The Silence of Modernity: Technology, Technique, and Reception of Giuseppe Vaccaro's Works since the 1930s

By the early 1930s, Giuseppe Vaccaro (1896–1970) had emerged as a leading professional figure in the Italian architectural scene and was the author of three prominent public projects, built throughout the peninsula: the Palazzo delle Poste in Naples (1931–36), the Faculty of Engineering in Bologna (1931–35), and the Colonia Marina “Sandro Mussolini” in Cesenatico (1936–38). Vaccaro seldom wrote about his own works and thus placed himself outside of the political debate on architecture shared by many of his contemporaries. On the contrary, his few words show that he was far more interested in the practical details and in the recent developments of building technology. As this chapter argues, this may be one of the reasons why, differently from other architectural legacies of the regime, soon after the war, Vaccaro’s buildings fell into the realm of the ordinary. Today, his projects are still living a silent and undebated life yet sometimes suffering from an even-more-soundless disregard.