Church of the Holy Family in Genoa (1956-'59)

Abstract

When Professor Bruno Malara mentioned Carlo Scarpa, I remembered Ludovico Quaroni (who was said to be rather uncomfortable with Olivetti because they used others, like Cosenza, as architects, and used him as a city planner), when he was being a bit snobbish, would say “if I were an architect, the architect I would like to be would be Carlo Scarpaâ€, and then the next time round he would say he wanted to be Albini or Gardella... I am responsible for naming a School of Architecture after Ludovico Quaroni, which is somewhat strange – it appears not to be the custom to give an entire faculty the name of an architect or a professor; usually just a classroom might be dedicated to him. Carlo Scarpa was one of the architects that Ludovico Quaroni said he wanted to be, but I think it was just a joke on his part. When we named the faculty after Quaroni, there was some doubt about whether, among all the Roman architects, he was in fact the most representative. Some colleagues of the time were more inclined towards others who were more associated with a robust, linguistically precise, almost ‘designer’ kind of architecture, and the main candidate was Adalberto Libera, who however did not have a particularly close relationship with Rome. Other names proposed were those of old masters of the twentieth century, such as Giovannoni; no mention was made of Piacentini.