Marcello Piacentini (8 December 1881 – 19 May 1960) was an
Italian urban theorist and one of the main proponents of Italian
Fascist architecture.
Biography
Born in
Rome, he was the son of architect
Pio Piacentini. When he was only 26, he was commissioned to revamp of the urban center of
Bergamo (1907); subsequently, he worked in most of Italy, but his best works are those commissioned by the Fascist government in Rome.
Piacentini became an important colonial architect, particularly in
Cyrenaica in Eastern Libya. The style of his buildings is characteristic of the
Neo-Moorish period of Italian colonial architecture in Libya in the 1920s. This is evident in his Albergo Italia as well as the Berenice Theatre in
Benghazi. Piacentini was made project manager of all Italian building works in Cyrenaica.[2]
He was also professor of Urban Planning at La Sapienza, of which he was also president. After the fall of the Fascist regime he did not work as architect for several years. He died in Rome in 1960.
^(in German) Luigi Monzo: trasformismo architettonico – Piacentinis Kirche Sacro Cuore di Cristo Re in Rom im Kontext der kirchenbaulichen Erneuerung im faschistischen Italien, in: Kunst und Politik. Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft, 15.2013, p. 83-86.
^Obermair, Hannes (2017), "Monuments and the City—an almost inextricable entanglement", in Matthias Fink; et al. (eds.), 'Multiple Identitäten in einer "glokalen Welt"—Identità multiple in un "mondo glocale"—Multiple identities in a "glocal world", Bozen-Bolzano:
Eurac Research, pp. 88–99,
ISBN978-88-98857-35-7
Piacentini Marcello. Fascismo - Architettura - Arte / Arte fascista web site
Sources
Lupano, Mario (1991). Marcello Piacentini. Rome-Bari: Laterza.
Pisani, Mario (2004). Architetture di Marcello Piacentini. Le opere maestre. Rome: Clear.
Scarrochia, Sandro (1999). Albert Speer e Marcello Piacentini: l'architettura del totalitarismo negli anni trenta. Milan: Skira.
De Rose, Arianna S. (1993). Marcello Piacentini: Opere 1903–1926. Modena: Franco Cosimo Panini.
(in German) Luigi Monzo, trasformismo architettonico – Piacentinis Kirche Sacro Cuore di Cristo Re in Rom im Kontext der kirchenbaulichen Erneuerung im faschistischen Italien, in Kunst und Politik. Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft, 15.2013, pp. 83-100.
(in German) Christine Beese, Marcello Piacentini. Moderner Städtebau in Italien. Berlin 2016.
(in German) Luigi Monzo, Review to Beese, Christine: Marcello Piacentini. Moderner Städtebau in Italien, Berlin 2016. In architectura: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Baukunst, 45.2015/1 (published October 2016), pp. 88-91.