By championing virtues such as speed, technology, youth, and flight, the Futurists worked to cement Italy’s status as highly advanced and, thus, superior. In Asmara, the handsome structures built between 1935 and 1941 became multi-faceted tools of oppression.
Eight decades later, these Italian-designed edifices are still standing, albeit in need of rehabilitation. But preserving Asmara’s Futurist architecture necessarily preserves the fascist agenda that erected them in the first place...
— Atlas Obscura
Though the Futurists are featured in virtually every textbook on Modernism, their politics can be described as more than controversial. As they embraced speed, technology and scientific progress, the Italian group was also upfront about its misogyny, sympathetic towards fascist ideologies and eager to shed lessons learned from the past.
The Futurists built a significant number of buildings based on their principles in Asmara, a city in the African country Eritrea, that remain to this day. As they begin to show their age more than 80 years after their initial construction, the question remains: should we preserve buildings designed by hateful and oppresive ideologies? As the buildings of the tumultuous 20th century show their age, we must decide which should withstand the tests of time and which should be abolished.
I was born and spent my youth in this city. These buildings that were built by the Fascists, whether we like it or not, is what defines the city of Asmara. I think we should preserve what we could. UNESCO has recognized the uniqueness of the city and if they are preserved tourists and architects like you will visit the country with much needed foreign currency. The Italians that were living in Asmara used to say "Roma e bella e Asmara sua sorrela."
Bereket Tekeste
All 9 Comments
Use them for non fascist activities
Danceterias?
Correct answer
How far back do we go? The fellas who built the pyramids were jerks too. The colosseum was pretty pretty brutal. Do we remove most Mayan, Aztec, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, American colonial, etc etc etc etc....let’s remove it all and pretend history was all rainbows and unicorns. Let’s replace these relics with cheap beige styrofoam condos and whack glass stacked boxes. That will teach the dead totalitarians a lesson! The developers will be happy too!
Calm down Capt. Slippery Slope.
.
You have just randomly named countries. The point is Asmara was built on racial segregation and apartheid inflicted on another group of people, The coliseum and pyramids are a false equivalence. The latter is being built by slaves is historically inaccurate.
The Fiat building rocks. I'd say keep them if they look interesting. But it depends on the extent of Fascism. If it's the German variety, take them down. The Italians, not so bad. It's like the revelations of R Kelly, Michael Jackson and other stars who turned out to be bad hombres. For those two, scratch them off the play lists, but don't go on a witch list. Like one's ideas on beauty, they are subjective, until they are not.
Mussolini was an absolute brute so yes the I talians were quite bad.
The FIAT building would be excellent for bumper-cars.
done.
Sorry but they are not fascist buildings, they are Futurist buildings. And although there are the obvious links between the two, they are not interchangeable.
+++well said
They are fascist buildings, they were built by the brute that was Mussolini and Asmara was built on an apartheid system of racial segregation.
Yes they are. We should read up on the history.
REVOLUTIONARY WEAPONS AND TACTICS
Since World War I, revolutionary weapons and tactics have undergone a biologic mutation to survive the invention of heavy weapons. Anyone can make a sword, a spear, a bow and arrow in his basement or spare room workshop. He can make the approximation of a small arm. He cannot make automatic weapons, tanks, bombers, fighter planes, destroyers, artillery. These heavy weapons are in the hands of reactionary forces, which give them an overwhelming advantage in direct combat. With heavy weapons five percent of the population can hold down ninety-five percent by sheer force. This advantage, which did not exist before heavy weapons, must now be taken into account.
A belated development to be sure. the stupidity of the military mind is unbelievable. Toward the end of the Civil War in the United States, a crude machine gun and a crude tank were rejected by President Lincoln's military advisors as impractical. Now these weapons were primitive to be sure, but quite usable, and all the elements were there. In World War II, General Gamelin thought that tanks were unimportant until they poured around the end of his Maginot Line. General Gamelin did not like tanks.
So, plinking around the streets with a Barretta .25 is little to the purpose. And still less a Colt Army .45, a handgun so inaccurate it is more dangerous to friend than enemy - your friends being closer to it. It is a very myopic handgun. Bombs, in the post office and the police stations - what is this, the IRA in 1916? Blow up the Statue of Liberty would you? Have you any idea how much good gelginite it would take to explode that old beast? The same explosive material, discreetly placed, could bring down the economic system of the West. The Boy Scout Manual will show you how...
The extent to which revolutionary theory and tactics is disadvantageously shaped by opposition is something few revolutionaries like to think about, being for the most part as bigoted and impervious to facts as those whom they think they oppose. In 1848, a worldwide liberal movement was ruthlessly crushed in Europe and vitiated in South America. Consider how present day revolutionaries are being Che Guevara'd back into the nineteenth century to repeat the mistakes of Garibaldi and Bolivar. Bolivar liberated a large section of South America from Spain. He left intact the Christian calendar, the Spanish language, the Catholic church, the Spanish bureaucracy. He left Spanish families holding the wealth and the land.
He must have loved the conquistadores in some corner of his being to treat them with such exemplary consideration. It is a familiar pattern: the oppressed love the oppressors and cannot wait to follow their example. Morocco, independent from France, takes over the inefficient French bureaucracy. Arab countries liberated from England retain the barbarous English method of execution. Cannot a revolution make a clean sweep of all this old garbage.
To achieve independence from alien domination and to consolidate revolutionary gains, five steps are necessary:
1) PROCLAIM A NEW ERA AND SET UP A NEW CALENDAR,
2) REPLACE ALIEN LANGUAGE,
3) DESTROY OR NEUTRALIZE ALIEN GODS,
4) DESTROY ALIEN MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT AND CONTROL,
5) TAKE LAND AND WEALTH FROM INDIVIDUAL ALIENS.
Excerpt from, "The Revised Boy Scout Manual," William S Burroughs
I was born and spent my youth in this city. These buildings that were built by the Fascists, whether we like it or not, is what defines the city of Asmara. I think we should preserve what we could. UNESCO has recognized the uniqueness of the city and if they are preserved tourists and architects like you will visit the country with much needed foreign currency. The Italians that were living in Asmara used to say "Roma e bella e Asmara sua sorrela."
Bereket Tekeste
Well said.
It's has always a commonly unfortunate stretch when it comes to linking esthetics and politics. This is another example on that stretch. Which falls short on comprehending a truly accomplished moment of great architecture which should not have nothing to do with its unfortunate political mantel, in that nonetheless condemnable and horrendous context and period. Btw shouldn't we loving Wagner music at all? Thanks the debate.
Asmara is an old colonic relic built on racial segregation and apartheid,. The first city in the whole of Africa to be built on such. It should go.
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