ABSTRACT
The International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), which began in Switzerland in 1928, established a union of mostly European architects and planners dedicated to supporting avant-garde Modern tendencies and interventions. CIAM served as a worldwide venue for the sustenance and advancement of progressive agendas, especially in town planning, for three decades. Several Italian Rationalists established important linkages with CIAM members before World War II, and continued to find legitimacy at the Congress for their furniture, housing, and urban designs. Albini's output had perpetuated Rationalist principles, those that characterized the most progressive buildings in post-war Italy. Filmic and literary modes of reflection provided the means by which a new national identity was forged. Cinematic Neorealism often depicted social networks struggling for rebirth and were characterized less by a particular form than by a composite of disparate voices and faces striving for a common purpose.
