Giuseppe Pagano: Design for Social Change in Fascist Italy

By Flavia Marcello

Giuseppe Pagano-Pogatschnig (1896–1945) was a twentieth-century polymath operating at the intersection between architecture, media, design and the arts. He was an exhibition and furniture designer, curator, photographer, editor, writer and architect. A dedicated Fascist turned Resistance fighter, he was active in Italy’s most dramatic social and political era.

Giuseppe Pagano provides a comprehensive overview of the influential architect and his contribution to the development of modern architecture. It follows a central biographical line with in-depth, mini chapter contributions on aspects of Pagano’s cultural production, concluding with writings by Pagano himself and a critical bibliography to aid scholars in further study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781789381016

Flavia Marcello

Flavia Marcello is associate professor at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia. She has had industry experience as a professional development manager at the Australian Institute of Architects and as a curriculum development consultant at Box Hill Institute in Mont Albert.

Book preview

First published in the UK in 2020 by

Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2020 by

Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,

Chicago, IL 60637, USA

Copyright © 2020 Intellect Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas

Copy editor: MPS Technologies

Production manager: Mareike Wehner

Typesetting: Holly Rose, Contentra Technologies

Cover image: Giuseppe Pagano, Self-portrait in front of Bocconi University, undated.

Black-and-white photograph. Giuseppe Pagano photographic archive, Naples.

By kind permission Professor Cesare de Seta.

Print ISBN: 978-1-78938-100-9

ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78938-102-3

ePub ISBN: 978-1-78938-101-6

Printed and bound by Severn, UK.

To find out about all our publications, please visit www.intellectbooks.com.

There, you can subscribe to our e-newsletter, browse or download our current catalogue, and buy any titles that are in print.

This is a peer-reviewed publication.

To Marta, Francis and the First Book.

Frontispiece

Tomorrow I will think of Death

Tomorrow I will think of Death

then I will go through this door

and I will say: Officers, Sirs, attention!

and many soldiers will

present arms

some of them may laugh

but I will not notice.

My friends will chat

of small daily matters

while following me

to the cemetery.

It’s no use warning them: do not come!

They will come.

And will come even from far away

and will talk of secret things

that I will never know:

train connections

or plans for new cities.

If they would only sneer when thinking of me

still alive, foul-mouthed and vulgar,

then I would still feel present

like when I was talking with them

of shit and of love and art.

Once I was a ripe egg.

But it will be good not to hear Paola’s cry.

It will be so, so thin and it will curse God

Giuseppe Pagano¹

Figure 0.1 // Giuseppe Pagano, self-portrait, Brescia Prison, 1944 on the 97th day of my accursed capture, pen drawing on paper, 1944. Costruzioni Casabella 195/198. Fascicolo speciale dedicato all’architetto Giuseppe Pagano (1947): 10.

Contents

Frontispiece

Contents

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Introduction: A Rebel with a Cause

Pagano Controcorrente

Pagano the Collaborator

Pagano the Coherent

The Life and Times of a Fascist Polymath

Chapter 1: Pagano the Young Man: The Formation of an Idealist from Poreč to Turin (1896–1926)

Poreč–Trieste August 1896 – September 1909: Early Childhood and Teenage Years

Pagano the Soldier and the ‘Adventure’ of World War I

Trieste – Parenzo, June 1919: Founding Fascism and a Call to Action

Chapter 2: Pagano the Architect: Architecture as a Force for Social Change (1927–1941)

Pagano the Architect

Turin, September 1920: Pagano at Turin Polytechnic

Pagano and his Colleagues: The Relationship with Modern Architecture

Pagano and Levi Montalcini: A Productive Partnership

Villa Colli

Palazzo Gualino

Turin, 1930: Fascism and the City I

Biella and Rome, 1933: Architecture and Education

Florence and Trieste, 1934: The National Competitions

Milan, 1939: Fascism and the City II

Biella 1939: Industrial Architecture

Milan, 1941: Architecture and Education II

Chapter 3: Pagano the Writer: The Voice for an Alternative Modernism (1930–1943)

Milan, 1930: The Move from Turin

Milan, 1930: Pagano the Writer

Casabella’s Editorial Team: Mutual Affection and Esteem

Edoardo Persico: Brothers in Arms

Casabella: In Context – The Italian Journal Scene

Quadrante: Bardi’s Radical Voice

Architettura: Piacentini’s Conservative Voice

Domus: Ponti’s Conciliatory Voice

History, Transformation, Evolution

Architecture as a Force for Social Change: Pagano’s Central Themes

Modern Italian Architecture

‘Small a’ Architecture: Rural and Industrial Vernaculars

Materials and Technology

Housing

European and North American Architecture

The Modernity–Tradition Debate

Tirana, 1941: Casabella under Siege

Chapter 4: Pagano the Exhibition Designer: Art in the Service of an Idea (1928–1940)

Architects and Exhibitions

Propaganda and Persuasion: Exhibitions and the Fascist Political Agenda

Pagano’s Progress: Exhibitions as Historical Milestones of Art and Civilization

Starting Out: The Turin National Exposition of 1928 and the Italian Pavilion at the Liège Expo of 1930

A Celebration of Material: Pagano’s Pavilions at the Milan Trade Fair

What is Modern Architecture? The 1933 Milan Triennale

‘An Exaltation of Courage and The Mind’: The Aeronautics Exhibition of

Modern Architecture Victorious: The 1936 Milan Triennale

Modern Architecture by Contraband: The Italian Pavilion at the Paris Expo of 1937

The Death of Rationalism: The Rome International Exposition of 1942 (E42/EUR)

A Renaissance Man Revisited: The Leonardo Exhibition of 1939

Where did Modern Architecture Go?: The 1939/40 Milan Triennale

Exhibitions: The Last Bastions of Modern Architectural Expression

Chapter 5: Pagano the Photographer: Snapshots of the Real Italy (1935–1943)

The Architect’s Eye

Italian Photography in the 1930s

The Image Hunter

‘Rural and Heroic Horizons’: The Photographs for the Vernacular Architecture Exhibition

Pagano’s Photographic Archive: A Resource for the Future

Capturing the Real Italy

Rome

Corfu, 1941: Destruction and Hope

Chapter 6: Pagano The Fighter: The Life and Death of a Partisan From Milan to Mauthausen (January 1941–April 1945)

Milan, January 1941: Turning Points

Pagano the Soldier: War and Disillusionment from the Front

An Architect in Captivity

An Architect in Exile

Chapter 7: Giuseppe Pagano, Polemical Photographer

Aid to Understanding

The Exhibitable Photograph

The Critical Photograph

Chapter 8: Elemental Housing: Giuseppe Pagano’s Neorealist Ethos

A Brief Retrospective

The Prison-House of an Architect

Building Information Sheets

Pavilions for the Italian National Exposition, Turin, 1928 (Esposizione Nazionale Italiana)

Chemistry Pavilion, Italian National Exposition, Turin, 1928

Forestry, Hunting and Fishing Pavilion; Gancia Pavilion, Turin, 1928

Mining and Ceramics Pavilion; Navy and Air Force Pavilion (Italian National Exposition), Turin, 1928

Receptions and Fashion Pavilion, Italian National Exposition, Turin, 1928

Palazzo Gualino, also known as Palazzo Salpa Italia, 1930

Villa Colli, Rivara Canavese, 1931

Steel Structure House, 1933 Milan Triennale

Physics Building, Città Universitaria, Rome

Offices for the newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia’s headquarters, 1934

Aeronautics Exhibition, 1934, Palazzo dell’Arte, Milan

Boarding School, Biella, 1936

Architecture Pavilion, 1936 Milan Triennale

Exhibition of Vernacular Architecture (L’Architettura rurale nel Bacino del Mediterraneo), 1936

Hall of Honour and Interiors of the Italian Pavilion, Paris International Exposition of 1937

Green Milan (Milano Verde) Urban Design Project, Milan, 1938

Structure Plan for the Rome International Exposition of 1942 (E42)

Bocconi University, Milan

Leonardo Exhibition, Palazzo dell’Arte, Milan, 1939

Exhibition of Mass Production, Milan Triennale, 1939/1940

Rivetti Wool Mills, Biella

Anthology of Writings

Writings on Modern Italian Architecture

The benefits of modern architecture, regarding a new construction in Como

Italian Architecture of the Year XIV (1934)

Palazzo del Littorio: act one, scene one

A Solemn Paternal Sermon

Writings on Photography

An invitation to tourism

Hunter of images

Personal Writings

Letter to an unknown friend, 1919

Excerpt from diary

Poems, c. 1943–1944

Final Letters from Mauthausen, April 1945

To his wife, Paola Perego

To his brother, Biagio [Zanetto] Pogatschnig

To his friend and colleague, Giancarlo Palanti

List of Illustrations

References

Filmography

Endnotes

Index

Acknowledgements

Ian Woodcock for reading every word (even more than once) and always being there.

Claudio Marcello, my translating touchstone and my ‘colleagues’ at the Word Reference Italian-English Forum for dealing with the trickiest bits.

My research assistants Aidan Carter, Larissa Ellen, Brandon Gardiner and Petra Cipriani. Jayden Ryles Smith and Ben Chavez for the cover design and graphic layout.

My ‘writing buddy’ Simone Taffe and all the wonderful colleagues at the FHAD writing workshops and retreats who can now stop asking about whether I am ‘still banging on about Pagano’.

Professor Cesare De Seta for his encouragement and support and patience with my many questions on the photographic archive.

The staff in all the many libraries and archives I have traipsed around over the years gathering material for this: the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Library at the American Academy in Rome, the Biblioteca del Progetto at the Milan Triennale Foundation and the Biblioteca dell’Arte in Milan, the Royal Institute of British Architects Library in London, the Archivio Centrale di Stato in Rome, the Piacentini Archives in Florence and the Archivio Storico della Città di Torino.

And finally the peer reviewers who helped me make a better book.

This book was made possible by thanks to Lovell Chen, 6 Degrees, Fairbank + Lau Architects and the Swinburne School of Design Strategic Start up Fund.

Foreword

Cesare de Seta

I dislike ‘replay style’ prefaces, those that simply repeat what the author says, as a sign of respect. In fact, the material gathered here by Flavia Marcello is analytical and very rich in detail, outlining a profile of the exceptional life and personality of Giuseppe Pagano. The scholar weaves a complex canvas with mastery and passion, with the support of respected colleagues. All authors love Pagano and thus they echo what Benedetto Croce wrote: ‘if you don’t love the subject of your interests, you are better off renouncing it’. My task is not a simple one so I will focus on two themes: Pagano’s relationship with Persico and the fate of his archives.

I will start with the relationship between Giuseppe Pagano (1896–1945) and Edoardo Persico (1900–1936), two gifted, yet radically different personalities. Pagano was a Fascist of the first hour, an Istrian subject of Emperor Franz Joseph who fought in the Great War within the Italian ranks. Then he was among the legionnaires in the Fiume adventure commanded by the soldier-poet Gabriele d’Annunzio who, nevertheless, Pagano never liked. Their personalities were also very different and they only agreed on their common aim to give the Dalmatian territories back to Italy.

Then Pagano moved to Turin, where he graduated from architecture school. Soon after he met Edoardo Persico who, at the young age of 23, had been attracted to that city by the charismatic personality of anti-Fascist leader Piero Gobetti whose magazines Persico had contributed to from when he was a young man in his native Naples. Persico held very deep Christian sentiments but he was a secular man. The two were aged only four years apart, but the younger Persico, thanks to his rich culture and his diverse and desultory interests, was the mentor: like Virgil for Dante.

Pagano successfully began his professional activity in Turin and made his mark by embracing modernity thanks to a commission from businessman Riccardo Gualino to design the Palazzo Gualino with Gino Levi Montalcini. Gualino was an industrialist and anti-Fascist intellectual who made his home into a centre of avant garde culture and was later sentenced to internal exile for three years. Persico, on the contrary, could barely manage to survive in the ‘cubic city’, first as a humble factory worker at FIAT then later as an editor of important works by authors like Lionello Venturi, a leading expert in art history who was lecturing in the University of Savoy and Eugenio Montale, the Genoese poet whose war experience had made a mark on his early work.

We do not know how and when Pagano and Persico met, but an exuberant temperament like Pagano’s must have been quite impressed by the lively intelligence of that young Neapolitan who, despite his melancholy air and his intransigent spirit, brought together the most interesting personalities in Turin’s art circles. He was among the promoters of the Gruppo dei Sei, the group of six artists in Turin and therefore close to figures like Venturi.

In 1928 Pagano, by then an accomplished architect, was invited to be the director of La Casa Bella a publication that, as the title indicates, was mainly addressed to polite society. When Pagano moved to Milan, he asked Persico to follow him, and Persico became his right-hand man: an unusual alliance between a Fascist and a declared anti-Fascist – as recorded in reports of the Fascist Secret Police. Their first step was to change the magazine’s title thus giving birth to Casabella. Together they agreed to transform content, format and graphics and created the world’s most beautiful architecture journal, as non-Italian scholars like Jean-Louis Cohen have acknowledged. Side by side they shared tasks with Persico taking a large portion of the editorial work thereby becoming co-editor. In time they were joined by Annamaria Mazzucchelli, whose archive was donated to me when she died.²

Pagano would write the editorials and together they would choose the works of design and architecture of the new generation, which became the unmistakable signs of their modernist choice: its lodestars were Gropius and Le Corbusier. Pagano had many professional commitments as well as an important political role, due to his personal relations with Mussolini and the ‘left-leaning’ minister and champion of the arts Giuseppe Bottai. It was a miracle then, in the 1930s, that two such strong personalities could find such a solid basis of agreement. Still, Pagano was better at riding the waves. Despite the fact that his relations with regime architect Marcello Piacentini were marked by fiery polemics against the pompous monumentality of the Fascist regime, Pagano allowed himself to be involved in professional collaborations with him on a number of occasions. Persico’s task was to cultivate relationships with architects of the new generation, for whom he acted as an uncompromising guide that they listened to very attentively. The pages he wrote about them in Casabella are unique examples of militant critique, in a career that sadly met a premature end at the age of 36.

Annamaria Mazzucchelli told me that Pagano was so distraught by the loss of his friend and collaborator that he considered closing down Casabella. But urged by her, Raffaello Giolli, Lionello Venturi, Giulio Carlo Argan, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti and other contributors to ‘Casabella’, he held on and the magazine continued to be published regularly, in spite of an underlying hostility from the publisher Mazzocchi, who was also publishing Domus. In the meantime Pagano completed many projects, directed and participated in exhibitions at the Milan Triennale. His most celebrated and successful project was the Bocconi University of Milan, on which a significant book has recently been published.³

In Giuseppe Pagano’s later years, he enlisted as a volunteer in the unfortunate war of Albania and Greece. From what I could gather in the little black books full of barely legible notes written in pencil that were among his papers, this made him quite distraught. Pagano’s Fascist sentiments crumbled when he became painfully aware of what Fascism really was. Once he returned to Italy he joined the Resistance, was arrested by Pietro Koch’s gang of torturers and that was when his journey to Calvary began – from torture in the ‘Villa Triste’ to the Mauthausen death camp. An ordeal powerfully narrated by Mimmo Franzinelli in a recently published volume.⁴ Raffaello Giolli, an important contributor to Casabella after Persico’s death, then died in Gusen death camp, a few hundred metres away from his friend Pagano.

The same destiny was met by Gian Luigi Banfi, a member of the BBPR, the group of Italian architects started in 1932 by Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers. The survivors were Ernesto Nathan Rogers, a Jew emigrated to Switzerland, and Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, who was detained first in Gusen, then in Gunskirchen, near Wells.⁵

I will conclude by mentioning only what is strictly necessary around the destiny of Persico’s and Pagano’s archives. Persico’s scattered papers, correspondence and drawings were donated by Ada Gobetti and by Giulia Veronesi to the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation, who made use of them for Veronesi’s seminal collection of his complete work in two volumes for Edizioni Comunità (1964).⁶

I was quite familiar with Pagano’s archives because they were sent to me by his daughter Lorenza Bicocco Pogatschnig, so that I could study them in order to edit an anthology of his writings and to outline a profile of his works.

The book came out in its first edition with the title Giuseppe Pagano, Architettura e città durante il fascismo, published by Laterza in 1976.⁷ I wrote to Mrs Bicocco that I had to return the three or four big boxes containing many drawings, war notes, sketches and negatives of his photographs to her. Mrs Bicocco replied that she would willingly donate them to me, having much appreciated the volume that I had edited. I told her that the material was very valuable and it deserved to be made available to scholars and students. I only accepted the negatives and proofs of Pagano’s photographs, that took very little space and that I meticulously classified. I suggested that Mrs Bicocco donate the archive to the Feltrinelli Foundation, who already held Persico’s archives and would give it a better placement. With her approval I forwarded the boxes to Professor Giuseppe Del Bo, president of the Fondazione, who thanked Pagano’s daughters for such a valuable donation and he sent me a kind letter. Thus, I thought, Persico and Pagano would be together again but I was wrong, because in the meantime the archives had flown away like Raymond Quenau’s Icarus.

In 1985 I promoted a conference to offer a systematic reflection on Persico’s work in view of the fiftieth anniversary of his death and I thought it necessary to accompany it with an exhibition of documents held by that worthy Milanese institution. But it was not possible because both Persico’s and Pagano’s archives had been handed – quite recklessly to say the least – to their Florentine colleague Riccardo Mariani (lest I speak ill of the dead), who in the meantime had moved to Switzerland.

Over time, I believe I have paid homage to Pagano’s work by dedicating an exhibition to his important role as a photographer, no less valid than his role as an architect and writer. In 2008 I wrote to the then Director of the Feltrinelli Foundation, Chiara Daniele, urging her to take action so that the Foundation could again take possession of the unreturned archives. Unlike her predecessors whom I had previously contacted in vain, she took the matter at heart and started legal action against Mariani’s heirs. Unfortunately the Swiss legal system, like Pontius Pilate, washed its hands of the matter with a verdict that left things as they were. This was in spite of an appeal signed by eminent personalities of Italian culture who requested that Pagano’s and Persico’s archives be returned to the Fondazione. It remains a sad and scandalous story.

Introduction: A Rebel with a Cause

Giuseppe Pagano (1896–1945) was an Italian architect and the story of his life is the story of a country that, in less than fifty years, went through two world wars, three wars of colonization and a civil war of resistance. The story of Pagano is also the story of Italian Fascism, and his engagement with it over the course of its metamorphosis from revolutionary movement grounded in socialist ideals to repressive, imperialist and anti-Semitic regime allied with Nazi Germany reflects the experience of many Italians born at the turn of the twentieth century. Italian Fascism lasted just over twenty years and was anything but a uniform phenomenon.⁸

The ventennio of Fascism had a series of distinct phases during which it changed ideology and direction, and although the beliefs of many Italians adherent to Fascism tended to change along with it, Pagano always stayed true to his original set of ideals. The first phase runs from 28 October 1922, the March on Rome, when Mussolini was given the power to rule by King Victor Emanuel III, to the establishment of totalitarian rule sparked by the murder of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti in June 1924. During this time, Pagano was already a member of the Fascist Party studying architecture at Turin Polytechnic. He saw the early years of Fascist government in the same way as many nationalist-minded Italians like him who had lived through the chaos of the last years of Italy’s liberal democracy as a return to social and political order. The second period runs from June 1924 to March 1929, in which Mussolini consolidated his dictatorship. This period is marked by the consolidation of power based on social, spatial and physical infrastructure – a time when architecture was primed to enter the political arena as a force for social change. This period sees Pagano at his most excited and optimistic as to how he, as an architect, can play a role in the country’s transformation. The third period stretches from the late twenties to the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, when the Fascist state was (literally) built. It marks the zenith of consent to the regime, and coincides with the tenth anniversary of Fascism. This was the period when Mussolini had officially declared modern architecture as the official ‘Art of the State’ and when Party support (and, more importantly government funding) was behind the realization of Pagano’s belief in architecture as a force for social change. It was a halcyon period that coincided with his most active time as an architect, exhibition designer and journal director. The fourth period was marked by empire, an inflated sense of military power, increased repression and the alliance with Nazi Germany that allowed what were initially only fringe groups of anti-Semites to come to the fore and become ‘officialized’. This period began in 1935–1936 with the Ethiopian campaign, sparked Italy’s entry into World War II alongside Nazi Germany and ended with Mussolini being deposed by his own Party in July 1943. This was the most difficult period for Pagano personally and for Italy’s modern architects as whole. The difficulty began when League of Nations placed sanctions on Italy that limited their capacity to import a range of goods including steel. This made it challenging to build modern structures that depend on steel for their unencumbered spaces, flat rooves and large areas of glass. Architecture was essentially ‘forced’ to return to masonry and load-bearing walls at a time when the regime’s changing symbolic needs shifted from a nation of modernity and revolution to an Empire of tradition and permanence. This, together with increased repression of everything from free speech to the role Jews could play in Italian society, planted many seeds of doubt in Pagano’s mind as to how well his original faith in the socialist basis of Fascism aligned with what was a clear divergence or in some cases a complete negation of what he believed Fascism could be. Pagano eventually resigned from the Fascist party and joined the ranks of the Resistance, a decision that eventually cost him his life. Fascism may well have been a chameleon, but Pagano was a leopard, he never changed his spots.

Born Giuseppe Pogatschnig (Pogàčnič) in the small seaside town of Parenzo (Poreč) on the Istrian peninsula (Croatia), he was formally a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but his family was culturally and emotionally Italian. He changed his name to Pagano in 1915 when he volunteered to fight (for Italy) in World War I. Pagano began life as a minority, lived his early years as an outsider, continued them as a rebel and ended them in struggle. A man like Pagano can be summed up in three words: controcorrente, collaborative and coherent. Controcorrente means non-conformist. Pagano was always the maverick who, though he knew it to be so much harder, always chose to swim upstream, to row against the current because that was the direction of his ideals.

PAGANO CONTROCORRENTE

Pagano was a controcorrente soldier in 1915 when he ran away from school to join the Italian army, in 1919 when he and his companions defied the Italian government and annexed the Fiume peninsula, in 1943 when he stood on cafè tables shouting at people in the main piazza of Massa Carrara to take up arms against the Nazis. He was a controcorrente Fascist in 1919 when he founded the local branch of the Fascist movement in his home town of Parenzo, in 1930 when he taught about the socialist and revolutionary foundations of Fascism at the School of Fascist Mysticism and in 1942 when he resigned from the Party and joined the ranks of the Resistance.

Pagano was a controcorrente architect in 1924 when he organized his colleagues in Turin to join a national movement for modern architecture, in 1934 when he refused to enter the nation’s most prestigious design competition for the new Fascist Party Headquarters and in 1938 when he resigned from the design team working on the structure plan for the 1942 Rome Expo because he could not betray modern life and repudiate his faith just to get a job.⁹ From the very start of his career, his political activities were parallel to his profession as an architect: the Pavilions at the Turin Exposition of 1928 showed the social and technological progress of a regime Pagano had supported from the very start and his work for forward-thinking industrialists like Gualino, Agnelli and Rivetti represented all that was new and modern about Fascist society.

Pagano was a controcorrente exhibition designer and photographer when in 1928 he used new materials, contrasting colours and modern forms to design new pavilions for the Turin Expo, when he travelled Italy to take his own photographs for the Exhibition of Vernacular Architecture thereby discovering both an unknown side to the country he loved, but also a new visual and critical medium of expression. In 1939 when he took over the direction of the Leonardo exhibition and made the world of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy intelligible to a twentieth-century audience. Pagano was just as happy running the entire 1928 Turin Expo, directing the 1936 Triennale or taking charge of the exhibition layout and content for the Italian Pavilion at the 1937 Expo Paris as he was designing a small wool stand for the Rivetti company, a tiny summer hall with six other architects or coming up with a demountable exhibition system for travelling exhibits. Whether setting the agenda and running things or crafting a small exhibit with one other colleague, he worked with dedication, passion and enthusiasm because exhibitions were not just a show or something ephemeral that would be seen and then forgotten, they were a conscious act of civilisation.

He was a controcorrente writer and architecture critic when in 1930 he took over the reins of the home journal Casabella and transformed it into a modern, technical publication that championed architecture as a force for social change, in 1935 when he argued to give rural and vernacular architecture a place in Italy’s building tradition next to the Classical styles of ancient Greece and Rome and in 1943 when his vehement attacks on the establishment of art critics caused the journal to be confiscated. Pagano wrote about his own work and the work of his colleagues, he unequivocally stated his position in the fiery debates about modernity and tradition, he championed its socio-political function, he initially celebrated and then later lamented parallelisms with the ever-shifting regime and he brooded on architecture’s very Italian-ness. Casabella was not about defining modern Italian architecture, it was about showing its many facets.

PAGANO THE COLLABORATOR

Pagano did none of this on his own; he was a great collaborator and drew energy from those around him. Edoardo Persico played a key role in establishing Casabella’s critical position and in modernizing its graphic layout. The editorial team drew their energy from Pagano’s enthusiasm but each issue came out thanks to them. Pagano was already devoting his energy to another project. Apart from very few cases, Pagano would not work on his own and would not work on projects for his own gain. His studio in Milan’s Via Beatrice d’Este was a constant bustle of ideas, buildings and projects. Any job that came his way was an opportunity to get a team of friends and colleagues together. His early work came from an intense collaboration with Gino Levi Montalcini – they studied together at Turin Polytechnic. Many of his other colleagues from the Turin days continued to work with him in Milan as well. He always had room for the younger generation – they were never a threat to his position rather they were a resource for future collaboration and because he never saw architecture as an autonomous discipline he worked with non-architects as well. For Pagano there was no distinction between architecture as art and architecture as technology so he worked closely with artists as well as engineers. Artists were key players in the design of the many exhibitions Pagano was involved in, especially the Milan Triennale, and two of his major buildings – the Physics Institute at Rome’s new university and the Bocconi University in Milan – that both integrated the work of artists into their design. Engineering was also, for Pagano, a key design element. He saw beauty and poetry in simple structures and worked closely with engineers from the scale of a helicoid stair for the Architecture Pavilion at the 1936 Milan Triennale to a large wool-combing mill and factory in Biella.

PAGANO THE COHERENT

Giulia Veronesi, who worked with Pagano for many years on Casabella’s editorial team, described him as ‘a rebel, an honest rebel of unassailable morals’.¹⁰ His deep morals about feeling Italian, about the potential for Fascism to revolutionize society, about architecture as a force for social change, about the power of exhibitions to educate the public and about the need to rid Italy of Nazi-Fascism remained constant – it was the context that continued to change around him. He was particularly coherent when it came to debates about Italian architecture and whether modern or traditional buildings were best placed to represent Fascist Italy. Pagano’s coherent position was expressed in his writings, his photography, his exhibition design and his architecture. He published reviews of specific buildings and projects in Casabella and also commented on the most topical debates in a monthly column called ‘Registro’ (‘Log’). As journal directors, he and Persico also indirectly expressed their position through the choice of projects, the cover image and from the second-half of the 1930s, Pagano added critical photographs with (often) sarcastic captions to his arsenal. Coherence was also the catchword in his work with exhibitions. Whether as curator and director of events like the 1936 Milan Triennale or looking after specific exhibits and pavilions such as the Steel Structure house, the Exhibition of Vernacular Architecture or the Hall of Honour in the Italian Pavilion of the Paris Expo of 1937 he strove for unity as the fundamental criterion.

Architecturally, he expressed his position through his built work and his competition projects. Some were of his own initiative (like the Via Roma in Turin), some were national design competitions (like the Santa Maria Novella Railway station or the Fascist Party Headquarters in Trieste) and some he chose not to enter, like the one for the national Party Headquarters in Rome, the Palazzo Littorio Competition.

This book tells the story of Giuseppe Pagano-Pogatschnig (as he often liked to call himself) from his boyhood in Poreč to his untimely and tragic death in the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Pagano’s passion for architecture was such that designing and making buildings was not enough to satisfy it. Pagano’s belief in architecture’s potential to enact social change was so strong that he knew that designing and making buildings would not be enough to reach it. So, he did not limit himself to just designing and making architecture. He wrote about architecture, he promoted the work of his Italian colleagues and those of the European modernists who aligned with his unassailable beliefs and lashed out, vehemently, against those who did not. He also knew that to convince other architects was not enough – he needed to convince the Fascist hierarchy and the public as well. Up until the mid-1930s it seemed that the hierarchy, all the way up to Mussolini himself, were on the side of modern architecture but from 1936 all that changed and he fought a losing battle against a regime that was more concerned with expanding their Empire and consolidating the revolution with heavy, traditional buildings than expressing the waves of change and modernity with streamlined, pure and rational architecture in glass and steel. And the public? They were an easier and less politically fraught audience and Pagano sought to win them over with cleverly designed exhibitions that expressed a unity between ideas, objects and the spaces in which they were exhibited. This need led him to discover photography and its capacity to go beyond objective documentation to become both artistic expression and a medium for critique.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A FASCIST POLYMATH

Pagano was a man of many talents, a polymath, a ‘Renaissance’ man of the twentieth century and for this reason I have decided to structure this book thematically and enrich it with critical essays, in-depth information on his major buildings and projects and an anthology. In the spirit of Pagano the collaborator, I have invited five fellow ‘Paganisti’ to join me in this enterprise. Professor Cesare De Seta agreed to write the foreword, Tim Benton has contributed an excellent chapter on Pagano’s photography that leverages on his expertise in Le Corbusier’s photography and makes connections between the two. In her critical essay, Noa Steimatsky reflects on how Pagano’s commitment to elemental housing and the visual documentation of his days in prison are linked to the Italian neorealist movement and the overall post-war imaginary. I have also brought young scholars on board, my future collaborators in the field of architectural history: Claudia Cagneschi and Caterina Franchini. Both completed PhDs on Pagano and they have made an invaluable contribution to this book by writing the Information Sheets. This book does its best to paint both a personal and professional portrait of Pagano without the help of his archives, which, after being deposited with the Feltrinelli foundation by his heirs, have now fallen into private hands, thus denying today’s scholars the opportunity to consult those papers and drawings of his that were not confiscated by the Fascist police after his arrest. I can only hope that they will be returned to the public for future scholars.

Fortunately, remembrances of what he was like as a man, selected documents, unpublished projects and letters have been reprinted in books as well as special issues of the journals Casabella-Costruzioni, Domus and Parametro. I have also relied heavily on existing monographs on Pagano by Italian scholars: Carlo Melograni, Cesare De Seta, Antonino Saggio, Alberto Bassi and Laura Castagno. Finally, I have made sure to visit all of Pagano’s buildings and the places where he lived and died to add an auto-ethnographic dimension to this work and help me sew together the tapestry of his life. I have also included translations of three key writings on Italian modern architecture, two articles on photography and other personal documents: letters, poems and a diary entry. Rather than simply document his life and his projects from 1896 to 1945, I have decided to organize the book thematically and weave his life and his work into the turbulent political times in which he lived, leaving detailed descriptions of his various buildings, projects and exhibition designs to information sheets at the end of the book. The chapter ‘Pagano the architect’ traces the story of what is a relatively small amount of buildings for a thirteen-year career; the chapter on Pagano the writer is essentially the story of the journal Casabella and the important role it played in promoting the cause of modern architecture in a political climate that was, in the first instance, firmly behind it and then became decidedly against it. The chapter on Pagano as an exhibition designer traces his evolution in this area of spatial design where Pagano had a leading hand in presenting a specific image of a ‘modern and harmonious, Fascist nation’ to both local and overseas audiences. It starts full of optimism and enthusiasm with his debut at the Turin National Exposition of 1928 and concludes with disappointment and disillusion at the ill-fated Rome World Expo of 1942. The chapter on Pagano the photographer adds to the existing scholarship on this topic by tracing the evolution of his style and analysing his photographs in a new way. These thematic chapters on Pagano’s cultural production are bookended by his many adventures as a soldier in the two world wars – both of which he joined as a volunteer. The final chapter recounts his last months as a political prisoner. After resigning from the Fascist Party in 1942, he became a partisan and joined the ranks of the Resistance. He no longer recognized himself in what Fascism had become: ‘a feudalism of verbose, incompetent and reactionary leadership squawking its rhetoric of sacred principles and order and their absurd, unjust and continually contradictory hierarchy’.¹¹ He was captured by a band of Fascist thugs, tortured and worked to death in a Nazi concentration camp, all because he never let go of his ideals.

Chapter 1: Pagano the Young Man: The Formation of an Idealist from Poreč to Turin (1896–1926)

I have barbarian blood in my veins and I am totalitarian: I want you with me all the way even through all our defeats. After all, I am not scared of sacrifice nor of hunger. And I am 100 per cent Italian, with all my passions, all my loves and all my hates.¹²

POREČ–TRIESTE AUGUST 1896 – SEPTEMBER 1909: EARLY CHILDHOOD AND TEENAGE YEARS

The story of Pagano began in the small seaside town of Poreč in Croatia where a small boy and his father wandered along its windy medieval streets (Figure 1.1). The boy is called Giuseppe (but everyone calls him Bepi), his father is Antonio Pogačnik, his mother is Giovanna Cernivani and he has two brothers: Antonio junior (the eldest) and little