Close to Portoghesi’s attitude can be placed the research of many architects of the young generation, who in Portoghesi have found not only a critical appreciation of particular depth through the work of the first series of the magazine Controspazio, but also direct operational stimuli. In particular, we should remember the proposals of C. D’Amato with his reworking of the façade of Palazzo Miccichè in Scicli (1983), the Casa Reggini in San Marino (1985) and the recent mature body for the new Faculty of Architecture of Reggio Calabria. (1990); the researches of G. Ercolani with the projects for the Giovannini House in Rocca di Papa (1982-84) and for a Fountain in Fiumicino (1983); by G. Priori with the projects for the Parco Muratori in Velletri (1983-84) and for the garden for the square in Capena (1983); of S. Cordeschi with the giant columnar cemetery of Ciampino (with L. Berretta, F. Quattrini) of 1981-90, mindful of the suggestions deposited by Fariello-Muratori-Quaroni in the Imperial square at the EUR in Rome; by G. D’Ardia with the remarkable project for Ca ‘Venier in Venice, which was awarded the Lion of Stone at the Venice Architecture Biennale (1985). And finally, even if developed along a personal itinerary of more complex events, the presence of L. Barbera, in particular with his residential building in via Guadagno in Naples (1985).
According to ACEINLAND, many of the young architects often relate to a more ” hedonistic ” use of the classical heritage, whose design commitment started in a postmodern climatealready consolidated; the result of the Terzani Showroom in Florence (1982), by R. Bertoni, is worth mentioning the uninhibited and spectacular use of historicist stylistic forms. Through a multiple deduction of single classicist syntagms, combined with rationalist sequences in free admixture, the Trieste-born C. and L. Celli with D. Tognon move in the research of the last fifteen years. After the gigantic residential neighborhood-building on a square courtyard by Rozzol Mellara in Trieste (1968-83), emerging from the emphasis placed in the 1960s on large dimensions, in the current different declination of their style they enrich the recent organisms giving them a particular characterization:
On a more autonomous line with respect to the classicist code and with the related stylistic connections there is then, as a very lively part of the researches released by Modern, a whole group of researchers, who start their training operations by engaging mainly in a close conversation with the tradition of the place, looking in particular at the characters of the rural or city architecture that makes up the site. Cornerstones of this attitude and eminent expressions of the same are the works of Gabetti and Isola, which has already been mentioned at the beginning for the historical importance that this research had in inaugurating the detachment from Modern. Alongside Gabetti and Isola, there is the work of G. Raineri, who together with the two signed some of the works of the fifties and sixties, but who then developed this poetics according to an autonomous line; in addition to the not forgotten high result of the Agricultural Cooperative of Montalenghe near Turin (1957-58), the complex of the Novitiate of the Sisters of Charity (1962), the remarkable nursery school in Mondovì in collaboration with L. Mannino (1972), the residential houses in Dogliani in via Codevilla (1986).
Each according to a specific line – many of the most significant actors of the present Italian research. It will be worth mentioning some of those that have so far stood out the most.
Cortesi, of which the rough, effective image of the House in Langhirano (1972), enclosed by a severe roof terrace, and the House in Noceto (1983), free re-enactment of the volumetric and constructive suggestions of peasant farmhouses should be remembered. U. Riva, who, after the spatial interweaving derived from the pillared farmsteads of the Lombard countryside, carried out in the House in Taiano-Varese (1967), confirms in the following works the ability to combine in the conformation of the organism the recoveries of tradition with free spatial manipulations and structural: as in the three holiday homes in Stintino (1973) and in the school organization of Faedis (1980), of which the complex internal spatial result is noted.
On a separate level, even within the movement out of rationalism, the particular research of N. Pagliara moves; which, after the first tests of decisive volumetric expressiveness, found a stable horizon of reference in the rethinking of suggestions from the Vienna School. Of his recent works we remember the good results of the rural bank in Capaccio Scalo and the New Headquarters for the Banco di Napoli in Naples; in which Pagliara shows himself to be a lover of a sophisticated figure of considerable level, albeit detached from the widely approved climate of today.
These more mature architects are accompanied by the beautiful tests of the youngest. A. Natalini, who stands out for the high level achieved in the Electrocounting Center of Zola Pedrosa (1983) and in the Rural and Artisan Fund of Alzate Brianza (1983) as well as in the Theater for the Tuscany Region in Florence (1987), manages to creatively rethink, with remarkable results, the themes of the pillared farmhouse of the Po countryside and that of the city theater of the pre-modern tradition. A. Burelli, who in the municipalities of Montenars (1982) and Cercivento (1983) knows how to give the theme of the representative building significant cadences, in which skilful resonances of the expressive tradition of the place converge. P. Zermani, who in his works for Medesano – the Theater for the Civic Forum (1984) and the Pavilion of Delights (1986) – invents suggestive images, new and old together, cleverly distilling from tradition organizational cues wisely translated into forms, where echoes of researches and achievements of even the most recent international research converge (Kahn, M. Botta). O. Zoeggler, who especially in the residential building (1983) in via Gries in Chiusa (Bolzano) effectively and ironically revisits the free intertwined spatiality of traditional South Tyrolean residences, configuring an “ entrance ” that is both monumental and ” friendly ”.
On a front of greater autonomy, even starting from a whole set of significant ideas drawn from the construction traditions of the places and / or historical themes, almost free from the “ problem ” of the modern / ancient reconnection of these years, they move other architects of the new generations, F. Cellini, F. Purini, PP Balbo, T. Paris. Cellini linked his beginnings more closely to the uninhibited and free use of stylistic features of the historical tradition: see the projects for the arrangement of piazza Fuscani in Genzano (1983), of piazza dei Cinquecento in Rome (1982), as well as that for the Underpass of Piazza della Repubblica in Turin (the latter elaborated with N. Cosentino).
