Alessandra Muntoni

Articles for DWF

Reviews for DWF


Articles for DWF


House Culture in Post War Italy, 1982, n. 19-20, pp. 7-26

The essay is centred on the assumption that a proper "house culture" and - above all - "modern" house culture never really existed in Italy as it did in the Anglo-Saxon world. In Italy the outward dimension, the dimension of the city, of the street, of the square, seems to have prevailed over the inward dimension, that of the domestic space. Moreover, the transition from an agricultural economy and culture towards an industrial one - with all the associated problems of mass urbanisation - brought as a consequence a need for and a planning of flats rather than of houses.

Women have so far had only two possibilities: total refusal on one side, or a passive acceptance mingled with feelings of hatred. The author traces the history of the relationship between women, houses and habitation through the three crucial phases of reconstruction, planning and the last which covers the present, in which despite resistance and oppositions the basis was laid for a public and decentralised policy of the building cycle.

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(edited by), Notes on the Guisa familistère, 1982, n. 19-20, pp. 48-64

Short introduction followed by fifteen pages with illustrations from Le familistère de Guise ou les équivalents de la richesse. The familistère was an economic and town planning experiment undertaken by the businessman Jean-Baptiste-André Godin in France in 1858.

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Reviews for DWF


LONZI Marta, L'architetto fuori di sé
, Milano, Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1982
rev. by Alessandra Muntoni, 1982, n. 21, pp. 171-172

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