Incompiuto – The Birth of a Style

Incompiuto (New Edition): documenting Italy’s unfinished architectural landscape

Incompiuto (New Edition) is a research-driven publication that documents and theorizes a uniquely Italian architectural phenomenon: unfinished public works understood not as failures, but as a coherent and recurring architectural language. Defined by its authors as “the most important Italian architectural style from the post-war period to the present day,” Incompiuto reframes incompletion as a structural condition of the contemporary built environment.

The volume brings together more than fifteen years of systematic field research conducted across the entire Italian territory. Through direct observation, mapping, and photographic documentation, the project identifies and catalogs hundreds of unfinished buildings and infrastructures—bridges, theaters, stadiums, hospitals, civic centers—left suspended between intention and abandonment. What emerges is not an anomaly, but a measurable and pervasive presence within the national landscape.

Unfinished public works as a measurable architectural phenomenon

This new, expanded edition updates the original research with revised data, additional case studies, and an enriched visual archive. The book includes an extensive census of incomplete works and situates them within a broader analytical framework that intersects architecture, politics, economics, and cultural history. Rather than treating incompiuto as waste or error, the publication positions it as a spatial archive of public decision-making, stalled development, and systemic contradictions embedded in post-war Italy.

By naming incompletion as a “style,” the project establishes a shared visual grammar—raw concrete structures, interrupted construction phases, exposed reinforcements—that repeats itself across regions and decades, independent of scale or intended function.

A long-term research project combining architecture, politics, and visual culture

Published in a bilingual Italian–English format, Incompiuto (New Edition) spans 348 pages and combines large-format photographic sequences with essays and critical texts. The visual core of the book features original photography by Alterazioni Video alongside seminal work by Gabriele Basilico, whose images reinforce the monumental, suspended quality of these structures.

The editorial structure alternates between visual documentation and theoretical reflection, allowing readers to move from territorial mapping to conceptual analysis. The result is both an atlas of incompletion and a critical narrative on the production of space in contemporary Italy.

Contributors and critical voices shaping the theory of Incompiuto

Contributors include Alterazioni Video, Marc Augé, Marco Biraghi, Fosbury Architecture, Davide Giannella, Filippo Minelli, Leoluca Orlando, Antonio Ricci, Salvatore Settis, Robert Storr, Paul Virilio, and Wu Ming—bringing together perspectives from anthropology, architectural theory, contemporary art, urban studies, and political thought.

Their essays frame incompiuto not as an exceptional or marginal phenomenon, but as a central expression of the relationship between governance, territory, and collective imagination.

Incompiuto as a critical lens on contemporary Italian architecture

More than a photographic survey or an architectural atlas, Incompiuto (New Edition) functions as a critical tool for reading the present. It invites architects, scholars, policymakers, and readers to reconsider the meaning of failure, permanence, and public space, transforming unfinished construction into a lens through which to understand power, time, and the material consequences of collective choices.

/ bilingual Italian/English
/ softcover
/ 348 pages
/ 22 × 30 cm

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