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Endpoint: Bruno Zevi



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created on: 11/12/2023
by: bob (9192)
 
 

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General info :
Bruno Zevi (22 January 1918, Rome, Italy – 9 January 2000, Rome, Italy (aged 81)) was an Italian architect, historian, professor, curator, author, and editor.
Zevi was a vocal critic of "classicizing" modern architecture and postmodernism.

Zevi was born and died in Rome. His family was Italian Jewish.

On finishing school in 1933, he enrolled at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Rome. Due to the anti-Semitic laws, Zevi was forced in 1938 to abandon his studies, and so left for London, UK, before moving to the United States. Zevi graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, then under the directorship of Walter Gropius.

In 1940 he married Italian journalist and writer Tullia Calabi. While in the US he discovered the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, which became one of the bases for his championing of organic architecture. Zevi returned to London in 1943, working as a translator in the war effort.

In 1944, he founded the influential Association for Organic Architecture (APAO). The following year the magazine Metron-architecture reviewed his book Towards an Organic Architecture, which brought him international acclaim.

In 1945, Zevi became Professor of Architectural History at the University of Venice. Later, he was a professor at the University of Rome, and a member of the International Academy of Architecture (IAA) in Sofia, Bulgaria.

From 1955 onwards, he wrote a column for the weekly L'Espresso magazine. He was an active member of the Italian Jewish community and took part in anti-fascist activities within the Giustizia e Libertà movement. He was active in the Action Party and later in Popular Unity and in the Radical Party, which he represented in the Chamber of Deputies from 1987 to 1992. From 1954 until his death in 2000 he was editor of his own magazine L'architettura. Cronache e storia.

The Modern Language of Architecture is one of Zevi's most significant publications. In this book, Zevi sets forth seven principles or “antirules” to codify the language of architecture created by Le Corbusier, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and Wright. In place of the classical language of the Beaux Art school, with its focus on abstract principles of order, proportion, and symmetry, he presents an alternative system of communication characterized by a free interpretation of contents and function, an emphasis on difference and dissonance, a dynamic of multidimensional vision, and independent interplay of elements, an organic marriage of engineering and design, a concept of living spaces that are designed for use, and an integration of buildings into their surroundings. Anticipating the innovations of postmodern architecture, Zevi argues forcefully for complexity and against unity, for decomposition dialogue between architecture and historiography, finding elements of the modern language of architecture throughout history, and discussing the process of architectural innovation.
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Married to : Tullia Calabi
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Item number : 60776

Submitted by : bob (9192)
on : 11/12/2023