Brutalist Italy: Concrete Architecture from the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea is the first publication to survey Italian Brutalism in its entirety, assembling over 140 exclusive photographs across every region of the country — from social housing towers to sanctuaries and football stadia.
About This Book
Italian Brutalism occupies a singular position in architectural history. In the aftermath of World War II, Italian architects faced an acute tension: how to embrace modernist concrete construction without rehabilitating the aesthetic language of fascism. Their response was a regionally inflected Brutalism that drew on uncontaminated historical references and traditional materials, producing monumental structures with a character distinct from their British or Soviet counterparts. This volume documents that tradition through five years of fieldwork and more than 20,000 kilometres of travel by architectural photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego, whose lens moves between the imposing social housing of Le Vele di Scampia and the celestial geometry of the Our Lady of Tears Sanctuary in Syracuse. Essential reading for anyone serious about twentieth-century architecture and the politics of built form.
Key Features
- 200 pages of exclusive architectural photography spanning every region of Italy
- Photography and text by Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego, authors of Soviet Asia
- Notable structures include Le Vele di Scampia and the Our Lady of Tears Sanctuary, Syracuse
- Published by FUEL Design & Publishing
What You'll Discover
- How Italian architects navigated the ideological legacy of fascist modernism when adopting raw concrete construction in the postwar period
- The role of historical and regional plurality in shaping a distinctly Italian Brutalist identity — one that assimilated local references into new construction
- The full programmatic range of Italian Brutalism, from private homes and cemeteries to churches and football stadia
- A systematic geographic survey, covering structures from the Alps to the Mediterranean that have never before appeared together in a single volume
About the Author
Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego are architectural photographers who have documented modernist and Brutalist built environments across Europe and Central Asia. They are the co-authors of Soviet Asia, also published by FUEL, and spent five years and over 20,000 kilometres travelling Italy to produce this volume.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 200
- Dimensions: 25 x 16.7 x 2 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781739887834
- Publisher: FUEL Design & Publishing
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and historians interested in postwar European modernism, photographers drawn to monumental concrete structures, and anyone tracing the political and cultural fault lines embedded in twentieth-century Italian architecture.