ARQUITECTURA E REGIME EM ITÁLIA E PORTUGAL. OBRAS PÚBLICAS NO FASCISMO E NO ESTADO NOVO (1928-1948)

Abstract

The present PhD thesis has as its main object, research and analysis, the study of the relationships between Italian and Portuguese architecture, in two decades between 1928 and 1948: from a historical point of view, in fact, Italy and Portugal lived a similar political context, characterized by two dictatorial regimes, respectively, by Mussolini in Italy (1922-43) and by Salazar in Portugal (1928-74). The architectural production financed by the government - in public works - put in place by the two countries to respond to a new reorganization of the state, presents links and common points, where the main was the "creation" or "invention" of a nationalist modernity. Starting from political, diplomatic, and cultural relations, and from the impulse of some important figures - as Antonio Ferro and Duarte Pacheco - we can highlight some formal and programmatic affinities, as well as linguistic choices that were decisive to characterize an architecture of dictatorship. In particular, the thesis tries to analyze and clarify a deterministic reading given by the Portuguese historiography, that is the link with a "fascist" architecture coming from Italy (and from Germany). Respect to this consolidated assumption - of a purely and apparently formal similarity, the attempt has been to clarify which, when and how these relations between the two countries in the field of architecture have intertwined, which always responded to a hegemony policy. Furthermore, if these relations really existed, and - if so - how they have materialized in the Public Works, that are representative of the regime. The central point of the argumentative structure of the present work, was not "isolating" the architecture built from its political context and from the close link with the underlying ideology, in the idea that the decisions werw related to the construction of an identity and a collective memory; that is, a concept of "nationalism" declined, in the respective countries, in terms of "fascist" and "salazarist". Relations between Portuguese architects and modern Italian architecture were "filtered" through study trips in Italy, the diffusion of architecture in the magazines of the sector, direct contacts between architects during exhibitions and congresses: a set of facts, later translated into the built works, which demonstrate how the example of modern Italian architecture is not limited to timely episodes but constitutes a wider affair that interested, above all, public works, with a language response reworked according to the "specificity" "of the two countries. In fact, it will emerge that the complex of relations between Italy and Portugal is characterized as a continuity, which, although with different variations, goes through the entire 20th century. Keywords: Architecture; Modern; Dictatorship; Italy; Portugal; Fascism; New State