ARCHITECTURE AND POLITICS IN FASCIST ITALY: IL MOVIMENTO ITALIANO PER L'ARCHITETTURA RAZIONAL, 1928 - 1932

Il Movimento Italiano per l'Architettura Razionale (M.I.A.R.) was an organization created by progressive architects in Italy in order to promote the cause of Modern Architecture in Italy and to influence the architectural policies of the Fascist Regime. An ad hoc committee of architects staged the First Exhibition of Rational Architecture in Rome in 1928. A Board of Directors, by-laws, regional chapters, and other bureaucratic trappings replaced the initial ad hoc organization in 1930. The M.I.A.R. staged the Second Exhibition of Rational Architecture in Rome and Milan in 1931. Confronted with a serious challenge from the National Syndicate of Architects (the legal entity charged with regulating the architectural profession) and the apparent indifference of the political leadership of the Fascist Regime, the M.I.A.R. collapsed in September, 1931.;The M.I.A.R. introduced progressive European architectural ideals in Italy and gave those ideals a distinctive Italian orientation. The work exhibited in the 1928 and 1931 exhibitions crystallized a new architectural aesthetic in Italy. The members of the M.I.A.R. attempted to integrate this new aesthetic ideology with the political ideology of Fascism. The issues raised by the M.I.A.R. exhibitions and the attendant heated polemics continued to dominate the discussion of architectural theory and practice in Italy until the outbreak of the Second World War.;This study begins with a review of trends in Italian architecture during the 1920s, including Futurism after World War One, the Lombard Novecento Movement in architecture, and the Rationalist Program as outlined by Gruppo 7 in 1926-27. The Rationalist exhibition of 1928, the creation of the M.I.A.R., the second Rationalist exhibition in 1931, and the aftermath of that second exhibition are discussed chronologically. This study concludes that personal rivalries within the M.I.A.R., opportunism and naivete played at least as large a role in the demise of the M.I.A.R. as did differences in philosophical and ideological orientations. The last chapter of this study describes the ambiguous nature of Fascist artistic and architectural policies and proposes a set of criteria for isolating and defining a specifically Fascist style of architecture. These criteria incorporate iconic, typological, and economic as well as stylistic factors.