Looking for Stefania Filo Speziale before the Skyscraper

Abstract

Stefania Filo Speziale (1905-1988), the first woman to graduate in Architecture in Naples and a pupil of Marcello Canino, decided to eliminate all traces of herself by destroying her project drawings, thus making it difficult to attempt to reconstruct her professional figure. Without dwelling on her most famous works, such as the Metropolitan Cinema-Theatre and the Della Morte Palace, we will consider her mature but less explored activity, which took place in the first half of the 1950s, considering that 1958 saw the completion of the Società Cattolica di Assicurazioni skyscraper. The overall reading and chronological “reordering” of her activity, supported by rare graphic acquisitions, also of unpublished works, such as the “residential building” in Carelli Park, can contribute to a broader understanding of the designer’s production, beyond the commonplace. Always attentive “to the need dictated by the psychological factor” of the inhabitants, to whom she destined green spaces and social places, she proposed the compositional type-morphological diversification of buildings, with fragmentary  lines, the play of volumes, and different surface textures. Particularly in the INA-Casa “laboratory”, such as the neighbourhoods of Capodichino (1951) and Agnano (1953), she made use of experimental research on urban landscape. What emerges is a personality capable of interpreting the evolution of modernity, deeply embedded in the cultural context of the 1950s.