ABSTRACT

The building campaign launched by Mussolini after he came to power in October 1922 included the construction of new medical facilities, schools, markets, post offices, recreational facilities, roadways, airports, as well as the development of new master plans for small towns and major urban centers, all of which were intended to transform Italy and make new Italians. Party building, often modest in material and scale despite their symbolic connections to prestigious buildings, offered an alternative to the exaggerated monumentality and abstracted neoclassicism favored for many of the regime's building projects. Occupying prominent positions in cities, towns, and villages throughout Italy, these buildings reinforced the party's hierarchical organizational structure. The spare vocabulary, low horizontal masses, and details such as floor-to-ceiling glass windows on the ground level of the winning entries met officials' expectations and appealed to the modernist sensibilities of the jurors, who praised Peressutti and Rogers's design for the "intimate simplicity of the exterior".