Derelict Utopias, by Mark Sanderson

Along the coastline of northern Italy lie a number of distinctive buildings, constructed during the 1930s to function as holiday hostels for the children of industrial workers who were members of the Fascist Party. This kind of building was called a colonia, which translates literally as “colony,” and its purpose was to promote health and fitness in an atmosphere of sun, sea, and regular exercise. The holidaymakers pledged love and allegiance to Mussolini at daily flag-raising ceremonies. For the purposes of propaganda, there was no higher cause than the nurture of Italy’s children and no better vision than boys and girls at orderly play in spectacular settings of modern architecture amid panoramic views. Two futures were on display here: the modernization of a nation together with its future citizens.


THE FASCIST PROJECT

Despite the lack of consensus about the root causes of Fascism, it articulated itself through a largely coherent corporate identity that ranged from logos to the design of new towns. While most of its slogans and symbols have long since been erased, its remaining architecture—varying in style from theatrical classicism to rationalism to futurism—is still recognizable as Fascist. Most common 
is a stripped-down classicism that recalls De Chirico’s “Piazze d’Italia” paintings, where all architectural form is simplified into disconcerting and faintly menacing scenography.


The ideology was intended to manage the population through the production of belief, a technique most effective in the young—Mussolini’s most famous slogan, “Credere, Ubbidire, Combattere,”(”Believe, Obey, Fight”) was posted 
in every classroom. The Opera Nazionale Balilla (founded 
in 1926) absorbed and unified all various youth groups into 
a single cohesive entity and offered Balilla Youth between 
the ages of eight and fourteen after-school activities 
including sports, gymnastics, military drills with dummy rifles, and excursions to holiday colonies by the sea or 
in the mountains. 

Idyllic spaces and panoramic views coincided with obedience, effort, and militarism. Comradeship was instilled in the Balilla Youth—who played, ate, slept, and marched together—in an attempt to dislodge older allegiances to place, church, and family.¹ Leisure time was being colonized with a view to regulating both consciousness and space.² Everyone was to be trained in the ways of Fascism, preparing them for a world of work, war, and mass culture.

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