The villa type can be considered one of the most archaic buildings still surviving to this date. This type of settlement originated in Ancient Rome and indicated an upper-class country house. The term evolved into a more comprehensive notion that encompasses multiple definitions today but ultimately refers to a bourgeoise luxurious detached house outside the city. In the collective imagination, the villa is a manifesto of the ‘good life’ representing for architects the occasion to go all the way, a laboratory for stylistic experimentation, often an exception in their portfolio, and for their clients the promise of an isolated heaven. Since the second half of the 20th century this type of building, saw a rapid multiplication, especially in the forms of holiday villas across the Mediterranean coastline, not sparing its birthplace, Italy where rapid industrialization and social mobility helped democratize the concept of the summer holiday for all.
This dissertation examines the proliferation of the built product and the ideology of the holiday villas by the sea in postwar Italy, as a phenomenon defined by the author as ‘villa-mania’, reinforced and promoted by specific political factors. It focuses on a period widely discussed in the history of architecture coinciding with the start of the Economic Miracle and the first Oil crisis in 1973 but shifting the focus to a building that has been kept outside of the urban center of knowledge and critical inquiry. The thesis employs six buildings, widely published for their technological innovations, all located a few meters by the sea and built in the timeframe studied. Through building stories centered on these so-called ‘architectural masterpieces’, previously unexplored notions of privilege, class, labor conditions, and consumption of natural resources are brought to light.The project, therefore, examines the villa as a place of experimentation, conflict, and contradictions, to ultimately question, how and if, this building type could become truly historical.