‘Un'arte ancora in embrione’: international expositions, empire, and the evolution of Fascist architectural design

This article reconsiders the development of Fascist architecture throughout the late interwar period. It pays especial attention to the structures erected for the most significant international expositions held, or planned to be held, between 1933 and 1942, in order to identify significant trends in Party-sponsored design. It argues that the ‘dynamism’ of Fascist design was a consequence of the regime's preference for an increasingly imperial tone which developed in direct proportion to its increasingly imperial identity. It points to Piacentini and Pagano's Italian Pavilion built for the 1937 Paris Exposition, the first national pavilion constructed following the May 1936 proclamation of empire, as a significant flashpoint in the tension between Fascist interpretations of modern and classical design. This article concludes that the often-overlooked world's fair buildings can be viewed as crystalline distillations of the stylistic experimentation which defined the broader Fascist building programme both in Italy and abroad.

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The Function of Luxury: Visual and Material Abundance in Minoru Yamasaki’s U.S. Consulate in Kobe and Federal Science Pavilion in Seattle (1954–62)

Arts ◽

10.3390/arts7040065 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. 65

Author(s):

Joss Kiely

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Federal Government ◽

Interwar Period ◽

The United States ◽

World's Fair ◽

World War ◽

Architectural Form ◽

World Power ◽

Global Exchange ◽

The U.S

This article explores the visual abundance found in a number of early projects by Leinweber, Yamasaki and Hellmuth (LYH) and Minoru Yamasaki and Associates (MYA), which stands in stark contrast to the austere character of architectural form during the interwar period. Although Yamasaki received his architectural training in the 1930s, he was neither a true modernist, nor a fully postmodern architect. His aesthetic, and his firm’s work, lies in the interstices between these two distinct architectural moments, in company with contemporaries Edward Durell Stone and Paul Rudolph, among others. The work of these architects embraced a kind of visual and formal excess but stopped short of approaching the playful linguistic games of postmodern architecture. With themes of visual and material excess in mind, I examine two early commissions from the U.S. federal government that put into play ideas of global exchange, power, and extravagance in architecture as the United States emerged as a major world power in the aftermath of World War II, including the U.S. Consulate in Kobe, Japan (1954–1955) and the Federal Science Pavilion at the Seattle World’s Fair (1962).

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Introduction

Asian Self-Representation at World's Fairs ◽

10.5117/9789462985636_ch01 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

William Peterson

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Case Studies ◽

San Francisco ◽

The Philippines ◽

World's Fair ◽

New York World's Fair ◽

International Expositions ◽

International Exposition ◽

China And Japan ◽

And Control

The chapter sets out the rationale for and structure for this inquiry into Asian self-representation at World’s Fairs, or international expositions. Using a case-studies approach, the book will consider how independent Asian nations have sought to shape and control the ways in which they were represented at these events. China and Japan at the San Francisco Panama Pacific International Exposition in 1915 are the focus of the first two chapters, followed by Japan in at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair, and China at Expo ’88 in Brisbane. Other fairs and nations examined in the 100-year span of this inquiry include the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair (the Philippines and Indonesia) and the 2015 Milan International Exposition (Thailand and Korea).

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