1947-1991. Architetti italiani nel Mediterraneo. Istituzioni e Autori / Italian Architects in the Mediterranean. Institutions and Authors

At the end of the World War II, several European States projected throughout the extended Mediterranean – with the political and strategic backup of the United Nations, Development Cooperation, and Ford Foundation – to support the social and economic modernization of less developed countries and former colonies, from North Africa to Iran. Some of the most promising or prestigious architectural-engineering firms opened their local offices in those countries to design and implement development plans, infrastructures, public buildings, and neighborhoods. Most of these programs were soon joined by private entrepreneurial initiatives. These prominent public-private economic and political network of synergies have been scarcely explored as a whole, especially in the Architectural research field, while they are neglected proofs of how the States actively shaped and created markets and steered innovative changes. In recent years some of these projects have been the subject of curatorial researches, publications and exhibitions especially focused on the work of solo architects or of complex cultural phenomenon as Mediterranean modernism, Post-colonial Urbanism. Therefore, there is a lack of in-depth analysis to comprehensively measure the impact – whether positive or negative – of European architectural and urban projects in shaping and inventing the collective identity in the extended Mediterranean. This book intends to recompose – at least at the level of initial investigation – a half-century picture of a cross-disciplinary constellation of Italian (and a brief introduction to the European) technical and intellectual skills, hybridized with the local cultures in the Mediterranean non-European countries, providing unpredicted interpretations compared to the mainstream architectural historiography of the twentieth century. This book has not the ambition to collect a complete Atlas of projects but to raise the discussion around some authors, institutions, developers, design themes and issues to stimulate ideas for Future Scenarios to be elaborated with local peers for the next reconstructions in the Near and Middle East, and North Africa, tackling the issue of the balance between urbanization and geopolitics to enhance urban quality.