Bruno Zevi
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Bruno Zevi (born January 22nd 1918, Rome, died January 9th 2000) was an Italian organic architect, historian, professor, curator, author and editor. Zevi was a promoter of Italian Social and Organic Architecture, and a vociferous critic of 'classicising' modern architecture and postmodernism.
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[edit] Life
On finishing school in 1933, Zevi 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 USA. Zevi graduated from Harvard University, then under the directorship of Walter Gropius. While in the USA 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. Already in 1944 he founded the Association for Organic Architecture (APAO). The following year the review Metron-architecture published his book Towards an Organic Architecture, which brought him international acclaim.
In 1945 Zevi became Professor of Architectural History at the University of Venice and was later Professor at the University of Rome, as well as a member of the "International Academy of Architecture (IAA)" in Sofia, Bulgaria. From 1955 onwards he wrote a weekly column for the newspaper L'Espresso. He was an active member of the Italian-Jewish community, and took part in anti-fascist activities within the Justice and Liberty Action Party. From 1954 until his death in 2000 he was the editor of the monthly journal L'Architettura. In 1955 Zevi founded his own journal Cronache di architettura.
Bruno Zevi was a honorary Chairman of the Radical Party, and a former member of the Chamber of Deputies, elected on the Radical Party list.
Zevi participated in the influential International Architecture Symposium "Mensch und Raum" (Man and Space) at the Vienna University of Technology (Technische Universität Wien) in 1984, also attended by Justus Dahinden, Ernst Gisel, Jorge Glusberg, Otto Kapfinger, Frei Otto, Ionel Schein, Dennis Sharp, Paolo Soleri, and Pierre Vago.
Such was Zevi's uncompromising critique of any tendency in modern architecture towards classicism that he even would criticize those architects he otherwise admired: "When Gropius, Mies and Aalto produced [symmetrical buildings] it was an act of surrender. Lacking a modern code, they weakened and regressed to the familiar womb of classicism." (Zevi, The Modern Language of Architecture).
[edit] Quotes
"In 1973, Zevi set out (his) ideas as a set of invariants - a sort of anti-classical codebook that attempted to define modernity as a language of asymmetry and dissonance, which he propagated via his magazine L'architettura, cronache e storia. This exciting theory of architecture as rupture and fragmentation marks him out as the seminal theoretician for all currents of modernism interested in iconoclasm and deconstruction, from Alvar Aalto in the 1930s to Daniel Libeskind in the 1990s." (Thomas Muirhead, March 1st, 2000; The Guardian, Obituary, 2000)
[edit] Select list of Publications
- Zevi, Bruno, Towards an Organic Architecture [Verso un'architettura organica] 1945, Faber & Faber, London 1950.
- Zevi, Bruno, The Modern Language of Architecture [Saper vedere l'architettura], 1948.
- Zevi, Bruno, Saper Vedere la Città (How To Understand the City), 1948.
- Zevi, Bruno, Saper vedere l'architettura [How To Look At Architecture], 1948.
- Zevi, Bruno. Storia dell'Architettura Moderna (1950).
- Zevi, Bruno, Ronald Strom, William A. Packer. Experimental Food Chemistry, Da Capo Press, 1994, ISBN 0-306-80597-9.
- Zevi, Bruno, Poetica dell'Architettura Neoplastica, 1974.
- Zevi, Bruno, Guiseppe Terragni. London, 1989.
- Zevi, Bruno, Frank Lloyd Wright, Birkhäuser Verlag, Berlin, 1998, ISBN 3-7643-5987-0.
- Zevi, Bruno, "Pietilä", in Roger Connah (Ed), Tango Mäntyniemi: The Architecture of the Official Residence of the President of Finland. Rakennustieto, Helsinki, 1998.
- Zevi, Bruno, Erich Mendelsohn - The Complete Works, Birkhäuser Verlag, Berlin, 1999, ISBN 3-7643-5975-7.
