Adalberto Libera is representative of a whole generation of young Italian architects, artists, and urban designers whose participation in the building culture of the 20th century was significantly marked by the tumultuous sociopolitical events of the first half of the century. His buildings, paintings, exhibit designs, poster designs, competition entries, and polemical writings attest to the material and philosophical challenges posed by two world wars and numerous years of reconstruction. In addition, like many of his Italian colleagues, Libera's actions as an architect were directly contingent on his actions as a political being.

During the interwar years (1927-1942), Libera sought the support of the Italian Fascist state. He participated in state-sponsored design competitions, built a number of iconic exhibition pavilions, and promoted a language of architectural figuration highly effective in the dissemination of fascist rhetoric. As a co-designer of the principal facade for the Tenth Anniversary Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution (Rome, 1932), the Italian Pavilions for both Chicago's World Fair (Chicago, 1933), Brussels' International Exposition (Belgium, 1935), and the Reception and Congress Hall for the E42 Universal Exposition (Rome, 1942), Libera's designs were instrumental in creating an exportable image of Italian military power.

Nevertheless, in the years following the war, Libera participated in extensive rebuilding efforts aimed at ameliorating the lives of those most devastated by the fighting. He administered the planning efforts of INA Casa (1947-1954), a postwar agency that oversaw the implementation of building standards for the construction of worker housing units. In this capacity, Libera developed technical specifications for all aspects of a building's performance, including key ergonomic measures for kitchen, bathroom, and work desk layouts. Via Galilei (Trento, 1949) was built precisely in this manner, adopting the physical measures that Libera had meticulously studied and codified in his manuscript La tecnica funzionale dell'abitazione (1943-1946).

However, Libera's legacy in the annals of 20th-century architecture is, most notably, the result of his unequivocal commitment to the development of an Italian language of Modern architecture. Throughout his career, Libera advocated the radical transformation of Italian building practices. In 1927, while still a student at the School of Architecture in Rome, he joined the ranks of Gruppo 7 and helped champion the tenets of Italian Rationalism. With Milanese collaborators Giuseppe Terragni, Gino Pollini, and Luigi Figini, Libera promoted the emergence of an entirely new culture of architectural making. Aware of transformations in the material, social, and programmatic conditions of daily life throughout Western Europe, Libera called for the development of a contemporary language of architectural figuration expressive of such transformations. The appearance of new building technologies such as reinforced concrete, steel, and glass necessitated a parallel invention in the nature of architectural forms. As such, the Rationalist credo was centered on the absolute rejection of all forms of Neoclassicism, including those of the Novecento Movement: a post-World War I movement that promoted a renewal of Italian architecture via the stylized representation of select architectural motifs.

Within months of joining Gruppo 7, Libera traveled to Germany, where he was introduced to Europe's most innovative building practices. He visited the Weissenhofsiedlung Exhibition in Stuttgart, seeing firsthand projects built by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Le Corbusier. On his return to Rome, in 1928 Libera co-organized with Gaetano Minucci the First Exhibition of Rationalist Architecture, which showcased projects by burgeoning modernists such as Alberto Sartoris and Matte Trucco; the latter having completed in 1925 the highly popular Fiat Factory in Turin. Libera's own contribution included two designs for low-income housing devised using the Rationalist principles of standardization and mass production.

By 1930, Libera had become a founding member of Movimento Italiano per l'Architettura Razionale (MIAR), a national organization seeking to promote Italian Rationalism. Its first and most audacious event was the launching of the Second Exhibition of Rationalist Architecture. Held in Rome in 1932, the exhibition's organizers openly sought, in their struggle for modernism on Italian soil, the support of the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. To this end, they mounted a series of polemical exhibits that challenged and ridiculed examples of architecture they deemed retrograde. Although the exhibit's argumentative stance eventually resulted in the demise of MIAR, the course had been set for a series of collaborative ventures between Rationalists and Fascists. Libera designed and built some of the most emblematic buildings of this collaboration.

The first such project was the resurfacing of the 19th-century neoclassical Exhibition Building on Via Nazionale destined to house the Tenth Anniversary Exhibition of the Fascist Revolution (Rome, 1932). Libera, along with Mario De Renzi, employed large-scale columnar steel fasces to inaugurate a figural language of mass rhetorical appeal. Framing the building's triumphal arch entry, these oversized and stylized emblems of imperial power convincingly portrayed the emerging influence of Italian Fascism. In a similar manner, the success of Libera's design for the Exhibition's Sanctuary of the Martyrs, the final room in the ritual procession through the building's layout, was once again assured by his use of over-scaled geometries and iconic figures.

Libera's mastery in the design of exhibitions was repeated in 1937 with his project for the National Exhibition of Summer Camps and Youth Programs. Sponsored by the Fascist Party and built on the grounds of the ancient Circus Maximus, Libera, Renzi, and the painter Giovanni Guerrini ushered in a language of horizontal extension and expansive parterres. Albeit a temporary structure, the simplicity of its construction and the singular power of its porticoed pavilions made of this project an easily imitated symbol of Italian Modernism.

In 1933, Libera built the first of his winning competition entries: the Aventino Post Office and Telecommunications Building (Rome). The clarity of its commitment to Rationalism was clearly evident in the building's C-shaped plan and its cubic volumetric proportions. A year later, in 1934, such allegiance to elemental and primary forms was again in evidence with Libera's completion of the Elementary School in Piazza Raffaello Sanzio, Trento, and the four apartment buildings for the Tirrena Corporation in Ostia, Rome. Libera's reputation continued to grow as a result of his competition entries for the Palazzo del Littorio of 1934 and for its second stage entry of 1937. Also, like many architects of the period, Libera participated in the design of new urban centers; the most notable of which being his 1936 Master Plan for Aprilia.

However, on the eve of World War II, his career was focused on the completion of his most publicized commission to date: the design and construction of the Reception and Congress Hall for the Universal Exposition, E'42. This most grandiose of building projects initiated by the Fascist regime aspired to advertise to the world Italy's most acclaimed new works of architecture and urban design. Planned for a site of 400 hectares and seven years in the making, Mussolini launched the construction of well over 50 monuments to Italy's industrial successes, cultural history, and artistic riches. Libera's Reception and Congress Hall was one such building and, contrary to most, whose fate was never to be built, Libera's Congress Hall was constructed.

The project of the interwar years that continues to garner the most animated discussion is that of Casa Malaparte (Capri, 1940). Sited on the exceptional cliffs of Punta Massullo, the house designed for the writer Curzio Malaparte still elicits admiration for its highly articulated Modernism. The manner in which its principal volume forcefully delineates its profile against the existing landscape makes Casa Malaparte the most lyrical and transcendental of Libera's projects.

During the final years of the war and the German occupation of Italy, Libera returned to Trento to work on his ergonomic studies for the optimization of residential living. It was only with his involvement in postwar reconstruction that Libera returned to Rome to design numerous housing projects, including the highly innovative complex at Tuscolano (Rome, 1954). As well, following the war, Libera oversaw the construction of his winning entry for the Trentino-Alto Adige Regional Governmental Headquarters for well over a decade (1953-1963). Finally, Libera's most successful and acclaimed postwar project was the construction of the residential village for the Olympic Games held in Rome in 1960. This highly publicized project returned once again both Libera and Italian building to international prominence.

Teaching subsequent generations of Italian architects was of importance to Libera, and in his final years, from 1954 until his death, he taught both in Florence and in Rome. In March of 1963, at the age of 60, Libera passed away, leaving a much-contested legacy.

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.