Chapter 1 of 24
Paolo Portoghesi
I am born in Rome very close to the dome of the Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza, the famous church of Borromini; and also the house of my grandfather was just behind the Oratorio dei Filippini, this fantastic building which is at the same time a palace and a church, and is not really a palace and not really a church. This problem of architecture I have discovered in the first years of my life, I remember that I have chosen to become an architect in connection with this special fascination, the buildings of Borromini. When I was in the university, the words that my professor said to me were so poor in comparison with the Borromini buildings that were so full of messages
for me, that I decided to reject my real living master and to choose as a master a dead man but so live in my mind.
I have discovered in the years of university the importance of modern tradition and I have remarked that in Rome the modern tradition was present and inaffective, with some examples without special quality. I have searched outside the quality of modern architecture, visiting buildings especially of
Le Corbusier. But in Italy I found some important examples of a research that I consider very important till now, to have a connection with historical tradition and the tradition of the new, especially the works of Albini, Ridolfi and Gardella, the works of the '5O's, a big importance in the formation of my taste. So the first works I have made are in the spirit of the research typical of the masters of Italian architecture of the '50's.