The Steel House in Twentieth-Century Italian Architecture

Research and experimentation in the use of steel technology for residential architecture has always been a limited field, especially in Italy. Although housing was a central theme in the modernist debate in Italy, and a social problem after two world wars, any approach to the question of housing in relation to steel technology remains conditioned by Italy's historical development, and by a cultural environment in which the idea of domestic living does not sit easily with the temporary feel that steel technology evokes. The Milan Triennale exhibitions in the early 1930s were the venue of choice for those wishing to bring developments in architecture into meaningful confrontation with innovations in steel technology. But with the unfolding of historical events, the Triennale became a celebration of the autarchic policies of the fascist regime, and it was not until the years of reconstruction after the Second World War that it regained its central role as the main forum for cultural and scientific debates on industrialisation and the use of prefabrication in the construction industry.