Theodor Cron - Stanze Italiane / Italian Rooms

«There was something else about these rooms that I had never considered before and which I now want to explain.» Recently discovered in the archives of the architect Theodor Cron, Italian Rooms is a highly original text on the conception of architectural space and its continuous redefinition. Written in 1947, it is the result of a trip to Southern Italy in which the author observed anonymous Saracen rooms and compared their architectural qualities with the canons of architecture practiced in Northern Europe. “Here, one dwells on the floor, while we live between four walls:” this is the paradigmatic statement that allows Cron to continue with a series of original observations, according to a conception of space genuinely different from the spatial paradigms of the Modern Movement. The essay, even more than its historical character, is therefore characterized by a theoretical contribution which, in this sense, has a timeless value and makes the text a sort of revelation in the contemporary panorama.