What role did design play in the creation of the Latina Province in Fascist Italy during the early twentieth century?
This pilot study explores the integrated design perspectives that contributed to the creation of the Latina Province (formerly Littoria Province), Italy, in the early twentieth century. The visual character of the written discourse, visual images, nonverbal communication, architecture and the built environment was characterised by the corporativist urbanism put to work by the Fascist regime across the various scales at which design functioned. Said to be the most ambitious programme and grandest display of Fascist power, the urban fabric of the region is adorned with fascist iconography manifest in the monuments and memorials on public display. Many of these symbolic elements have since been removed in the light of attempts to disassociate the place with that time in Italy’s past, but there remains traces of Fascism that still serve to stimulate the urban graphic memory at the macro, meso and micro scale.
The project benefitted from financial support awarded by the Loughborough University Changing Environments and Infrastructure cross-research challenge.
Read about the research:
Harland, RG and Liguori, A (2019) Designing the Latina Landscape: Graphic Images of Italian Fascism, Journal of Urban Design, ISSN: 1357-4809. DOI: 10.1080/13574809.2019.1638237.
Harland, R, Liguori, A, Cole, GJ (2018) Developing a Digital Archive for Symbolic Resources in Urban Environments – the Latina Project, International Journal of Digital Curation, 12(2), pp.136-145, ISSN: 1746-8256. DOI: 10.2218/ijdc.v12i2.511.
Archive link:
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/projects/Latina_Province_Italy_pilot_study_/15534