(ANSA) – ROME, OCTOBER 28 – The smile of a very young Monica Vitti, looking out from the balcony of Casa Papanice, in a photo from the 1970s. For Paolo Portoghesi, a life still full of tasks, ideas, aspirations, projects, 90 years also have the flavor of tenderness. The one for the great actress with whom she almost shares her birthday. “Both of 1931, on November 2 I, on November 3 she”, smiles the architect who Sunday 31 October it will be told on Rai Storia, protagonist of “Domenica Con”, broadcast from 2pm to midnight.
Stories of architecture that in many moments crossed art, theater, cinema, as it was for that Roman house, built in the mid-60s and then became a set for many Italian comedy titles. Scola chose it for his Drama of Jealousy, the protagonist of Vitti. The image of her on the balcony, which has come to the fore these days, was taken during the shoot by the entrepreneur for whom it was designed. “I met Monica many years ago and it is really a beautiful memory”, says Portoghesi from the majestic garden of her home in Calcata, “a very special person, so elegant, so polite”.
The architect speaks on the phone in an interview with ANSA and occasionally gets distracted, a ferment of activity is perceived around him. “My wife Giovanna wanted to organize an exhibition of my works here in the village”, he explains, “and it is not easy because space is limited”.
Time is running out, the week of celebrations is already full of events, the highlight on November 3, with the screening at the Maxxi and then in various cultural institutes in the world of Dramma della Gelosia, for an event, organized by HALP (Humanitarian Aid Life Programs). On 5 November another meeting, this time for a mass sung in the church of San Carlo alle quattro fontane, a jewel of the beloved Borromini. On 11 November, the Faculty of Architecture of Sapienza will celebrate him with a morning in his honor, on 13 the party moves to Calcata for the inauguration of the exhibition. A whirlwind that would tire a thirty-year-old, but he does not get upset.
He mentions the effort of choosing the works for the exhibition (“Who wants, you are never satisfied with what you do”) and while he speaks you understand that the secret of these ninety years carried with absolute lightness is perhaps precisely in the desire to work and to study that he never gave up for a single moment.
“We go on and change – he says – the important thing is to maintain consistency”. The last work carried out is from 2019, a church, or rather the co-cathedral of Lamezia Terme, a work that appears to be the summa of all his reflections on the sacred, with the soaring corten steel bell towers that mention the Sagrada Famiglia of Gaudi and the facade that almost seems to embrace the faithful inviting them to enter. “I tried to translate Pope Ratzinger’s ideas on the Council into architectural forms, to put the dogmas of the new liturgy into practice,” he explains.
In fact, the local population immediately loved it, so much so that the project should now be extended with a rearrangement of the square in front: “the design is done, we hope they will be able to realize it”, he stresses, recalling the municipality has just left the commissioner.
In a professional life lasting almost 70 years, there have been other churches, in Terni, Vicenza, Calcata, Castellaneta, and then the mosques, from that of Rome in ’95, which marked an era, up to the most recent in Strasbourg. , inaugurated in 2012. He dedicated a lot of time to teaching – at Sapienza and then at the Politecnico di Milano of which he was rector from 1967 to 1979 – and to studies, to the writings that made an epoch on the baroque and the adored Borromini (the revision of the of his monumental monograph of 1967). But in his professional curriculum there is everything, from houses to gardens, from airports to convention centers, from the Breath Tower in Shanghai to the Royal Court of King Hussein of Jordan, from the Opera House of Catanzaro to the Cesena Cemetery. He was president of the Accademia di San Luca, is an academician of the Lincei, president of the Venice Biennale from 1984 to ’93. And today another of his memories is linked to the Venice Biennale, that of the work shared with Aldo Rossi in 1980 on the occasion of the first Architecture Exhibition, with the Strada Novissima and with the wonderful experiment of Il teatro del mondo (“Io as director of the exhibition in the unprecedented role of client “). It was the time of the post modern, of which Portoghesi in Italy was the main exponent, with the idea of establishing a new creative relationship with the history and traditions of the different civilizations. There has also been criticism in recent decades. And it happens then that the 90 years are also the time to take satisfaction: “Because what really pleases me – he confides – is to see that there has been a revaluation: finally today it has been understood that the post modern was a movement to free oneself from slavery. For me the sense of greater understanding. And why not, of respect for my work “. (HANDLE).
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