This catalog focuses on the theme of the "Mediterranean house," investigating its operational presence within a specific historical context: the 1950s. This period is characterized by the decisive influence in Spain of two masters of international architecture—Gio Ponti and Alberto Sartoris—whose ideology is rooted in a balanced mediation between tradition and modernity.
It is a wide-ranging cultural project that was primarily disseminated through an updated concept of domesticity, emphasizing the well-known typology of the "Mediterranean house"; a paradigm that defines its identity through the uniqueness of its relationship with the environment, the use of specific materials, a distinctive interior layout, and the use—also symbolic—of certain figurative patterns. These strategies were implemented to satisfy the basic needs of contemporary existence, while standing in polemical opposition to the alienating uniformity of a mechanized urban civilization.
Through various documentary sources of diverse nature—projects, drawings, magazines, correspondence, publications, and photographs—the implications of an architectural reflection that integrates historical, landscape, and anthropological approaches are revealed, as well as the personal and professional contacts established between prominent figures of modern architecture.
