Un’architettura di Stato. Pierluigi Spadolini e il programma degli Uffici Postali (1974-1979)

In the context of state implementation of major civil engineering works, the post office program represented in the twentieth century the first experiment in Italy of a coordinated large-scale industrialized building project managed by public bodies. In 1974 the Ministry of Posts delegated the entire organization of the program to ITALSTAT. The project consisted of the construction of more than a thousand small post offices in as many municipalities in every region of Italy. As chairman of ITALSTAT’s scientific committee, Florentine architect Pierluigi Spadolini (1922-2000) was the major player in the operation. Spadolini had always been engaged in designing buildings in which prefabricated components were predominant. He designed a single-story typological solution of a post office, adaptable to each municipality. Through unpublished documents, the contribution analyzes the virtuous policies of a government building program of enormous proportions that, in a short period of time, led to the construction of numerous post offices that are still active today and spread throughout the country. The paper also analyzes the long design process that led Spadolini and his research group to conceive a typology that was both an exemplification of an architecture with a recognizable physiognomy and an element susceptible to serial production.