The books of Italian Professor Leonardo Benevolo, one of the world's leading architectural historians, are also used as textbooks in many universities around the world.
Italian architectural historian and architect. He is known for his studies that evaluate the formal problems of architecture, its social function, and political context together. He was born in Novara, near Milan. After graduating from the Department of Architecture at the University of Rome, he taught the history of architecture at the universities of Rome, Florence, Venice, Palermo, and again in Rome. After quitting his teaching career, he worked as an architect in Brescia. He became internationally known as an architectural history expert with the books he wrote starting in 1960. The subjects he dealt with were mostly the history of modern architecture and urban design issues. He made the new center of the Bologna Fair together with Giura Longo and Melograni in the field of application and realized many school structures. He also took part in various commissions on city regulations.
Leonardo Benevolo (25 September 1923 – 5 January 2017) was an Italian architect, city planner and architecture historian. Born in Orta San Giulio, Italy, Benevolo studied architecture in Rome where he graduated in 1946. Later taught history of architecture in Rome, Florence, Venice and Palermo. His book Storia dell'archittetura moderna (History of Modern Architecture) first published in 1960 has been reprinted 18 times, as of 1996, and translated into six other languages.
Benevolo, while examining the evolution of architecture, has taken care of making a multi-faceted evaluation. On the one hand, he discussed how the qualities of the project and implementation phases and formal experiments changed or remained constant depending on place and time, and on the other hand, he focused on the relationship of architectural activity with society. According to Benevolo, the relationship between architecture and society was not given much importance until the middle of the 18th century. However, modern architecture, which developed under the influence of the Industrial Revolution, went beyond the class limitations in society and gained a quality that envisages the spread of cultural and artistic products on the scale of all people.
"The European City" book
Leonardo Benevolo has done an outstanding job. Not only has he made a rich synthesis of the history of the city since the early Middle Ages, but he has also made a distinguished and scientific contribution to the European urban history literature by avoiding superficiality and unfounded generalizations.
What stages have the city, which is a built environment, passed through and reached the present day? What are the differences in the structuring of cities?
As an answer to these questions, Cities in the History of Europe is a striking study that deals with the evolution of cities from the early Middle Ages to the present throughout centuries and civilizations.
The city walls were built for defense and commercial purposes, the settlements that protrude beyond the walls, the impact of the Renaissance on architectural works, and the distorted urban environments that came with the Industrial Revolution... In this work, which examines the historical change of European cities, he sheds light on the relations between urban life and the history of thought and culture.
Cities in European History, supported by maps, drawings, and plans, is a unique reference resource that will attract the attention of readers from all walks of life.