Friday, January 19, 2018

PROPYLEA OF EUR DISTRICT

PROPILEI DELL'EUR
1963/65 Luigi Moretti (1907/73), Vittorio Ballio Morpurgo (1890/1966), Giovanni Quadarella (1927) e Morpurgo's nephew and pupil Giorgio Santoro
Five floors above ground level and three below
“The design, due to the language of the International Style, is characterized by the gradual lightening of the architectural score from top to bottom, which, according to a Michelangelesque scheme, reverses the traditional compositional hierarchy” (Giorgio Muratore)
“Le Corbusier proposes the horizontal blinds as a rhythmic element that gives the façade a homogeneous configuration by removing the window from the vocabulary of the city. Quite often then the blinds will be free from their original appearance as a box of heavy elements to become a vertical blade with the use of metal. As such it makes an appearance in the late sixties of the last century, in a masterpiece among the least celebrated of modern Italian architecture: the Propylaea of EUR, built by Luigi Moretti. 'The thought of doing a big building - wrote to his friend, the architect Agnoldomenico Pica - that would be violent and present at certain times and even unsubstantial in others, in an endless repetition as a Chinese manuscript, as Greek columns, or as the stochastic arrangement of a façade such as Porta Pia, etc. etc. has led me to concoct that endless rows of vertical elements that at some point you either get tired of seeing, or you have sufficiently understood not to waste more time looking at them” (Paolo Portoghesi)

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