Building in the western hemisphere (1959-1989) - Tapa dura

Renato Severino, architect, graduated in the Fifties at the University of Florence with Adalberto Libera, started a shining career very young, thanks to his high-level skill that made him enter the upper range of italian architectural teams of that period. He worked with Adalberto Libera and Pier Luigi Nervi and, in 1964, at just 34 years old, he designed the Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest university campus in Cape Coast, Ghana. His interest in light technology led him to build the Italsider’s resort of Cesana Torinese (1963), one of the first responsive high-tech architecture in Italy. In the United States, where he moved in 1968, his professional activity gained a worldwide extension, with works in America, Latin America, Africa and Europe. He published and researched extensively on sustainability and industrialized systems. In 1970 he wrote Equipotential Space. Freedom in Architecture, a passionate vision of architecture and technology as a means to enable society to shape and control the environment. Severino’s architecture and his research into new urban configurations make him an architect ahead of his time, who has envisaged many ongoing and future concerns. His work and his vision of the future enrich the history of architecture with yet another protagonist who has challenged Modernism beyond the boundaries of its time. This is his first autobiography that revisits all his work, revealing the development of a period of great changes.