ドイツ人アーティスト、エイコ・グリンバーグ（Eiko Grimberg）の作品集。アーティスト / デザイナーのティル・ガートマン（Till Gathmenn）との共同で制作された本書は、近代建築のインターナショナル・スタイルの流れを汲み、1930年代に建てられたイタリアの建造物を撮影した作品を収録。ムッソリーニの独裁政治時代のファシズム建築と同時期に現れた合理主義建築は、当初ファシズム建築の勢いに押されその建築様式は見えにくいものであった。しかし当時のイタリア国内の学校、病院、道、住宅などのインフラ整備の際はこの合理主義の考えの元に設計され、現在でもそれらの建築物が街中に残っている事実に目を向け、かつての社会的、政治的な意味を含む建築物は、今の時代にはどのような意味をもつのか、またこれからそのような建築は意味をなさなくなってゆくのか、それとも別の意味が加えられていくのか、という問いを投げかけようとしている。 

The buildings in Future History are examples of ‘Razionalismo’, the Italian version of International Style Modernism built in the 1930s. Emerging during Mussolini’s dictatorship, Razionalismo architecture was contemporaneous and frequently indivisible in design from official fascist building, now referred to as Stile Littorio. Italian fascism and Modernism blossomed in approximately the same period, during which the fascist state engaged in a significant infrastructural and institutional building programme. Countless school, hospital, road, rail, housing, government building and redevelopment projects were realised, several of which are viewed today as noteworthy examples of Razionalismo. These projects put architecture at the service of a state equally intent on improving health and housing, making its might conspicuous domestically and colonising in Africa.The photographs in ‘Future History’ are interleaved with extracts from a series of papers first published in 1926 and 1927 by Gruppo 7, a group of architects from the Milanese Politecnico who championed the concepts of rationalism. This group called for an architectural renewal within the victorious state of Italy, for the development of a new idiom of form ‘until it dictates a style to other nations, as it has in the great periods of the past’. The essence of rationalism was ‘truth, logic, order, and Hellenic lucidity – true character of the new spirit.’