building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici
building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici
building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici
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Jefferson, who considered himself a professional farmer 57 , insisted in favour of<br />
agricultural economy and local autonomy, understood as productive self‐reliance on<br />
<strong>the</strong> land, and with his dislike of <strong>the</strong> development of industry was <strong>the</strong> first American<br />
to openly express a kind of repulsion for <strong>the</strong> city 58 . According to Manfredo Tafuri,<br />
Jefferson represented <strong>the</strong> "ambiguous conscience of <strong>the</strong> American intellectuals" 59 ,<br />
due to his fear of accepting <strong>the</strong> passage from an old to a new social order: for this<br />
reason his is a utopia, “even though not an avant‐garde one, but as a rear‐guard<br />
one […]. The utopia of Jefferson <strong>the</strong> architect becomes <strong>the</strong> <br />
of his Classicism” 60 .<br />
The agricultural development in <strong>the</strong> North of <strong>the</strong> country was a different case. The<br />
expansion of <strong>the</strong> plantations did not celebrate <strong>the</strong> aristocratic agricultural<br />
democracy by using <strong>the</strong> classical shapes of Jefferson's architecture. In fact, it<br />
became evident after <strong>the</strong> Civil War that <strong>the</strong> plantations in <strong>the</strong> North and in <strong>the</strong> Mid‐<br />
West, which had been explored in <strong>the</strong> first decades of <strong>the</strong> nineteenth century, were<br />
an indirect achievement of an entrepreneurial and commercial spirit, which relied<br />
on <strong>the</strong> resources of <strong>the</strong> rising American cities.<br />
Since <strong>the</strong> initial attempts to set up settlements, <strong>the</strong> first agricultural villages in <strong>the</strong><br />
North were idealized as refuges of religious tolerance without, however, having<br />
utopian connotations. Those who settled <strong>the</strong>re did not want to experiment a new<br />
model of social behaviour, <strong>the</strong>y did so simply to stay <strong>the</strong>re. This attitude also<br />
explains <strong>the</strong>ir agricultural experiments and <strong>the</strong> diffusion of horticulture, all of which<br />
57 In 1809 Jefferson draws a particular model of a plow called improved moldboard of least resistance.<br />
This project will receive a medal from <strong>the</strong> French Society of Agriculture.<br />
58 See WHITE, Morton Gabriel, WHITE, Lucia, The intellectual versus <strong>the</strong> city: from Thomas Jefferson<br />
to Lloyd Wright, Cambridge, Harvard University press, 1962; FITCH, James Marston, Architecture and<br />
aes<strong>the</strong>tics of plenty, London, Columbia University press, 1966; SCULLY, Vincent J., American<br />
architecture and urbanism, London, Thames & Hudson, 1969 (Italian translation Architettura e<br />
disegno urbano in America: un dialogo fra generazioni, introduzione di Mario Manieri Elia, Roma,<br />
Officina, 1971)<br />
59 TAFURI, Manfredo, Progetto e utopia, architettura e sviluppo capitalistico, Roma‐Bari, Laterza 2007<br />
(prima ed. 1973) p. 28, (English translation by Barbara Luigia La Penta, Architecture and Utopia.<br />
Design and Capitalistic Development, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, The MIT<br />
Press, 1976, p.28)<br />
60 Ibid. p. 28‐29<br />
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