An in-depth and substantiated interpretational essay provides the first comprehensive profile of Luigi Moretti - his career as an architect and scholar and his personality, also placing his theoretical and design production in the context of 20th-century Italian history.
This book presents all Moretti’s design production and highlights its deep-seated consistency and unity. Only recently acknowledged as one of the leading Italian architects of the 20th century, in each phase of his complex career Moretti constructed buildings of great relevance, from the Accademia di Scherma at the Foro Italico in Fascist times to the Watergate complex in Washington in the 1960s. From his youth, Moretti developed intense theoretical, speculative and scientific interests that were closely linked to his design work and in the 1950s these culminated in the founding of the journal Spazio and IRMOU (Institute for Mathematical and Operative Research for Urbanism). For the first time, this book records the full breadth and complexity of Moretti’s work and consists in an essay organised in chronological and subject order. The chronological sequence examines Moretti’s work from three viewpoints: architectural, following the timescale of projects and constructions; “cultural”, following the course of his numerous study and research activities; and, lastly, against the economic, political and cultural background of 20th-century Italy, with which it was repeatedly entwined. Exhaustive files, illustrated mostly with previously unpublished materials, describe the main buildings designed or constructed by the architect in a career that spanned more than 40 years. Completing the book is a list of his extensive and varied production and a detailed biography.