“Rome from the sky”. Architectural drawings in the age of the conquest of the sky

In the centenary of the Italian Air Force, it is significant to analyze retrospectively the role that the diffusion of the experience of flying by plane had on urban and architectural representation. In the years in which it was sieged by taller and taller towers, from Eiffel to King Kong, the sky was also filled with vernacular flying machines, renewing the literary and figurative imagery of semi-divine heroes, winged horses, magical flying carriages that crowd mythology, chivalric poems and the early science-fiction novels. For various reasons, Italy, and Rome in particular, were at the forefront not only of aeronautical research but also of the novel artistic results the experience of flying promoted. A number of futuristic artists explored the visual opportunities of this new mean of transportations, both exalting the shape of the planes and transfiguring the city and landscape seen through their cockpits. After 1922, this new figurative approach, which breaks down the surface of the canvas with trajectories, kinematic lines and nuanced trails that make urban forms dynamic, intertwines with the fascist regime’s needs for self-representation. In this sense, the civil and military fulfillments of the Italian pilots are represented through the lens of figures such as Icarus and Leonardo da Vinci to endorse and place the regime in the wake of century-long tradition. While the social and urban effects of the experience of flight are discussed and theorized by Le Corbusier and Walter Benjamin, tangible consequences can be found in the architectural projects and drawings of some of the Italian architects. Let us take in account the inauguration of Sabaudia on 15 April 1934. The new town city in the Pontine Plain is celebrated by the passage of a flock of fighters from which some photographs are taken. The photographs, which actually become the official representation of the new goal achieved by the regime, are eventually used by the painter Tato to depict Flying Over Sabaudia according to the futuristic style of Aeropittura (“plane-painting”) At the same time, the architects Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini cut out the silhouettes of the fighters to paste them on the photograph of the wooden model of their project for the Palazzo del Littorio near the Colosseum, framed by the sky, of course. This episode testifies of an aptitude for filling the skies with architectural drawings of balloons and airplanes, also useful for conveying not only the specific brand of the regime to the architectural project but also a general idea of modernity and dynamism. Secondly, the image of the fighters refers to an effective point of view, that of the pilot or the technician who takes the photographs, and therefore prefigures the day of the inauguration of the immense office building of the Duce. Thirdly, the photomontage technique attributes verisimilitude to the model, delivering it to the reality to which the airplanes belong. Lastly, it is useless to underline that the view from above brings with it the idea of the planning will of the leader, who, not by chance, had promoted the construction of a bronze colossus with his features in Monte Mario, above "his own" Forum.