“Leader at Eur, a strange location born as a showcase of fascism”. It is controversy over the Washington Post for the G20 summit hosted by Italy in the Cloud and the Media center in the Palazzo dei Congressi by the rationalist architect Libera, right in the heart of Eur.
In short, different from the touristic Rome, the district displaces the Americans with empty and colossal buildings reminiscent of “Pyongyang”. But the relationship between Rome and history is also striking, while in the USA the statues of confederate generals are demolished.
G20 in Rome, the architect of the cloud Fuksas: “The revenge of the Eur. Born a fascist now embodies the dream”
by Paolo Boccacci
“The strange background of the G20: a Roman neighborhood built as a showcase of fascism” writes the US newspaper. No archaeological ruins or ancient buildings, but large boulevards and imposing white buildings, as well as “some disturbing blocks reminiscent of Pyongyang, empty, colossal, with colonnades” and even a bas-relief with Mussolini.
While just today in an interview with Repubblica Massimiliano Fuksas, the designer of the Nuvola, one of the most famous Italian architects in the world, said: “Eur? It was born from a wrong idea, because it had to represent the triumph of fascism for an operetta empire at the Universal Exposition, and instead a fantastic project came out with a large axis, that of the Colombo and many masterpiece buildings, from the Palazzo dei Congressi of Libera at the Roman Museum of Aschieri. In short, a sort of white suggestion that today acquires a strong value. And to think that in the post-war period it was still a construction site and was seen almost with detachment also because it recalled Fascism. Then, on the contrary, that very Italian rationalism took on force, began to parade up to the Palazzo dello Sport and the lake and conquered everyone. But the strength of his dream lies in the fact that he was able to almost materialize De Chirico’s metaphysical painting ”.
“There are various theories as to why Italians felt less of the need to remove the propaganda of those terrible times”, the Washington Post article reads. “One is that the Romans have so much history that they don’t feel compelled to focus on recent recent horrors. Others have noted that fascist icons, unlike Confederate monuments, were built then and do not reflect some sort of posthumous nostalgia for an earlier period. “
And finally he remembers however how the EUR was chosen for practical reasons, being “spacious and easy to isolate for safety”. And he concludes with a note of admiration. Eur, the red of the glare of the sun on the white marble of the buildings, also has one thing in common with the center of Rome: the beauty of the “sunset view”.
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