ABSTRACT
The Italian university of the 1960s was the result of a historical process of reform that had commenced with the unification of the country a hundred years earlier, and had experienced a pivotal moment in the fascist reforms of the 1920s. Despite being promoted according to the notion of academic autonomy, higher education had developed under the control of the central state and was composed of an array of public institutes all very similar to one another. Already in the 1950s, the state of disrepair of an academic system still based on outdated protocols and ruled by a quasi-feudal logic of isolated faculties had led to accusations that it was fostering a fossilised institution – in the words of Adriano Buzzati-Traverso, a scientist who negatively compared the Italian university to its international counterparts. Citing a high degree of absenteeism by students and professors, a lack of proper university life, old-fashioned curricula, and archaic forms of academic government, Traverso’s critique touched on the main points that formed the backbone of higher education reformism for about two decades, but one that did not lead to an idea of the university that was agreed upon across the social and political spectrum. While parliamentary debate unrolled aimlessly in search of agreement, the growing turmoil coming from the bottom-up critique and self-management experiments of the Student Movement contributed to the ultimate derailment of agreed reforms. Confronted by such instability and a lack of clear guidance, the Italian architectural community embarked on a parallel path that, through conferences, research projects, and the architectural press, explored how a university could act as the motive force to shape city-territories.
