13 hours ago

141 — Bruno Zevi's 'The Modern Language of Architecture'

In the second episode of our 'Language' trilogy, we discussed Bruno Zevi's 'The Modern Language of Architecture', first published in Italian as 'Il linguaggio moderno dell'architettura' in 1978, partly in response to Summerson's 'The Classical Language of Architecture' the subject of our previous episode.

Zevi is a fascinating figure in 20th century Italian culture and politics. From a Roman Italian-Jewish family, he studied under Walter Gropius at Havard during the 30s and 40s due to Mussolini's anti-semitic fascist regime. He returned after the war and became a professor in Venice and Rome, a fervent advocate of a particular form of humanist modernism against rectilinear standardisation, symmetry and a classicising return to the past, which he viewed as a symptom of fascist continuity in Italian society. In later years he served as a politician in various heterodox leftist parties.

In the final episode of this trilogy, out soon, we will discuss 'The Language of Post-Modern Architecture' by Charles Jencks.

To follow along with the images of this episode, you can watch it on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/HY3yZs9KbQ8

Edited by Matthew Lloyd Roberts.

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