Franco Antonelli. 1929 – 1994

The development of critical categories frequently takes place in places distant and separate from the production of architectural works, typologies on different scales and powerful creative force. The case of Franco Antonelli is a masterly example of this accidental separation. This volume offers the opportunity to learn about “provincial” works that can create a frame of reference for the profession and architectural research.
Franco Antonelli, an architect and urban planner, born in Umbria and trained in Rome, has left a number of notable architectural works, well known internationally, in his region. First of all the monastery of Santa Maria di Betlem, which overlooks the Foligno valley with the severe grace of a medieval building, and the Campi printworks, whose expressive power is still striking today, deservedly gracing the cover of the volume. Critically retracing Antonelli’s work, relocating it in his time, starting from the early decades of the post-war period, when the new Italian architecture shone, emerging from the restrictions of fascism, means not only doing justice to a singular architectural talent, but also projecting a new light on a fruitful period of Italian culture and society.

Designing for Antonelli, as for every money order architect, means knowing reality in depth to critically modify it for the benefit of present and future generations.

The book opens with a preface by Claudia Conforti and is divided into two sections. The first consists of essays respectively exploring the national context, urban plans and religious architecture. The second section of the volume is devoted to studies in depth of Antonelli’s formative period, his designs, competition projects, public and industrial architecture, residential architecture, the recovery of the interior of San Domenico as an auditorium and the design of furnishings. The volume concludes with the apparatus, biography and bibliography of the writings on and by Antonelli and notes on the photo shoot.