Is Italy Hostile to Architecture

Italy is a strange country with a very long history but an extremely young and weak state structure. Apart from a few tragic exceptions, such weakness has lasted for 150 years and grown during the republican period. It is also reflected by architecture, that is first and foremost a solid expression of power. Indeed, formal art languages are nourished by the institutions’ political will to express themselves by meaningful works. What is an absolutely necessary condition for the creation of a national architecture is absent here, since only rarely have state leaders had any interest in affirming with force its presence, and even more rarely have citizens perceived the very idea of a national community as a good thing. But this issue is unavoidable: architecture needs a State in order to develop fully, and where there is none, it takes complex and contradictory forms, either merely exemplary or absolutely marginal.