Above: The ruins of Giuseppe Perugini’s ‘Casa Sperimentale’. Photo: Oliver Astrologo
In the town of Fregene on the outskirts of Rome, Italy, sits an abandoned and deteriorating building. Built by Buenos Aires-born architect Giuseppe Perugini’s (1914-1995) the ‘Casa Sperimentale’ (Experimental House) is an eclectic ode Brutalism that is slowly crumbling away.
Sketch of Giuseppe Perugini’s ‘Casa Sperimentale’.
Floor plan of Giuseppe Perugini’s ‘Casa Sperimentale’.
Perugini built the house in the 1960’s as a way to explore space and scale. Designed as a series of interlocking blocks and forms and suspended in a scaffold-like exoskeleton the home is a tribute to the architectural form and a homage to architects including Paul Rudolph, Le Corbusier, and Rem Koolhaas.
Giuseppe Perugini never reached the fame of those who influenced him and his legacy is now a neglected curiosity that has become overgrown and graffiti-covered in the 20 years since the architect’s passing. Much maligned and misunderstood Brutalism is of late receiving the recognition it deserves as a new generation of architects are re-discovering concrete as a principle material. So, perhaps, this wild example of the form can yet be saved.
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