Italians New Towns as an Experimental Territory for the Modern Movement in Italy. The case Study of Oriolo Frezzotti and his architecture for public facilities in Littoria, Sabaudia and Pontinia

Abstract

During the 30’s, the Fascist Party achieves its most significant territorial project: the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes and the construction of New Towns.

In the same years starts the debate between modernity and tradition, that will characterize the whole history of modern Italian architecture, and the Fascist party obtains its highest approval trying to breathe life into a new Italian society full of new behaviours. This opens a new parenthesis within the debate of modern Italian architecture that not only has to find its own definition but must also be translated as State’s art. In this scenario, the founding cities of the Agro Pontino became the experimental territory for the Italian architects of the Modern era. The pivotal architect of the New Towns was Oriolo Frezzotti, chosen directly by Mussolini to build in 1932 the first new town, Latina, with a rural character and then in 1935, Pontinia where the architect abandoned the vernacular style to leave space to pure geometric shapes. So Frezzotti, in just two years, changed his language almost drastically, abandoning the architectural forms linked to the traditional rural style and approaching the "horizontal lines", symbol of architecture for human, and the "vertical lines" symbol of dictatorial monumentalism (Zevi 1950, 167) that will characterize the modern Italian architecture. To give the impetus for this transformation was the experience that Frezzotti made in 1934 collaborating on the project for Sabaudia known as the city of Italian rationalism. In light of this, this paper intends to analyse these urban artefacts understood as a tool capable of returning a material history of modern Italian architecture. So, through the urban and architectural analysis of the New towns, so through the study of the debate between rurality and monumentality, this paper intends to give a generic picture of modern Italian architecture.