Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale

urbaine et paysagère
Matériaux de la recherche | 2022

Histories of Postwar Architecture (HPA) (Italie)

Electronic version
URL: https://journals.openedition.org/craup/9679
DOI: 10.4000/craup.9679
ISSN: 2606-7498

Publisher
Ministère de la Culture

Electronic reference
“Histories of Postwar Architecture (HPA) (Italie)”, Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et
paysagère [Online], Research Materials, Online since 01 March 2022, connection on 01 April 2022. URL:
http://journals.openedition.org/craup/9679 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/craup.9679

This text was automatically generated on 1 April 2022.

Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale, urbaine et paysagère sont mis à disposition selon les termes
de la Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Pas d’Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 3.0
France.
 Histories of Postwar Architecture (HPA) (Italie) 1

Histories of Postwar Architecture (HPA)

(Italie)

Présentation de la revue

Année de création : 2017.

Institution porteuse : département d’architecture, Alma Mater Studiorum, University of
Bologna.
Éditeur : département d’architecture de l’Université de Bologne.
Langue : anglais.
Disciplines/thématiques : architecture, urbanisme de la seconde moitié du XX e siècle
(articles sans restriction géographique, méthodologique, historiographique ou
disciplinaire).
Chaque numéro est thématique.
Objectifs : diffusion d’articles en histoire et théorie. Chaque numéro est porté par des
rédacteurs en chef invités.
Lectorat : milieu académique.
Système d’évaluation : évaluation en double aveugle par les pairs lorsque les articles
sont reçus suite aux appels à articles. Non expertisés lorsque les auteurs sont invités à
participer. Le journal est référencé.
Périodicité : 2 numéros par an.
Mode de publication : numérique.
Site internet : https://hpa.unibo.it/

Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère , Matériaux de la recherche

 Histories of Postwar Architecture (HPA) (Italie) 2

Questionnaire filled up by Giovanni Leoni, Editor-In-Chief

The Journal Governance and Committees’ composition

What is the percentage of members holding a PhD on the editorial board?

90 %.
Is there a reading committee? Who participates in it?
HPA is an open-access, double-blind, peer-reviewed journal. The panel of reviewers
changes according to the expertise required by the issue.
Does the journal develop a special relationship with an academic institution? If so, what is
it?
The journal is owned by the Department of Architecture of the University of Bologna
and also involves other departments having researchers in history of architecture.
The journal is under the auspices of AISU Italian Association of Urban History and
AISTARCH Italian Association of History of Architecture.
Are there debates within the editorial board? If so, how are they made visible in the journal?
The editorial board discusses the general outline of the editorial programme and
decides on call topics. Once the editors of the individual issues have been chosen, the
discussion is limited to the editors, and the board follows the editorial process.
What are the economical, formal and intellectual relations to the publisher (resources and
constraints)?
The journal is funded by the Department of Architecture. Publication and
consultation are free of charge. Publication is facilitated by the University of
Bologna’s Alma DL Journals system (https://journals.unibo.it), which also handles
dissemination and ratings of its journals.

Research and Journal

What milieu does the journal plug into? What audience is targeted?
The magazine addresses scholars interested in history of international postwar
architecture.
From the journal’s point of view what are the outcomes expected from the research in
architecture? (urban planning and landscape architecture)?
The journal seeks a very precise position in the field of architectural research. The
intention is to take studies related to postwar architecture out of the field of militant
criticism by favouring the perspective of historical analysis. The basic idea is that it is
useful to create — or rather to recognize — a discontinuity between the first and
second halves of the 20th century by identifying the specific historiographical
themes of the latter. As a result, the research promoted by the journal has a distinctly
geographical character and an interest in site-specific topics.
According to you is there a difference between research and innovation? If there is, what
does it consist of? And what about research and expertise?
In my opinion, historical research in the architectural field has a specific structure
that derives on the one hand from the assumption of the theoretical foundations of
historical research tout court, with its strict disciplinary rules, and on the other hand

Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère , Matériaux de la recherche

 Histories of Postwar Architecture (HPA) (Italie) 3

from the possibility (sometimes necessary) of comparing different operational areas:

design, not just restoration ; the field of cultural heritage ; the role — today perhaps
underestimated — of public engagement and social action. Thus in the context of
historical research on architecture there is certainly a difference between research —
understood as a philological and documentary activity in which the interpretative act
is framed in historiographical production — and innovation, if by this term we mean
a contribution that is not only disciplinary that history can offer by comparing itself
with other knowledge or operational areas related to the physical transformation of
places. For this second aspect, I believe that the most important role that the history
of architecture can assume today with respect to contributing to innovation
processes — without betraying its disciplinary matrix — is to bring precise, in-depth
knowledge of the places examined within the scope of political action on the city and
the region by using every possible means to make this historical knowledge
accessible also to non-specialists or for those who are specialists in other fields of
knowledge.
With regard to the relationship between research and expertise, the reflection is
twofold. The identity of research in the history of architecture is well defined
because it falls within the broader family of history tout court and from this draws a
disciplinary expertise with clear, well-established parameters. On the other hand,
there are various types of expertise that are not strictly disciplinary that it
contributes to, from that of the designer (a topic that involves the great question of
teaching the history of architecture to the various types of designers) to the
historical skills of the various actors involved in the processes of transformation of
built space, to the means and value of dissemination aimed at a non-specialised
audience.
How does research content fit into the journal’s plan?
The journal mainly contains research by specialists in the history of architecture.
During the last year, how many researchers contributed to the journal?
The journal is biannual and on average contains about ten articles chosen through a
call for papers.
Considering the past ten years, what transformations have occurred concerning the
relationships between research and the profession? between research and public
discussion?
The dominant creative structure of the early 20th century, that of an inspired and
hieratic architect-artist, required the presence of a double, a critic whose work was
no less artistic and whose expression was also inspired, necessarily without scientific
foundation because his/her authority was based on absoluteness, on the absence of
constraints. The symbiosis between an architect-artist who stands out for his/her
personality and a critic who, endowed with equal personality, certifies the other’s
value is today broken and outdated and has generated new roles. On the one hand,
the architect-curator — of buildings, parts of cities, cultural projects or commercial
and real estate brands — who is simultaneously author and critic, for whom the built
work, its material quality, is a secondary impact compared to the cultural or simply
communicative design. On the other hand, the muted architect, who refuses both
roles and rejects (or hides, or reinvents) an intellectual profile, entrusting everything
to the built work, its collective dimension, its presence and effectiveness. And, of
course, varying combinations of the two extremes. This new condition, on the one

Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère , Matériaux de la recherche

 Histories of Postwar Architecture (HPA) (Italie) 4

hand radically redefines the role of criticism with respect to the world of the
profession, on the other hand I believe it offers history new opportunities to be able
to play an important role (and perhaps new roles) in the public debate relating to the
transformation of the built environment.
How do you select peer-review experts? How do you deal with peer reviewed assessments
and disclose them to the authors? (Problems and anecdotes)
HPA dedicates each issue and corresponding call to a specific topic and thus chooses
reviewers for each issue based on their specialised expertise on the subject. The
double-blind review process is strictly defined by the Alma DL Journal IT structure
and is designed for national and international ratings.
What is the part played by the lay out management? (Text/image, typography, cover-front)?
The magazine has two graphic and design editors (a senior who is entrusted with the
graphic design of the journal and its revisions, and a junior who is entrusted with the
layout of the individual issues).
The Journal is digital but ready for printing.

Editor-in-Chief’s Statement

What kind of journal did you have in mind when the journal was launched or when you were
appointed Editor-in-chief and has it evolved?
The cultural project underlying HPA concerns “discussion”, discussions about the late
20th century. The issues that justify this chronological framing can be summarised in
three terms: militancy, criticism, historiography.
In the field of architecture, militancy is the scarlet letter of the contemporary
historian. The possible fault — and the relative presumed methodological
impoverishment — lies not so much in the narrowness of the time difference with
respect to the object of study (except for those who naively suppose that
chronological proximity simplifies the task and impoverishes the methodology of the
historian) as in the possible militant nature of research applied to events that still
claim to be topical. À powerful and successful narrative of continuity between the
innovation that took place in architecture at the beginning of the 20 th century and
the field of reflection and action of the discipline throughout the entire century and
to date has also dominated the historiographical production that has mainly engaged
in the analysis — even critical and problematic — of the Modern Movement in its
variants and revisions and its protagonists and heirs. Guidelines of this study: the
artistic personality, thus the languages of the protagonists and the networks of
international elites formed by them. The sense of a heroic, radical refounding of the
discipline at the beginning of the 20th century, led by masters and still active today as
a matrix of operations, albeit in the form of a perennial critical review, seems to be
able to subjugate historical narration, making it ancillary to the project of
architectural Modernity. I think there is no doubt that if one is interested not in
touching up or repainting the Modern architectural canvas in one’s own style, but
rather in identifying the tears, the cuts that, like in a painting by Fontana, show what
has been and what is beyond this dominant representation, the latter half of the
20th century offers specific occasions if not urgencies of historiographical
enrichment. Occasions that remove the risk of militancy (or update its objectives, if
you prefer) but that discount their extraneousness to the framework already outlined

Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère , Matériaux de la recherche

 Histories of Postwar Architecture (HPA) (Italie) 5

with risks of marginality and invisibility. To cite a topic that is not subtle among the
many possibilities: all the studies of what is “local” and not included — sometimes
not includable — in major historiographical series because it is functional only to a
specific right or simple desire of historical knowledge. The issue of the new
relationship between criticism and history was already touched on above.
The exercise of contempt that research on the late 20th century allows us to carry out
with respect to militancy and criticism — the lifting of historiography from those
tasks even for topics that are closest to us chronologically — can be the act of
opening the way for historiographical topics that have escaped the dominant
narrative or that have been removed from it.
What journals in the field of architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture do you
read regularly? Occasionally? What journal do you read outside the field?
Rather than following specific publications, I follow the topics that interest me
regardless of where they are published. I don’t consistently follow journals outside
the field of architecture, preferring instead to read books.

Suggestions

Do you have remarks or suggestions in relation to the call for papers?

The call seems to me to be well structured and promises to aid in reconstructing an
area of editorial production that is certainly lacking. I don't have any additional
suggestions.

Les Cahiers de la recherche architecturale urbaine et paysagère , Matériaux de la recherche