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HOUSES INSTEAD OF FIELDS

The development of a town in its whole civil, cultural, ethnic, and economic identity is bound to the growth of its components. Any urban planning, and therefore the changes in landscape, depends on the different ways of life, production methods and terms between the society and the territory it concerns.

In Italy the post-war development led to an increase of the working class too, and therefore to the consequent building of houses, the famous "Piano Fanfani" run by INA-Casa. Two hundred thousand houses were built by INA in five thousand villages and towns, one of which is Vicenza. This plan was financed from contributions of workers, employers and also state aid. INA, an insurance company, was appointed for running the funds and the activity plans. This project had been launched in order to build new working-class areas, which were to be inserted in urban planning designed by famous architects, appointed through national competitions.

Each district was to be provided with all plan metric solutions, besides the plans for the houses and facilities. So, 567 dwellings were built in Vicenza in Via dei Mille, Viale della Pace, Pio X and Borgo Casale between 1947 and 1956.

The Villaggio del Sole quarter was developed a second time between 1956 and 1963. The laying of its foundation stone dates back to September 1958, while the announcement of consignment on leasing, to 1959. A second allotment was inaugurated in 1960. Moreover, 526 new flats, cost of 1 billion 600 million lire, were built and run by INA.

Opposite Villaggio del Sole, on the other side of the road, the Government financed the growth of Villaggio della Produttività.

The Villaggio del Sole quarter owes its name to 'the House of the Sun', a building standing at the foot of Mount Crocetta. In the sixties, it spread round the crossroads of the large northwest ring road of Vicenza. The project "Città del Sole-INA Casa" had been designed in order to raise an ideal town like the one described by Tommaso Campanella in 1602. It had been planned just for being semiautonomous, that is provided with any facility and service. Actually, it turned out to be but a dormitory, equipped with the essential services only much later.

Its sinusoidal body, nicknamed "The grass snake", forms a visual and acoustic barrier, which abates the noise of the quite busy ring road. The ratio between the height of its buildings and the reciprocal horizontal distances among them was planned in order to create a man-sized context and grant enough green areas. The road system, which winds through the village, was designed just to restrict the road traffic to the residents, in so avoiding any continual traffic flow. For this purpose, the roads are rather winding and often dead end, too.

The three-storey buildings with exposed brick-walls in Villaggio della Produttività, stand among large green areas, which are provided with small gardens, one for each family.

Not far from this village, facing Via Brigata Granatieri di Sardegna, there is another block of houses built for "middle class" people and supported by loans granted by Cassa di Risparmio. The largest suburbs in Vicenza, and nearby towns, were set up by middle-class people. They were given the names of rivers, lakes or writers.

On the outskirts of towns like Bassano, Arzignano, etc., study citadels were built in order to group together all the high schools. Houses after the above-mentioned Fanfani Plan were built in every town nearby Vicenza. So, our Third Age Students were given the task to take photos and write down the story of many of those buildings and the areas they stand in.