戦後イタリア建築文化における伝統論争

－新古典主義建築を背景としたアルド・ロッシの初期建築理論における根本理念に関する研究　2－

抄録

 In 1955, Italian architectural culture witnessed the dispute on the concept of tradition between Italian architects, especially Giancarlo De Carlo (1919-2005) and potentially Ernseto Rogers (1909-1969), who tried to continue the Modern Movement while adjusting it to new conditions of the postwar period, and the students of the faculty of architecture in Politecnico di Milano, including Aldo Rossi, whose main reference was nineteenth-century architecture. This dispute triggered Rossi's following research on Neoclassical architecture, focusing on the notion of tradition.

 In the architectural culture of Italy in the 1950’s, the recognition that the Modern Movement faced crisis was widespread. Rogers, De Carlo and Rossi commonly called the crisis “formalism”, meaning a lack of any real content, and emphasized the importance of the concept of tradition for overcoming the formalism of the Modern Movement.

 The dispute began with De Carlo's denunciatory article published in the magazine Casabella Continuità, the editor of which was Rogers. His article accused a Milanese architectural student group of designing a project with columns, capitals and pinnacles, and gave this group a catchy name: ‘the column kids (i giovanni delle colonne)’. After several months, De Carlo was countered not by the group that designed this project, but by a wider group of students from the Faculty of Architecture of Milan, including Rossi, at the meeting entitled “the discussion on the tradition in architecture”.

 The argument of Rogers and De Carlo on tradition is mainly based on the historiography of the Modern Movement, where academism is its first enemy, and formalism its second. In its birth, the Modern Movement presented itself as a revolutionary and isolated episode in order to defeat academic eclecticism, whereas in its second phase, or the battle against its formalism, the movement had to pay attention to the variety of places where common people live. The notion of tradition means spontaneous and local architectural elements, and is understood as a new content or theme. For Rogers and De Carlo, the notion of tradition serves to maintain the myth of the Modern Movement and poses as its essential question the choice of a norm to follow and continue.

 Rossi and other students understand the concept of tradition as a certain attitude towards reality or a method to represent it, which requires architects to judge contemporary society from a historical view-point. They refer to nineteenth-century architecture, not as norm to follow and continue, but as a model which shows the ability to judge and represent reality. For them, traditional architecture means an architecture whose form shows an architect’s critical judgement on the reality, therefore not including spontaneous architecture arising from common people without any conscious responsibility for reality.

 In spite of its simple appearance of opposition between old and new architectural styles, the dispute consists of the conflict in understanding the term of tradition. The discussions of the students at the dispute suggest a new possibility to interpret the concept of tradition, and supply the clues for comprehending Rossi’s following research on neoclassical architecture developed in the second half of the 1950s.