story goes, today, “society can no longer ignore the importance of the food question in all its ramifications”31.

“Achieving sustainable development represents a complex yet unavoidable challenge for the planet and one which is closely linked to the question of sustainable food policy”; the Expo presents itself as an exceptional “opportunity for dialogue, co-operation and policy making involving all countries around the world”32. “If an engine is given the wrong fuel or if this contains impurities, it ‘coughs’ and then breaks down”; the exposition takes the chance to bring attention on this issue by instructing us on how man too, “if not fed properly” and “with healthy food”, eventually “gets sick”33. The west has far-too-long made abuse of the world’s resources, not only in the name of a “physiological need”, but also in the name of “pleasure”; the consequences on the planet have been irreversible, “creating a situation that is unsustainable in the long term”34. “It is imperative to act”, they claim; “we urgently need to develop a culture of sustainable development” which looks “to the needs of future generations”35. And indeed, it is now Italy’s responsibility to come to terms with this condition. As a leading economy on the matter of nutrition, the country is now ready to put itself at the service of society, to grant ‘all’ of its inhabitants the “most fundamental human right”: “A good healthy diet”36.

It is the first four words under the rousing designation of “the expectations of contemporary society”37. The section opens up listing the goals of the exposition by assuredly disclosing its

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Umberto Eco, ‘The Multiplication of the Media’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 146 29 “As with previous exhibtions, the producers of Expo ’92 explicitely set out to demonstrate and display the radical effects of human progress and innovation. Yet to do so, of course, they needed simultaneously to sustain a sense of continuity of the very modernist premises through which a cultural form such as the universal exhibtion sustained. These comparative posibilities are implicit in the ways in which the Expo presented itself and existed as an entity which we might compare with earlier similar events. Such continuities were also quite explicit, visible components of the Expo display”, Penelope Harvey, Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition, Routledge, London, UK,1996, p. 24 30 Umberto Eco, ‘The Multiplication of the Media’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 146 31 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Chapter 2, p. 42, http://en.expo2015.org/downloaddocuments (accessed 31-06-2012) 32 Ibid., Chapter 2, p.42 33 Ibid., Chapter 4, p. 87 34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 Ibid.

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Figure 5. Expo 2015, Milano, Apples

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Figure 6. Giuliano Pisapia Major of Milan, at Expo Days 2012

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most fundamental values. At the beginning of it, a moralistic disquisition on the appropriateness of the theme, lays out a heart-breaking description of the contemporary status of both production and provision of food across the globe (“we are failing to win the battle against hunger and poverty” they claim. Or even better, “to satisfy this excessive appetite for food, we some times destroy natural resources irreversibly”38). Following the same alarmist stance by which the medias alert climate change, the dossier lays the grounds to its own compensatory mission: “to demonstrate that it is possible to guarantee, today, in this world, food safety, food security and sustainable development for all mankind”39. In order to accomplish it, solidarity and co-operation are at the heart of the event’s initiatives, encouraging both exchange of technique between differing positions as well as one-to-one comparisons of the particular approaches. Rather than widening “the gap between opposing visions and potential solutions”, an opportunity is given to the nations represented to construct “a universally acknowledged map for the goals to be achieved”40. And as the dossier underlines, “the Expo in Milan intends to offer an occasion” in which everyone participating can determine what is “happening in a field that is so fundamental for the future of mankind”41.

The universality of the theme chosen by Milan will open the door to add specific, local elements to the traditional Expo values, thus increasing the overall impact of the event. The Bidding Committee is convinced that each Expo represents an additional piece in the overall strategy to continually improve the Expo’s image. Therefore, it is important to highlight all links and synergies with previous Expositions to reinforce the notion of a common path and constant enrichment.42 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy

Beyond the relative importance which can be given to the theme, what is of our particular interest is how ‘the universal scopes’ to which this edition is committed to can actually be envisioned in a much wider field of reference. As we already anticipated (and as the quote above suggests), the focus on Milan is by no means to be directed towards its temporal, geographical or even ideological specificities (which after all is just contextual to a particular moment in time); but in it being “an additional piece in the overall strategy to continually”43 corroborate the image of the exposition. That is why it becomes of fundamental importance to inquire this edition in relation to the previous, be it through resemblance or divergence, correspondence or distinction. For as in the same way Expos have been the proof of ‘evolution’ (as big as the word might sound), they have also been the place in which atavic retrogressions perpetually reaffirm themselves. In the last section, attention was devoted to the humanitarian aspirations which this Expo has proclaimed; its ‘universal scopes’, as they delineate them. In what follows, we will try to understand how their magniloquence, is no more to be accepted as a particularity of this edition, than it is to be ascribed to the genetics of the exposition itself.

37

World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Chapter 4, p. 87, http://en.expo2015.org/downloaddocuments (accessed 31-06-2012 38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., Chapter 4, p. 89 40 Ibid., Chapter 4, p. 104 41 Ibid., Chapter 4, p. 90 42 Ibid., Chapter 7, p. 195 43 Ibid.

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The living Picture 1. When it comes to Milan, one of the main points on which the dossier places emphasis, is how the Expo can be thought of as both a standing point in the evolution of humanity, as well as a guideline it must follow for its further emancipation. As described in chapter 4, the exposition, is mutually described as both a moment in which awareness can be taken on the different approaches to the matter of nutrition (thus giving an understanding of it in its actuality), as well as a moment in which the participating nations can (once more) construct “a universally acknowledged map for the goals to be achieved”44 in the future. In her text on Expo ’92 in Seville, Penelope Harvey explains how this condition has, even more, been a mantra of her own specific case study; to the point that, in Seville, the exposition was promoted as both a moment of reflection on the “the achievements of the human race” as well as the time to be confronted with a “future marked by the approaching millennium”45. In both cases, by establishing a link between achievements and potentials, the event has carved its relevance in the eyes of its participants, by ambiguously announcing itself as both a portrait and a forecast; or in other words, a representation of the present which is projected to the future. And when it comes to pointing out where this compulsion has arrived from, the words of Prince Albert a year before the opening of the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, are surely a good starting point: The Exhibition of 1851 is to give us a true test and living picture of the point of development at which the whole of mankind has arrived in this great task, and a new standing point from which all nations will be able to direct their further exertions.46 Prince Albert, 1850

In his celebratory speech, the Member of the Royal Family already puts an accent on two fundamental features which will accompany us throughout the text: on the one hand that an exposition is a ‘living picture’ of a particular situation around which the interests of humanity converge; on the other, that this picture is also a standing point from which ‘all nations’ can detect where their efforts will be directed in the next decades. Conceived at a time in which society was undergoing an intense process of change, and indeed a time in which the British economy was doing all but well, the exposition “was aimed as much at solving some of Britain’s industrial problems [amongst which industry’s inadequate social value]” as at celebrating its potential to give rise to a better future47. And in this double function, it becomes clear how the “overriding aim of the Great Exhibition” was much less concerned with the consistency of the display (or its capacity to authentically inform the audience on the effective social and political conditions of the time), than it was to “educate” the public to feel at ease amidst the industry’s products48.

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World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Chapter 4, p. 104, http://en.expo2015.org/downloaddocuments (accessed 31-06-2012) 45 Penelope Harvey, Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition, Routledge, London, UK,1996, p. 22 46 Quoted in Anna Jackson, Expo: International Expositions 1851-2010, V & A Publishing, London, 2008, p. 13 47 Anna Jackson, Expo: International Expositions 1851-2010, V & A Publishing, London, 2008, p. 13 48 Ibid.

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I confidently hope that the first impression which the view of this vast collection will produce upon the spectator will be that of deep thankfulness to the Almighty for the blessings which He has bestowed upon us already here below.49 Prince Albert, 1850

As Anna Jackson has put forward in her text on expositions, education was to become the cornerstone “of the rhetoric that drove and justified the planning and realization of the expositions through much of their subsequent history”50. No matter how different the social, economical and political contexts in which the later expositions would occur, the financial successes of the events first editions (only in London, “by the time the doors of the Crystal Palace closed on 11 October, 6,039,195 people had paid to see the exhibition”51), encouraged other nationalities to continuously rerun the formula, to the point by the end of the 19th century expositions were being held “virtually every year”52. In the name of progress and well-being, the event proved to be an efficient political apparatus in which authorities could strongly influence both “individual and collective values” building up a “a powerful sense of modernity and culture” 53 . By the “immediacy of the display”, it provided visible manifestations of how the current revolution had been a gift from the ‘almighty’ to which society had to be thankful. Its representations of the world bestowed “the means by which the public could be acquainted, and reconciled to, the social and psychological changes”54 that globalization and industry would bring about, and at its very own consent. So much that in short time, and in agreement of all member nations, the practice had been institutionalized to become one of modernity’s most formalized traditions.

2. It was in 1928 that the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) was formed. At that time, Paris had already taken leadership over London by organizing 5 prominent editions between 1855 and 1900; but when the BIE’s first convention was signed on the 22nd of November, 1928, the phenomenon was formalized by those typically French canons which would later shape the Olympics in 1894 (International Olympic Committee). “For a long time, international exhibitions followed no other rule than that laid down by the country in which they were organized”55, claimed the first BIE Director Maurice Isaac in 1936. They were thought as international, not because their “rules of organization were deliberated jointly by countries pursuing a common cause, but for the mere fact that different countries took part in it” 56—the global, so to say, was no more than the result of the juxtaposition of representations from different places and with different pursuits. And as the 1928 convention underlines, the BIE was born to put an end to this situation, by once and for all delineating what the exposition should have itself represented to mankind.

Operating as the “intergovernmental organization in charge of overseeing the calendar, the bidding, the selection, and the organization of World and International Expos”57, the BIE is 49

Quoted in Anna Jackson, Expo: International Expositions 1851-2010, V & A Publishing, London, 2008, p. 1314 50 Anna Jackson, Expo: International Expositions 1851-2010, V & A Publishing, London, 2008, p. 13 51 Ibid., p. 10 52 Ibid., p. 22 53 Ibid., p. 15 54 Ibid.

55 Maurice Isaac, first Director of the BIE, 1936, http://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/main/convention.html (accesed 25-05-12) 56 Ibid.

57 Organisation, Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) (International Exhibtions Bureau), http://www.bieparis.org/site/en/main/organization-m.html (accessed 25-05-12)

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still today the institution in charge of making sure that the event maintains the pedagogical objectives it has ever since been characterized by. As asserted in the first article of the 1928 convention, to the BIE, “an exhibition is a display which, whatever its title, has its principle purpose the education of the public; it may exhibit the means at man’s disposal for meeting the needs of civilization, or demonstrate the progress achieved in one or more branches of human endeavor, or show prospects for the future”58; but no matter when, where, by whom and under what theme it is enacted, it must always (at least at surface) be devoted to its original objectives—namely education, exchange, progressiveness, liability and commitment to mankind. Still now, it is the BIE which orchestrates the whole process of organization by which each Expo is brought to life, and precisely “to maintain the integrity and quality” of the event so that it may continue “to educate the public and promote innovation in the service of human progress”59. And still today, it is the BIE that monitors the whole process implementation of the events, so that every new edition may ultimately be conformed to the institution’s consolidated propositions.

3. When investigating the means by which expositions have been able to express these propositions, the first thing to acknowledge is how in fact, over time, these means have all but remained the same. That is to say that in the same way communication strategies have changed throughout the century (and we are not only referring to the ‘multiplication of medias’), the exposition itself has been remodeled to be able to comply with them. In order to understand the status of the Expo in contemporary society (and to eventually think of new ways of conceiving it), throughout his text A Theory of Expositions, Umberto Eco places emphasis on four fundamental aspects which (sometimes more, sometimes less) have characterized the Expo all throughout its history: the first being focused on Expositions as Inventories; the second being an understanding of them as A Collection of Goods; the third being centered on How the Expo exposes itself (or better, ‘none other than itself’); and the fourth revolving around the role architecture has had as a means of Communication60. In the next few paragraphs, and for the sake of our discussion, we will briefly take the chance to give a summary of his argument.

The products of all quarters of the globe are placed at our disposal, and we have only to choose which is the best and the cheapest for our purposes, and the powers of production are intrusted to the stimulus of competition and capital.

Prince Albert, 1850

In the first place, Eco puts attention to how expositions were conceived as being “enormous gatherings”61 of objects, in the light of which human progress would be at once both visible and tangible. Novelties of the industrial sector were presented as if the standing testimony of how technology had beneficially affected the most dispersed aspects of society, “from raw materials to traditional crafts, to industrial machinery and sculpture”62. The progressivist agenda which had characterized the first editions can be described as being the fruitful

58

1928 Paris Convention, Article 1, http://www.bie-paris.org/site/en/expos/intro-to-expos.html (accessed 25-0512) 59 Organization, Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) (International Exhibtions Bureau), http://www.bieparis.org/site/en/main/organization-m.html (accessed 25-05-12) 60 Cfr. with Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 291-307 61 Ibid., p. 292 62 Douglas Murphy, The Architecture of Failure, Zero Books, Alresford, UK, 2012, p. 15

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combination of two distinct, yet in this case complementary, ideologies: firstly the 19th Darwinian notions of evolution which imparted a profound belief in the possibility of mankind’s constant advancement; secondly the affirmation of capitalist modes of production which, as Karl Marx claims in Das Kapital (and as Eco himself reminds us), presented themselves as “an immense accumulation of commodities”63. This combination was essential in determining the very nature of these exhibitions, as it resulted in that the materialization of such progress should’ve been expressed through display of commodities in themselves, and not in their ‘container’.

Precisely in spite of this condition, the result was that, as Douglas Murphy has argued, expositions were primarily to be experienced as interiors. As he explains, if the event had to be the place in which the whole world would be presented through the products of their industries, it followed quite naturally that the space in which it happened had to be a covered one, and of the biggest ever seen. As he further argues, that is also why a building such as the Crystal Palace is no more to be regarded in its architectural connotations (or indeed, its capacity to eclipse the outside world, as Peter Sloterdijk has argued—which is an aspect which was secondary to the task) than it is to be considered as “the product of the most unpretentious thinking” and “focused upon a single task at hand” 64. Having to be the receptacle for the most impressive amount of products ever seen in the same room, and having to be erected “in a matter of four months”65, the Crystal Palace (which after all was ‘just’ a greenhouse) had been chosen out of technical necessities (in terms of size, but also in terms of efficiency) and not aesthetical finesse. In fact in expositions, only later did the problem of architectural expression become a primary concern; and as it happened, Eco explains, products were no longer at the heart of the event’s initiatives.

In the late nineteenth century, the world exposition took on an additional meaning. Not only did it provide a utopian fairyland that evoked wonder of the masses. Each successive exposition was called upon to give visible “proof” of historical progress toward the realization of these utopian goals, by being more monumental, more spectacular than the last.66 Susan Buck Mors, ‘Dream World of Mass Culture’

As a quote from Susann Buck Morss shows, the transition was progressive and with many different aspects to it. A quite simple one for instance, and which mainly has to do with how the exposition had been ‘accustomed’ over time, is that as the practice gained momentum and as society ‘got used’ to it, the shock value of the commodity form (be it “a tractor or a space shuttle”67) could no longer be a hot-spot. Already by the end of the nineteenth century, the event had took place at least 16 times and within cities from all across the globe (only in Paris there had been 5 of them). So whilst the nature of the products would (to a certain extent) remain unvaried, the exposition had to deploy other means to have an impact on its public. That is way each country (and it is Eco which explains us this), was from a certain moment, called to show itself no longer in what it was able to produce, but by means of how 63

Quoted in Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 293 64 Douglas Murphy, The Architecture of Failure, Zero Books, Alresford, UK, 2012, p.17 65 Ibid., p.16 66 Susan Buck Mors, ‘Dream World of Mass Culture. Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Modernity and the Dialectics of Seeing’ in Modernity and The Hegemony of Vision edited by David Michael Levin, University of California Press, London, UK, 1993, p. 310 67 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 296

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it was able to represent it. And indeed, that is also why today, it is so important for Milan to “affirm its ability to host and organise big events”68 in front of the whole world.

The exposition today does not display goods, or if it does, it uses the goods as a means, as a pretext to present something else. And this something else is the exposition itself.69 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’

A telling symptom of this process (which of course had also other implications) is how the layout of the exposition has evolved throughout history. Whereas in the 19th century editions, both nationalities and corporations were gathered in huge ferrovitreous structures such as the Crystal Palace in London 1851 or the Galerie des Machines in Paris 1867, in time (and to a certain extent, as a consequence of what we mentioned), the ‘one-great-hall’ based model “had been replaced by the pavilion format, whereby countries, firms and even movements” would have more freedom in expressing their “own projected self identities”70. No need to say that this typological variation had enormous consequences on how the exposition itself would be operating, and indeed its effects are still much evident in the contemporary form.

In fact, if in its first moments commissioners would “transpose the outside world into a magical immanence transfigured by luxury and cosmopolitanism”71 by enclosing it in one, large, space, the pavilion format “expanded this phantasmagorical principle to areas the size of small cities”72. So much that by the beginning of the 20th century, ‘the principle of interiority’ which had determined the Crystal Palace and indeed all the major institutions of so-called disciplinary societies, left place to an interiority of a different sort—one which in spite of the exposition’s new requirements, had suddenly become exteriorised.

5. It is precisely in this moment, that architecture becomes central; no longer as a technical issue (‘the largest possible room’), but in its communicative value. As the exposition grew out of the climatically controlled interiors of the 19th century editions (and as industrial products were no longer at the centre of the exposition’s agenda) nationalities had the chance (or the burden) to represent their ‘living pictures’ by eloquently articulating them in the construction of “miniature [but not only] ideological edifices”73. What occurred then, is that ‘progress’ was not only to be measured by the pedagogic quality of the features on display, but even more, it was through the architecture of the exhibition, and the visual experience it was capable of triggering, that event’s real potential could be properly exploited. As Eco himself explains, this process was supported by the basic ideology to which “the packaging” would become “more important than the product”; and that in the same way industrial goods had been the testimonies of progress and human endeavor in the early expositions, ultimately it became architecture’s task to “communicate the value of a culture” or, why not, even “the image of a civilization”74.

68

World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, Candidacy Dossier, Chapter 2, p. 44, http://en.expo2015.org/downloaddocuments (accessed 31-06-2012) 69 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 296 70 Douglas Murphy, The Architecture of Failure, Zero Books, Alresford, UK, 2012, p.14 71 Peter Sloterdijk, ‘The Crystal Palace’ in In the Global Inner Space of Capital: For a Philosophical Theory of Globalization, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2005, p. 265-76, https://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/public/article/viewFile/30252/27786 (accessed 24-08-12) 72 Susan Buck-Morss, ‘Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered’ in October, MIT Press, Vol. 62, 1992, p.22 73 Douglas Murphy, The Architecture of Failure, Zero Books, Alresford, UK, 2012, p.14 74 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 299

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Figure 7. The Great Exhibition, London 1851

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Figure 8. The Italian Pavillion at The New York’s World Fair, 1939

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Gentlemen, Comrades! This solemn reunion of ours on the Capitoline Hill, is the first act of a great mobilization. The few, the many, the far too many whom across the borders surrender to the hysteria of our time, should not be alarmed at the sound of these words. It is a civil mobilization. A pacific one. With no weapons, if not those of labor in the hands of 15000 workers.

It is the beginning of a systematic effort and coordination of all national energies, so that the Universal Exposition of 1942 will be deserving of the greatness of Rome, of Fascist Italy, and of the title of Olympics of Civilizations with which it is announced to the world.75 Benito Mussolini, 21st of April 1939

The Image of a Civilization 1. As in every other case, the E42 also started with a handful of vows and good intentions.

Much resembling the enthusiasm which accompanies the current edition, Mussolini sets forth in manifesting to the planet his anxiety to foster mankind’s peaceful congregation, to consecrate the “effort undertaken by all the civil populations that march along the route of progress”76. By the time in which his words were spoken, peace and progress had already become the “mantras of expositions”77 since at least 1928 (when the BIE was formed); and yet, in the case of the E42, their pursuit was even more paradoxical than in it had already turned out to be in the past. As history has told us, by the end of the 1930s war was imminent and the political relations between the implicated nations was quite far from being tuneful ever since World War I; nevertheless, Adolf Hitler had assured Mussolini78 that the conflict wouldn’t have sparked off before at least 1943/1944, leaving him all the time required to comply with his initiative. So Mussolini thought well that the Exposition could not only be the occasion to “show the rest of the world the design capabilities and dynamic capacity of Mussolini’s Italy”79; it could have also been a major opportunity to raise considerable funds, later to deploy in the predicted conflict80.

As we all know, the plan didn’t really follow Mussolini’s expectations; Germany invaded Poland on September 1st 1939 (3 years before the beginning of the event), and the rest of it is a well known story. Still though, on the 21st of April 1939, when the organization of the Universal Exposition was announced to the comrades by Mussolini himself, the ideas which were expressed suggested quite a different outcome. In his own words, the speech was but the “first act of a great mobilization” in the accomplishment of an extraordinary task, to which “the hands of 15000 workers”81 would’ve exultantly committed to. “The beginning of a systematic effort and coordination of all national energies” of which the outcomes were “destined to remain for centuries, with buildings of the proportions of St. Peters and the Colosseum” 82. On the authority of the dictator, the event had to be “deserving of the 75

Roma: Discorso del 21 Aprile 1939 (Exposizione Universale E42), Benito Mussolini, I grandi discorsi, Vol. 3, Fonotil, Italy, 2010—Translated by the author from Italian 76 Ibid.

77 Anna Jackson, Expo: International Expositions 1851-2010, V & A Publishing, London, UK, 2008, p. 14 78 Cfr. with Corrado Augias, The Secrets of Rome. Love and death in the eternal city, Rizzoli Ex Libris, New York, USA, 2007, p. 370 79 Ibid., p. 377 80 Cfr. with Paolo Nicoloso, Mussolini Architetto. Propaganda e paesaggio urbano nell’Italia fascista, Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Turin, Italy, 2008, pp. 197-198 81 Roma: Discorso del 21 Aprile 1939 (Exposizione Universale E42), Benito Mussolini, I grandi discorsi, Vol. 3, Fonotil, Italy, 2010—Translated by the author from Italian 82 Roma: Discorso del 21 Aprile 1939 (Exposizione Universale E42), Benito Mussolini, I grandi discorsi, Vol. 3, Fonotil, Italy, 2010— Translated by the author from Italian

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greatness of Rome, of Fascist Italy, and of the title of Olympics of Civilization” 83 with which it was announced to the World. And whereas the last proposition could be regarded as expectable (after all, it is an exposition we are dealing with), when considering the architecture of the E42, the first two cannot be understood without some further explanation.

2. To begin with, it is crucial to acknowledge how Mussolini’s exposition fell not only at a precise moment in time, celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Fascist March on Rome in 1922, but was also to constitute the most important act of planning Mussolini had undertaken in a city which already since some years had been at the heart of his initiatives— Rome. In itself, the project is to be understood as being part of a much wider ideological and territorial plan in which the exposition had both a representational function, epitomizing the architectural ‘style’ with which Fascism had to be identified (namely, the paradoxical combination of a classicist allegorism with a ‘Fascistized’ modernism), and a strategical function in relation to the expansion of the capital. Since the very beginning, and under strong influence of Commissioner Vittorio Cini, the intent was to locate the exposition site between Rome and the Mediterranean thus giving birth to what the dictator himself would define as being the ‘Third Rome’. And in so doing, the exposition not only “strongly anticipated later concepts of regional decentralization”84 by establishing a new quarter in the city’s southwest periphery; even more it became the place in which the Fascist myth of ‘romanness’ could achieve its highest level of expression.

Rome is our point of departure and reference; it is our symbol or, if you wish, our myth. We dream of a Roman Italy, that is wise and strong, disciplined and imperial. Much of what was the immortal spirit of Rome, resurges in Fascism: Roman is the Lictor, Roman is our organization of combat, Roman is our pride and courage: Civis Romanus sum.85 Benito Mussolini, ‘Past and Future’

Soon after the initiative was communicated to the BIE in 1935, Mussolini set off in person to find a spot in which the new Fascist monument could ultimately be settled. The idea of building in the southwest had already been around since 1928, when the INU (National Institute of Urbanism) Congress had hypothesized an expansion of Rome towards the Sea. So to a certain extent, the choice of the Tre Fontane area was the result of both logistic reasons and territorial ambitions. As industrialist Vittorio Cini described the site in a “report sent to Mussolini in November of 1936”, the land would’ve provided almost “unlimited possibilities for urban development”, whilst being still relatively close to Rome’s city center.

And beyond that, Mussolini was equally delighted by the Tre Fontane’s (the name of the site) peculiar history rich of Christian myths and references to tradition, as “according to the legend”, it was “the place where St. Paul was decapitated” (the story narrates that having his head bounced three times on the ground, three springs appeared: the first hot, the second warm, the third cold—which explains the name86).

83

Roma: Discorso del 21 Aprile 1939 (Exposizione Universale E42), Benito Mussolini, I grandi discorsi, Vol. 3, Fonotil, Italy, 2010— Translated by the author from Italian 84 Corrado Augias, The Secrets of Rome. Love and death in the eternal city, Rizzoli Ex Libris, New York, USA, 2007, p. 370 85 Benito Mussolini, ‘Past and Future’ quoted in Jan Nelis, ‘Constructing Fascist Identity: Benito Mussolini and the Myth of "Romanità"’, in The Classical World, Vol.100, No.4, 2007, pp.403 86 Cfr. Corrado Augias, The Secrets of Rome. Love and death in the eternal city, Rizzoli Ex Libris, New York, 2007, p. 375

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The choice of site though didn’t come without a number of complications. As Corrado Augias explains in his Secrets of Rome, “the fact that the Tre Fontane wasn’t uninhabited terrain” was actually a considerable obstacle “for the grandiose EUR plans”87. The land was in fact home to at least 102 people located in around eighty shacks within the Expo area, most of which with small plots of land for the purpose of nutrition. When it came to relocating the displaced population (which obviously was ordered to be cleared under the orders of the dictator himself), Mussolini “repeated a tactic used before”88, when large parts of the historical center in Rome had been destroyed to give rise to his famous monumental axis’ (from the clearances of Via dell’Impero which would link the Circus Maximus with the Collosseum, to those in the newly created Via della Conciliazione which would connect St. Peters with the castle of St. Angelo). “These forced transfers gave rise to the solution called borgate ufficiali rapidissimi” 89 , temporary developments located in the suburbs, which eventually became permanent residencies to those that were deported. But little mattered if hundreds of people lost their homes; for Mussolini, the stakes were definitely higher. “In quest for an imperial image, Fascist Italy obviously couldn’t tolerate” 90 any form of hindrance which would threaten it’s accomplishment. So by 1937 the canvas had been cleared, and ready for proposals.

3. When establishing which architecture could best epitomize the ‘imperial image’, Mussolini was involved in first person in both the selection and the dialogue with the architects commissioned. Throughout twenty years of fascism, architecture had always occupied an upfront position in the government’s affairs and in more than one occasion, Mussolini himself had declared that amongst all other arts, architecture was that which he felt closest to. Yet even though a connoisseur of the architectural scenario of that time and holding personal relationships with most of its protagonists (in Rome, Giuseppe Pagano and Marcello Piacentini had already sat several time at the desk of the dictator and with very different outcomes) when it came to making his mind up on how the nation was to be represented in the Universal Exposition of 1942, the process was more complicated and controversial than what one might expect. As Dennis P. Doordan has suggested in his The Political Content in Italian Architecture during the Fascist Era, “nothing illustrates more clearly the resultant diversity of interpretations than the entries submitted in the numerous competitions sponsored by the regime during the 1930s”91; and in the E42, the conflictual relationship between so-called ‘rationalists’ the ‘classicists’ could no better be reflected than in the dissimilarity of the proposals.

At the time in which race laws were being promulgated, and as the alliance with Germany had ultimately been formed, the E42 became the setting of a “violent and incurable conflict between two opposing fronts: the academia and modernity, monumental rhetoric and rationalism”92. Even though the final result (which after all should’ve been representative of Italian architecture at that time) displayed a coherent coordination of ‘stylistic’ leitmotifs, “a comparison of two 1938 competition entries for the Palazzo della Civiltá Italiana, one of the key monuments” of Mussolini’s esposizione, “demonstrates the range of possible 87 Corrado Augias, The Secrets of Rome. Love and death in the eternal city, Rizzoli Ex Libris, New York, USA, 2007, p. 381 88 Ibid.

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 Dennis P. Doordan, ‘The Political Content in Italian Architecture during the Fascist Era’ in Art Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, ‘Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the1920s and 1930s’, Summer, 1983, pp. 125 92 Adachiara Zevi, ‘Eur: if Terragni had won…’ in Una guida all’architettura moderna dell’Eur, Iacobelli, Rome, Italy, 2008, p.7

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architectural responses to the challenge”93, which to the least may be seen as heterogeneous (to put in Mitchell’s terms) to each other. Fact is, that as in every representation (and “the E42 was conceived as a representation”94), the end product was inevitably the result of a meticulous process of selection in which discordant points of view had been systematically excluded. So much that in the same way determined solutions were elected as representatives, others (and in the many) were unavoidably discarded.

4. Lost Occasions is what Pagano would’ve called them in an article published in 194195. All the formulations which could’ve been selected to represent the nation in the E42, but that due to the propensities of the ‘commissioners’, were rejected in favor of an architecture which could better reflect the nation’s ‘supposed’ glorious past. Pagano knew it well, as he was one of the five architects which Mussolini himself had initially appointed to develop the expositions master plan together with Piacentini, Piccinato, Vietti and Ettore Rossi in 1936.

And at that time, Mussolini was quite open to ideas, allowing the planners of the exposition to experiment proposals which, in terms of iconography, were far from the result of which parts remain today. When the plan had been initiated, “it still seemed that the same lively spirit generously awaiting new experiences and new proof, fluttered over the hills of Tre Fontane” 96 . But in less than 2 years, and under strong influence of Mussolini’s commissioner, Vittorio Cini, the situation took a turn of which Pagano, despite him being a Fascist since the end of World War I, was surely not content of.

Indeed the first master plans were remarkably divergent to its final resolution. Partly because on Vittorio Cini’s will, the group of five in the end became a group of one (Piacentini), and partly because Mussolini had changed his mind on what the values which were to be expressed actually should’ve been. In his article Lost Occasions Pagano himself confesses his faith in how the process was unraveling and, as many during those days, he had thought the time was ripe for a new Italian architecture to emerge on a global scale. The project was innovative indeed, a city for cars and with buildings out of glass and steel (and not stone and stucco, as in the later version). But Piacentini (also known as the ‘academic’) in the meantime was gaining more and more consensus over his fellow architects, being in charge of almost half the jobs available in Italy (the prestigious University Campus in Rome is but one of them) and abroad (his design was also chosen to represent the nation at the 1937 exposition in Paris). And as his role within the planning team became increasingly authoritative (being elected as chief in charge of the architecture of the exposition in December 1937), Pagano on the other hand, was steadily pushed aside.

5. It was on the 1st of January 1938, that Pagano definitively left place to his ‘collaborator’.

What occurred is that, in the light of a quite radical ideological divergence in respect to how the architecture of the exposition was actually to be conceptualized (on the one hand, the idea that it had to be celebratory of the Fascist kinship to romanness, on the other the conviction that a truly Fascist architecture had to be reduced, morally simplistic and exempt from stylistic eccentricities), Pagano was dismissed from his position. Even more, he was offered an annual salary of 26’000 lire for the duration of three years, to keep silent (through

93 Dennis P. Doordan, The Political Content in Italian Architecture during the Fascist Era, Art Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the1920s and 1930s, 1983, p. 125 94 Corrado Augias, The Secrets of Rome. Love and death in the eternal city, Rizzoli Ex Libris, New York, USA, 2007, p. 377 95 Giuseppe Pagano, ‘Lost Occasions’ in Adachiara Zevi, Una guida all'architettura moderna dell'EUR, Iacobelli, Rome, Italy, 2008, p. 9 96 Ibid., p. 11

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Figure 9. E42, Rome prior to 1938

Figure 10. Competition entry for the Palazzo della Civiltรก Italiana

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Figure 11. E42, Rome between 1939 and 1941

Figure 12. Winning scheme for the Palazzo della Civiltรก Italiana

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Casabella, obviously) on the diatribe between so-called rationalists and traditionalists97.

And as Paolo Nicolosio explains, whereas previously a debate between the two parties might have been allowed, the price became too high for such discrepancies to emerge. What was at stake was precisely the cohesiveness of the nation being portrayed; and a proper nationalist representation, as the Expo is itself, can never show the uncertainties which subsist behind the curtain.

In January 1941, once the three years of silence were definitively over, Pagano opens n˚ 157 of Costruzioni-Casabella with the following inquiry: Potremo mai salvarci dalle false tradizioni e dalle ossessioni monumentali?98—or in my own translation, Will we ever be safe from false traditions and monumental obsessions? The question was not only the outburst of a man whom for three years was kept silent, but the title of a much discussed article where Pagano publicly wreaks havoc on two distinct personalities which were active at that time: Piacentini on the one hand, and Gio Ponti on the other. The problem for Pagano, was the unacceptable acceptance of the regime’s inclination towards a ‘monumentomania’ which would embarrass every architect on the peninsula in front of the whole world; and even more, the exposition would’ve provided a representation of Italian architecture which in his own opinion at least, was far from being accurate.

Ponti is the first to be addressed, and Pagano’s critique is as ironic as it is merciless. His buoyancy and candidness as well as his will to make everything beautiful, splendid and exemplary, disgust Casabella’s director to whom such an approach does nothing more than sustain the misunderstandings and contradictions the new ‘style’ was setting out. ‘A false classicism’, or ‘the most romantic of dreams of an academic Hellenist a la Winkelmann’ which ‘to justify poor inventiveness, resigns to the most scholarly of castrations’, oscillating between compromise and banality. But the biggest cake of all, claims Pagano, is definitively to be assigned to Piacentini whom, with a bag full of ‘quotations from ancient Rome…manages to monumentalize the future Exposition in Rome in such a way that even the most talented scenographer of the Nero would’ve ultimately been envious’ (ironically, 10 years later Mario Soldati would shoot scenes from O.K. Nero right in front of the Palazzo della Civiltá Italiana). Pagano spares no words in pouring scorn on the establishment and as he moves forward in his critique, he meticulously gives account of how the design of the exposition had actually been brought forward; from the fake competitions to the undisputed authority of Mussolini within the process; from the dismissal of competent architects to the ‘mediocrity’ of the commissioners in charge.

As he claims: It may seem impossible that so many useless columns and tacked on arches were led to center stage through the competition process. Even if I myself, if I had not been a judge at one of these competitions, would not have believed that the decadent taste, the lacking of imagination and the inability to architecturally judge, of so many “authorities” was possible…In the cases in which a second level of competition was reached, only double damage and mocking was received,

97 Cfr. with Paolo Nicoloso, Mussolini Architetto. Propaganda e paesaggio urbano nell’Italia fascista, Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Turin, Italy, 2008, pp. 212-213 98 Giuseppe Pagano, ‘Potremo mai salvarci dalle false tradizioni e dalle ossessioni monumentali?’ in CasabellaCostruzioni, Vol. 157, 1941, pp. 2-7

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because no strength of reason, no logical debate, no recourse in cassation could manage to make it understood that the civilization of our day refused the false, useless, awkward columns.99 Giuseppe Pagano, ‘Lost Occasions’

6. When it came to picking out which projects would win the (dreadfully fraudulent) competitions, representation turned out to be the fundamental issue; as Pagano himself underlines, even though the Mussolini was not present in the juries (Piacentini and Cini were though, and had a quite central position in determining the winning projects), he explicitly contributed to the latter development of the schemes with personal suggestions and endless lists of ‘proposed’ amendments100. Already throughout the competition process, and under guidance of Piacentini, the participating architects had been encouraged to make projects inspired by a ‘classical sentiment’; informed by ‘criteria of monumentality and grandiosity’.

But in the latter stages, and for two buildings in particular (namely, the Palazzo della Civiltá Italiana by Ernesto La padula, Giovanni Guerrini and Mario Romano, and the Palazzo dei Ricevimenti e dei Congressi by Adalberto libera), Mussolini became even more keen on manifesting his propensities. Only for the Palazzo dei Ricevimenti, Libera himself had to make 5 different proposals to satisfy his requirements. And indeed, the Duce’s concern is indicative in staging how the question of iconicity was in fact a fundamental one.

The architectural ‘vocabulary’ (provided that it is proper to label it as such) to be unveiled in the exposition, was not only to make manifest the ideology behind it; even more, it had to constitute a brand new agenda for the projects yet come. To Mussolini, architecture had always been the instrument through which the masses could favored; Walter Benjamin’s account on the aestheticization of politics, is a telling explication of the efficacy of the process 101 . In the E42 though, the stakes were even higher. As Piacentini writes, the architecture of the exposition had to be the ‘facies’ of the Mussolinian Rome102; the ‘living picture’, so to say. It had to be the instrument through which the crowds could be identified, and educated on the values of the time. In that architecture, Nicolosio explains, people had to be able to reflect themselves, acknowledging not only the true and universal characteristics of Italian civilization, but also understanding the indissoluble bond between the modern Fascist state, and the ancient Roman tradition. That is also why the much discussed arches and the columns were so vital to the plan; because the architecture of the ‘new’ empire had to be an evident and all-embracing ‘symbol’ to which society at large could strongly be committed103.

The site will be dominated by a gigantic Roman Arch. We like to think of it as the symbol of human will, stressed in the effort to establish peace on the durable and truly firm ground of justice.104 Benito Mussolini, 21st April 1939 99

Giuseppe Pagano, ‘Lost Occasions’ in Adachiara Zevi, Una guida all'architettura moderna dell'EUR, Iacobelli, Rome, Italy, 2008, p. 12 100 Cfr. with Paolo Nicoloso, Mussolini Architetto. Propaganda e paesaggio urbano nell’Italia fascista, Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino, Italy, 2008, pp. 204-207 101 See Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in Illuminations, Schocken Books, New York, USA, 1968, pp. 217-251 102 Paolo Nicoloso, Mussolini Architetto. Propaganda e paesaggio urbano nell’Italia fascista, Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino, Italy, 2008, p. 221 103 Ibid.

104 Roma: Discorso del 21 Aprile 1939 (Exposizione Universale E42), Benito Mussolini, I grandi discorsi, Vol. 3, Fonotil, Italy, 2010—Translated by the author from Italian

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Figure 13. Placard E42, Rome

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Figure 14. Placard E42, Rome

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Architecture as Symbol 1. If architecture can communicate something, it is merely “in the form of a symbol”105. With little hesitation, and confirming Mussolini’s line of action, Umberto Eco gives account to how the architecture of expositions can ultimately be regarded as if an act of communication.

To explain his proposition, the author makes distinction between two fundamental ‘actions’ through which messages are both expressed and received: that is, connotation and denotation. As he explains, “a word or phrase can denote something”106, giving a clear delineation of the meaning of the term. An arch, for example, ‘unequivocally’ suggests that the stones have been laid to carry loads in compressive stresses, eliminating tension. And at the same time, an arch has “a broader connotation depending on the historical period and education of the person who communicates or receives a message”107 using the structure.

Thus in the E42, for instance, an arch could connote what Mussolini calls a ‘classical’ sentiment, or a ‘monumental’ one108, despite it being loadbearing (or not). And even more, when considering the Fascist cult for romanness (once again, “Rome is our point of departure and reference; it is our symbol or, if you wish, our myth”109), it could even have determined why a particular proposal had ultimately been judged as being more suitable (or why not, more representative) than another.

When accounting to the way in which architecture reflects the above procedures, the author makes distinction between two different modes of operating: the first through what he calls primary functions, the latter through the secondary functions110. In his words, the primary functions are those by which particular elements of a building (or of a master plan, indeed) denote their most ‘conventional use’ (i.e. a roof covers from rain, a column supports the roof, or a stair is used to ascend, etc.); the secondary functions are those which connote aspects which go beyond the element’s practicality (as “its related meanings based on cultural conventions, and mental and semantic associations”111 ; e.g. a fireplace suggests reunion, or a throne connotes royalty, or indeed an arch connotes classicism, etc.)112. As he explains, “the history of architecture and design is the history of the dialectic between these two functions” 113 , meaning that their interplay is ultimately what determines our understanding of architecture itself. And what remains (according to Eco at least) is that whereas the primary functions can be persistent over time, the secondary functions tend to have a slightly different line of evolution.

105

Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 297 106 Ibid., p. 296 107 Ibid.

108 Cfr. with Paolo Nicoloso, Mussolini Architetto. Propaganda e paesaggio urbano nell’Italia fascista, Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino, 2008, pp. 212-213.

109 Benito Mussolini, ‘Past and Future’ quoted in Jan Nelis, ‘Constructing Fascist Identity: Benito Mussolini and the Myth of "Romanità"’, in The Classical World, Vol.100, No.4, 2007, pp.403 110 See Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 298 111 Ibid.

112 “It should be remembered, and is implied in what has already been said, that the terms primary and secondary will be used here to convey, not an axiological discrimination (as if the one function were more important than the others), but rather a semiotic mechanism, in the sense that the secondary functions rest on the denotation of the primary function (just as when one has the connotation of ‘bad tenor’ from the word fo ‘dog’ in Italian, cane, it rests on the process of denotation”, Umberto Eco, ‘Function and Sign’ in Rethinking Architecture. A Reader in Cultural Theory, Routledge, London, UK, 1997, p. 179 113 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 298

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The history of civilization influences the history of architecture in such way that objects in which the two functions were harmoniously integrated are in time deprived of one of those functions, so that the other becomes dominant.114 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’

When it comes to understanding how these functions have been uttered within the architecture of the Expo, Eco’s rationale becomes a particularly telling principle. Let us take some examples: in its conception at least, the Hyde Park Crystal Palace (as the one in Sydenham was yet another story) was essentially determined by its primary function—that was to be the largest possible ‘container’ of objects from all over the world. As James Ferguson has argued (and as Kenneth Frampton has confirmed), in the first proposal “use, and use only, pervaded every arrangement” and it was only in a second moment that the “introduction of the arched transept with the consequent arrangements at each end and on each side”115 would aspire to a secondary function—i.e. the expression of certain meaning based on cultural conventions. That is why, no matter how intricate our contemporary reading of it, one could ultimately advance that the primary function (to host the exhibition) dominated on the secondary one. As in that case, industry’s products made the ‘living picture’, architecture was primarily the frame.

On the other hand though (and bearing in mind our initial explication of how the ‘one-room’ based model has left place to the pavilion format, thus making the architecture of expositions much less of technical contrivance than a communicative one), in the post 20th century exposition, the process becomes more complex to anatomize. As what occurs is that, as architecture has been primarily deployed to “connote symbolic meanings”, correspondingly, its primary functions have inevitably been ‘minimized’. Of course, as Eco himself explains, “an exposition building must [always] allow people to come in and circulate and see something”116 ; in the end the display is its ‘primary’ purpose. Yet what he underlines, is that the ‘utilitarian function’ is subsidiary when accounting to the communicative apparatus the contemporary exposition sets in place117 . To put it tersely, in expositions, “architecture and design explode their dual communicative nature, sacrificing denotation to very widespread connotation”. And indeed that is also why within the contemporary exposition, “architecture proves to be message first, then utility”118.

2. Let us take another example: This general plan articulates a set fundamental values, which since the very beginning have characterized the EXPO in Milan. In particular, its leitmotif can be summarized as follows: "the righteous relation between man and nature". The theatre which this master plan gives birth to, is

114

Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 298 115 Douglas Murphy, The Architecture of Failure, Zero Books, Alresford, UK, 2012, p. 19 116 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 299 117 Similarly, in her text on the Expo ’92 in Seville, Penelope Harvey explains how “all the pavillions referred in some way to similar material symbols” so much that “it was only in the degree of association with one or other aspect of these generelly recognizable symbolic forms that the pavillions differed”, and not in their inherent functioning. See Penelope Harvey, Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition, Routledge, London, UK,1996, p. 55 118 Umberto Eco, ‘A Theory of Expositions’ in Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, Uk, 1995, p. 299

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based on this assertion. It tells the story of a 21st century man which is protagonist in an extraordinary communion and interaction with nature.119 Roberto Formigoni, 26th of April 2010

In a text published on Abitare in June 2010, and “with reference to an idea for 2015 Expo”120, Stefano Boeri (leading Italian architect, editor-in-chief of the magazine Abitare, Councilor of Culture, Fashion and Design, and most of all, member of the expositions Architecture Advisory Board) explains how “to encapsulate the very essence of the challenges facing the planet today” (namely, “the big questions linked to nutrition and the politics of food production, the imbalances of food distribution”121, and so forth), the Expo will be held within a large-scale Planetary Garden. As he explains, this Planetary Garden “will host cultivated sections of land where new technologies linked to agricultural products will be exhibited and used”122 as well as “extraordinary greenhouses and futuristic pavilions in which” the reconstruction of “different bio-climatic conditions” will show how “zootechnics, agriculture and fishing can help fight the battle against world hunger” 123 (of course). From an architectural point of view, the site has been conceived as a if “a new concept of monument” (as if sustainability necessitates a monument) in which “landscape and open-air common areas” 124 are at the heart of its design concepts. And bearing in mind our previous argument on what Eco would describe as being the symbolic task of architecture within the exposition (and once more, by architecture we are not merely referring to buildings but to everything which has been designed to serve a purpose), the master plan presents a number of constituents which, for the sake of our discussion, are surely worth investigation.

To begin with, the site (about 1.5 km in length) will be surrounded by a perimetral canal of which the crossing will occur by means of ‘two’ pedestrian bridges: the first 730m long on the North-East front, and the second 350m long on the Southern. As the designers explain, the canal will be the means through which the visitors can explore the different parts of the Expo site from unusual points of view, whilst avoiding the pedestrian roots which cross the area at its center. At the same time though, the commissioners place emphasis on how canals have been “a typical element of the Italian landscape”125, thereby representing a further set of meanings, which in Eco’s terms, are expressed through connotation (or in other words, reference to cultural or in this case traditional elements). And making use of water channels to circulate around the area (which of course has nothing ‘functional’ to it), the exposition not only takes advantage of the conventional nostalgia towards the ‘no-longer-active’ navigational system which once circled around the city of Milan (a romance which ironically had been spoiled by Mussolini himself throughout the thirties, by ‘quite reasonably’ replacing them with car routes—once more, in favor of a primary function). Even more, and making the most of the phantasmagoric principle, it distances the Expo from its immediate 119 Roberto Formigoni, Presentation Master Plan EXPO 2015 at Teatro Strehler, Milan, 26th of April 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJbFfja6_nk (accessed 22-05-12)—Translated by the author from Italian 120 Stefano Boeri, ‘Arguments for a Planetary Garden’ in Abitare, Vol. 503, 2010, p. 7 121 Ibid., p.8 122 Ibid., p. 9 123 Stefano Boeri, ‘Expo Milano 2015’ presentation at the BIE in Paris, 1st July 2011, http://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/?p=3245 (accessed 23-06-12) 124 EXPO 2015 S.p.A. , ‘The Exhibition Site’, May, 2012, http://en.expo2015.org/sites/default/files/rich_text_editor/pagine_standard/120508_masterplan_web_eng_r_1.pdf (accessed 22-05-12) 125 Stefano Boeri, ‘Expo Milano 2015’ presentation at the BIE in Paris, 1st July 2011, http://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/?p=3245 (accessed 23-06-12)

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surroundings by accentuating its status as that of an island of felicity—or in their own words, “an integral landscape”126.

It will be an EXPO that overturns the whole idea of monumentality: in place of giant structures ( like the Eiffel Tower of Paris 1898), Milan will build a new landscape of monumental lightness and natural beauty. An environment that reflects the environmental sustainability, technical precision and haunting beauty of Venice’s winding alleys, Leonardo’s canals and the open countryside of rice fields and vineyards.127 World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy

Within the island, the interplay of references and metaphorical allusions is perfectly epitomized by the layout of the pathways. As the architects suggest, and indeed much resembling what was the Fascist exposition, “the principle behind this new Planetary Garden is the urban plan of Roman towns with their twin axes, the Cardo and the Decumanus”. The Decumanus (a.k.a. World Avenue) will be a 1.4 kilometer boulevard “laid in the same direction of the old Sempione road” (for whatever it counts), where nationalities can represent themselves in a setting of which the size reminds that of “the Ramblas in Barcelona or the Champs Elysées in Paris” (again, 19th century fixations). The Cardo instead, will “reflect the geometries of the farmlands that surround Milan”, whilst showcasing “the cultivable land to describe the excellent products of agricultural and food production in the Italian regions”. “Organized along two strongly symbolic axes”, the site thus denotes its functioning, by reminding of what has ever since renaissance been the space for representation ‘par-excellence’ (namely the street); but even more, through asserted connotations, it establishes a direct bond between itself and a tradition, which is made even more evident by the setting of its centerpieces.

At the end of the main axis (namely the World Avenue and the Cardo), the layout places emphasis on four meaningful constructions, amongst which surely the most indicative is the Mediterranean Hill. Together with the Lake Arena (“an open area on the water for artistic performances and events”, designed to evoke “the Arena of Milan in Parco Sempione”), the Expo Centre (“a spacious facility offering cultural events and entertainment”) and the ExpoCascina Merlata Bridge (“which provides pedestrian and bicycle connections between the city and the Expo Site”)128, the Mediterranean Hill is regarded as one of the principal elements within the Exposition site. Built using the earth from excavations (which paradoxically is its primary function), it will be located in the south-eastern part of the site where, through representations of the world’s agricultural landscapes (wet tropical climates, dry tropical climates, desert climates, wet warm climates and Mediterranean climates), “visitors will retrace the process by which human beings, compelled to search for food,

126 Expo 2015 S.p.A., Master Plan presentation, April, 2010, Teatro Strehler, Milan, http://en.expo2015.org/sites/default/files/rich_text_editor/pagine_standard/allegati/100423_presentazione260410 _en.pdf (accessed 15-06-12) 127 Feeding the Planet, Energy For Life – the Conceptual Master Plan and Planning Office, http://en.expo2015.org/press-area/press-releases/feeding-planet-energy-life-conceptual-master-plan-andplanning-office (accessed 15-06-12) 128 EXPO 2015 S.p.A., ‘The Exhibition Site’, May, 2012, http://en.expo2015.org/sites/default/files/rich_text_editor/pagine_standard/120508_masterplan_web_eng_r_1.pdf (accessed 15-06-12)

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Figure 15. Expo 2015, Milan, The Mediterranean Hill

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Figure 16. Expo 2015, Milan, Greenhouses

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learned to understand nature and thus how to transform it”129. With its 22 meters in height (the equivalent of seven stories in a conventional apartment building), the hill has been conceived as if a miniature translation of the Tour Eiffel in Paris (which, by the way, was erected for the exposition of 1889). In fact, “reproducing the warm-temperate agricultural ecosystem typical of Italy and providing a panoramic overlook for the site”130, it not only is imbued with representative capacities (thus effectively performing what Eco would’ve called its secondary functions) epitomizing the essence of an elected source of pride (in this case, nature—not industry); even more, it is an optical device from which the numerous spectators can identify the site as if a set piece for contemplation.

Authenticated by what Ross Adams has referred to as the ‘language of sustainability’ (“green roofs, vegetation on facades and an overuse of glass—architecture’s triumphant act of self-annihilation”131) the buildings within the Master Plan are revealing when accounting to the way in which the architecture of the exposition exteriorates its contents. Even though the planners have asserted their intention to give “give greater priority to the overall landscape than to individual buildings” 132 , in place of Mussolini’s mastodontic hollow monuments, the master plan accommodates a number of ‘extraordinary’(in the truest sense) greenhouses in which climatical conditions are artificially devised. As Boeri himself explains, the structures “will be one of the main attractions of the Expo”, allowing visitors to “experience a walk in the most typical and extreme landscapes of the planet” (namely wet tropical, dry tropical and desert)133. Within the structures, mountains, dunes and forests will be built, depicting the whole world through a representation of its landscapes. More than 50 meters tall (16 floors of a conventional apartment building), and with their sharp, eccentric and unconventional designs, the greenhouses, will “not only allow people to travel among the climates and vegetations of the planet”; beyond that, they will “also offer great formative, scientific and entertaining experiences”134, which (in their truest hopes at least) will continue to be active even after the event’s accomplishment.

Thanks to Expo 2015, Milan will be able to create the create the first Planetary Garden. This will be a new kind of landscape which has to be conserved as it is when the event will be over…The great legacy of Expo 2015 for Milan, Italy and for Europe consists in creating a prototype for a new peri-urban rurality: an exemplary place which is both unique and revolutionary, and which could also change the future for many other world cities. 135 Stefano Boeri, ‘Arguments for a Planetary Garden’

129

Expo 2015 S.p.A., Master Plan presentation, April, 2010, Teatro Strehler, Milan, http://en.expo2015.org/sites/default/files/rich_text_editor/pagine_standard/allegati/100423_presentazione260410 _en.pdf (accessed 15-06-12) 130 EXPO 2015 S.p.A., ‘The Exhibition Site’, May, 2012, http://en.expo2015.org/sites/default/files/rich_text_editor/pagine_standard/120508_masterplan_web_eng_r_1.pdf 131 Ross Adams, ‘Longing for a greener present. Neoliberalism and the eco-city’ in Radical Philosophy, Vol. 163, September/October, 2010, p. 3 132 Feeding the Planet, Energy For Life – the Conceptual Master Plan and Planning Office, http://en.expo2015.org/press-area/press-releases/feeding-planet-energy-life-conceptual-master-plan-andplanning-office (accessed 15-06-12) 133 Stefano Boeri, ‘Expo Milano 2015’ presentation at the BIE in Paris, 1st July 2011, http://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/?p=3245 (accessed 23-06-12) 134 Stefano Boeri, ‘Expo Milano 2015’ presentation at the BIE in Paris, 1st July 2011, http://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/?p=3245 (accessed 23-06-12) 135 Stefano Boeri, ‘Arguments for a Planetary Garden’ in Abitare, Vol. 503, 2010, p. 9

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Aftermaths

It is precisely in this moment that the issue becomes controversial. Eco claims “the paradox in an exposition is that buildings, which are supposed to last just a few months, look as if they have survived or will survive for centuries”. Apparently, (either unaware or uninterested) he didn’t really take the aspect into consideration; rather he was preoccupied by the opposite effect, and indeed his last statement gives us testimony of it. Still though, and in every great event (cfr. with the latest Olympics), today, it is impossible to overlook the question of the legacy, in all its ramifications. As it not only is amongst the main reasons why municipalities still strive to host an Expo (as we explained within the first section), but also the most debated feature when it comes to being polemic of it. As Boeri himself has put it, the “innovative Thematic-Scientific Park will be one of the main legacies of EXPO 2015 to the city of Milan and Italy”136; meaning that once the event has come to an end, the buildings we’ve just mentioned (or indeed, the landscape features—for whatever the difference) will remain where they first stood. In his mind, as indeed in the minds of every organizing member, the Expo will continue to be “a place of entertainment, study and knowledge sharing” long after the event’s accomplishment. And even more, it will “lay the basis for a whole new district of the city…around a large open, green and productive area of land”137.

Let it be clear that it is not here that we shall argue whether the material or immaterial benefits such Expo is committed to will ultimately be fruitful; newspapers from all across the country have already started questioning the ambitious aspirations its commissioners put in place. On our part, we must merely take notice of how this unconditional optimism has continued to affirm itself in the genealogy of Expos (again, Milan is but the ultimate reenactment). And even more, we must reflect on how today, it is architecture that comes to terms with this condition once the event has come to an end. Throughout the text, we have argued how within the exposition (and from a certain moment in time), architecture had the role to represent the ‘living picture’; as we claimed, it was through the architecture of the exposition that the ‘values of a culture’ or, why not, the ‘image of a civilization’ would be communicated to the crowds. At this point though, what arises is that the architecture of the ‘living picture’ has to equally be projective. And as one might expect, this ambition doesn’t come without a number of difficulties.

The urban plan of the E42 has its own particular character, which differentiates this exposition from those all over the world that have come before it. The plan of this great exhibition of civilization, which Italy will offer on occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Fascism, goes hand in hand with the plan for a new monumental quarter of Rome.

Marcello Piacentini, 1938

136

Stefano Boeri, ‘Expo Milano 2015’ presentation at the BIE in Paris, 1st July 2011, http://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/?p=3245 (accessed 23-06-12) 137 Feeding the Planet, Energy For Life – the Conceptual Master Plan and Planning Office, http://en.expo2015.org/press-area/press-releases/feeding-planet-energy-life-conceptual-master-plan-andplanning-office (accessed 15-06-12)

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Figure 17. EUR, Rome

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Figure 18. Palazzo dei Congressi, EUR, Rome

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The context is a different one and yet the words remain unaltered. In Milan, “the EXPO will…leave the city the gift of a site that for years to come will celebrate”138 its fundamental message. In Mussolini’s exposition, the very same buildings which commemorated Fascism, still today stand as the testimonies of its initial aspirations. As Corrado Augias argues, “this permanence was not really as novel as was claimed”. Already in many previous editions “the tendency to use an exposition to build something useful for the city was fairly common”. In Paris, for instance, “the Grand and the Petit Palais were built for the expo of 1900, and the Pont Alexandre III…was also constructed for the same event”; even more, “the Palais du Trocadéro, across the river from the Eiffel Tower”139 or the much discussed Palais de Tokyo, were also built for expos prior to the 1942. Yet what makes the story of the E42 in Rome a particularly interesting one, is that (as we’ve seen) the architecture of the exposition had never even functioned for the purpose it had been planned for (or in Eco’s words, its primary function).

After the break-out of World War II and the consequent downfall of the Fascist regime, the site stood in abandonment for the following ten years. It was only in 1951 in fact, that under the initiative of Virgilio Testa, the representational and exhibitory functions of the area planned under Mussolini, had slowly been converted to more feasible solutions. The buildings initially planned to be the epitome of Fascism, would ultimately be occupied “the ministries of Finance and Communications, the Central State Archives” and the headquarters of many other public entities. And beyond that, a number of initiatives took place within the area in a deliberate attempt to make amends for its unchastity: in 1953, for instance, and mainly via the Agriculture Exhibit, the site was reconceived as if a periurban “park-city” and connected with an underground; by 1960, new structures had been built to host the next coming Olympic Games (the most famous being Pier Luigi Nervi’s Palazzo dello Sport); in time, the city would embrace it in its growth making it just another fragment of its ongoing expansion. Yet no matter how effectual the compensatory missions, the original impression stayed unquestionably present.

Conceived as the embodiment of a political depravity, its architecture could not flee from its primordial propositions. Despite the powerless attempts which have been made to disregard its connotations, the buildings were still ‘stuck’ to their determinative viewpoints. As director Federico Fellini himself has explained in an interview from 1973140, the pictorial dimension to which the EUR aspired, never allowed for different standpoints to overturn its single-handedness—as in a Wagnerian gesamtkunswerk (of which ironically, Hitler was an admirer), the quarter was concealed from the surrounding state of things, even though encompassed by a number of new buildings. It is a stage-set, Fellini argues, in which there can be no relations but those established by the author. And in the end, that is also why the district had attracted him to shoot a number of his movies. Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio, is but one of the productions in which the Maestro brings the complex into play with his own story. By making use of its theatrical connotations, the EUR becomes setting of a sarcastic caricature in which morality and customs are continuously made fun of. The paradox though, lies precisely in the fact that whilst a stage set is a temporary structure, the life of which is consequent to the success of a performance (or why not, an interpretation), the EUR is 138 Feeding the Planet, Energy For Life – the Conceptual Master Plan and Planning Office, http://en.expo2015.org/press-area/press-releases/feeding-planet-energy-life-conceptual-master-plan-andplanning-office (accessed 15-06-12) 139 Corrado Augias, The Secrets of Rome. Love and death in the eternal city, Rizzoli Ex Libris, New York, USA, 2007, p. 379 140 Marcello Piacentini quoted in Corrado Augias, The Secrets of Rome. Love and death in the eternal city, Rizzoli Ex Libris, New York, USA, 2007, p. 379

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conceived to be a permanent scenography; meaning that no matter how worn-out the fundamental propositions, its architecture is doomed to come to terms with them adinfinitum.

Today, all we are left with, is the corpse of an ambition which, to the casual eye at least, has never even been fulfilled. As if a dream which halfway through fell to the breadth of its own magnitude, the quarter stands as testimony of the shortcoming of its prospects. Conceived as a representation of what today no longer ‘is’, the perpetuity it longed for was undermined by its own qualities (namely, its ambition to be the ‘living picture’ of a particular moment in time). And as Fellini himself explains, part of the fascination one might have for the EUR is consequent to the decadence this stone idol expresses. At the same time though, one must recall how expositions still continue to advance their propositions as if the values they encourage will remain ‘for years to come’. In Milan, as we discussed, this procedure has once more been re-presented in the belief it will pay off. Let it be said though that it is useless to be pessimist on what the aftermaths might be. Only time will give us evidence of how the process will unravel. Today, all we can do is raise a number of interrogatives on this Panglossian line of reasoning. And perhaps, in this perspective, Fellini’s sardonic interpretation of what was considered to be the paradigm of the Fascist exposition in 1942 (namely, the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana), might be itself reconsidered to be more than just a mockery.

Convention has it sarcasm and hope cannot dine at the same table. In time to come, we shall bear witness to whether the stereotype is true.

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Figure 19. Still from Federico Fellini, Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio in Boccaccio ’70, 1969

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Expo 2015 Milan, http://www.expo2015.org/masterplan Figure 2, 19. Still from Federico Fellini, Le Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio in Boccaccio ’70, 1969 Figure 3. Expo 2015, Milano, Roberto Formigoni, http://www.lapresse.it/cronaca/expo-formigoni-da-domani-awashinghton-per-presentazione-a-governi-g8-1.163255 (accessed 17-05-12) Figure 4. Expo 2015, Milano, Letizia Moratti, http://cronaca.liquida.it/focus/2011/06/15/letizia-moratti-sidimette-dalla-carica-di-commissario-speciale-del-governo-per-l-expo-2015/ (accessed 15-09-12) Figure 5. Expo 2015, Milano, Apples, http://www.expo2015.org/il-tema (accessed 10-09-12) Figure 6. Giuliano Pisapia Major of Milan, at Expo Days 2012, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150803568479480&set=a.10150803460334480.403108.314888 134479&type=3&theater (accessed 25-08-12) Figure 7. Figure 7. The Great Exhibition, London 1851, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crystal_Palace__interior.jpg (accessed 06-09-12) Figure 8. The Italian Pavillion at The New York’s World Fair, 1939, http://www.studyblue.com/notes/note/n/ah398-final/deck/885953 (accessed 11-06-12) Figure 9. E42, Rome prior to 1938 in Adachiara Zevi, Una guida all’architettura moderna dell’Eur, Iacobelli, Rome, Italy, 2008, p. 14 Figure 10. Competition entry for the Palazzo della Civiltá Italiana in Adachiara Zevi, Una guida all’architettura moderna dell’Eur, Iacobelli, Rome, Italy, 2008, p. 123 Figure 11. E42, Rome between 1939 and 1941, in Giuseppe Pagano, Pagano, Giuseppe. ‘Potremo mai salvarci dalle false tradizioni e dalle ossessioni monumentali?’ in Casabella-Costruzioni, Vol. 157, 1941, p. 5 Figure 12. Winning scheme for the Palazzo della Civiltá Italiana, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:QuadroPalazzo_Civilt%C3%A0_Italiana.jpg (accessed 13-08-12) Figure 13. Placard E42, Rome, http://ritacharbonnier.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/la-roma-del-ventennio.html (accessed 15-05-12) Figure 14. Placard E42, Rome, http://www.secretplacesitaly.net/2011/07/e42-rome.html (accessed 15-05-12) Figure 17. EUR, Rome, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Eur_aereo_edit.JPG (accessed 0605-12) Figure 18. Palazzo dei Congressi, EUR, Rome, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mfphoto2007/3199499852/sizes/l/in/photostream/ (accessed 22-05-12)

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Bibliography Adams, Ross. ‘Longing for a greener present. Neoliberalism and the eco-city’ in Radical Philosophy, Vol. 163, September/October, 2010 Augias, Corrado. The Secrets of Rome. Love and death in the eternal city, Rizzoli Ex Libris, New York, USA, 2007 Baudrillard, Jean. The Gulf did not take place, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, USA, 1995 Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations, Schocken Books, New York, USA, 1968 Boeri, Stefano. ‘Arguments for a Planetary Garden’ in Abitare, Vol. 503, 2010 Buck-Morss, Susan. ‘Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Walter Benjamin's Artwork Essay Reconsidered’ in October, MIT Press, Vol. 62, 1992 Doordan, Dennis P.. ‘The Political Content in Italian Architecture during the Fascist Era’ in Art Journal, Vol. 43, No. 2, ‘Revising Modernist History: The Architecture of the1920s and 1930s’, Summer, 1983 Eco, Umberto. Faith In Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Vintage Books, London, UK, 1995 Harvey, Penelope. Hybrids of Modernity: Anthropology, the Nation State and the Universal Exhibition, Routledge, London, UK,1996 Irwin, Robert. Notes Toward a Conditional Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA, 2011 Jackson, Anna. Expo: International Expositions 1851-2010, V & A Publishing, London, UK, 2008 Levin, David Michael. Modernity and The Hegemony of Vision, University of California Press, London, UK, 1993 Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture. A Reader in Cultural Theory, Routledge, London, UK, 1997 Mitchell, W. J. T.. Picture Theory: Essays on verbal and visual representation, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA, 1994 Murphy, Douglas. The Architecture of Failure, Zero Books, Alresford, UK, 2012 Nelis, Jan. ‘Constructing Fascist Identity: Benito Mussolini and the Myth of "Romanità"’, in The Classical World, Vol.100, No.4, 2007 Nicoloso, Paolo. Mussolini Architetto. Propaganda e paesaggio urbano nell’Italia fascista, Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Turin, Italy, 2008 Nye Jr., Joseph. Soft Power: The means to success in world politics, Public Affairs, New York, USA, 2004 Pagano, Giuseppe. ‘Parliamo un pó di esposizioni’ in Casabella-Costruzioni, Vol. 159-160, 1941 Pagano, Giuseppe. ‘Potremo mai salvarci dalle false tradizioni e dalle ossessioni monumentali?’ in CasabellaCostruzioni, Vol. 157, 1941, pp. 2-7

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Roche, Maurice. Mega-events and modernity: Olympics and expos in the growth of global culture, Routledge, London, UK, 2000 Rogers, Ernesto N.. ‘Un Errore Nazionale’ in Casabella-Continuitá, Vol. 252, 1961 Sloterdijk, Peter. ‘The Crystal Palace’ in In the Global Inner Space of Capital: For a Philosophical Theory of Globalization, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2005, p. 265-76, https://pi.library.yorku.ca/ojs/index.php/public/article/viewFile/30252/27786 (accessed 24-08-12) XML Architecture Research Urbanism, Olympic Cities, XML, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2012 Zevi, Adachiara. Una guida all'architettura moderna dell'EUR, Iacobelli, Rome, Italy, 2008

Websites Abitare – International Design Magazine, http://www.abitare.it/en/ Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) (International Exhibtions Bureau), http://www.bie-paris.org/site/ Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/ World Exposition Milan 2015, Italy, http://www.expo2015.org/ Stefano Boeri Architetti, http://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/ YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/ Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia

Audio Roma: Discorso del 21 Aprile 1939 (Exposizione Universale E42), Benito Mussolini, I grandi discorsi, Vol. 3, Fonotil, Italy, 2010—Translated by the author from Italian

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