Vittorio Giorgini in New York: The Cultural Climate Influences and the “Made in USA” Projects Never Built

The Florentine architect Vittorio Giorgini (1926–2010) graduated in 1957 from his hometown School of Architecture. During the 1950s and 1960s, he came to maturity in the lively cultural climate of Florence. Giorgini’s design process was based on the direct observation of natural structures. He coined the term “Spatiology” to define his studies of morphology. In 1969, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a professor of Architecture and Planning at the Pratt Institute until 1996. Giorgini took part in the artistic and cultural life of the Big Apple, and here, he frequented and formed a series of friendships with personalities of notable stature (John M. Johansen, Isamu Noguchi, Buckminster Fuller). The aim of the latter is to investigate Giorgini’s USA period (1969–1996), which constituted a far-reaching design phase beginning in the Seventies. In particular, it is very interesting to study the relationships Giorgini established with architects, artists, and intellectuals in New York that constituted a source of seduction and inspiration for his design process. The research focuses on the “Made in USA” projects that were never built, in which the formal interpretation of natural organisms consisted mainly of tetrahedral and octahedral meshes.