In 2000 Luca Molinari and Paolo Scrivano are invited by international architecture magazine 2G to organize a monographic issue on Italian Postwar architecture. The prefaces by co-curators clarify the two main debating issues of those years. Molinari links the Postwar architectural season to an ambivalent design approach that moves between continuity and crisis; he describes a virtuous stage when “a harmony among context, history and modernity appeared feasible and as a key to the humanisation of modern architecture”.
Scrivano underlines the international reach of Italian topics. “Influences and exchanges” between the Italian peninsula and the rest of the Western countries were mutual and manifold, starting from the theoretical activities of some key figures such as Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Bruno Zevi and Adriano Olivetti – up to the CIAM attendance by some of the most important Italian designers of that time.
The project descriptions include drawings, old photographs and contemporary photos by Francesco Iodice which tell about reconstruction as a pervasive phenomenon that encompasses all facilities of Italian modernity. From the solem Fosse Ardeatine Sacrario in Rome (designed by M. Fiorentino and more in 1949) to the neorealistic projects within INA Casa (such as The Tiburtino neighbourhood by L. Quaroni, M. Ridolfi and more designers in 1949-1954) to the middle-class apartment blocks in Milan (as the building by L. Figini and G. Pollini in via Broletto, 1947-1948) and in Rome (Girasole House by Luigi Moretti, 1947-1950) to production sites (Olivetti plants in Ivrea and Pozzuoli) to museums (such as the Museum of the Treasure of San Lorenzo Cathedral in Genoa by F. Albini, 1952-1956) to churches.
The final essay by Marco De Michelis, Observations on Italian Architecture at the End of the Century, leads to the following decades and up to the present, starting from the famous family tree designed by Italo Rota on 1994 Domus, issue n.764.