Architecting the city: Luisa Anversa and the post-war Italian debate (1950–1970)

This article investigates the built work of Luisa Anversa (1920–2022), an architect who graduated from the School of Architecture of Rome in 1950, to position her contribution within the Italian debate on architecture and urban design. During the years between post–war reconstruction and the economic boom, Italian architects were called to redefine their political and professional roles. In this context, public housing programs offered a new generation of Italian architects opportunities to experiment with urban schemes and to shape cities in anticipation of rapid growth. Despite producing more than fifty projects – from social housing to holiday resorts – Anversa's work has so far received limited scholarly attention. Yet her training and early collaborations make her trajectory particularly useful for reassessing key developments in the architectural and planning discourse of post–war Italy. From the mid–1950s onward, Anversa engaged in this debate through temporary collaborative practices and close partnerships with several prominent colleagues. While the composition of these groups changed over time, reflecting the fluidity of the period, she consistently maintained a commitment to rigorous design principles, adapting them to shifting design scales and bureaucratic frameworks. This paper offers a first analysis of Anversa's approach to planning through architecture, focusing on public housing projects developed during the late reconstruction and early economic boom, drawing on the rich documentary heritage of her private papers.