Numero monografico "Riviste di architettura. Traiettorie"
Abstract
“We have to start anew, from letter A, to generate a happy life for everyone”: so states the cover of the first issue of “A – News, Architecture, Home, Art”, which later became “A – Culture of Life”: the magazine that Lina Bo Bardi and Carlo Pagani built with Bruno Zevi in 1946. Their hope was to involve an audience as vast as possible during the collective reconstruction of the country, destroyed by the Second World War. The article explores the suspended space and brief life of this small utopia, aiming at demonstrating how A became the magazine that, for its directors, engaged in intense outreach activity during such years, meant most of all to understand and pass on the civil value of architecture. The text also explores the publication’s themes and contents, its protagonists and unusual graphic design, trying to comprehend the originality of its message. In a lively national editorial scene, its uncompromising attitude, politically advanced and, for the same reason revolutionary, was its strength and, in a way, the real reason behind its sudden closure.
