Moderns Abroad: Architecture, Cities and Italian Imperialism

288 Pages·2006·15.01 MB·English

by  Mia Fuller

Moderns Abroad
Moderns Abroad analyzes the theory and practice of Italian architecture and
urbanism in modern-era colonies in North Africa, East Africa, and the eastern
Mediterranean. Introducing the history of Italian imperialism and the expecta-
tions that shaped it, the book analyzes Italian architects’ theories of modernism
with respect to Italy as well as its colonies; and describes how Italian administra-
tors and planners developed Tripoli, Addis Ababa and settlements for migrant
farmers in Libya and Ethiopia.
In addition to introducing the history of Italian colonialism (1869–1943), the
book discusses the symbolic geographies governing Italians’ approaches to the
colonies: Italian colonizers worked from different assumptions regarding
Mediterranean and sub-Saharan African populations, assuming the former to be
more akin to themselves, and the latter less so. Colonial governments initially
took no interest in how Italians’ buildings represented the colonial power, but by
the late 1920s architects began to theorize colonial design, and these different
assumptions about the local populations and their level of “civilization” influ-
enced their design theories. Similarly, in the mid-1930s, planners and administra-
tors began to develop strict ideologies of racial segregation in colonial cities,
particularly in East Africa. The final chapters of this book bring these theories into
juxtaposition with what was actually built in the colonial settings, illustrating how
wide the gaps between theory and practice were.
Moderns Abroadis the first book to present an overview of Italian colonial archi-
tecture and city planning. In chronicling Italian architects’ attempts to define a
distinctly Italian colonial architecture that would set Italy apart from Britain and
France, it provides a uniquely comparative study of Italian colonialism and archi-
tecture that will be of interest to specialists in modern architecture, colonial
studies, and Italian studies alike.
Mia Fulleris Associate Professor in Italian Studies at the University of California,
Berkeley.
THE ARCHITEXTSERIES
Edited by Thomas A. Markus and Anthony D. King
Architectural discourse had traditionally represented buildings as art objects or
technical objects. Yet buildings are also social objects in that they are invested
with social meaning and shape social relations. Recognizing these assumptions,
theArchitextseries aims to bring together recent debates in social and cultural
theory and the study and practice of architecture and urban design. Critical,
comparative, and interdisciplinary, the books in the series, by theorizing architec-
ture, bring the space of the built environment centrally into the social sciences
and humanities, as well as bringing the theoretical insights of the latter into the
discourses of architecture and urban design. Particular attention is paid to issues
of gender, race, sexuality, and the body, to questions of identity and place, to
the cultural politics of representation and language, and to the global and post-
colonial contexts in which these are addressed.
Already published:
Framing Places Writing Spaces
Mediating power in built form Discourses of architecture, urbanism,
Kim Dovey and the built environment
Greig Crysler
Gender Space Architecture
An interdisciplinary introduction Drifting – Migrancy and
Edited by Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner Architecture
and Iain Borden Edited by Stephen Cairns
Behind the Postcolonial
Beyond Description
Architecture, urban space and political
Singapore space historicity
cultures in Indonesia
Edited by Ryan Bishop, John Phillips
Abidin Kusno
and Wei-Wei Yeo
The Architecture of Oppression
Spaces of Global Cultures
The SS, forced labour and the Nazi
Architecture, urbanism, identity
monumental building economy
Anthony D. King
Paul Jaskot
Indigenous Modernities
Words Between the Spaces
Negotiating architecture and urbanism
Buildings and language
Jyoti Hosagrahar
Thomas A. Markus and
Deborah Cameron Moderns Abroad
Architecture, cities and Italian
Embodied Utopias
imperialism
Gender, social change and the modern
Mia Fuller
metropolis
Rebeccah Zorach, Lise Sanders and
Amy Bingaman
Forthcoming titles:
2006 2007
Desire Lines Sensing Cities
Memory and identity in the post- Urban aesthetics in a global age
Apartheid city Monica Degen
Edited by Noëleen Murray,
Nick Shepherd and Martin Hall Making Leisure Work
Architecture and the experience
Reinterpreting Sustainable economy
Architecture Brian Lonsway
Simon Guy and Graham Farmer
Framing Places 2nd edition
Constructing Colonial Modernity Kim Dovey
Building, dwelling and architecture in
British India and Ceylon
Peter Scriver and Vikram Prakash

Mia Fuller
Moderns Abroad
Architecture, cities and Italian
imperialism
First published 2007
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2007 Mia Fuller
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Fuller, Mia, 1958–
Moderns abroad : architecture, cities and Italian imperialism / Mia Fuller.
p. cm. – (Architext series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Architecture, Colonial—20th century. 2. Architecture, Italian—20th century.
3. Fascism and architecture—Italy. 4. Italy—Colonies—History—20th century. I. Title. II.
Series.
NA207.5.F85 2006
720.945’0904—dc22
200612528
ISBN 0–203–96886–7 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-19463-6 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-96886-7 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-19463-1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-96886-4 (ebk)
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Illustration Credits xi
Introduction 1
Part I: Contexts 21
1 History: 1869–1943 23
2 Geographies 39
3 The Colonial Built Environment Untheorized, 1880s–1920s 63
Part II: Theories 85
4 Modern Italian Architecture, 1910s–1930s 87
5 Colonial Modern, 1920s–1940s 107
6 Imperial Urbanism, 1936–1937 137
Part III: Practices 149
7 The Italian Colonial City: Tripoli 151
8 Islands of Ethnicity: Planned Agricultural Settlements 171
9 The Italian Imperial City: Addis Ababa 197
Epilogue 215
Notes 223
Selected Bibliography 263
Index 269
vii (cid:1)
Acknowledgments
This project would have been impossible without the generous support of a
number of funders and institutions. I traveled to Rhodes, Libya, and Ethiopia
thanks to grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine
Arts, the American Institute of Maghrib Studies, and the American Philosophical
Society. A Fellowship from the Wolfsonian Foundation allowed me to explore its
extraordinary collections. For research in Italy, I am grateful to the École Française
de Rome, the Cesare Barbieri Research Fund, and once again, the American
Philosophical Society. I am especially thankful to the American Academy in
Rome, not only for awarding me a precious full year of support, but for providing
a unique environment of intellectual exchange that has extended well beyond
that year in residency. Because parts of this book are modified versions of my
doctoral dissertation, I also wish to thank the funders that made that earlier
effort feasible: the National Science Foundation; the Graduate Division as well as
the Center for African Studies at the University of California, Berkeley; Stanford
University’s Center for European Studies; and the Council for European Studies.
Conducting the research presented here would have been equally impossible
without the forbearance of the staff in several archives and libraries. In Rome, I
wish to thank the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, the Archivio Storico del Ministero
degli Affari Esteri, the Biblioteca della Camera dei Deputati, the Istituto Italiano per
l’Africa e l’Oriente, the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea, the Istituto
Nazionale di Urbanistica, the Biblioteca di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte, the Bib-
lioteca Centrale di Architettura, and the British School. The Istituto Agronomico per
l’Oltremare in Florence kindly let me loose in its photographic archive, and has
allowed me to reprint some items in its collection here. The Wolfsonian Foundation
branch in Genoa has been especially hospitable during my visits there. I owe a
great debt to the Libyan Studies Centre in Tripoli (i.e. Markaz Jihad al-Libiyin lil-
Dirasat al-Tarikhiyah) and its director, Dr Muhammad Jerary. In Tunis, I am also
thankful for the use of libraries at the Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis and
the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain.
viii (cid:1)
Acknowledgments (cid:1)
Throughout the writing of the book, the work of the Interlibrary Loan staff
at Rice University and the University of California, Berkeley was indispensable and
much appreciated. At Berkeley, my colleagues and students have extended
support of many kinds. I tested the first three chapters of the book on students
in my seminar on Italian colonialism and am glad to have had their comments; in
particular, I thank Steven Doctors for his feedback on Chapter 3. Above all, I was
exceedingly fortunate to have had Stephanie Hom Cary as a research assistant at
several stages, and Mrinalini Rajagopalan as well. Both have been treasured
interlocutors, and I am grateful for their wise editorial suggestions.
Brien K. Garnand designed the maps in Chapter 1 and helped prepare the
images for publication; I thank him for these labors and for his loving companion-
ship. My closest relatives – Blair Fuller, Nina de Voogd Fuller, Diana Burgess Fuller,
Anthony Fuller and Joanna Di Paolo, Whitney Fuller, Sage Cowles and John
Cowles, and Jill Fox – have awaited the book’s publication with curiosity tempered
by kind patience. A number of friends, colleagues, and mentors offered extensive
logistical support as well as discussion of the book itself. I remain very grateful for
their immediate assistance, but also for their faith in the project and its author:
Nezar AlSayyad, W. R. Dull, James D. Faubion, Enrico Mattiello, Justin McGuinness
Cathie O’Brien Twaddle and Don Twaddle, Susan Ossman, Julie Peteet, Susan Sly-
omovics, Stefania Tuzi, and Dirk Vandewalle. Others gave liberally of their expertise
or resources: Sean S. Anderson, Anna Baldinetti, Caterina Borelli, Ilaria Brancatisano,
Giorgio Ciucci, Jean-Louis Cohen, Susan Crile, Angelo Del Boca, Liz Hasse, Robert
Ilbert, Nora Lafi, Karl Longstreth, Tyler Monroe, Jessica Otey and Steve Poulos.
For commenting on the manuscript more times than ought to be required
of series editors, I am thankful to Anthony D. King and Thomas Markus. Eliza-
beth Leake closely read a number of drafts and, with characteristic elegance and
wit, alleviated the agony of revisions. Others who selflessly volunteered to give
editorial advice are Catherine Brice, Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, and Laura Wittman.
To all of these I am much indebted for their help in improving the text. For more
diffuse but equally significant friendship and conversation, I also want to thank
Doug Argue, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Federico Cresti, Greig Crysler, Ornella Folinea, Joe
Helms and Pamela Sinclair, Marcia Inhorn and Kirk Hooks, Carl Ipsen, Cynthia
Ipsen, Ruth Iyob, Vincent Jolivet, Mary Margaret Jones, Karla Mallette, Linda Pel-
lecchia, Lee Ann Sandefer and Ted Lyman, David Stone, Krystyna von Hen-
neberg, and Richard Wittman. In addition, I welcome this opportunity to express
my warm gratitude for their enduring mentorship to my past teachers Paul
Rabinow, Allan Pred, Alan Dundes, Ira Lapidus, Irving Goldman, Robert F. Tan-
nenbaum, and Ilja Wachs. Last but by no means least, I wish to acknowledge the
people I interviewed, starting with Anna Maria Cicogna, a daughter of Libya’s
Governor Volpi. Several interviewees in Tripoli, Addis Ababa, and Asmara prefer
not to be named; therefore I thank them all anonymously, and trust that they
will recognize their influence here. No matter how intangible in the text that
follows, their knowledge and personal recollections were crucial to my under-
standing of Italy’s colonial cities and how I have depicted them.
ix (cid:1)