Antonietta Iolanda Lima

I think that architecture should speak to people. It has succeeded when every single person manages to live within the space that it creates in complete ease. People use the space, they feel that they can attribute values to it. They even discover things they did not know and question others, they themselves become subject to scrutiny and their own individual experiences gradually cause them to become aware of what ‘space’ is and to experience its physicality and irrationality. They thus become aware of its meaning through the use, on separate occasions or contemporaneously, of highly communicative objects, loaded with meanings, with an enormous, even astounding power —⁠ ⁠as Raymon Carver said when talking of the capacity language must possess when describing common things. In embodying the function which merely provides the raison d’être, they make it desirable. Through a hardly won experimentation, architect expresses the people’s needs artistically.

Palermo 1941. Degree in 1964. Professor of the ‘History of Architecture’ (Faculty of Architecture, Palermo) and ‘History of Landscaping’ (Master School of Garden Architecture and Landscaping, Palermo). Her publications probe History in order to identify processes and values; for a free, democratic, creative architecture. Whether small or large scale her projects undermine the boundaries between the disciplines, claiming architecture’s singleness. Basic values: a landscape-oriented vision, from the object to the urban development scheme; particular attention to the human being within his/her complex integrity, to the nature of the materials, to light.

Antonietta Iolanda Lima, Lima-Miceli Apartment, Via Arimondi, Palermo, 1971‑1974. Photography: Antonino Cardillo, 1995

Antonietta Iolanda Lima, Miceli Wine Shop, Palermo, Via Streva, 1974. Photography: Antonino Cardillo, 1995

Antonietta Iolanda Lima, La Scuderia Restaurant, Viale del Fante, Palermo, 1974, 1978. Photography: Antonino Cardillo, 1995 / Lima Archive.

Antonietta Iolanda Lima, Apartment, Palermo, Via Ariosto, 1976. Photography: Antonino Cardillo, 1995

Antonietta Iolanda Lima, Lima-Miceli Villa, Palermo, Fondo Anfossi, 1979‑1982. Photography: Antonino Cardillo, 1995

Source

• Antonietta Iolanda Lima, ‘Antonietta Iolanda Lima: architetture’, L’Architettura‑Cronache e Storia, no. 499/500, ph. Antonino Cardillo, Rome, 1995, pp. 228‑241.