The abandonment of ‘nuova dimensione’ and ‘urban renewal’ in a transatlantic perspective: the 1968 effects on the perception of urban conditions

Abstract

The paper scrutinizes the effects of 1968 student protests on architectural education and epistemology within the European and American contexts. It shows how the concepts of urban renewal and ‘nuova dimensione’ were progressively abandoned, shedding light on the differences of how the “real” was treated in the American and the Italian context and on the impact that the student protests had on the models of urban evolution. Even if urban renewal discourse was still presiding in the United States, a group of students coming from the Department of City Planning of Yale University’s School of Art and Architecture, reacted against the extensive redevelopment of New Haven in the 1950s and 1960s, marshalling a critique of their university’s role in this top-down reconstruction. This response of Yale students is interpreted as a rejection of the dominance of the notion of “urban renewal”, which had a protagonist role within the north-American context of the mid- and late-sixties. The rejection of the very basis of urban renewal is related to the conviction that it was incompatible with any kind of socially effective architecture and urban design approach. Within such an ambiguous context, where the problem of urban conditions was protagonist, in 1968, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown started teaching at Yale School of Art and Architecture a seminar titled “Learning from Las Vegas”. In Italy, a network of significant events extending from the fight between the police and the students outside at Valle Giulia in Rome to the students’ occupation of the 15th Triennale di Milano in 1968, and “Utopia e/o Rivoluzione” at the Politecnico di Torino in 1969, triggered the rejection of the concept of ‘nuova dimensione’ in favor of the rediscovery of reality’s immediacy, the ‘locus’ and the civic dimension of the architects’ role. The objective is to demonstrate the complexity of the reorientations that took place in both contexts, taking into consideration, not only the student protests, but also other significant episodes, such as the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the Vietnam War protests. Special attention is paid to the impact of these episodes on the understanding of architects’ task and the curriculum of the schools of architecture. Special attention is paid to the six weeks student protests at Columbia University and the intention to respond to the fulfilment of needs related to the welfare of the society as a whole and the responsibility to provide equal housing opportunities and equal access to public amenities regardless of race, religion, or national origin.