La proposta plastica per il palazzo del Littorio del Gruppo Universitario Fascista dell’Urbe

In the last days of 1933, when the struggle for definition of an Italian way for modern architecture fueled the strongest controversies, the competition for palazzo del Littorio was announced. According to Giorgio Ciucci, the debate that arose, already at that time, exhausted itself “in the duplicity of an architecture as style of a State and an architecture as image of a Regime”. This article proposes a re-interpretation of this debate through the project proposal by Gruppo Universitario Fascista dell’Urbe, composed by Saverio Muratori, Franco Petrucci and Enrico Tedeschi, back then just graduated, realized as well in collaboration with Pasquale Carbonara, Giorgio Quaroni for the paintings and Pericle Fazzini for the sculptures. The dialogue with the ruin, which could have represented a constraint, significantly limiting the expression possibilities, did not hold indeed the young participants, who demonstrated through their project an impressive reactivity to the present, in which the fascinations from modern art result more than ever crucial.