The color of urban scenography in Modern Architecture

Modern architecture in Genoa rests on three main reasons: the complex natural place, the industrial and port socio-economic matrix and the absence, until the 1960s, of a school of local architecture. The architects who with their attempt to approach the reality of Genoa, a difficult and stimulating site, and through the development of constructive characteristics typical of industry such as rhythm and seriality, invention, indifference to the formal rule and great impact, are to be considered fundamental on the urban landscape, they radically changed the perception of places. The great transformations move along the great historical-urbanistic changes of the city: 1926 - unification in the Great Genoa of 19 Municipalities; 1936-38 new docks in Sampierdarena and the new heavy traffic road Genova Serravalle; 1930-32 the Town Plan for central and Levante areas and public competitions; Regime and architecture: modernizing force that welcomes the currents of the artistic avant-garde in its ranks. This study investigates the relationship between the city, the transition phase between the libertyinfluences and the search for the essential in the figure of Giuseppe Crosa di Vergagni and the choices of the Municipality of Genoa which determined the new urban spatiality with the architects who in the Fascist regime period remained unknown - Technical Offices of the Municipality and Mario Braccialini 1930-1955 very interesting public works, by architects remained unknown. (G.Gentilomo, L.Solari, R.Tassistro, G.Zappa). In addition, the figures of Daneri, Fuselli, Morozzo della Rocca, Vietti with the open and radical evolution that leads to a change in spatiality and the years of the great urban opportunities indicated by the 1932 Town Plan elaborated by Zappa and Viale that lead to the creation of three unitary interventions: Piazza della Vittoria, Piazza Dante -Piazza Rossetti with the figures of Piacentini and Daneri. The color in these architectures, precisely because determined by the materials, plays a fundamental role in the definition of the volumes and in the components of weight-shape-light.