Jonathan Meades: Ben Building (1 x 90′) – The inimitable Jonathan Meades presents the last part of his trilogy of films on the architecture of modern dictators. After Jerry-Building: Unholy Relics of Nazi Germany and Joe-Building: The Stalin Heritage Trail comes a journey through the bizarre and (it has to be said) often brilliant architecture of Mussolini’s Italy, with its vision of a new kind of human – half man, half machine – and its unsettling cult of death.
Unlike his equally murderous contemporaries, Mussolini did not insist on a single totalitarian style. Under his rule, Italy saw progressive urban planning such as the extraordinary new towns south of Rome, suffused with the spirit of de Chirico, the exuberant Fiat factory in Turin, the famous modernist Casio del Fascio in Como, the Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR) in Rome, built as the spectacular site for an exhibition that never happened, now a functioning complex of offices and apartments – as well as the more familiar, but still awe-inspiring patriotic style of the vast monuments to the First World War dead at Monte Grappa and Redipuglia.
Discussion
Comments are disallowed for this post.
Comments are closed.