REVALUING THE BIOCLIMATIC IN THE MODERN MOVEMENT: ARTÉ AND TEKNÊ

It is still a widely held opinion that the cultural legacy and material heritage of the Modern Movement (MoMo) are antithetical to environmental sustainability. Recently, the challenge of energy sustainability has become pressing, and concern for passive thermal control in the preservation and restoration of the 20th-century architecture is getting momentum. Within this epochal turning point, it is relevant to acknowledge that bioclimatic architecture reached its first systematic formulation along the path of the MoMo in 1963, with the book Design with Climate: A Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism by Victor Olgyay. Well before its release, the concern for thermal control has featured the face of the global modernities through an impressive variety of external solar shading systems and other climate-mediating strategies. The designed solutions demonstrate both the climatic adaptability of the building elements and the adaptation of the International Style to the different climatic regions, including tropical and subtropical areas. In the period surrounding the Second World War, several forward-thinking Italian architects combined arté and teknê to achieve proto-bioclimatic solutions by designing solar shading devices and new building envelopes, experimenting autarkic bio-based materials or reinterpreting the use of traditional elements. In an international comparative perspective, looking at the modern heritage in Italy through the lens of energy sustainability, our study focuses on the identification and analysis of combined solutions and devices for passive thermal control, thus re-evaluating the bioclimatic legacy of the MoMo. The assessment processes leading to protection and restoration choices have to encompass this legacy.