Renato Severino. Building in the Western Hemisphere 1959-1989

Renato Severino, architect, graduated in the Fifties at the University of Florence with Adalberto Libera, started a shining career very young, thanks to his high-level skill that made him enter the upper range of italian architectural teams of that period. He worked with Adalberto Libera and Pier Luigi Nervi and, in 1964, at just 34 years old, he designed the Sub-Saharan Africa's largest university campus in Cape Coast, Ghana. His interest in light technology led him to build the Italsider's resort of Cesana Torinese (1963), one of the first responsive high-tech architecture in Italy. In the United States, where he moved in 1968, his professional activity gained a worldwide extension, with works in America, Latin America, Africa and Europe. He published and researched extensively on sustainability and industrialized systems. In 1970 he wrote Equipotential Space. Freedom in Architecture, a passionate vision of architecture and technology as a means to enable society to shape and control the environment. Severino's architecture and his research into new urban configurations make him an architect ahead of his time, who has envisaged many ongoing and future concerns. His work and his vision of the future enrich the history of architecture with yet another protagonist who has challenged Modernism beyond the boundaries of its time. This is his first autobiography that revisits all his work, revealing the development of a period of great changes.

RENATO SEVERINO (Cagliari, Italy,1930), graduated in Architecture in 1954 at the University of Florence. and in 1960, after having won an important architectural Competition, started his own architectural firm in Rome. During the following years he was awarded several sizable architectural contracts, establishing professional offices in four Continents. In 1968 Severino moved to New York City and began to develop his professional activity in the United States, Central and South America. He estabilished professional corporations specialized in architectural industrialization, operating in several areas of the world for more than twenty years, accepting the challenge of bridging art and science, tradition and technology. Among the many international competitions, he has won the one held by European Common Market (CECA) for a mass produced dwelling unit. Severino taught at the University of Rome and Florence before taking the position of Adjunct Professor of Architecture at Columbia University in New York City in 1970. He has lectured extensively and wrote books and articles in the international press concerning the problems of modern culture, urban planning and architectural history.