The Architecture of the 1920s and 1930s in Merano

Curated by
Schmidt Magdalene, Walter Gadner

With regard to architectural trends, Merano buildings and projects from the interwar period will be juxtaposed, introduced, and placed in the context of urban planning. The topic is part of a comprehensive research project on the design and appearance of the town of Merano from 1860 to 1960. 

Up until World War I, the appearance of the spa town was characterized by the splendid buildings of Historicism and Art Nouveau, but following the change in the political situation, Modernism - largely unknown up to that time - found its way even to South Tyrol. 
During the Mussolini period, various architectural trends were prevalent, and they can more or less be distinguished by classifying them as either traditionalistic or modernistic. Mussolini let them compete with one another. Representative buildings were erected for the party organization, more military personnel was present in the new border territories, and workers from the old provinces were deliberately resettled in Merano, boosting the building activity. The fascist regime attached great importance to the liberal extension of leisure and sports facilities, and many of them were built in Merano, especially since it was a spa town. 

In cooperation with the municipal archive, the projects have been selected and digitalized for this exhibition.
The presented buildings document the period concerned and show the variety of buildings that typify it. They range from mixed forms during the transition from Historicism to Modernism - accessorized with local elements - to the puristic, unadorned buildings of Rationalism, down to the monumental, heavily decorated buildings of the Scuola Romana.

The selected buildings can be categorized under the various movements that existed during the Mussolini era. The aim is not only to present Modernism, but also to understand the architectural history of that period.

The exhibition is segmented according to topics, and the projects in the individual segments are presented in chronological order.

With regard to the architectural styles, the exhibition mainly shows the facades; as for a few buildings, only floor plans or photographs are available, as no further documents exist. Only in rare cases does the archive have a complete set of plans; application plans are available for some buildings, and sometimes there are detailed or design plans. The floor plans were not reworked for the exhibition, but simply scanned in their archived form. Thus, they show the condition of the drawings that were submitted to the municipal archive. For the sake of comparison, in some cases it was necessary to minimize plans within a subject group for the exhibition, but that was always done true to scale. The documents of each of the presented buildings have an own number, so background information can be accessed in a list of descriptions by stating the accession number at the Merano Arte shop.