As Balsdon Fellow at the BSR, I conducted research on a new project that seeks to examine how a ‘Mediterranean’ imaginary was constructed and used in the debates on architecture in Fascist Italy. My starting premise was that the proponents of a ‘Mediterranean’ architecture (proposed mostly by ‘rationalist’ architectural circles) sought to influence the direction of the Fascist project as a whole, steering it clear from the traditionalists and nostalgic proponents of romanità into a decidedly modern, strongly internationalist, futural direction. As the mirage of victory gave way to a sense of collective marginalization, they became more vocal in their opposition to the official direction of the regime, using the regime's aesthetic choices associated with the official stile littorio as symbolic markers of what they perceived as a ‘revolution’ that depressingly had lost its direction. Though perhaps too much of a leap into charged historical language, I explored the hypothesis that mediterraneità ended up resembling something like a ‘Fascist anti-Fascism’ — a fierce critique of official choices of the Fascist regime but without ever questioning the centrality of Fascism itself as the vehicle of transformation itself.

As part of my project, I spent significant time reading contemporary publications from cultural and architectural journals, typically dispersed across numerous library locations in Rome and beyond. My primary tasks were to decipher the different meanings and symbolic uses of mediterraneità in public debates and polemiche across a period of profound change in both the direction of the Fascist regime and the fortunes of architectural modernism; and to unpack the growing oppositional strand of the ‘Mediterranean’ architectural discourses. Being in Rome for a prolonged period of time allowed me to spend time reading the issues of the architectural journal Quadrante (notoriously difficult to find), as well as chasing a range of other articles dispersed across various other national and regional journals. I also worked at the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, identifying resources from the viewpoint of the Fascist authorities at the time — in particular, how they viewed the architectural polemiche and how Mussolini sought to respond to them at different stages. But I was also privileged to be given access to a number of archives (by architects Luigi Moretti, Marcello Piacentini, Alberto Calza Bini, Pier Maria Bardi and Enrico Peressutti; as well as the archive of the ex-Istituto Case Popolari in Rome) that offered a more intimate look at the constructions and understandings of the ‘Mediterranean’ trope in the 1930s. I discovered some fascinating tensions that highlighted how difficult it was for rationalists to deal with history and tradition in their discourses of radical transformation. In addition, I tried to retrace the trajectories of Italian architects who maintained contacts with the international modernist movement (especially CIAM). Gradually my research shifted to the 1934–9 period because this coincided with the gradual marginalization of razionalismo in favour of the stile littorio and the transformation of ‘mediterraneità’ into an oppositional discourse. What I encountered seems to confirm my initial hypothesis — that debates on architecture in Fascist Italy evolved into proxy culture wars about the future of Fascism itself; and that ‘mediterraneità’ was invested with a significance by its proponents that never lost sight of its supremely ideological-political horizon.

There is, of course, a lot more mileage in this project that inevitably deals with the ‘bigger picture’. But I could not have asked for a more productive, constructive and inspiring spell in Rome. I consider myself privileged to have had the opportunity to be part of the BSR's thriving community for three months as Balsdon Fellow. Living in Rome for a prolonged period of time, being allowed to focus exclusively on my research, being so fully supported by the BSR across all my activities, and taking an active part in its unique intellectual life fostered, sharpened and enriched my research project beyond what words can do justice to.