Italo Calvino's Architecture of Lightness: The Utopian Imagination in An Age of Urban Crisis

284 Pages·2011·3.04 MB·English

by  Letizia Modena

Italo Calvino’s
Architecture of Lightness
Routledge Studies in
Twentieth-Century Literature
1. Testimony from the Nazi Camps 10. Before Auschwitz
French Women’s Voices Irène Némirovsky and the Cultural
Margaret-Anne Hutton Landscape of Inter-war France
Angela Kershaw
2. Modern Confessional Writing
New Critical Essays 11. Travel and Drugs in Twentieth-
Edited by Jo Gill Century Literature
Lindsey Michael Banco
3. Cold War Literature
Writing the Global Confl ict 12. Diary Poetics
Andrew Hammond Form and Style in Writers’
Diaries, 1915–1962
4. Modernism and the Crisis of Anna Jackson
Sovereignty
Andrew John Miller 13. Gender, Ireland and
Cultural Change
5. Cartographic Strategies of Race, Sex and Nation
Postmodernity Gerardine Meaney
The Figure of the Map in
Contemporary Theory and Fiction 14. Jewishness and Masculinity
Peta Mitchell from the Modern to
the Postmodern
6. Food, Poetry, and the Aesthetics Neil R. Davison
of Consumption
Eating the Avant-Garde 15. Travel and Modernist Literature
Michel Delville Sacred and Ethical Journeys
Alexandra Peat
7. Latin American Writers and the
Rise of Hollywood Cinema 16. Primo Levi’s Narratives
Jason Borge of Embodiment
Containing the Human
8. Gay Male Fiction Since Charlotte Ross
Stonewall
Ideology, Confl ict, and Aesthetics 17. Italo Calvino’s Architecture
Les Brookes of Lightness
The Utopian Imagination in
9. Anglophone Jewish Literature an Age of Urban Crisis
Axel Stähler Letizia Modena
Italo Calvino’s
Architecture of Lightness
The Utopian Imagination
in an Age of Urban Crisis
Letizia Modena
New York London
First published 2011
by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the UK
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1988.
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A catalog record has been requested for this book.
ISBN 0-203-81764-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN13: 978-0-415-88038-1 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-81764-3 (ebk)
Ai miei genitori

Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction 1
1 The Inner City of the Imagination: Utopia and the Ethical
Charge of Fiction 17
2 Retroterra: Urban Planners, Architects, and the City in Crisis 57
3 Memos for the City of the Next Millennium: Invisible Cities as
Embodiment of Urban Renewal 91
4 Architectures of Lightness 131
Epilogue 185
Notes 191
Works Cited 217
Index 239

Figures
1.1 Guy Rottier, Rêver (Daydreaming). Courtesy of Guy
Rottier. 41
2.1 Otto Frei, Petite ville de l’avenir (Small City of the
Future), 1960. In Michel Ragon, Histoire mondiale de
l’architecture et de l’urbanisme modernes. Courtesy of
Éditeur Casterman. 58
2.2 Nicolas Schöffer, Centre de loisirs sexuels (Center for
Sexual Diversions). In Michel Ragon, La cité de l’an 2000.
Courtesy of Éditeur Casterman. 84
2.3 Fausto Melotti, Alfabeto (Alphabet), 1971. Courtesy of
Archivio Fausto Melotti. 89
3.1 Paul Maymont, Ville des sables (City in the Sands). In
Michel Ragon, Histoire mondiale de l’architecture et de
l’urbanisme modernes. Courtesy of Éditeur Casterman. 95
3.2 Paul Maymont, Megastructure lunaire (Lunar
Megastructure). In Michel Ragon, Histoire mondiale de
l’architecture e de l’urbanisme modernes. Courtesy of
Éditeur Casterman. 99
3.3 Fausto Melotti, Il sonno di Wotan (Wotan’s Sleep), 1958.
Courtesy of Archivio Fausto Melotti. 116
4.1 Fausto Melotti, Scultura n. 21 (Sculpture Num. 21),
1935–68. Courtesy of Archivio Fausto Melotti. 136
4.2 Nicolas Schöffer, Centre de recherches scientifi ques
(Center for Scientifi c Research). In Michel Ragon, La cité
de l’an 2000. Courtesy of Éditeur Casterman. 136