Conversation with Paolo Portoghesi

Paolo Portoghesi welcomes me in the ‘stanza della deposizione’. I sit on the sofa upholstered in William Morris fabric and bring as a gift my book Specus Corallii, together with a green envelope containing my architectural works and an invitation to a lecture. Portoghesi leafs slowly through the book and lingers over the image of a gallery with arches.

— It looks as though it were carved into the page.

— I was pleased to see that some beautiful new photographs of your project for the Chiesa della Sacra Famiglia⁠ in Salerno had been taken.

— Yes, the photographer [Cédric Dasesson] was very good. He managed to interpret the ageing of that concrete. For old age ought to be seen against the light.

He then opens the green envelope and examines the ten sheets inside, pausing over the image of the project Akin to a Cinema Set.

— In all these years you have remained faithful to your vision of architecture. You have not yielded, and your works possess an integrity that is very rare today. This makes you one of the few architects.

He then looks at the invitation to the conference.

— It is the invitation to the conference Anthropology in Architecture that Rita Cedrini and I will hold on Lévy-Bruhl’s ‘Mystical Participation’ — I explained. — I will speak of how, over time, I came to understand the importance of a genuine, heartfelt participation between client and architect in order to realise authentic works of architecture.

— In my early works I too experienced this aspect. Later, when I worked on public commissions, this relationship had faded. Architecture was probably affected as a result.

— I think your life has been like the history of Italy: the story of sabotage.

Portoghesi smiles.

— When I was studying at university, some professors did not speak well of your work. Yet I sensed that there must be something special. Many years later, when I began to study psychology, I realised that my intuition had been well founded. In a certain sense, your work was an answer to a question posed in other disciplines.

— Yes, it is very important to step outside this narrow architectural enclave, in order to understand more.

— In studying the Analytical Psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, I came to ascribe value to your research. What you sought to trace as a path was an issue Jung had already raised in the 1920s. And while in those same years the Bauhaus mechanised architecture, Analytical Psychology revealed that our psyche is formed of ‘Primordial Images’ or ‘Archetypes’.⁠ Then I began to understand your path, which was often misunderstood by modernists and dismissed as historicism. Yet it was in fact an important response to that call for the evocation and integration of the ‘Archaic Images’.

— It was the key to moving from functionalism to a completely different rationalism, based not only on functions but on perception. That was entirely lacking. Things are important for how they are used, not for how large they are, and the idea of capturing man’s relationship with the house through drawings, considerations and knowledge of a purely material nature leaves one perplexed. At a certain point one must move on to psychology. There was a very strong closure there. A pity.

He went on: In the 1960s, when there was friendship with Bruno Zevi, in those years — few of us, let us say — we shared this interest. We turned to the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche to fund a joint research project… the response was entirely negative.

It ought to have been a study on psychology in architecture, one that would certainly have absorbed the conflict with Zevi, which had arisen from a fundamentally secondary issue. I greatly regret that we were not given the space to carry out this research. It was undoubtedly a study that should have involved both fields. It should have been conducted at a lofty level — a recognition, at last, of the union of two forces, architecture and psychology, which were of great importance. Unfortunately, nothing came of it. Later a psychology of architecture did emerge, but in a very scholastic form. The work we could have done with Zevi would have given it this Jungian imprint. For it was Jung who truly gave the fundamental impetus.

— Last Saturday, Mario Pisani and Lucia Galli came to the inauguration of Open House Roma at the House of Dust and saw my work. I was sorry you were not there. I would have been glad if you had visited one of these spaces of mine.

— Unfortunately I am very unwell, but perhaps, with some improvement, enough to move, I may be able to see them.

— Whenever possible, I will always be available. If you should find yourself in Rome, near Via Veneto or at the Pigneto, there would be two works to visit: the Off Club [Paradiso] and the House of Dust.

— I would very much like to, for photographs give only an impression. Yet even from what one perceives in the photographs, I must say that a quality emerges, a consistency that is very rare today. What is interesting is that there is not only minimalism; there is also, rather, a raw pursuit of stronger things. For, let us say, minimalism risks lulling us to sleep. It induces drowsiness. Whereas it is evident that we must elaborate a conflict. We cannot, therefore, be too soporific.

Portoghesi lingers in silence.

— Might it be possible to see your garden again?

— Unfortunately, I do not move about much. But you may. I can also give you a book as a gift.

I receive the book Abitare Poeticamente la Terra.⁠

— The book on the Parco di Calcata!⁠ Wonderful. Thank you. I am delighted to receive it.

I leaf through it, pausing over the image of a hypogeum with a cellar.

— Yes, it speaks of the park, of how we settled there beginning with a small holiday home. If you should return, there are also guided tours to see the interior spaces.

Portoghesi goes to the door and we step outside. In front of the house, he opens a small gate and invites me into the park. I walk through the garden, shaded by a leaden sky. I linger, eager to enter the façade in the form of an open book of the ‘biblioteca dell’angelo’. Passing through the ‘scalinate a stella’, I reach the ‘facciate antropomorfiche’. From above, I discern the labyrinth of the Italian garden. Further on, near the ‘tempio decastilo’, I read these lines by a rose garden:

If we’re sometimes so amazed
by your freshness, happy rose,
it’s that deep inside yourself,
petal against petal, you’re in repose.⁠

It is raining and I return to the house. Portoghesi opens the door and the voice of his wife, Giovanna Massobrio, is heard:

— Paolo, show him Apollodoro!

Through a small passage, I enter a long living room with a trompe-l’œil façade that frames — within a perspective of arches — an imaginary landscape. Portoghesi sits on the Liuto sofa, which he designed in 1982.

— It is what remains of the Galleria Apollodoro that once stood in Piazza Mignanelli in Rome.

— How long was the Galleria Apollodoro in Piazza Mignanelli?

— From 1985 until 1994. The gallery was able to involve many people.

— Perhaps Rome was even more active in the 1980s? Now it seems like a suburb.⁠

— Let us say that what the world presents to us today is a great universal periphery, without a centre… Yet there is no capital on this Earth. It is becoming a distressing problem, without being physically localisable.

Leaving the room, I notice a painting resting on the floor.

— This painting depicts Casa Papanice!⁠ Is this the image with which you presented the project to the client?

— No, it is a painting made by an artist who completely altered the colour of the building.

— Speaking of this house, I have a curiosity: when the film Il Dramma della Gelosia⁠ with the actress Monica Vitti was shot, do you recall that scene set inside Casa Papanice? Perhaps you were displeased?

— About what?

— The inhabitant of the house is very vulgar, and I think this aspect of the film disrespected your work.

— But the director Ettore Scola interpreted it very well. His approach was to portray, as one might say, a disparity of tastes between classes. So there was no disparaging intent.

— So you were content?

— Content with a house that still had a cinematic vocation.

— Do you think a restoration could be carried out, as with Casa Baldi?⁠

— I think so; it would cost very little.

— And the interior?

— The interior is now lost.

— Perhaps it could be rebuilt?

— Rebuilding the interior space would be easy, though…

— In my view it would be important to rebuild it. It should become a house‑museum dedicated to your work. A way should be found. Perhaps a foundation could be created to purchase the house.

— A foundation that acquired the places of cinema. Among other things, Scola later shot a very interesting film,⁠ again with Mastroianni, in a house designed by Mario De Renzi: the Casa Furmanik⁠ on the Lungotevere. De Renzi was an intelligent architect. It is an idea, yes. It could be a way to save it. To find someone to buy it.

— But in your opinion, would it be possible to buy it from the Embassy of Jordan? Is the embassy renting it, or is it the owner?

— No, they bought it. But it is a very inconvenient residence for an embassy. It does not really have the stature to be a public building, and having the residence separate from the offices is somewhat problematic. However, someone would be needed to establish an agreement.

— It would also be interesting to have a place in Rome that could serve as an interface with your garden here in Calcata, also for scheduling visits.

— We thought of a donation to the MAXXI,⁠ so that the garden might become a library of sixty thousand volumes open to the public, with a guesthouse to accommodate visitors. Casa Papanice, instead, could become the guesthouse of a house of architecture. Which it already is, for it is a historic building.

— That is an important building. Also because it is located in a central part of Rome, easily accessible. It could be strategic.

— Yes. Restoring the exterior is easy. And the interior as well, for after all the interior architecture extended only over one floor.

— If a reconstruction were to be undertaken, how would it be done?

— It is a stucco job, very simple.

— Good. You used colours in the space. Are the specifications of these colours preserved in your studio archive?

— We had chosen them from a catalogue.

— And is this catalogue preserved? Are the chosen colours marked?

— Yes. There are, I think, five colours. There is no problem.

Then Portoghesi falls silent once more.

— Professor, perhaps you are tired.

— No, it is simply that I suffer from an illness I am struggling against; I hope to overcome it. In any case, life must be taken as it comes, and respected. However, I thank you for your visit, for I immediately appreciated your architecture. You are a true architect. Yours is a difficult task, is it not? Yet the intuition is there.

— I am honoured by your words. Thank you for your time and for what you have said.

— I hope that something may be arranged for the garden. In the book I gave you there is an introductory essay of substance. For these are architectures — yours as well as mine — bound to philosophy, bound to poetry. There is, therefore, a profound affinity.