Images of a mood: Architecture and representation at the Italian dopoguerra

David Escudero

The postwar period in Italy was an exceptional time of interaction between cinematography, aesthetics, and urban space. In those years, a wave of Italian films emerged that depicted the life and hardships of characters left helpless after the conflict, bringing to the screen the struggles of a time of existential angst and uncertainty. They were grouped within the broader cultural environment known as neorealism, which spread to other areas of artistic production, eventually reaching the field of architecture.

This lecture explores some of the topics that neorealism unveiled, especially that of everyday life. Paying special attention to the interactions between cinematography and architecture, we will discuss the role of arts and culture in the formation of new collective, social and visual imageries of the city. Neorealism’s imagery will help identify phenomena, reveal hidden relationships, and suggest questions for a better understanding of the challenges of today’s world.

David Escudero is an architect and postdoctoral fellow at the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM-UPM). His research focuses on the intersections between theory of architecture, cinema and representation, especially in dopoguerra Italy. He has been a visiting researcher at the College of Environmental Design of the University of California Berkeley (2017), at the gta Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture of ETH Zürich (2017), and at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome (2018). His most recent articles have been published in Journal of Architecture, Architectural Theory Review, European Planning Studies, LA+journal, and Trans.

This event is part of the seminar „What Kind of Cities do we Want to Live in?„ at the Art History Department of the Goethe University Frankfurt. Conceived by Daniela Ortiz dos Santos, the seminar begins with a series of questions and expects to engage a conversation between participants based in very distinct cities: Rio de Janeiro, Graz, Madrid and Frankfurt am Main. Through a virtual format, the sessions explore the various ways of defining, designing, living, exploring, representing, appropriating and embodying the city.

Our efforts are to challenge Eurocentric perspectives, while creating a platform to exchange positions, propositions and histories. It sheds light on new names, records and episodes. It intersects urban and architectural studies with histories of feminism, with anti-colonial histories, with histories of the moving image as well as with cultural studies of displacement and of everyday life.

For further information and attendance please contact Daniela Ortiz dos Santos.