An Imperfect Industrialization. Prefabrication Cultures in Post-War Italy Between Liberalism and Public Planning (1943–1949)

Post-World War II building reconstruction in Europe––both Western and Eastern––represented an opportunity to fulfil industrialization process of the building sector that begun since the 1920s. In Italy, despite the Post-War urgencies, such as the broad demand for new housing, building industrialization wasn’t adopted as the main tool for the building reconstruction. The industrialization of construction started only in the 1960s because in the Italian socio-economic context the building sector represented a significant employment field strongly linked to traditional construction. However, even before the Second World War’s end, Italian architectural culture, starting from the American and European models, carried out a rich debate on the standardization and optimization of the building process, giving a significant contribution to the international history of building industrialization. The paper analyses the debate through cultural initiatives in support of prefabrication, such as national design competitions, conferences, exhibitions, editorial projects and––finally––an experimental district, which offers a cross-section of the Italian construction, systems and prototypes developed by designers and companies in the early post-war years and who are heavily connected with the debate that started in 1943.