Ricerc@Sapienza

The Architects Collaborative (TAC), founded in 1945 by Walter Gropius and seven colleagues from the prestigious university institution of MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was one of the most influential and prestigious names in the international architecture field of the twentieth century. The TAC worked for 50 years, closing definitively in 1995. In the 1960s they opened an office in Rome, which mainly dealt with projects in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Our research deals with this experience, little-known, but fundamental for the experimentation of a method that acknowledged a great role to the collaboration between peers and to the rejection of individualism in the project. The research began about a year ago, interviewing some witnesses participating in the projects developed in the TAC Office in Rome. The heritage which we take from the Modern Movement today is one of the consequent remarks that can be followed in the exposition of the interviews which we propose to present in the conference celebrating the 100 years from the foundation of the Bauhaus and the 50 from the death of Gropius. Through the witnesses collected we will then analyze the methodological aspects of the collective work in architectural design, which today are not only sustainable but at the basis of the training for the modern professional.