Villa: Type or Model? Framing a Contradiction in the Context of Post-war Italy

In the collective imagination, the villa is a manifesto of ‘the good life’ (Abalos, 2016) and probably the most archaic building still surviving today. Since the first appearance of the term, the villa has evolved into a more comprehensive notion referring to a bourgeois, luxurious and detached house outside of the city, often immersed in nature. However, a closer typological examination of this building, reveals a contradiction. The various forms in which the villa exemplified itself throughout history show in fact a non-homogeneity motivated mainly by the fact that architects and designers have always used villas as their laboratories for stylistic experimentation, which would prompt us to define this building as a non-type. On the other hand, however, the word ‘villa’ is strongly related to a precise ideology of the ‘escape from the city’, which could make this building fit into the very notion of type, or at least make it a model for a very specific idea of domesticity. The Fifth Typology presentation will therefore be instrumental in looking into the notion of type and model in relation to the villa intended as a holiday residence, in the context of post-war Italy. This presentation wishes to explore the difficult theoretical task of defining what a villa really is, by means of a comparative analysis of three holiday residences built in Italy in the post-war period: Villa Balmain by Leonardo Ricci, Villa La Saracena by Luigi Moretti and Villa Arosio by Vico Magistretti. The contribution wishes to ultimately answer the question of whether the irreducibility and tenacity of the villa ideology are sufficient elements to classify this building as a type.