Metalli autarchici. Uso e sperimentazione dei metalli non ferrosi nell’architettura italiana tra gli anni ’20 e ’40 del Novecento

Architectures built between the twenties and forties of the twentieth century are characterized by the variety of finishing and coating materials used. The trials of new materials and the use of specific products, nowadays totally abandoned and hardly understood and known, are also encouraged by the fanatical autarchy policy imposed by the fascist government. The intervention of the regime stimulates experimentation in the productive sectors of Italian industry, encouraging the prevalent use of domestic origin raw materials. The intention to pursue a genuine scientific-technical nationalism is already explicit in the 1926 economic plan; thus, the protectionist policy began well before the League of Nations sanctions due to the invasion of Ethiopia (1935). The designers, motivated by Sindacato Nazionale Fascista Architetti, put all their effort for the “fully self-sufficient project”, using national raw materials, innovating their usage, and experiencing substitutes and surrogates materials directly during the construction phase. In this period, therefore, we can find new products for surface finishing of buildings, reassembled panels and composite materials. We also notice an increasing use of non-ferrous metals in the buildings facades and finishings (section bars, window and door fixtures, railings, gratings, etc.). If iron was to be saved as non-self-sufficient material, another metal, aluminum, could, indeed should, be used without any parsimony; Italy was in fact rich in minerals from which it could be extracted industrially. Between WWI and WWII, aluminous alloys became, even in architectural applications, symbol of the industrial soul and modernity of the country, reminding the most advanced aeronautical, automotive and shipbuilding technologies.

Le architetture realizzate tra gli anni venti e quaranta del XX secolo si caratterizzano per la varietà dei materiali di finitura e di rivestimento utilizzati; l’utilizzo di materiali specifici, talvolta originati dalla commistione della tradizione artigiana con la sperimentazione industriale, ha originato una casistica vastissima di prodotti di rivestimento e di finitura, oggi totalmente in disuso e scarsamente compresi e conosciuti. Le innovazioni nel campo dei materiali per l’architettura si diffondono e si alimentano sollecitati anche dall’esaltata politica di autarchia promossa dal governo fascista. L’intervento diretto del regime stimolò una generale sperimentazione nei settori produttivi dell’industria italiana, incentivando la produzione di ‘materiali nuovi’, realizzati ricorrendo a materie prime di origine esclusivamente nazionale.