At the end of the Second World War, America's newly acquired status of hegemonic power- together with the launch of ambitious international programs such as the Marshall Plan- significantly altered existing transatlantic relations. In this context, Italian and American architectural cultures developed a fragile dialogue characterized by successful exchanges and forms of collaboration but also by reciprocal wariness. The dissemination of models and ideas concerning architecture generated complex effects and frequently led to surprising misinterpretations, obstinate forms of resistance and long negotiations between the involved parties. Issues of continuity and discontinuity dominated Italian culture and society at the time since at stake was the possible balance between allegedly long-established traditions and the prospect of a radical rupture with recent history. Architectural culture often contributed to reach a compromise between very diverging attitudes. Situated in the larger realm of studies on Americanization, this book questions current interpretations of transatlantic relations in architecture. By reconsidering the means and effects of the dialogue that unfolded between the two sides of the Atlantic during the postwar years, the volume analyzes how cultural and formal models were developed in one context and then modified when transferred to a new one as well as the fortune of this cultural exchange in terms of circulation, amplification, and simplification.

At the end of the Second World War, Italian architects began to pay increasing attention to examples imported from the United States, with the 'American model' becoming a reference for many Italian designers, planners, and critics. Post-war US intervention in Italy provided ample institutional support for the dissemination of models and ideas concerning architecture. This effort manifested itself through housing programs, publications, exhibitions, and exchanges between scholars, engineers, and architects. Nevertheless, the relationship between Italy and the United States remained, in many respects, inconclusive, as circulation and adoption of American models were subjected to alteration, often faced resistance, or were used for their potential ideological implications. This book questions how effective the circulation of US-originated knowledge was: regarding the Italian-American exchange, identifying what was exported from America is as interesting and significant as recognizing what was received or rejected. It reconsiders the means and effects of the circulation of cultural and formal models between the two countries, analyzes the way in which these models were developed in one context and then modified when transferred to a new one, and examines the fortune of this cultural exchange in terms of circulation, amplification, simplification and misinterpretation. This investigation into the Italian-American exchange in architecture and planning is situated in the larger context of post-war dissemination and diffusion of American cultural models.

Though he garnered global praise at the peak of his career from 1960 to 1990, Australian architect John Andrews faced waning fame as postmodern cultural transformations challenged modernist design values, and wider social and economic changes led to a withdrawal of government-funded institutional commissions. Yet his body of work is a remarkable achievement that deserves to be better known. Following a path from Australia to the United States and Canada and back again, John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense examines his most important buildings and reveals how the internationalization of architecture during this period was an unexpectedly dispersed geographical phenomenon, following more complex flows and localized progressions than earlier modernist ideas that travelled from center to periphery, metropole to outpost. Andrews negotiated the advent of postmodernism not by ignoring it, but by cultivating approaches that this new era foregrounded—identity, history, place—within the formal vocabularies of modernism. As Andrews assumed wider public roles and took appointments that allowed him to shape architectural education, he influenced design culture beyond his own personal portfolio. This book presents his legacy traversing local and international scenes and exemplifying late-modern developments of architecture while offering both generational continuities and discontinuities with what came after. John Andrews: Architect of Uncommon Sense features essays from Paul Walker, Mary Lou Lobsinger, Peter Scriver and Antony Moulis, Philip Goad, and Paolo Scrivano, along with nearly 100 new photographs from visual artist Noritaka Minami of existing buildings designed by Andrews in North America and Australia.