The Italian House vs The American House. Decoration and Life-Style in the 50’s

The Fifties saw the consecration of two residential models - and related furnishings - very different from each other: the Italian and the American homes. The first has its origins in the thirties and is strengthened later. The latter originates in the same years on the West coast. The interpretation that is given is respectively that of a house predominantly urban, bourgeois and elegant which is the result of the combination of traditional objects and modern "pieces" and, on the other side, that of a cell housing immersed in the nature, "taylorized" on its owner. Two models deriving from the substantial diversity of production and social structure but also from a very distant way of interpreting the living and its equipment. The comparison between the two models traces up to the present day, a mode of respective contamination where the "Italian style" responds to the "irresistible Empire".