1984 Master of Architecture
Alan Warner

Letters from Abroad

April 27, 1985
Como, Italy

The Villa Malaparte was designed by Adelberto Librera in 1932 on a rock outcropping overlooking and almost within the Mediterranean Sea. Approach by land is only along a narrow ledge of rock that has been carved from the stone, or one can ascend to the villa from the dock below. The house is essentially a stair to a plateau. This project is most unlike most other Rationalist work. This villa is private, inwardly contained, designed as a subtractive solid, and elusive in the same sense that the meaning of a DeChirico painting is enigmatic. This constantly questions what the viewer’s role is in relationship to the building. The two paths to the villa (and I can only assume that those within are qualitatively similar) are suggestive of some murky Romanticist attitude that movement is primarily a ritualistic event.