ABSTRACT
Between 1945 and the end of the 1960s, Italian architectural journals witnessed the transformation of a country that, after defeat in an ill-advised war, passed from being an agricultural nation of limited industrial capacity to one of Europe's economic powers. The end of the war marked a rite of passage for Italian architecture, insofar as it implied an internal process of cultural redefinition. Accounting for the change in journal's title, Rogers reflected upon the role architects should play in postwar Italy in an editorial titled 'Continuita' that appeared in the first issue of Casabella Continuita. Society and its contradictions were indeed central to the journal's publishing project: as Portoghesi wrote in an editorial in the first issue, Controspazio's primary goal was to delve into architectural practice and theory's 'clash with social reality' Owing to a economic and demographic change between the early postwar years and the 1960s, during the so-called 'economic miracle', Italy took on an increasingly urban character.
