Architecture and Cold War in Italy: creative processes and possible contaminations

Analyzing the relations between the Bauhaus and the Cold War it is possible to identify a contamination of the creative processes in the modernist architectural design by the American propaganda lines (see for example the Hilton hotels and the related message of new efficient domesticity). To the massification of architecture as an object of art, standardized but however of great quality (Bauhaus), followed the phenomenon of the brutalist current where the concept of megastructure and “power” could be associated with an indirect influence of American culture, even in opposition and by reaction. During the Cold War in Italy new networks were created, beyond the national borders, based on international dialogues and artistic collaborations at a time when there were countries that were concerned instead with consolidating their national traditions. A deeper analysis of these artistic interrelations can help us to outline the influence of the Cold War policies on architectural production in Italy, in particular in Rome, Milan and Venice, the Italian cities which were more pervaded by a renewed artistic fervor in the cinematographic field. This new cultural atmosphere, linked to the Cold War, can help us to trace the activities of the precursors of the subsequent globalization and the related local / global relations that characterized the architecture of the end of the 20th century. For better or for worse, The Cold War in fact produced a phase of cosmopolitan intercultural exchange based on the creation of new global networks (previously non existent on this large scale) and a spirit of collaboration between critics, artists and the public. The contribution aims to demonstrate any influences / interrelations between the Cold War and the works of the Italian architects (for example Viganò, BBPR, Capobianco, Castiglioni, De Carlo, etc.) who designed and built between the 1930s and 1990s.