PDF: Log 53: Why Italy Now?
Fall 2021
Log 53 asks the simple yet provocative question “Why Italy Now?” The responses are as diverse and multifaceted as the country itself. Exploring this seemingly well-trodden ground, one discovers that because of its historic centrality – and its precarity – Italy remains relevant to the challenges facing architecture today. As contributor Giulia Amoresano writes: “Amid calls today to challenge the Eurocentrism of canonical histories of architecture’s modernity and to work on decolonizing its theories and practices, work needs to be done on what we think canonical spaces are.”
Log 53 is guest edited by Alicia Imperiale in New York and Manuel Orazi in Macerata. Essays include philosopher Giorgio Agamben on a Venetian door, theorist Mario Carpo on blight in Piedmont, architect ElDante’ Winston on violence in Bologna, historian Edward Eigen on the Club of Rome, architect Fabrizio Furiassi on the Mafia in Sicily, and reporter Mario Calvo-Platero on colonial architecture in Tripoli. Emilia Giorgi explores unplanned greenery in Rome, while Gabriele Mastrigli highlights the planned greenery of EUR. Iwan Strauven reviews books on Carlo Aymonino and Aldo Rossi, Britt Eversole parses the trove of untranslated Italian theory, and Ingrid D. Rowland details her translation of Vitruvius. Paulette Singley sets the place for Italian cuisine, and Giulia Amoresano sources caffè espresso in the colonization of southern Italy. An Tairan revisits an 18th-century earthquake, Daniele Profeta analyzes the impact of the 19th-century Grand Tour, and Davide Spina exposes the dark side of postwar architecture culture. Greg Lynn talks with art historian Marilyn Aronberg Lavin about her digital analysis of Piero della Francesca, and Patrick Templeton asks writer and podcaster Alex Hochuli about Italy’s political legacy. Log 53 also presents projects by women building in Italy today – Lina Malfona, Elisabetta Terragni, and Maria Alessandra Segantini – as well as in the past – overlooked Neapolitan modernist Stefania Filo Speziale.
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Contents
Giorgio Agamben, “Door and Threshold”
Giulia Amoresano, “The Tale of Caffè Espresso”
An Tairan, “Between Stone and Life: Notes on a Sicilian Fish”
C+S Architects, “A Public Presence”
Mario Calvo-Platero, “Under the Blue Mediterranean Sky”
Mario Carpo, “We Used To Be Good”
Edward Eigen, “The W*O*L*F* at the Door”
Britt Eversole, “The Coming Communities”
Fabrizio Furiassi, “Mafia Matters”
Emilia Giorgi, “A Laboratory of Unexpected Nature”
Alicia Imperiale, “Perché Italia? Perché Italia...”
Greg Lynn & Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, “Supercomputing Fresco Cycles”
Andrea Maglio, “Stefania Filo Speziale: La Signora di Napoli”
Lina Malfona, “Upstate Rome”
Gabriele Mastrigli, “The Open City”
OMMX, “A Second Shot”
Daniele Profeta, “Grand Tours and the Construction of Italian Identities”
Ingrid D. Rowland, “The Genera of Things”
Paulette Singley, “Table Talk”
Davide Spina, “The Dark Side of the Boot”
Iwan Strauven, “On Talking and Silent Architecture”
Patrick Templeton & Alex Hochuli, “Italy at the End of the End of History”
Elisabetta Terragni, “Viewing Rooms”
ElDante’ Winston, “The Body in the Window”
And observations on rubble and a floodplain…