A colloquio con Franco Purini per la serie 'Incontri con il successo architettura' [Book review]

Abstract

The 2014 book A Colloquio con Franco Purini by Carlo Berrizzi and Enrico Valeriani, reviewed by Conrad Thake, revisits Manfredo Tafuri’s 1986 critique that described the young Purini’s prolific conceptual drawings as products of an increasingly baroque graphic fury and excessive practices within a rigorist context, suggesting he needed more time and built works to prove whether his output constituted a truly stimulating “narrative architecture.” Decades later, Purini—together with his lifelong partner Laura Thermes—has established himself as one of Italy’s most authoritative architects, with mature projects such as the Church of San Giovanni Battista in Lecce (2006) and the Eurosky Tower in Rome’s EUR district (2008) embodying the very narrative quality Tafuri anticipated.