The Experimentation with Steel in the 20th Century Italian Architecture: Analysis of Some Paradigmatic Works

In the exceptional panorama of 20th century Italian engineering, the theme linked to the use of steel structures becomes central both in terms of construction and architecture. Within this context are inserted important experiments in which steel plays a leading role. A story, in many ways still unpublished, that develops in continuity with the constructive and formal research of the 19th century, on the architecture of iron and glass. Starting from the debate on the modernization of the Thirties, then going through the period of autarchy until the post-war period and the years of the economic boom, the innovative aspects linked to the continuous and singular Italian tendency towards steel constructions highlight an important fact: the contained quantitative diffusion of steel structures, compared to traditional ones, corresponds to a constant and significant experimentation in qualitative terms.