“Sobria ricchezza di movimento di volumi”: Marcello D’Olivo tra Puglia e Basilicata

In the multi-faceted context of architecture after World War II, Marcello D'Olivo anticipates the non-utopian debate on the "new urban dimension" and on the city-territory, which since the 1960s has faced the overcoming of rationalist solutions. His research, while close to Wright's organicism, is part of the Le Corbusier trend, especially in the interest for the urban scale. In 1959, D'Olivo provides convincing proof with the ambitious project of a holiday village capable of hosting twenty thousand people, in Manacore. He gives the project a large scale sign characterized by curved and spiral lines, conforms to the orography of the land and in respect of nature. Only the Gusmay hotel, which receives the IN/ARCH award in 1964, is built. The rooms, facing the sea, are shielded by a continuous brise-soleil of cement. Some ideas of the project for Manacore are taken up into the Orthophrenic Institute, built in 1968 in Potenza, like the "fishbone" articulation of the four pavilions, wich are inserted at 45° in the service tunnel. The tallest building is covered by a practicable terrace. In the lower buildings the in-patiens rooms overlook gardens. Particular attention is paid to the location of common areas, in which colored and fine materials are used “in order to guarantee patients the comfort of an aesthetically pleasing home attractive".