Luigi Moretti

Luigi Walter Moretti (2 January 1907 – 14 July 1973) was an Italian architect. Active especially in Italy from the 1930s, he designed buildings such as the Watergate Complex in Washington DC, The Academy of Fencing, and ''Il Girasole'' ("The Sunflower") house, both in Rome. He was the founder of the Institute for Operations Research and Applied Mathematics Urbanism, where he developed his research on the history of architecture, and on the application of algorithmic methods to architectural design. He is recognized as the inventor of parametric architecture.

Career

Education and academic career

He was born on via Napoleone III, on the Esquiline Hill, in the same apartment where he lived almost his entire life.Alessandra Capanna
MORETTI, Luigi Walter
''Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani'' - Volume 76 (2012), '' Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti/Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana (Treccani)'' (in Italian)Luigi Walter Moretti
Biography on the website of the Polytechnic University of Bari (in Italian) He was the natural son of Luigi Rolland (1852–1921), engineer and architect, born in Rome in a Belgian family, whose most important work is Teatro Adriano, and Maria Giuseppina Moretti.
He attended primary and secondary school at Collegio San Giuseppe - Istituto De Merode and from 1925 he studied at the Royal School of Architecture in Rome. In 1929, Moretti graduated with honors, with a project for a college of higher education Rocca di Papa, where he won the Giuseppe Valadier award.

After degree, in 1931 he won a three-year scholarship for Roman Studies, established by the Governorate of Rome and the Royal School of Architecture. With this grant he worked with archeologist an art historian Corrado Ricci, in the arrangement of the areas east and north of Trajan's Market.
In these years he also worked as assistant for the professorships of Vincenzo Fasolo (architect of Mamiani Lyceum and Duca d'Aosta Bridge, both in Rome) and Gustavo Giovannoni, at the restoration chair.

Activity in building and urban development

In 1932, Moretti entered in competitions for the town planning of Verona, Perugia, and Faenza, for which he obtained the second place. He also entered in a competition for a council house complex in Naples.

The next year, after ending the university career, with Giulio Pediconi, Mario Paniconi e Mario Tufaroli, attended at the fifth Triennale di Milano with a project for a country house designed for a scholar. In this year he also met Renato Ricci, at that time president of the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB), that, the following year, appointed Moretti ONB technical director, succeeding to Enrico Del Debbio.
In this role Moretti designed some of the youth centres of ONB and Gioventù Italiana del Littorio: in 1933 in Piacenza and in Rome, Trastevere, in 1934 in Trecate, in 1935 a women's centre in Piacenza and in 1937 another youth centre in Urbino. His work was also part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1936 Summer Olympics.

In 1937 he took over the design of the regulatory plan of the Foro Mussolini (renamed Foro Italico after the Second World War), where he created some of his masterpieces, such as the academy of fencing and the Duce's Gym (both 1936) and the commemoration cell (of 1940).

His are also the major planner of the Forum, enriched in the 1937 with the square of the Empire and the Stadium of Cypresses (expanded in 1953 and 1990 of other architects to become the Stadio Olimpico).

Moretti's works were published in the journal ''Architecture''.

In those years he participated in the competition for the construction of the Palazzo Littorio ( Casa del Fascio), a project harshly criticized by the magazine ''Casabella'' and progressive Italian architectural culture in general.

In 1938 he participated in the design of the ''E42 (Esposizione 1942)'' later changed to EUR ''(Esposizione Universale Romana)'' standing for Rome World's fair. Moretti(with Fariello, Muratori and Quaroni) won the competition for the design of the Imperial Square (now Piazza Guglielmo Marconi). The large building fronting the square was never finished, but after the war the structures already constructed were used for the ''"Skyscraper Italy (Grattacielo Italia)"'' by Luigi Mattioni.

He served in that period, in private practice, thanks mainly to his friendships with Fascist officials and journalists.

In the period between 1942 and 1945 Moretti disappeared from public view. He reappeared in 1945, was arrested for his collaboration with fascism, and was briefly imprisoned in the prison of San Victor, where he met count Adolfo Fossataro. After release, with him in November of the same year, founded Cofimprese company.

The postwar period

With Cofimprese, he worked to develop house-hotel buildings. The original plan was for 20 hotels, of which only three were built before the company broke up in 1949.
Also in Milan for Cofimprese, designed the complex between Corso Italia and Via Rugabella

The house ''Il Girasole'' ("The Sunflower") designed in 1949, and built in Rome in viale Bruno Buozzi (near via Parioli) in 1950, is one of the best-known projects of the period, and is considered an early example of postmodern architecture. The building is also mentioned by Robert Venturi in his essay ''Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture'' as an example of ambiguous architecture, poised between tradition and innovation. According to Swiss architectural theorist Stanislaus von Moos, the Vanna Venturi House, one of Venturi's masterpiece, in its broken pediments "recalls the 'duality' of the facade of Luigi Moretti's apartment house on the Via Parioli in Rome."

Then Moretti designed villas for illustrious patrons, including ''La Villa Saracena'' (1954) in Santa Marinella for the former director of the Rome newspaper ''Il Messaggero'', Francesco Malgeri.

Paolo Monti