Paolo Portoghesi, an architectural historian in Italy, single-handedly revived interest in baroque architecture in the 1960s, leading to important contributions to Postmodern design and theory. A series of books and articles include Guarino Guarini (1956), Borromini nella cultura europea (1964), Roma barocca (1966), Bernardo Vittone (1966), Francesco Borromini (1967), and Borromini, architettura come linguaggio (1967; Borromini, Architecture as Language). Every historian of Italian baroque architecture acknowledges Portoghesi for generating interest in this area. Subsequently, during the 1970s and 1980s, Portoghesi was a leading figure in the Postmodern movement in Italy and beyond, both as a historian and as an architect. In the 1990s, Portoghesi has been a leading figure in the Architecture and Nature movement in Italy. He is a prodigious architect as well as a prolific writer and is recognized internationally as an articulate critic of architecture and urban projects. Portoghesi was born in Rome in 1931 and graduated from the University of Rome in 1957. From 1962 to 1966, he taught the history of criticism at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome. He was also professor of the history of architecture at the Milan Polytechnic from 1967 to 1979 and the dean there from 1968 to 1976. In 1966 he was elected a member of the Accademia di San Luca, Italy’s most prestigious arts academy. Since 1979 he has been the director of the architecture section at the highly important Venice Biennale. There he received great praise for making important progress in the advancement of Italian architectural culture. He currently teaches architecture at the University of Rome. He recently moved his studio from Viale Aventino in Rome to Calcata, a medieval borgo 30 miles north of Rome, where he lives in a house that he restored.

Portoghesi’s other books include Infanzia delle macchine (1968; The Infancy of Machines), Victor Horta (1969), Le inibizioni dell’architettura moderna (1974; The Inhibitions of Modern Architecture), Dopo l’architettura moderna (1980), and Postmodern, L’architettura nella società post-industriale (1982). In 1997 he published an exhibition catalog called Arte e natura, and a new book, Natura e Architettura, was published in 1999. Important architectural projects include the Casa Balsi (1961), the Casa Bevilacqua (1973), the Church of the Holy Family in Salerno (1974), and the Mosque and Islamic Cultural Center (1984) in Rome. Whereas many architectural historians and architects have learned from Portoghesi’s writings about baroque architecture and contemporary architecture, several writers have in turn made Portoghesi the subject of their own books and articles. The long list of authors includes Francesco Moschini, Mario Pisani, Carlo Argan, and Christian Norberg-Schulz, a conclusive testimony to Portoghesi’s importance to 20th-century architecture.

As a historian, Portoghesi was influenced mainly by the methods of Carlo Argan and Rudolf Wittkower. Like them, he has always seen architecture as a language, with a particular vocabulary and syntax. This approach has dominated his analyses of architecture in its historical context and its relevance to contemporary practice. He even went so far as to classify the various design motifs incorporated by Francesco Borromini as language tropes to explain the architecture in terms of language itself. A freedom from restraint can be seen as common to Portoghesi’s career: the baroque, the Postmodern, and art and nature all suggest his theoretical interests in an architecture that embraces discipline and spontaneity in its study of the past.

Throughout his career, Portoghesi’s architecture reflects his preoccupations as a historian. His early work is based on the appropriation and reinvention of baroque forms. A historical consciousness is present in all his designs, especially those of the Postmodern period, in which he sought, both as a historian and as an architect, a new language of architecture. His most successful designs contain the presence of history, yet they are free from the restraints of the formalized systems of 20th-century architecture and modernism. In the Postmodern movement, Portoghesi found sympathy in the work of Philip Johnson, Michael Graves, and Stanley Tigerman, among others, which he introduced to a receptive Italian audience in his book Postmodern. The themes from this book evolved to include Portoghesi’s more recent concern with the relation between architecture and nature. In this ageless relationship, he seeks to develop and explain architecture as a natural organism, an “architecture born of architecture.” According to Portoghesi, the, architect is seen as an element in a great biological process in which architecture is seen as an instrument for understanding this process. Portoghesi’s architecture, for example, has been characterized as “crystallized music.” For inspiration, Portoghesi has looked to the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Kahn, among others, who brought a profound understanding of nature and architecture to the architectural profession. As always, Portoghesi continues to search for new languages of architecture, new forms of expression, always rooted in the study and lasting memory of history.

JOHN HENDRIX

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.3 (P-Z).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

2 November 1931 Born in Rome;

1957 Attended the University of Rome; graduated with a degree in architecture;

1958 degree in art history (the University of Rome);

1958 Opened his own architecture office;

1962–66 Taught history of criticism at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome;

1967–79 professor of the history of architecture;

1968–76 dean of the history of architecture;

1982 Architecture Faculty of Milan Polytechnic; professor of the history of architecture, University of Rome ;

1978 Elected member of the Accademia di San Luca 1966, and Academy of Arts and Design of Florence;

1968 Director, Dizionario enciclopedico di architettura e urbanistica (Encyclopedia of Architecture and City Planning);

1983 director, Controspazio (magazine)

1969–83 director, Eupalino (magazine);

1990 director, Materia (magazine);

1979–82 Director, Architecture Section at the Venice Biennale;

1983 President at the Venice Biennale;

Lived in Calacata, a medieval borgo 30 miles north of Rome;

30 May 2023 Died at the age of 91.

Selected Publications

Guarino Guarini, 1956

Borromini nella cultura europea, 1964

Roma barocca, 1966; as Roma Barocca: History of an Architectonic Culture, translated by Barbara Luigia La Penta, 1970

Bernardo Vittone, 1966

Francesco Borromini, 1967

Borromini, architettura come linguaggio, 1967; as The Rome of Borromini:

Architecture as Language, translated by Barbara Luigia La Penta, 1968

Dizionario enciclopedico di architettura e urbanistica, 1968

Infanzia delle macchine, 1968

Victor Horta, 1969

Roma del Rinascimento, 1970; as Rome of the Renaissance, translated by Pearl Sanders, 1972

Le inibizioni dell’architettura moderna, 1974

Dopo l’architettura moderna, 1980; as After Modern Architecture, translated by Meg Shore, 1982

Postmodern: L’architettura nella società post-industriale, 1982; as Postmodern: The Architecture of the Postindustrial Society, 1982

Natura e architettura, 1999; as Nature and Architecture, translated by Erika G.Young, 2000

Further Reading 

Argan, Carlo, Paolo Portoghesi, Roma: Gangemi, 1993

Moschini, Francesco (editor), Paolo Portoghesi: Progetti e disegni, 1949–1979; Paolo Portoghesi: Projects and Drawings, 1949–1979 (bilingual English-Italian edition), Florence: Centro Di, and London: Academy Editions, 1979; New York: Rizzoli, 1980

Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Alla ricered dell’architettura perduta, Roma: Officina, 1975

Norberg-Schulz, Christian, Architettura di Paolo Portoghesi et Vittorio Gigliotti, Roma: Officina, 1982

Pisani, Mario, Dialogo con Paolo Portoghesi: Per comprendere l’architettura, Rome: Officina, 1989

Pisani, Mario, Paolo Portoghesi, opere e progetti, Milan: Electa, 1992

Pisani, Mario (editor), Paolo Portoghesi, Rome: Gangemi, 1993

Priori, Giancado, L’architettura ritrovata: Opere recent di Paolo Portoghesi, Rome: Kappa, 1985

Priori, Giancarlo, Paolo Portoghesi, Bologna, Italy: Zanichelli, 1985

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