Sapienti Romane. Pioneers and Heirs at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome

Currently chaired by a woman, Professor Anna Maria Giovenale, the Faculty of Architecture "Sapienza" in Rome was the first created in Italy in 1920. Although briefly discerned in ‘Ludovico Quaroni’ and ‘Valle Giulia’ didactic units (today reunited in one single institution), the two branches of Rome1 stand out from the most recent Rome3, as the cradle of the Roman School of Architecture. However, even if its own identity has never been codified in an official statute, it is possible to recover its historical character and to reflect upon its modernity. Differently from Florence, Milan and Venice, the ‘School of Rome’ did not constitute a united front and it did not outline a unique "tendency". Nevertheless, it is unquestionable that the presence in the school, of prominent figures like Marcello Piacentini, Gustavo Giovannoni, Adalberto Libera, Bruno Zevi, Ludovico Quaroni and Manfredo Tafuri have traced several well-defined paths and left a complex inheritance, absorbed by the later generations and metabolized in a diversified language. Among the pioneers and heirs, female architect graduated during almost a hundred years of didactic activity represent an ever-increasing percentage. About them, nothing has been said as a group yet, and therefore it is particularly interesting to study its increase and inflections, but, above all, their outcomes. How many women have enrolled and how many have completed their studies since 1920? How was the comparison with their male colleagues? How was their placement in the professional world? How many of them have become teachers? What characters of the "Roman school" can be traced in their architecture and in their teachings? What were their reference models? What are the difficulties they still face today? Questions like these need wide-ranging answers, based on statistical data and on the deepening of some remarkable study cases. The aim of the research is to provide a wide frame of women graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Rome and comparing the different generational outcomes by pondering the historical fate of the pioneers and by collecting the personal experiences of the heirs with a series of direct interviews.