Ernesto Nathan Rogers: The Modern Architect as Public Intellectual

Description

Architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909-1969) was a towering figure in 20th-century Italian architecture, with a significant impact at the international level. Through the work of his collaborative firm (Banfi Belgiojoso Peressutti Rogers, or BBPR), the editorship of publications such as Domus and Casabella, and his teaching at the Politecnico in Milan, Rogers ensured a lasting influence on the field as a practitioner, theorist and educator. However his contributions have been largely neglected by scholarship outside of Italy. Published as part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture series, which brings to light the work of significant yet overlooked modernist architects, this book re-assesses Ernesto Nathan Rogers' cultural legacy. It is the first comprehensive, critical work on Rogers in English, and emphasizes Rogers' vision for the role of the architect as a public intellectual, as well as his commitment to pursue a renewed path of professional and cultural research within the "Modern Project." The book also discusses Roger's willingness to challenge academic classicized monumentality as well as modernist stereotypes, to emerge as a leader of Italian design in the aftermath of World War II; his interest in all scales of design and planning, with a cross-disciplinary mentality; tradition in modernity; and criticality as a mode of practice, to bring a detailed account of the work and thought of Ernesto Nathan Rogers to an English-speaking audience for the first time. With a foreword by Kenneth Frampton.

Maurizio Sabini is a Professor of Architecture with the Hammons School of Architecture at Drury University and is Editor-in-Chief of The Plan Journal.

Maurizio Sabini offers a stimulating survey of Rogers's architectural career within the prominent Milan-based collective BBPR (including his social engagement, and his insistence on teamwork and cross disciplinarity), rescuing it from a neglect due to its nonorthodox version of modernism. * Architectural Record * His design intelligence unconstrained by his mastery of modernist method, Ernesto N. Rogers, as this book amply demonstrates, created buildings equally appropriate to their time and to their place. * Kathleen James-Chakraborty, University College Dublin, Ireland * The first account in English of the work of an important Italian modern architect and post-war CIAM leader. This book will be an excellent resource for teaching and scholarship worldwide on key ideas in modern architecture and urbanism. * Eric Paul Mumford, Washington University in St. Louis, USA * The architect as an artist, an intellectual, and a civic figure: by envisaging all the aspects of an essential figure of Italian post-war architecture, this study proposes a stimulating reflection on modernism as a global project. * Antoine Picon, Harvard University, USA *