Simple, Masterful Clarity

Taking his cue from Benedetto Croce’s definition of literature, Bruno Zevi divides architecture into “prose architecture” and “poetic architecture”. For Zevi, poetic architecture is unique, non-fungible, giving a glimpse of the future and a perceptive judgement of the past. Prose architecture, on the other hand, is fungible, with no pretense at uniqueness or theatricality, rather seeking to establish a relationship with its surroundings, be these urban or natural. Zevi also rightly asserts that it is wrong to apply the categories and criteria of prose architecture to poetic architecture, and vice versa. The two categories, he holds, are significantly distinct, even if there are several examples of prose architecture that come close to being poetic, albeit discreetly.

In his A Scientific Autobiography (1981), Aldo Rossi sums this up in an insightful sentence: that great architecture possesses the capacity to also be forgettable. Rossi is here intimating that jagged line that separates poetry and prose. Indeed, Italian architectural production of the 1950s and 1960s can be examined in the light of Zevi’s distinction. This was a time when a significant portion of the architecture being produced derived from what was later termed “cultured professionalism”. The term was synonymous for a group of designers trained at universities where modern architecture was being taught for the first time and whose subsequent work was considered not to derive from the application of principles – considered too radical at the time – but from the use of modern forms. All this, it should be underlined, took place against the backdrop of a once rural country being transformed into an industrial nation. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the period of cultured professionalism led to the development of a large market for quality-crafted building components. Ernesto Nathan Rogers, one of the fathers of modern...

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