The Complexity of Cultural Exchange: Anglo-Italian Relations in Architecture between Transnational Interactions and National Narratives

British and Italian cultures have interacted for several centuries, and often with fruitful results, as plenty of studies have well documented also for the field of architecture. However, analyzing the Anglo-Italian exchange raises several questions, concerning for among others the reciprocity of the relation between the two countries and their different understandings of self-identity and ‘nationality’: the analysis proves even more challenging when dealing with the post-war years, in a moment marked by the passage from a context of prevalently bi-national interactions to an increasingly transnational one. This essay aims to place Anglo-Italian relations in architecture in the complex context that followed the end of the Second World War, when frictions began to emerge between existing national narratives and new frameworks of multi-national exchanges.