Experience, theory, practice. The Manifesto of Colonial Architecture by Giovanni Pellegrini

Giovanni Pellegrini graduated in Architecture from Politecnico di Milano in 1931 and moved to Lybia soon afterwards, hired by Alpago Novello, Cabiati and Ferrazza to supervise construction of the new cathedral at Benghazi. Later on, he started working in Tripoli for both private clients and public authorities. This chapter discusses his Manifesto, as published in Rassegna di Architettura October 1936, against the contemporary Italian debate on colonial architecture Pellegrini’s Manifesto consisted of a rather short text followed by a 17 pages of photographs complemented by accurate captions, explaining how to read each example as a precedent for future reinterpretations. These photos and captions, even more than the actual text, bear evidence to Pellegini’s understanding of local architecture, based on his direct experience of the Libyan built environment, presented as a source of solutions dictated by necessity, an antidote to any aesthetic game embedded in the rhetoric of Fascism.