La tensione verso il “metodo” in Saverio Muratori

The experience carried out by Saverio Muratori between the mid of the Thirties and the end of the Sixties is characterised by the coherence of the theoretical contents, by the tension towards the synthesis of theory and practice, and by the search for a unitary method extended to the speculative, didactic and design activities. In his Architectural Composition courses in Rome, where he dealt with all scales of intervention (from the architectural one, with the “masonry chapel”, the building in reinforced concrete and the one in a historical environment, to the urban one, with the small neighbourhood, the projects of “urban mending” and urban expansion), he verified the experiments he was conducting in parallel in his project design activity (the interventions at E42, the projects for reconstruction, the INA Casa neighborhoods, the specialised buildings in Bologna and Rome) and in his research (the “ studies for an operating history” of Venice and Rome). He looked for a method based on critical judgement, which, in his view, should make up for the loss of the spontaneous approach that characterised systems of knowledge and practice in the pre-modern period.