The After Image Phenomenon between Immaterial and Hyper-Material Architectures: Hypothesis on the Influence of Italian Architecture at the Time of the Cold War

Abstract

The Cold War was not only a political-military confrontation but also a way of life, an atmosphere that enveloped and influenced society in all its dimensions. Through the two key concepts of "anarchic architecture" and "interrupted sign" the paper analyses the design processes theorized and experimented by Giancarlo De Carlo within the complex and articulated historical-cultural context of the Cold War. From this analysis, the research highlights both the conscious and unconscious origins of a complex process of dematerialization that has characterized some more recent architectures, oriented towards the rejection of compositional processes based on the composition of forms, instead privileging abstract design concepts more closely linked to the user's emotional and perceptual sphere. Finally, the research refers to the phenomenon of the After Image defined by Biraghi as a possible orientation towards an "after contemporary architecture".