La casa di Gustavo Giovannoni

On November 17th, 1923, Francesco Stagnitta’s request for the issuance of a "regular license for the construction of a residential building" is the official birth act of Gustavo Giovannoni’s future house. Stagnitta declares to be the owner of the area where a building should be built (via S. Martino ai Monti, nn. 7-8), located a short distance away from his residence in via Giovanni Lanza. Some graphic designs are attached to the request: three plants (mezzanine, basement, second floor), two façades (main, lateral) and a section. Following the approval by the “Commissione Edilizia” (December 28th, 1923), the license was issued just three months after the presentation, on February 23rd, 1924, even though it was subject to certain prescriptions: two technical aspects related to the distribution water and the requirement to provide openings for the illumination of corridors; besides, a clear dissatisfaction with solution of the upper part of the façade or, better, with its overly modest architectural tone. Despite the approval, Stagnitta’s request was not followed. For reasons not entirely clear, the property will soon be sold, with a second practice for the initiative of the new owners: Umberto Gentile, Tito Rossi and, precisely, Gustavo Giovannoni. The request for a building permit, submitted on 30th July 1925 in the form of a variant to the previous project, was approved on 26th September and 5th October 1925 respectively by the “Commissione Edlizia” and the Building Inspector. From a further document one learns how the construction was started in March, which confirms how the designs presented were just variants. In any case, the works will be completed in August 1926. The graphic works enclosed to the new building permit application, or rather to the variant of the previous project, appear much more detailed than the previous drawings presented by Stagnitta: a representative completeness, which is on the one hand from the greater richness of architectural motives of the new project, and on the other by the significant alteration introduced to the total cubage. Although, in its stringent compositional logic, the house gives the feeling that it has been quickly designed, a series of drawings, preserved at the Roman “Centro Studi per la Storia dell’Architetura”, attests a sufficiently long design process. More than in the internal distribution ̶ in the whole, rather traditional and in any case partially conditioned by the first project ̶ the salient figure of the building must be sought in the compositional solution of the main prospect that if a superficial vision seems to be devoid of peculiar features, to a more careful analysis reveals a few interesting details. From the “opus reticulatum” inserted into the ground floor, to the brick arches above the shop windows and the main entrance, from the vertical layout of the windows of the first and second levels, to the two niches inserted into the sides of the central opening of the second floor, the façade is proposed as a sort of ideal and synthetic schedule of Roman architecture from the ancient to the eighteenth century, defined through abbreviated elements. This results in a formal, at the same time easily legible and subtly interpretative outcome, a tribute to shared and popular architecture. This is the most singular and interesting note of the palace where Gustavo Giovannoni lived for the last twenty years of his life.