Denise Costanzo is Assistant Professor of Architecture and Art History at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. Andrew Leach is Professor of Architecture and Associate Dean (Research) of the School of Architecture, Design and Planning, at the University of Sydney, Australia.
This elegant collection challenges familiar ideas of how Italian sites and histories shaped 20th-century design theory worldwide. Inaugurating a set of provocative new questions, it stands to generate innovative architectural and scholarly debates for years to come. * Mia Fuller, University of California Berkeley, USA * At once origin of the Western conceptualization of architecture as a discipline and institution, home to buildings that have become hypercanonized, and arena of historiographical debates, Italy is an undeniable presence in architectural consciousness, whether it is embraced or rejected. From a variety of perspectives the essays in this volume enrich and complicate our understanding of Italy’s position in global architectural culture. Together they amount to a critical examination of ‘architecture’s vision of itself’ over the long 20th century. * Maarten Delbeke, ETH Zürich, Switzerland *