La Califfa Villa

Luigi Moretti – Villa called “La Califfa” Santa Marinella – Rome Italy, 1954

"At the root of human behavior that leads to the realization of architecture lies the hostile weight of matter and the need to oppose it, triumph over it, remove and lift matter to a level beyond its naturally inactive state. This could be interpreted like man's need for self-awareness, to feel alive, to demonstrate his presence to himself, his will to exist in a tangible and violent way, breaking with the foreign impassiveness of nature. Regardless of the interpretation of this behavior, in the older elementary architecture, as in most complex works, instinct, the sense of weight building, are clearly felt.

This primordial component of making architecture, together with others that have been added over time, combined into a single orchestration. These components originated from man's need to satisfy the conditions of a material and inner life. Of course I am referring to those components that concern the need to cut spaces out of the fabric of nature, which are different from it and instead belong to the higher biological life of man, and to the components that refer to the mysterious need for venustas, or beauty . "
Luigi Moretti