The private home project is one of the themes that most powerfully manages to narrate architecture through history in all its complexity. Indeed, it is an archetype that is rooted in human nature. In naming his editorial vision for Domus in the aftermath of the Second World War, it is no coincidence that Ernesto Nathan Rogers started from the absolute value of the magazine's name, evocating "la casa dell'uomo" ("the house of man"). But what happens when the big names in architecture design houses for themselves and their daily lives?
In most f the cases the designers were to become the inhabitants of one of their most important works, such as Charles and Ray Eames in their namesake Case Study House residence, or Philip Johnson in the Glass house; other times, the projects marked the beginning of some careers, like the Casa Venturi, marking also the starting point of a revolution in architectural language.
We have collected a selection of stories that, in addition to ranging in geography, touch on very different historical moments, from the historic Chicago home and studio built by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1898, to the Hemeroscopium House by Antón García-Abril (founder of Ensamble Studio) built in 2008 in Madrid, up to the ever-transforming project of La Fabrica by Ricardo Bofill, an evolving construction site since 1974. The houses are told through images from the architects' foundations and from articles in the Domus archive.
The projects build real portraits of their authors, managing to synthesize the poetics of space and the creativity that the different architects then transposed into different experiments. Presented in a chronological sequence, the houses thus also manage to portray a changing sensitivity towards the concept of living itself, touching on the different historical contexts in which they were built, and, in their own way, the role of some protagonists who left an essential mark on architectural culture through the last century.