Villas through Press. The Endorsement of the Escape by Hoepli and Görlich in Postwar Italy

In the collective imagination, the villa is a manifesto of ‘the good life’, often representing for architects a laboratory for stylistic experimentation, as an exception in their portfolio. The fate of the villa in contemporary architecture and research culture reflects its very own position: outside of the ‘urban’ centres of knowledge and critical inquiry, it is still abundantly present as an unexamined source of architectural intelligence, history and ideology. This situation is particularly applicable to Italy, the birthplace of the villa: in histories focusing on Italian post-war architecture, this type of building is strikingly absent despite a revival of this building type in this period. This presentation focuses on one chapter of a larger thesis and examines the role that the five books on holiday villas edited by the Aloi family and published by Hoepli had in disseminating and reinforcing the dream of escape. Discussing the archival material provided by the Aloi family in comparison with Görlich publications will be the start of a conversation around what the author defines as the project of villa-mania. This saw its peak in the post-war period and ultimately resulted in changing the Italian coastal landscape irreversibly.