Il seme nel solco comporre nella versilia di carlo carrà

“Il seme nel solco”, così si intitola il capitolo dell’autobiografia di Carlo Carrà dove il maestro piemontese ricorda gli anni del suo impegno didattico in qualità di professore di pittura presso l’Accademia di Brera. Immagine fondativa del rito contadino della semina che diviene perfetta metafora della trasmissione del sapere, del tracciamento -secondo una precisa misura- del comune terreno dove poter far germogliare nuove idee e diverse sensibilità partendo da una regola e da una poetica condivise. Inevitabile d’altronde, avendo scelto la terra di Versilia per l’esercitazione progettuale degli studenti del Laboratorio di Progettazione dell’Architettura del terzo anno, ricorrere a Carrà quale nume tutelare per rileggere fra le righe, a partire da questo locus, pieno di vita e colori nelle stagioni estive, totalmente metafisico d’inverno, le più ampie questioni del Novecento che riguardano la nostra disciplina. Tutte in nuce presenti e riassunte qui, fra le Apuane e il Tirreno; dai temi del mito mediterraneo, declinato in modi diversi e complementari da Michelucci e Bottoni, alle silenti ma eloquenti case contadine della piana anticamente centuriata da Roma a partire dal II secolo a. C a seguito della fondazione di Luni. Dal debutto di Aldo Rossi, con una bianca architettura sospesa fra il mediterraneo e i viali della Vienna di Loos e Wittgenstein, al fuoco dell’astrazione custodito nell’umile addizione che Giuseppe Pagano costruì per Carrà a Forte dei Marmi, come lui interessato alla pregnanza antica e moderna di architetture rurali senza autore. Temi e tipi architettonici generali desunti da uno specifico topos, e ad esso ritornati in forma di asserzioni progettuali, di piccoli saggi disciplinari che gli studenti -già impegnati a misurare e ricostruire proporzioni e brani di auliche architetture nel modulo di Caratteri Distributivi degli Edifici- hanno tracciato su questa porzione di Versilia prossima al Lago di Porta, alle antiche vie consolari d’epoca romana, alla Via Francigena, a guisa di nuovi semi nel solco. Germoglieranno presto. “Sowing the seeds in seed beds”. This is the title chosen by Carlo Carrà for the chapter from his autobiography dedicated to his appointment and teaching experiences as an art professor at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. In those pages Carrà makes a comparison between the work of a peasant, slowly tracing lines on the land following a precise pattern of measures and his work as a Professor of Painting, a commitment lasted over 20 years. According to the Italian artist a class, crowded with young minds, can be easily seen as a fertile field in the open countryside. There, new ideas and new sensibilities may grow up well but only if one fundamental condition is satisfied: a good teacher/peasant will achieve an abundant “harvest” only if he will be able to grow these young “plants” from a conceptually solid common ground of shared values and visions. Common rules that will nourish “young roots”, allowing each student to develop his very own personality, thus resistant to the frequent dry seasons and storms of fashions, styles and ideas brought in by the ever changing avant-garde movements. A call for the ultimate quest of truth in art, which surprisingly comes from one of the protagonists of the Futurismo and Metafisica that will become over time more and more inspired by the complex simplicity of Giotto’s and Paolo Uccello’s art. Carrà spent over forty summers in the Versilia riviera, painting more than 300 artworks and constantly investigating the secret metaphysical dimension hidden behind those luminous summer seasons, kept by those architectures without architects which constellates both the beach - with the typical huts and cabins built as facilities for the beach goers- and the countryside comprised between the coast and the Apuan Alps. A territory drawn by the ancient Roman centuratio grid since second century B.C. and still populated by numerous humble peasants houses and farms. Architectures at the same time iconic and anonymous, ordinary and magical. Once the Versilian landscape was chosen as the site for our third year Architecture Design Lab project assignment, recalling Carlo Carrà’s work and his teaching methods has indeed been inevitable. As a matter of fact all the possible nuances and gradations belonging to the cultural debate on Italian Modernist Architecture seems to be resumed in this region: from the Mediterranean Myth epic, embodied by the near Roman city of Luna, and echoed by the projects for Villas designed in the ‘30 and ‘40 by Giovanni Michelucci and Piero Bottoni; to Aldo Rossi’s debut with the white Villa ai Ronchi; an homage both to Adolf Loos’ most mediterranean project, the unbuilt Villa Moissi, and to Haus Wittgenstein. Last but not least another important presence and reference, the small annex for Carlo Carrà’s home designed by Giuseppe Pagano, a small commission and a minor work nevertheless able to jealously guarding in its sculptural fireplace the inexhaustible flame of architectural abstraction. A flame that will light up both Pagano’s and Carra’s interests in vernacular architecture. The essays published in this book contextualize and define the conceptual and theoretical territory of our Architectural Design Lab. The projects exposed here represent the seeds sowed in that land. They will become healthy plants. They will bear good fruits.