Superstudio A

Negative Utopia

An Illustrated History of the Villa

Superstudio, Fall 2025

TPOD

Team: Pier Vittorio Aureli, Romain Barth, Michela Bonomo, Theodora Giovanazzi, Marson Korbi, Constantinos Marcou

The villa is perhaps one of the most enduring types in architecture: it first emerged two millennia ago, and it still exists. Since its invention, it has represented the same aspirations: escape from the city, return to nature, and the 'good life'. In principle, these are everyone's aspirations, but the villa was meant to make them exclusive. As such, the villa works as a 'negative utopia' whose exclusionary logic is defined by class relationships. The villa has always embodied, in the most archetypical terms, class and status, and as such is one of the most potent forms of hegemonic architecture produced by the ruling classes of all times. In his seminal study of this type, James Ackerman has argued that the villa is an ideological form whose main goal is to sustain, in highly symbolic and allegorical terms, narratives about domination and control. It is interesting to note that the development of architecture as a discipline is profoundly intertwined with the history of the villa. With the rediscovery of this type in the Renaissance, the design of villas was the prerogative of the early 'professional' architects who distinguished themselves from master masons. These architects exploited the idiosyncratic forms of villas as a way to experiment with architecture and promote their role as authors of unique buildings. This authorial idea of the villa has survived to this day since the villa still represents for architects the opportunity to affirm in uncompromising terms their idea of architecture.

Yet, villas were never the product of architects' imagination alone; their form was also the appropriation of existing rural customs and even folk traditions. Inventions such as the 'vernacular' and the 'picturesque' were the elite's appropriations and idealizations of peasant culture that was celebrated while it was subtly exploited. For this reason, to frame the villa only as a matter of privilege is--perhaps--too simplistic. Because of their intense ideological nature, villas were imaginative constructs, invented worlds, poetic versions of life in which the power of architecture to represent reaches its utmost intensity. It is precisely their formal and symbolic surplus that makes them--for better or worse--a compelling form of architecture. If, within the history of domesticity, changes and reforms have always been introduced by the ruling classes, villas were laboratories of innovation in which both architects and clients ostensibly challenged given norms and canons. And yet, precisely the villas that were meant to challenge the status quo became canonical architectures imitated by dwellers of all classes. The history of villas is thus much more complex and nuanced than what their pastoral aura may lead one to perceive. Villas were sophisticated representations of the world, in which every architectural element refers to a larger idea than itself. Within the architecture of villas, loggias, pediments, and even seemingly utilitarian elements such as a pigeon-tower are symbolic devices. This surplus of architectural representation was not an excess per se; it served the most important mandate of the villa: the domination of the territory. The villa emerged in ancient times when class struggle opposed peasants and the elite; in order to gentrify the rural territory of Rome, the elite appropriated the rustic way of life of the peasants, elevating the latter to the dignity of the good life. This operation implied the appropriation of the farm and its transformation into a luxury retreat. As such, the villa became an ambivalent architecture, both private and public, since it was both a retreat and a monumental head of the land it dominated. A similar operation was repeated in the Renaissance when a new elite, scared by pandemics and by class struggle in cities, transformed rural castles into palaces in which the relationship between domestic space and its surrounding landscape took unprecedented importance. It is for this reason that the villa is arguably the first architectural type to open up the interior towards the exterior. As such, the exterior, which is the life that surrounds the villa, is domesticated and controlled. The villa is thus a paradoxical type: as much as it aims to celebrate its 'splendid isolation,' its architecture is deeply intertwined with its context, and without it, the villa cannot exist. This paradox is very much present in the most important modern offspring of the villa: the suburban single-family house. Behind its ostensible goal to democratize the villa as mass-produced domestic space, the single-family house has contributed to make private property the nomos of liberal democratic societies.  More recently, the villa has remained a major financial asset and a status symbol, but at times it has also become the opportunity for interesting architectural experiments in which to propose new forms of dwelling. In some case villas are architects' manifestos or autobiographical portraits of themselves or their clients.

This year, 'Superstudio' will study the history of the villa by focusing on thirty case studies that span from antiquity to the last century. The aim of this study is not to design villas, but to understand through the architecture of the villa the most quintessential tropes of architecture: form, composition, and representation. Above all, the goal of Superstudio is to use the villa as an exemplary artifact with which to test the ability of reading a singular architectural object as a synecdoche of an entire historical period. For this reason, a central topic of the studio is the idea of exemplarity in architecture: the possibility of interpreting a building in order to define a larger domain. No matter how unique and unprecedented an architecture can appear, once carefully and rigorously interpreted specific buildings can become examples that shed light on entire historical periods. The capacity of studying architectures as 'examples' is thus a central theme in architectural research. Rather than starting from sweeping generalizations and then looking for evidence, working with examples implies the opposite. Focusing on examples means starting with a specific case study and searching for the way its singularity can shed light onto the whole, not in spite of but because of its singularity. For this reason, this Superstudio is not on the villa per se, but on the possibility of studying architecture as a meaningful object, as something that in itself becomes the vantage point through which to understand the world.

Analogy as Method

As mentioned above, the goal of this Superstudio is not to design but to study the villa. The final product of the studio will be a drawing known as 'Analogous Map.' This drawing can be understood as a 'drawn essay' in which the research content is not written but represented by means of visual elements. These elements work as analogies of the research content. For this reason, in terms of methodology, the main focus of the Superstudio is the notion of 'analogy.' Analogy is the comparison of something to something else for the purpose of explanation. Analogy cannot fully rely on a rational explanation, but, rather, works through imagination and by mobilising one's knowledge and memories. In some respects, analogy is an incomplete explanation or illustration of something, and it is precisely such incompleteness that triggers the imagination. However, within analogy, imagination does not run wild but is subtly directed and informed so that it might be an intersubjective tool--one which works as long as those who use or interpret such analogies share common references or a common ethos. It is important to emphasize that analogies are not metaphors. Metaphors imply a morphological resemblance between what exists and its representation; analogies, on the contrary, rely on knowledge rather than resemblance. For example, Palladio's use of the dome in his Villa Capra is not a metaphor, but an archetype that establishes an analogy between the villa and the temple in order to reinforce the house as a sacred domain. This analogy was possible because in the Western world a dome signified sacred buildings, and as such it was never placed on top of a profane building such as a house. Because of their ideological role, villas are full of analogical forms: orientation, openings, terraces, roofs are architectural features that evoke something other than the villa itself. In this way, a villa can be interpreted as a complex text in which the micro and the macro are in constant relationship. The goal of the Superstudio is to reveal these analogies by mapping them into an inventive and historically accurate drawings. Besides decoding analogies, the drawing will represent the physical, social and economic context by using figures taken from the iconographic landscape of the period in which each villa was build. The ambition of this exercise is to bridge imagination and history, invention and erudition. Against the idea that imagination is effective when set free, the brief argues that imagination can only work through rigorous knowledge.

The Analogous Map

In order to facilitate the undertaking of this exercise, the Superstudio team has selected thirty case studies of villas from antiquity to the last century. Each group of students will work on one case study. Case studies will be assigned ex officio via a lottery. The selection criteria are based on architectural relevance and available literature. Although they do not exhaust the rich history of this type, the thirty examples selected offer a concise historical overview of villas. For each case study we have selected a minimal bibliography that eventually students can (and should) expand. After gathering and reading the bibliography, each group will write a short and concise text that close-reads the villa and situates it within its historical context. This text will be the 'script' on which to compose the analogous map. Each map--a drawing that measures 80x80cm - will be first drafted as a collage of images and drawings. The starting point will be a plan and axonometric representation of the assigned villa, around which the map will unfold as a sort of 'mandala.' Within this scheme, every architectural and historical fact will be drawn as figures taken from a rich iconographic repertoire. A reference for this kind of composition is the analogous map par excellence: Aldo Rossi's 'Analogous City', a visual essay on the city that Rossi and his collaborators composed for the 1976 Venice Biennale. In this famous image, Rossi composed both historical examples and his own architectures in order to stage as one composite vision his own idea of the city. In the same manner, each group of students will visualize their case study as a composition of figures and architectures whose goal is to offer a visual description and explanation of the assigned villa. Once the analogous map is drafted, it will be retraced as a line drawing. This passage is key. By translating the composition into a uniform medium, the analogous map is no longer a collage but one drawing in which multiple scales and images will coalesce as one narrative. By retracing the material collaged in the draft, things can be changed, modified, and even deformed. The surgical precision of line drawing is the adequate technique for this kind of drawing because it will emphasize the detail as the key protagonist of the composition. It should be stressed that, in order to work, the analogous map should be a very detailed drawing in which the whole is never subsuming the importance of the detail. In spite of its unitary form, the analogous map is also a labyrinth, and as such it becomes the analogy of history itself, in which nuances and contradictions resist any sweeping statement. Finally, the analogous map will be supported by an explanatory legend that will caption every element used.

Deliverables

Drawing 80x80cm: The Analogous Map

Drawing 80x80cm: Legend

Text, 1.500 words