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Right until the end, Paolo Portoghesi’s life was full of all those ideas, jobs, aspirations, and projects that made him such a multifaceted character and defender of beauty. In fact, when he died, he was still writing a new book about his work, which remains unfinished. The architect, critic, and educator passed away this morning, 30 May 2023, at his home in Calcata, near Rome. He was 92. Towards the end, his thoughts were focused on the future of his marvelous house and garden in the heart of a medieval village near Rome, which he shared for over fifty years with his wife, architect Giovanna Massobrio.
Over the years, many of his projects, positions, and architectural visions placed him in the international spotlight. An example is his own garden in Calcata, where he gave form to his ideas about the value of genius loci, with thematic libraries, fountains, swimming pools, and exotic animals. But he was also the greatest Italian exponent of postmodernism, as well as a long-standing president of the Biennale di Venezia (1983–92) and the first director of its Architecture Biennale (appointed in 1979).
Many of his projects were used as sets in Italian films, such as Casa Papanice, built in Rome in the mid-sixties, which featured in Jealousy, Italian Style, directed by Ettore Scola and starring Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni. Others have been discussed in histories of architecture because of their ability to establish connections between the architecture and its place and history. These include, for example, Casa Baldi, and the residential developments in Enel in Tarquinia, the Aquila Academy of Fine Arts, and the Catanzaro Theater. He also oversaw the projects for the restoration of Piazza del Teatro alla Scala in Milan and the reconfiguration of Piazza San Silvestro in Rome. His projects abroad include homes, gardens, hotels, fast food restaurants, the Strasbourg mosque, and many churches. The Grand Mosque in Rome might be his most famous project.
“If I had to choose the three projects most representative of my work, I’d say the Sacra Famiglia Church in Salerno, the small San Cornelio and Cipriano Church in Calcata, and the Grand Mosque,” said Portoghesi a few years ago during an interview with Ansa. “But all of my projects are a little like my children, and every now and then I pay them a visit.”
In 2016, he donated his materials archive to the Maxxi Museum in Rome. His last work, completed in 2019, was Lamezia Terme Cathedral, a building that seems to sum up all his thoughts on the sacred, with soaring weathering steel bell towers, which cite Gaudì’s Sagrada Famiglia, and a façade that almost seems to embrace the faithful as they enter. Concerned over the worsening state of Casa Papanice, Portoghesi was, in the weeks leading up to his death, working on a manifesto for the conservation of contemporary architecture. “It remains a taboo,” he repeatedly stated, pointing out the responsibility of politicians as well as architects themselves. “Casa Papanice was a return to nature and beauty. It was meant to be distinctly different from the architecture around it. It was meant to be a prophecy of the new city. This was the innovation that, perhaps, is the thing that has been least understood.”
Besides being an architect, Portoghesi lectured for many years at La Sapienza University in Rome and, later, Politecnico di Milano, where he was dean from 1967 through ’79.
Also in ’79, he was appointed director of the Architecture sector of the Venice Biennale. Among numerous initiatives, he was behind the now legendary Strada Novissima exhibition (1980), which left an indelible mark on the history of contemporary architecture and postmodernism.
The organizers of the Venice Biennale fondly recall Portoghesi’s final involvement with the event, which took place last year when he participated in “Il Carnevale Squarcia la Nebbia. Venice, Scaparro, La Biennale 1980, 1981, 1982, 2006,” an exhibition curated by the Biennale’s archival department that celebrated the unforgettable milestones of his work in Venice. With his unmistakably polished and thoughtful style, Portoghesi delivered a lecture during the event. He also presented a lecture at “The Theatre of the World ‘Singular Building. A Tribute to Aldo Rossi,” held as part of the 2010 Biennale.
After his appointment as director of the Architecture sector of the Biennale in 1979, in the same year Portoghesi commissioned Aldo Rossi to build the Teatro del Mondo, moored on the Punta della Dogana in the San Marco Basin, where Biennale Teatro performances were staged under the direction of Maurizio Scaparro. A year later, Portoghesi invited twenty international architects – including Ricardo Bofill, Frank Gehry, Arata Isozaki, Hans Hollein, Rem Koolhaas, Franco Purini, Laura Thermes, Denise Scott-Brown, John Rausch, and Robert Venturi – to design the same number of full-size façades for a 230 foot (70 m) long replica street inside the Corderie dell’Arsenale, marking the first time the venue opened to the public. The exhibition was dubbed Strada Novissima (Extremely new street) and was created for the first International Architecture Exhibition of the Biennale, entitled The Presence of the Past.
While president of the Biennale between 1983 and ’92, Portoghesi appointed many experts to direct the event’s various sectors, including Maurizio Calvesi and Giovanni Carandente (Art sector), Aldo Rossi and Francesco Dal Co (Architecture sector), Gian Luigi Rondi and Guglielmo Biraghi (Cinema sector), Carlo Fontana and Sylvano Bussotti (Music sector), and Franco Quadri and Carmelo Bene (Theater sector).
“With Paolo Portoghesi, Italy has lost an incomparable master of postmodern architecture. His art, his insights, his genius will remain forever a part of the heritage of architecture, which he lived and practiced not only to create beauty but also to create works that were unique.” With these words, the president of Veneto, Luca Zaia, expressed his condolences for the death of the great architect. “Veneto will retain a concrete memory of him and his prestigious presence, beginning with the direction of the Architecture sector of the Venice Biennale, to which he was appointed in 1979, and through to the construction of the Teatro nel Mondo, which he entrusted to Aldo Rossi and was created on a boat moored in the San Marco Basin, which then sailed on to Dubrovnik. And then Treviso, with the Latin Quarter and Palazzo Bortolan. To his family, to the world of architectural art, and to all those who knew and admired him, I express my deepest condolences.”
“Historian, critic, architect, and author of seminal essays for architectural education, Paolo Portoghesi – to whom we gave the Italian Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021 together with the Maxxi Museum – was a great humanist of architecture. His works have influenced the last seventy years of world architecture,” said the president of Triennale Milano, Stefano Boeri.
“This is a great and painful loss for architecture and culture. He was a friend, a master, and an intellectual who always helped defend beauty,” said the president of the Order of Architects of Rome and Province, Alessandro Panci. “This is a huge loss for the country and for Rome, its capital. The lesson he taught on architecture will remain a cornerstone for all of us – professionals, lovers of architecture, and the community.”
Portrait courtesy of Triennale Milano
