La formazione dell’architetto negli Stati Uniti. Un rapido excursus storico

The architecture of the United States has assumed from the nineteenth century a primary role in symbolically representing the European root of American culture and, together, its freedom of development. The essay intends to summarily trace the path through which the figure and profession of the architect in the United States has established itself, lived and changed providing a historical excursus between nineteenth and twenty-first century of the training programs. A characteristic feature of the development of the architect’s academic training in the USA is the explicit role that the most important schools of architecture have soon assumed as vehicles of imperial affirmation of the American culture and of claiming pre-eminence even with respect to European academic institutions. The essay is focused on historical moments that correspond to relevant institutional and conceptual passages in the history of the discipline and of the profile of the architectural profession in US: between the nineteenth and twentieth century, the thirties of the twentieth century; during the Second World War and in the post-war period; in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century; the early nineties at Columbia University in New York; the recent interpretative difficulties of climate change and in the anthropological anxiety that derives from it; the actual cultural and neo-colonial uncertainties of globalization.