Armando Brasini

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (June 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Armando Brasini (Rome, 21 September 1879 - Rome, 18 February 1965) was a prominent Italian architect and urban designer of the early twentieth century and exemplar of Fascist architecture. His work is notable for its eclectic and visionary style inspired by Ancient Roman architecture, Italian Baroque architecture and Giovanni Battista Piranesi.^[1]

Biography[]

Brasini was born in the Roman district of Tor di Nona from a family of modest background. After having successfully attended the Institute of Fine Arts, he started specializing in renovation of old buildings and interior decoration. His early assignments included the Villa Manzoni building on Via Cassia, the monumental entrance to the Villa Borghese Zoological Garden, and the Villa Brasini complex for himself and his family on Via Flaminia.

In the early 1920s he worked with Giuseppe Volpi, then Governor of Tripolitania, on the remodeling of Tripoli. There he designed the Savings Bank Building (Palazzo della Cassa di Risparmio, now the countrty's central bank), the waterfront boulevard (Lungomare Conte Volpi, now Ad-dahra Al-kebira), the renovation of the Red Castle, and the memorial to the Italian conquest (Monumento ai Caduti e alla Vittoria).^[2] In 1925 he also produced the first master plan for the expansion of Tirana, where Italian influence was significant at the time. That plan was partly implemented, and elements of Brasini's design still exist in the layout of Skanderbeg Square.^[3] In 1929 he was appointed a member of the newly created Royal Academy of Italy.

In Rome he was entrusted with designing the regulatory plan for the Flaminio neighborhood.^{[citation needed]} In 1925-27, Brasini conceived a project for a remodeling of Rome's center dubbed the "Mussolini Forum" (Italian: Foro Mussolini) which would have entailed the demolition of much of the Campo Marzio, leaving the ancient monuments (Pantheon, Column of Marcus Aurelius, Obelisk of Montecitorio) standing alone in the midst of large urban spaces.^{[4]: 276-278} Brasini's emphasis on facilitating car traffic at the cost of the old city fabric has elicited comparisons with Le Corbusier's 1925 Plan Voisin for Paris, despite the obvious stylistic difference.^[4]: 100 In 1931 he participated in the committee for a new city plan of Rome, and in 1934 he was a member of the jury for the Palazzo Littorio project that would have faced the Basilica of Maxentius across the Via dell'Impero (now Via dei Fori Imperiali).^[4]

His prestige projects in Rome included, in the 1920s, the church of the Sacred Heart of Mary in Parioli and the sprawling Complesso del Buon Pastore on Via di Bravetta, and in the 1930s, the seat of Istituto nazionale per l'assicurazione contro gli infortuni sul lavoro buttressing Quirinal Hill, as well as the Ponte Flaminio. He also designed major public buildings in Southern Italy: the Palazzo del Podestà in Foggia (built between 1928 and 1932), and the massive Palazzo della Prefettura in Taranto (built from 1930 to 1934).

In the 1930s he produced various designs for a colossal Mole Littoria in Rome, intended to celebrate Mussolini's imperial achievements and match Albert Speer's plans for Nazi Berlin. Mussolini did not approve the project, however, due to its high costs and competing projects of EUR. For the EUR, Brasini in 1938 designed a monumental Forestry Institute named after Arnaldo Mussolini, whose construction started in 1940 but was suspended in 1942 for war reasons. The partly built structure was demolished in 1957 and replaced by the General House of the Marist Brothers, in spite of Brasini's attempts to promote alternative design options to save the construction.

Following World War II Brasini no longer received major commissions but he remained involved in the completion of some of his projects, such as the Ponte Flaminio and the Parioli basilica. He died in 1965 in the house he had designed for himself on Via Flaminia.

Assessment[]

Paolo Portoghesi, while acknowledging the "undoubted architectural merits" of Brasini's designs, defines him as "one of the great misfits of twentieth-century architecture" for generally not being "in tune with the spirit of the times," but rather representing "a case of estrangement from that spirit."^[5]

Works[]

• Villa Toeplitz in Varese (1901)
• Monumental entrance to the Zoological Garden in Rome (1911)
• Villino Tabacchi, Rome (1912)^[6]
• Villa Manzoni on via Cassia in Rome (1919-22)
• Renovation of the Red Castle of Tripoli (1922-23)^[2]
• Waterfront boulevard, now Al-dahra Al-kabira in Tripoli (1922-24)^[2]
• War monument in Tripoli (1922-25), demolished in the 1950s^[2]
• Church of the Sacred Heart of Mary (also known as the Parioli Basilica) in Rome (1923-51)
• Villa Flaminia (Via Flaminia 495), part of the Villa Brasini complex (1925)^[7]
• Italian Pavilion at the Decorative Arts Exhibition in Paris (1925), demolished after the event's end
• Master plan for the Center of Tirana (1925), partly implemented and modified by Gherardo Bosio after 1939^[8]
• Headquarters of the Savings Bank of Tripolitania, Tripoli (1921-34), now Central Bank of Libya^[2]
• Central Museum of the Risorgimento inside the Victor Emmanuel II Monument, Rome (with A. Calzavara, 1926-32)
• Regia Accademia Aeronautica, now Comando Aeroporto di Capodichino near Naples (1928), partly destroyed during World War II^[9]
• INAIL building, Via IV Novembre in Rome (with F. Zevi, 1928-34)
• Palazzo del Podestà in Foggia, now City Hall (1928-34)^[10]
•  [it] in Rome (1929-43)^[11]
• Palazzo del Governo, now seat of the Province of Taranto (1930-34)
• Italian Pavilion at the Paris Colonial Exposition (1930-31), a smaller-scale reinterpretation of the Severan Basilica in Leptis Magna, demolished after the event's end
• Villa Augusta (Via Flaminia 489), also known as the castellaccio ("ugly castle") for its eclectic style, part of the Villa Brasini complex (1932-38)^[12]
•  [it] in Naples (1933-38)
• Ponte Flaminio in Rome (1938-51)

Gallery[]

• 

  Zoological Garden entrance, Rome

• 

  Lungomare Conte Volpi, Tripoli

• 

  Monument to the Fallen, Tripoli

• 

  Tripoli Castle following its renovation by Brasini

• 

  Savings Bank building, Tripoli

• 

  Italian Pavilion at the Paris Arts Décoratifs Exhibition, 1925

• 

  Italian Pavilion at the Paris Colonial Exhibition, 1931

• 

  Museo Centrale del Risorgimento, Rome

• 

  INAIL Building, Rome

• 

  City Hall, Foggia

• 

  Palazzo del governo, Taranto

• 

  Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Naples

• 

  Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Mary in Parioli, Rome

• 

  Sacred Heart of Mary, interior

• 

  Ponte Flaminio, Rome

• 

  Ponte Flaminio, detail of decoration

Honors[]

• Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy

See also[]

• Giovanni Muzio
• Ricardo Bofill

Notes[]

Bibliography[]

• Paolo Nicoloso, Mussolini Architetto, Torino, Einaudi, 2008, ISBN 978-88-06-19086-6
• Antonio Cederna, Mussolini Urbanista, Bari, Laterza, 1979, SBN IT\ICCU\RAV\0065211
• Antonio Labalestra, Il palazzo del Governo di Taranto. La politica, i progetti e il ruolo di Armando Brasini, Roma, Edizioni Quasar, 2018, ISBN 978-88-7140-872-9
• Luigi Monzo: Croci e fasci – Der italienische Kirchenbau in der Zeit des Faschismus, 1919-1945. 2 vol. Karlsruhe 2017 (tesi di dottorato, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 2017), pp. 470-478

This architecture-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t