He was the singer of happiness in post-war Rome, which disseminated dreams in a building format: a book finally brings Venturino Ventura's work to the general public

There is a building on the corner of via Montanelli and via Nicotera, in Rome, designed by Venturino Ventura, which has the traits of the dream.

The slender trunk of a maritime pine surpasses the roof, almost leaning against the balconies of the house to open up only above, after the building, in a sky of shade and wind. And that maritime pine, so terribly Roman, seems to be the source of inspiration for the house it supports: the large, circular balconies recall the shape of the umbrella-like opening of the tree which no one knows if it supports the 'building or, vice versa, is supported by it.

Not only that: each balcony is a maritime pine, or perhaps a tree that protects the dreams of its tenants at night, while during the day it certainly guarantees their shade, together with the vegetation housed on every single circular concrete overhang.

montanelli ancgolo nicotera
Montanelli, angolo Nicotera

Looking at it from the street, this house is a madness that forces the pedestrian to stop and wonder who designed it and when, together with what it must be like to live there.

Because the balconies are corner projections on a parallelepiped that runs parallel to the sidewalk, punctuated in an almost trivial way by narrow and long windows and balconies, typical of the years 60: time flies by on the facade, although set back from the road to ensure greater tranquillity, and then expands immeasurably on the round terraces that promise well-being.

dettaglio scala via piccolomini
Dettaglio scala via Piccolomini

Venturino Ventura, forgotten architect

The author of this marvelous architectural work on the street, Venturino Ventura, is the forgotten architect of the post-war Roman bourgeoisie.

No one can say exactly why he suddenly and irreversibly fell into oblivion, despite his very high production of buildings for almost always private clients and office buildings, all recognized as having great architectural and design quality.

After all, other names have also fallen into oblivion with him, perhaps less whimsical than Ventura, who knew how to play with architectural languages like a polyglot or a multi-instrumentalist who can choose from time to time which key to interpret songs and feelings.

piazza morgagni oggi
Piazza Morgagni oggi

The beginnings and the voluntary exile in Chieti

Of his history we know very little. We talk about the very first period of his career, invalidated by the proclamation of racial laws just as he was designing the Tower of the National Fascist Party (today Tower of Nations) for the fair d'Oltremare di Napoli of which he had won the tender. It was 1938 when he designed the building that would be built in 1939 and inaugurated in 1940, while he also collaborated with Amedeo Luccichenti and Vincenzo Monaco in the construction of the Iron Minerals Pavilion at the VIII Autarchic Exhibition of Italian Minerals.

But the Second World War brought about a serious arrest in his career, starting with the abandonment of the academic one, which he was probably forced by the promulgation of the racial laws.

It seems that he was of Jewish origins but even this news is not certain, although almost all biographers use this data to explain his voluntary exile in Chieti, where he was actually saved from persecution.

palazzina via Bruxelles
Palazzina via Bruxelles

The beginnings and the voluntary exile in Chieti

Of his history we know very little about him. We talk about the very first period of his career, invalidated by the proclamation of racial laws just as he was designing the Tower of the National Fascist Party (today Tower of Nations) for the fair d'Oltremare di Napoli of which he had won the tender. It was 1938 when he designed the building that would be built in 1939 and inaugurated in 1940, while he also collaborated with Amedeo Luccichenti and Vincenzo Monaco in the construction of the Iron Minerals Pavilion at the VIII Autarchic Exhibition of Italian Minerals.

But the Second World War brought about a serious arrest in his career, starting with the abandonment of the academic one, which he was probably forced by the promulgation of the racial laws.

It seems that he was of Jewish origins but even this news is not certain, although almost all biographers use this data to explain his voluntary exile in Chieti, where he was actually saved from persecution.

piazza morgagni oggi2
Piazza Morgagni

A dream, indeed. Which Roberta Piroddi now collects in a book, Venturino Ventura. Roman architecture and the office complex in Piazzetta Morgagni, D editore, edited by Valerio Bindi.

Perhaps the first monographic document dedicated to him through essays by various authors, together with a volume born from the material collected by Stefano Nicita on his Facebook page Where is Italian architecture? and on his homonymous Instagram profile, entitled Palazzine in cerca d'autore. The unnoticed beauty of Modern Rome.

The journey focuses on the Flaminio, Parioli, Pinciano, Salario, Nomentano, Della Vittoria and Trieste districts where there are striking examples of the dreams of the time and those transformed into buildings by Vittorino Ventura. There are architectural elements of Wrightian origin in an osmosis with nature while remaining within the urban fabric: the vegetation is included in the buildings, as in the case of the palazzo in via Bruxelles, designed to contain a tall cypress, which passed into the overhanging structure of the balconies through a hole of the right size (and now clearly visible because the tree is no longer there!), or foreseen by the ever-present planters which would have ensured vertical green facades.

The organicism of the American architect also translates into Ventura in the use of materials and in the never-ending dialogue between inside and outside, between light and shadow, between city and vegetation.

dettaglio scala via bruxelles
Dettaglio scala via Bruxelles

There are also traces of older elements, of a revisited modernism and of an artistic approach, up to a real dictionary of Ventura which, through idioms , peculiar expressions and a rather rigorous sentence structure, expresses his personal vision of architecture.

This is demonstrated by the concluding part of Piroddi's volume, dedicated to the offices in Piazzetta Morgagni, an architectural and urban planning project recently restructured and redeveloped, which obeys the idea of surprise.

The glass, iron and concrete buildings open onto a small square which then turns into a pedestrian street which has the attraction, for those who walk, of a shortcut.

A dream, together with the geometric lines on the façade which converge in pillars with a Doric flavor. Those fundamental columns, ready to support the entire building, become lotus flowers , magical plant creatures that feed on concrete and iron to support men in their habitation.

Venturino Ventura was born in Florence in 1910 and died in Rome in 1991. Of Rome, his elective city, he narrates happiness and the dissemination of little dreams in a building format, with external spiral staircases interrupting the monotony of the facade, terraces with unusual shapes, planters and curtain rails whose sinuous movement has also been taken up in one of his best-known slender canopies that lead from the road to the entrances of those small enchanted kingdoms.

In fact, one of these looks like a sail blown by the wind…

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