Formation

Enrolled at the University of Florence, Marta Lonzi graduated from the Urban Planning Institute directed by Ludovico Quaroni and from the Science of Construction Institute run by Riccardo Morandi with a thesis that received the 1963 prize awarded by the Unione Italiana Applicazioni Acciaio (U.I.S.A.A.).

Moving to Rome after her marriage, she tried to reconcile her new tasks as a mother with her work as an architect, tackling her first jobs as a professional and at the same time trying to maintain contact with her former university group. The relationship of esteem with Quaroni developed into a close friendship, which also appeared in her relations with the artists closest to her, such as Gallizio and Consagra. In 1965 she was involved in the “Experimental Course in Urban Preparation” held in Arezzo under the direction of Quaroni himself by the Study Centre of the Olivetti Foundation. This was one of the foundational acts of Italian urban planning. In 1966 the text La città nuova, which she wrote with M. Cusmano, B. Gabrielli, R. Mazzanti, R. Rozzi, was selected for the Olivetti Prize.

Her studies of urban planning issues continued in the research on Gallura conducted with Italo Insolera for Italia Nostra (1965-70).

In 1967 she returned to university as a voluntary assistant in the course of Architectural Composition at the Faculty of Architecture of Rome, directed first by Alberto Samonà and a year later by Ludovico Quaroni. But her passion for teaching clashed with a growing sense of estrangement from the spirit and methods of design in force that led her to leave the university, in January 1973, with a letter addressed to Quaroni himself: “I think that a serious experimentation cannot be carriued out to its end if the need to start from a cultural backgroud that is truly open to every possible meaning and value is not recognized... The authenticity of the process will become the verification of the experimentation”.

“We talked about design but were silent about the exparinece of designing... Every need could find its theoretical moment. Because the subjective moment... is censored by the architect, a thousand miles away from claimingit as a passage of authenticity that redeems his doing... For me, the obective impossibility of being able to shift the general interest from the object to the process emerged, while everyone was possessed by the charme of the elevations, the plans, the sections.” (ML 1982)