The House I'd Like to Have: Women's Spatial Cultures, Design, and Aesthetic in 20th Century Italy

Article Sidebar

PDF

Main Article Content

Issue Vol. 7 No. 1 (2024)
Published Jan 29, 2024
Section Articles
Article downloads 122
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7454/in.v7i1.359
Submitted : Jul 1, 2023 | Accepted : Dec 9, 2023
Francesca Romana Forlini
New York Institute of Technology, USA
fforlini@nyit.edu
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-4181-8622

Abstract

"Has any woman ever designed architectures in the past centuries? You may ask her to design a hut, not even a temple! She can't. She is foreign to architecture." These infamous words of Benito Mussolini (1927) reflected the widespread sexism of the Fascist regime and prompted a silent wave of dissent pioneered by women intellectuals, architects, writers, and journalists in the early 20th century. They advocated for a valuable feminine contribution to Italian architecture and their story is still partially unknown by architectural historians today. This essay tackles Italian women's spatial design and aesthetics during the regime, a period in which they kept silently operating within the built environment as professional architects with unbuilt projects and as amateur designers inside their homes. These circumstances, as argued here, determined the emergence of a feminine and feminist approach to architectural design and criticism that transcended the male boundaries of high culture, reinforced by the Fascist regime and in line with the modernist binary understanding of taste and cultural architectural production. The latter is studied through the lens of cultural domesticity, a theoretical framework that merges cultural sociology, feminism, and architecture. By focusing on Italian women's lived experiences and unconventional design approaches, this study ultimately looks at the consolidation of feminine aesthetics and how it informed women's spatial design as it keeps challenging the boundaries of architectural history.

Keywords: domesticity, Italy, feminine, aesthetics, design, interiors

Article Details

How to Cite
Forlini, F. R. (2024). The House I’d Like to Have: Women’s Spatial Cultures, Design, and Aesthetic in 20th Century Italy. Interiority, 7(1), 41–60. https://doi.org/10.7454/in.v7i1.359
Author Biography

Francesca Romana Forlini, New York Institute of Technology, USA

Francesca Romana Forlini is an architect, PhD, educator, writer, and editor whose research is located at the intersection of feminism, cultural sociology, architecture, and interior design history and theory. She teaches history and theory of interior design and architecture at the New York Institute of Technology. Francesca previously taught at Parsons The New School in New York and was head of the BArch History and Theory of Architecture course at the University of Hertfordshire. She worked as a researcher at Foster + Partners, lecturer, and researcher at Middlesex University, Harvard University, and the Royal College of Art (RCA). Francesca presented her research in various international conference venues (such as Harvard, SAH, AMPS, Docomomo) and published it in several journals and magazines. She is the director of the book series Stanze (LetteraVentidue), former chief editor of KoozArch and contributor at the Italian Journal of Architecture. She is a Fulbrighter and an alumna of the RCA, where she completed her Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory. She also holds a Master in Design Studies in Critical Conservation from Harvard Graduate School of Design (degree with Distinction) and completed a five-year degree in architecture (Laurea Magistrale, cum laude) at Università La Sapienza in Rome.

References

Asquer, E. (2011). Storia intima dei ceti medi: Una capitale e una periferia nell'Italia del miracolo economico [Intimate history of the middle classes: A capital and a suburb in the Italy of the economic miracle]. Editori Laterza.

Attfield, J. (1989). FORM/female FOLLOWS FUNCTION/male: Feminist critiques of design. In J. A. Walker (Ed.), Design history and the history of design (pp. 199–225). Pluto Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18mvngc.15

Attfield, J., & Kirkham, P. (1989). A view from the interior: Feminism, women, design. Women's Press.

Balbo, L. (1978). La doppia presenza [The double presence]. Inchiesta,32, 3–6.

Barazzetti, D. (2006). Doppia presenza e lavoro di cura: Interrogativi su alcune categorie interpretative [Double presence and care work: Questions on some interpretative categories]. Quaderni di Sociologia, 40, 85–96. https://doi.org/10.4000/qds.995

Benito Mussolini. (2021, January 4). In Wikiquote. https://it.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini

Brin, I. (1944). Usi e costumi [Customs and traditions] (1920-1944). De Luigi.

Casciato, M. (1988). L'abitazione e gli spazi domestici [The home and domestic spaces]. In P. Melograni (Ed.), La famiglia italiana dall'Ottocento a oggi (pp. 525–588). Editori Laterza.

Cooper, M. (2017). Family values: Between neoliberalism and the new social conservatism. Zone Books.

Cosseta, K. (2000). Ragione e sentimento dell'abitare: La casa e l'architettura nel pensiero femminile tra le due guerre [Reason and feeling of dwelling: The house and architecture in female thought between the two wars]. Franco Angeli.

Douglas, M. (1982). The world of goods. W. W. Norton & Co.

Elias, N. (1998). The Kitsch style and the age of kitsch. In J. Goudsblom, & S. Mennel (Eds.), The Norbert Elias reader (pp. 27–29). Blackwell. (Original work published 1935)

Forlini, F. R. (2021). Salotto buono: The "art of conservation" and the permanence of an Italian room. Interiors, 11(2–3), 157–182. https://doi.org/10.1080/20419112.2021.1942616

Fowler, B., & Wilson, F. (2004). Women architects and their discontents. Sociology, 38(1), 101–119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038504039363

Hartman, H. I. (1981). Women and revolution: A discussion of the unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism. South End Press.

Heynen, H. (2012). Genius, gender and architecture: The star system as exemplified in the Pritzker Prize. Architectural Theory Review, 17(2–3), 331–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/13264826.2012.727443

Morelli, L. (1933). La casa che vorrei avere [The house I'd like to have]. Hoepli.

Pilkey, B., Scicluna, R. M., Campkin, B., & Penner, B. (2017). Sexuality and gender at home: Experience, politics, transgression. Bloomsbury Academic.

Rendell, J. (2012). Tendencies and trajectories: Feminist approaches in architecture. In S. Cairns, G. Crysler, H. Heynen, & G. Wright (Eds.), Architectural theory handbook (pp. 85–97). Sage.

Salvati, M. (1993). L'Inutile salotto: L'Abitazione piccolo-borghese nell'Italia fascista [The useless living room: Lower-middle-class housing in fascist Italy]. Bollati Boringhieri.

Sparke, P. (2010). As long as it's pink: The sexual politics of taste. Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. (Original work published 1995)

Speckel, A. M. (1935). Architettura moderna e donne in architettura [Modern architecture and woman architecture]. Almanacco della Donna Italiana, 13,120–134.

Wigley, M. (1992). Untitled: The housing of gender. In B. Colomina & J. Bloomer (Eds.), Sexuality & space (pp. 327–389). Princeton University Press.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Author(s) retain the copyright of articles published in this journal, with first publication rights granted to Interiority.