Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy by Michelangelo Sabatino (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Michelangelo Sabatino. Pride in Modesty! Modernist Architecture and the VernacularTradition in Italy. Toronto: University ofToronto Press, 2010, 336 pp., 87 black-and-white illustrations, hardcover, $47.25, ISBN13 : 978-0802097057. Michelangelo Sabatino's Pride in Modesty is a comprehensive study of the emergence of vernacular architecture in Italy, and its inextricable ties to the development of a Mediterranean modernism. Along the way, Sabatino critically examines the complex landscape ofcompeting twentieth century artistic and architectural movements operating inside Italy. Sabatino also describes how a few leading international architects transmitted their investigations into Italian vernacular architecture to the United States. Key to understanding Sabatino's thesis is the idea that vernacular architecture is a modern invention, a term defined relatively recently. According to Sabatino, Italian architects in this period separated the vernacular architectural tradition from any ethnographic or folkloric associations and were opposed to nostalgic or retroguard meanings. The debate Sabatino presents therefore ARRIS 84 § VoLUME 21 ~ 2010 hinges on associations with nationalist and revanchist ideologies that sought to build an Italian legacy on local building traditions. During the interwar period, groups like the Italian Futurists and Rationalists used vernacular architecture to tie their building designs to more deeply rooted Italian and Mediterranean traditions. Vernacular architecture for these groups served to counteract the influence ofltalian classicism, whose most recent iteration aggrandized the Fascist Regime's propaganda. Ultimately , as Sabatino makes clear, explorations into the vernacular were not about distinguishing between camps of morally good or bad architects, but instead about the internecine struggle over who among them could claim to best represent Italy's architectural legacy. The "pride in modesty" that Sabatino alludes to in his title is not necessarily disassociated from Fascist ideology. As the author points out, many of the book's protagonists remained staunchly Fascist throughout the interwar period. Rather, the increasing fascination with vernacular architecture, and its evident technological advantages in the Mediterranean climate gradually transcended earlier political associations. According to Sabatino , vernacular architecture in Italy ultimately became a critical axiom in the development of a very unique and extremely significant post-war architecture. The book begins with the first major Italian ethnographic exhibition, staged in Rome in 1911 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the unification of Italy. As Sabatino recounts, Marcello Piacentini, who would become the key architect for the Fascist regime and whose influence extended well into the post-war years, was responsible for the exhibition's master plan. After World War I, Piacentini continued to develop the vernacular theme, producing another exhibit in 1921, Rustic Art. He also played an important role in launching the publication series, Minor Architecture, which promoted the study oflocal and regional forms of rural building. The next three chapters each identify a partie- ular set of locations and protagonists. In "Tabu!d rasa and Tradition," Sabatino shows how the island of Capri served as a locus for the gathering of Futurists and Rationalists , who met during the summers and were influenced by the incredibly rich patrimony of local and historical buildings. One finds on Capri the most renowned house from the interwar period, the Casa Malaparte , designed by the writer Curzio Malaparte with the architect Adalberto Libera. Set out on a promontory high over the sea with a bold triangular staircase mounting to the roof, Casa Malaparte's masterful achievement depended, according to Sabatino, on the expert role of local stonemasons. In Engineering versus Architecture, Sabatino traces the growing interest in Italian vernacular architecture to a series ofstudies on tenant farmer cottages from the hinterlands of Lazio, Tuscany, and Padania. Architects , such as Giuseppe Pagano, Giovanni Michelucci, and lgnazio Gardella, integrated vernacular principles from these areas specifically in their own work Pagano was ofcritical importance; he and Werner Daniel developed one of the most comprehensive exhibitions on rural vernacular architecture to be assembled in Italy. The "Exhibition of Rural Italian Architecture," presented at the 1936 Milan Triennale, broke with earlier precedents by developing categories of typologies and by eschewing a rigid chronological order. Thus, according to Sabatino, Pagano and the other protagonists of this area demonstrated a more "objectified" sensibility of the vernacular. In "Continuity and Reality," Sabatino argues that the post-war-era shift to urban...