Blossoming of a Modernist Lexicon. Camillo Autore and the Reconstruction of Reggio Calabria

Abstract

The reconstruction of Reggio Calabria, which at the time of the 1908 earthquake had about 80,000 inhabitants, was carried out almost entirely after the First World War, between 1920 and 1940. In those years modernism spread rapidly across Europe, thanks also to the improvement of new construction systems and contributions from the artistic avant-garde. However, the city was reconstructed following only partially the new architectural style. Reggio was a provincial city, concerned with creating the largest number of social housing and public buildings in the shortest time, and mistrustful of the experiments. A solid and traditional image was therefore preferred. The main protagonists of the reconstruction are Camillo Autore and Gino Zani. Autore is certainly the one who best represents the rapid evolution of the architectural language from liberty and eclectic canons to modernism, however mediated by that link with the Italian tradition supported (and often imposed) by the fascist regime. Of his vast work we keep 84 projects, almost all completed and built, 33 of which in Reggio Calabria. Retracing the chronological excursus of the works created by Camillo Autore in Reggio allows us to reconstruct—obviously with the limits of a single artist’s point of view—the evolution of architectural language in a particularly significant period of contemporary history. In this essay we will analyse three significant projects by Camillo Autore in Reggio: their realization was preceded by different design solutions in which the evolution from the eclectic-liberty language towards modernism is clearly legible.