Appunti per un confronto tra scuole: Bauhaus, Scuola Superiore di Architettura di Roma e Architectural Association

The School of Architecture of Rome was established by in 1919; in the same year Gropius enters as the founder of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar. The parallel lives of the School of Architecture of Rome and the Bauhaus reveal some stringent timing coincidences that make the comparison mainly full of symmetrical oppositions. Tentatively a more interesting comparison may be proposed between the School of Architecture of Rome and the Architectural Association in London (AA). Coincidences: the date of birth of AA is 1852, the promulgation of the Casati Law is in 1859. Symmetrical oppositions: in northern Italy the cultural competition between the Napoleonic Empire and Austria has deeply implanted in our country the conviction that it's up to the State to define and protect the professional activities and to ensure the relevant practice; England liberal culture grants the arts with a total self-regulation in which successful professionals play a decisive role, not rarely as master. The Architectural Association was founded as a school planned and organized exclusively by young professional novices, as a claim for a cultured vocational training of those who, so far, were considered only apprentices under a boss; In Italy very soon arose the conflict between institutions, i.e. between the Higher Technical Institutes and the Art Academies, or else engineers and architects; in other words between Science and Art. In England immediately arose the conflict between Profession and Art, i.e. between economic interests and the freedom of expression. Further symmetries: the students of London, through the voice of the founders of the new school say: architecture; is nothing but a Fine Art." In Italy Camillo Boito, in those same years, used to say: in the schools of engineering;the young man inclined to the architectural beauty is forced to halt the momentum of his natural talents and rack his brain between rigorous scientific studies; Still a number of symmetries: back in the fifties of the nineteenth century Norman Show and Philip Webb are among the interlocutors of the students of London. The theme is the relationship with history or, better, the problem of the Style: i.e. the need to reject the hegemony of neo-classical and neo-Gothic architecture. In Italy the problem of the Style reflects the spirit of the time, at national or regional level, and is dominant at length, both in Milan and in Rome, through Boito, Giovannoni, and Piacentini, at last. The problem of the Style remains a central one in the London school. Over the time, at the end of the nineteenth century, in 1880, once consolidated its own organizational and financial structure the Architectural Association organized a tour in northern Italy, a renewed Grand Tour that was bound for remaining memorable. John Summerson says that the students came back "drenched with Reinassaince detail" literally imbued with Renaissance details. With English ease the AA seems on a track parallel to that driven by the Italian leaders of the School of Architecture, Gustavo Giovannoni and Vincenzo Fasolo. The symmetries and the very important divergences between the Rome and the London Schools of Architecture is traced in the text until the end of the 30s as a first trace of a tentative research that might be developed in the future.