RAZIONALISMO ARCHITETTONICO. -
From the time of ancient Classicism, first in Greece and then in Rome, certain “laws” or “rules” were established to which the forms and relationships of architectural members had to conform. These “rules” and “laws” were codified several times over the course of the centuries (v. ORDINI ARCHITETTONICI).
They are founded upon the very principle of the evolution of those forms and relationships, according to which the column would derive, for example, from the trunk of a tree, while the façade of the Parthenon, in its fundamental scheme, would take up the theme of the façade of a hut. At times, moreover, those same evolutionist theories were made still more complex by a certain anthropomorphism, according to which, in the view of some, the ancient Greeks drew inspiration from the perfect harmony of the human limbs in defining their architectural “laws.”
As is easy to infer, implicit in such theories is the concept of the initial “functionality” or “rationality,” or better still, reasonableness, of the various architectural elements and members. From this also derives the necessity of admitting the possible atrophying and hence the perishability—determined by disuse—of those elements and members by then destined to a merely decorative function. For logical reasons, one can therefore understand how, toward the end of the seventeenth century and during the eighteenth, with the spread of the mentality that generated Enlightenment rationalism, and through the same natural saturation of Baroque and Rococo taste, architectural theories—previously foreshadowed as well (for example, by Gallaccini)—found favor. These theories postulated for architecture the application of the same laws defined by Galilei in the fields of mechanics. The teachings of Carlo Lodoli and subsequently of Algarotti, Temanza, Memmo, Milizia, and Pini—to cite only a few names among those of the Italian theorists of architecture of the eighteenth century—then insisted that the use of every architecture should be clear, even in its external appearance, and that every architectural element employed in that architecture should have a precise function. Every architectural form was thus to arise from a precise constructive reason, and every material was to be used according to its own characteristics and possible applications. These theories, which enjoyed very wide circulation in the second half of the eighteenth century, at the time when Rococo taste was waning, established precisely the theoretical premises for an architecture that, in fact, was not to arise then. Indeed, at that time, the practitioners of courtly architectural art responded to the demand for simpler and more straightforward architectural forms by employing forms proper to ancient architecture, which was then being investigated by archaeologists with new precision and scientific method (v. NEOCLASSICISMO).
Nevertheless, while this was happening in the sphere of courtly architecture, where the Neoclassical forms were soon succeeded by Purist forms, then by Romantic forms, and subsequently by those of Eclecticism characteristic of the second half of the nineteenth century, in the construction of the first industrial buildings—that is, buildings intended to house machines and created to meet the needs of machines—the very principles that the theorists of r. a. had long since formulated were applied almost inadvertently, albeit without any stylistic concern, that is, without any aspiration to beauty.
One may therefore distinguish, throughout the nineteenth century,
a twofold architectural current. One, the courtly current,
of ceremonial buildings, in which the forms of ancient
styles and orders are taken up with various modifications
and variations (it is essentially the work of those
nineteenth-century architects who were above all
professors of architectural drawing); the other is in-
dustrial architecture, the architecture of factories, that
determined, in the forms and even in the character of
the structures, exclusively by the requirements of their
use and by the needs of machines—in other words, the
architecture of engineers.
In any case, it was at the beginning of our century that
such functional or rational architecture—that is, in which,
it may be worth repeating, the various parts and
elements are determined, even in their appearance and
in the choice of materials, by the requirements of their
function and rationale—acquired dignity and came to be
widely understood as a new plastic-constructive style.
While this style seeks to respond to the requirements of
functionalism and r. a., it is essentially directed toward
“spatial creation.” That is, toward the definition and
harmonization of that modern architectural space which,
although it cannot be determined by precise laws and
rules, pursues plastic rhythms of high expressiveness and
clarity, in which the demands of technique and the free
flight of imagination, finding a perfect accord, give rise
to the artistic fact—in other words, become art.