Bruno Zevi, 22 January 1918 – 9 January 2000, was an Italian architect, historian, professor, curator, author, best known as a historian and architectural critic. Following the racial laws, he left Italy in 1939 to go first to London and then to the United States. Here he graduated from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, directed by Walter Gropius, and discovered Frank Lloyd Wright, whose preaching in favor of organic architecture he will remain a lifelong advocate.
In 1944 he returned to Rome where he promoted the APAO (Association for Organic Architecture) and, the following year, founded the magazine “Metron”. In 1948 he published “Knowing how to see architecture” and “History of modern architecture” in 1950; until the last one in 2001, ten regularly updated editions will come out. Since 1948 he has taught History of Architecture at the University Institute of Architecture in Venice (IUAV) then, from 1963, at the Faculty of Architecture in Rome.
In 1959 he founded the IN / ARCH (National Institute of Architecture) for which he hopes to be the driving force of a forum for all the forces that produce architecture. “It must be a center where the various characters of the architectural scene, from industrialists to journalists, hitherto isolated, find a channel of communication, the seat of sincere and clear disagreements, the tool to break apart the segregation,” he proclaimed in the inaugural session.
The transition from “Metron” to “Architecture – chronicles and history” took place in 1955. The declaration of intent is in the editorial of the first issue: “to create a magazine that reflects the entire range of architectural interests: from political ones to the artistic ones, from the professional ones to the historical ones, which balances contemporary experiences with tradition, which integrates the awareness of current art with the study, conducted with modern sensitivity, of the past ». In the same year he began his collaboration with “L’ Espresso “as the owner of the successful architecture column that he will curate until his death.
