The advent of modern architecture in Malta

Abstract

At the same Lime that Le Corbusier and Jeanneret were completing the ground-breaking Villa Savoie, in Poissy, in 1929, the local architect Giuseppe Psaila was receiving accolades for the newly completed Balluta Buildings in St Julian's - revered as a monumental masterpiece of Art Nouveau architecture and an eloquent statement of the Stile Liberty. The contrast between the two could hardly be more revealing for whereas Corbusier's Villa Savoie was revolutionary in pioneering the spirit of what was to become the Modern Movement. Psaila's Balluta Buildings indulged in an anachronistic manifestation of ornamentation on a grand scale. During the 1920s and '30s, the European continent was experiencing several avant-garde experiments in the visual arts ranging from the wide-ranging Bauhaus emanating from Dessau, Germany to the Dutch De Stijl movement, to the visionary Constructivist works of the Soviet architects Melnikov, Ginzburg and Leonidov. All these movements were fundamentally inspired by a deeply-ingrained desire to impart a radical and tangible impact in transforming society and its institutions. Hence, it was inevitable that most of the manifestos of these artistic movements are intertwined with a strong dose of political rhetoric, at times verging on the revolutionary and tinged with utopian ideals. [Excerpt]