This interesting book deals with the Ina-Casa plan, the most important social housing programme implemented in Italy in the period following the Second World War. Promoted by the Minister of Labour and Social Security, the Christian Democrat Amintore Fanfani, the plan had the double aim of reducing unemployment and providing affordable and good-quality dwellings to the numerous households suffering from the post-war housing crisis. The plan was implemented in two seven-year phases (1949–1956 and 1956–1963), through a multitude of projects ranging in size from one or a few buildings scattered around cities and towns to larger-scale interventions consisting of entire new neighbourhoods on the urban outskirts that comprised hundreds or thousands of dwelling units. To develop these projects, the Ina-Casa administration hired many of the most talented Italian architects and planners of the mid-twentieth century, including Adalberto Libera (who chaired the projects office), Mario De Renzi, Mario Ridolfi, Giuseppe Vaccaro and Ludovico Quaroni.

Zeier Pilat’s work examines the Ina-Casa plan with a clear focus on architecture and town planning. The book has a tripartite organisation. Part I, which consists of two chapters, covers the origins and organisation of Ina-Casa and the development of the plan, plus the design manuals drafted by the projects office to guide architects through the design process. Part II focuses on three case-study neighbourhoods, which are examined in detail: Villa Longo in Matera, Tiburtino in Rome and Borgo Panigale in Bologna. This part, which constitutes the core of the book, has itself a tripartite structure: Chapter 3 investigates the neighbourhoods at the urban scale, Chapter 4 goes down to the architectural scale, while Chapter 5 zooms in on unit plans and domestic interiors. The last two chapters, grouped in Part III, switch respectively to the residents’ experience and evaluation of the Ina-Casa homes, as revealed by contemporary surveys and retrospective oral histories; and to the reception of Ina-Casa buildings and neighbourhoods by architectural critics from the post-war period to the present. An introduction on Ina-Casa as a lens through which to look at the (re)construction both of Italy’s built fabric and of Italian national identity after Fascism, and an epilogue on the legacy of the plan for post-modern architecture complete the volume.

Zeier Pilat’s work is an exceptionally ambitious enterprise. To my knowledge, this is the first single-authored book to deal comprehensively with the Ina-Casa plan. Reference studies on this topic date back to the early 2000s when, following the fiftieth anniversary of the plan, two important volumes were published, edited respectively by Paola Di Biagi and the Istituto Luigi Sturzo. Subsequently, the historiography on Ina-Casa has been enriched by researches on particular aspects of the plan, architectural guides to the buildings and neighbourhoods constructed in various cities, and studies focused on a single urban area or a specific intervention, such as Alice Sotgia’s inspiring ‘biography’ of the Tuscolano neighbourhood in Rome.

In my opinion, Reconstructing Italy has several strengths. It effectively sets the Ina-Casa plan in an international context, looking at its theory and practice in relationship to leading contemporary strategies and approaches to housing, urban planning and design, particularly those associated with ‘orthodox’ Modernism that were dominant in many Western countries in the post-war era. From this point of view, Zeier Pilat presents Ina-Casa as a success story, praising the organisation of the plan as well as the contextual approach to design and vernacular style that characterised especially its first seven-year phase. The analysis of Ina-Casa at different scales, ranging from the urban to interior design, is convincing; and the three case-study neighbourhoods – spanning northern, central and southern Italy, as well as cities of different size and nature – are well assorted. The discussion of Ina-Casa design as reflecting and contributing to the redefinition of Italian national identity after Fascism is fascinating, as is Zeier Pilat’s fine analysis of the internal layouts of the Ina-Casa dwellings in relation to dominant values and normative notions of morality, privacy, class and gender.

Yet, some critical remarks can be made. The author tends to overemphasise the relevance of the object of her study in fostering national unity: indeed, one might think of several other entities that in the 1950s and 1960s probably ‘did more to unify the nation’ than Ina-Casa homes (p. 10), including the Autostrada del Sole, television and the unified scuola media. In addition, I am sceptical that ‘the construction of Ina-Casa quarters throughout Italy contributed to further segregation by class in cities and towns’ (p. 105). This claim is linked to the assumption that all beneficiaries of the Ina-Casa plan can be categorised as working class. This implies the adoption of an extremely broad notion of working class, which may be nominally faithful to the plan’s establishing law, which spoke of ‘case per lavoratori’, but loses sight of the fact that a far from negligible portion of those who were assigned a home – clerical workers, in particular – should actually rather be considered lower-middle-class. One could also doubt that, as an example of urban planning and design from the Fascist era, Littoria – a new town built on the reclaimed land of the Agro Pontino, which was meant to serve all the functions of a city – is the best comparison to the Tiburtino neighbourhood; rather, why not continue with the comparison with Garbatella, looking at the other Roman neighbourhoods that Vittorio Vidotto has branded ‘quartieri del fascismo’, or at the social-housing borgate of the late 1930s that have been studied by Luciano Villani?

However, despite possible reservations, this is undoubtedly an admirable and thought-provoking book. Extensively researched, clearly written and richly illustrated, it will be compulsory reading for all English-speaking scholars who are interested in the Ina-Casa plan, and more widely in urban planning and architecture in post-war Italy.