Healthy and beautiful. Italian Colonies during the Fascist Period: two Architectures between Abruzzi’s Mountain and Sea

Abstract

Seaside, mountain and heliotherapeutic colonies form a combined health and educational building typology encouraged by the National Fascist Party for the care and training of young Italians.

Different commissioning authorities and environmental conditions prevent the adoption of any single model for a new architectural typology that going way beyond the gloomy nineteenth-century medical centres for tuberculosis.

Characteristics are allegorical and recreational aspects evoking the images of aeroplanes, ships, letters of the alphabet. These structures, however, are also complex “health-care machines”, developing buildings arrangement to provide health-enhancing ways, including the use of innovatory materials and building techniques.

The paper retraces the architectural and typological evolution of the buildings for the treatment of tuberculosis from which the colonies originate, focusing the attention on two of the marine and mountain colonies built in Abruzzo in the fascist period, in order to study its architecture, the construction events and the materials used to make them "healthy and beautiful".