ITALIAN POP NOSTALGIA: BETWEEN PLEASURE TIME AND HYPER-WORK

Felicori, Bianca [UCL]

The story of this Italy brings us back in time to a dimension that is much more political and social than it might first appear. It takes us back to a post-war nation immersed in the well-being of the economic boom and the oncoming of mass capitalism. Everyone can have everything and citizens have access to every good: TVs, refrigerators and computers enter the Italian homes, as they do all over Europe and America. Products are being transformed — to quote the art critic Mario Amaya — by the big machine of commercial advertising even before they reach the consumer: «bread becomes WONDERLOAF, cereals become SNAP, CRACKLE, POP. Everything is packaged: our work, our thoughts, our dreams, our love of life». All of this spills over inevitably into architecture, town planning and landscape morphology. In fact, in the post-war period, with the increase in demand for goods, a new idea of tourism was born: no longer an elitist tourism dedicated to the higher social classes, but a tourism within everyone's reach. Just as everyone can have a consumer product at home, everyone can enjoy a well-deserved rest after a long period of work. A new idea of “leasure architecture” was born, responding to the emerging needs of a society that separates labour time from free time. Free time was an «exclusive privilege of the West», wrote the French critic Pierre Restany in 1980 in “Domus”. It’s the time we take away from work, duty and any kind of daily toil whatsoever. The article investigates the new leisure architecture born in Italy after the Second World War in Italy and how the culture of leisure has had a huge impact on the territory planning.