Holiday Houses in Italy in the 1930s,

During the 1930s, holiday houses provoked a lot of attention from italian architects, who dedicated to it a particular section at the Exhibition of Housing during the V Triennial in Milano (1933). The five houses presented at that event demonstrated how modern architecture, with a compositional and technological renovated style could satisfy the needs of the new lifestyles of the contemporary society. During the following years, this type of building was totally reinvented replacing the famous “villino signorile”: a pejorative term with which contemporaries identified holiday houses realized up to then with no style and with terrible taste that damaged the natural landscape. The article outlines all the project experiences that have greatly contributed in determining within the culture of the time, an image of the ideal holiday house, an image that for its greatness in terms of values has remained practically unchanged till today.