Research into the creative process
After her sister Carla’s abandonment of art criticism and the start of Rivolta Femminile (Rome 1970), Marta also endorsed the group’s activity.
This led her to leave the university and embark on research into the “real and unsublimated” process that resulted in a decidedly atypical book, L’architetto fuori di sé (series Prototipi, 1982), understood as “a heterodox testimony to the practice of current architectural design”. A testimony, therefore, hence a proof that acknowledges something: her own experience as an architect and a woman.
The book, received coldly in Italy, would prove far more influential abroad, in part because it was spread in the circuits of feminist publishing. For Marta, a busy period of presentation and debate began on the theme “What is it for a woman to create?”. Often her lectures were followed by educational involvement in courses or seminars: in Strasbourg (1983), in Berlin, first at the IBA in 1987 then at the Hochschule der Künste (1989), then Malaga (1993), Strasbourg again (1993-94), Toledo (1994), La Coruña (1994-95). In Spain above all, she left an important trace, as witnessed by Pasquala Campos, the first woman to be appointed to a chair of design in that country, who thanked Marta “for her support in my process of integrating my professional work with the feminist understanding of the world” (1999). In Italy she again received a university appointment only in 2005, in the Master’s course on “Restoration of the Modern” at the Politecnico di Milano.
“Authenticity is the guarantee of expression... Design, like any form of expression, discovers the intentions of the subject.” (ML 1982)
“Authenticity is the Ariadne’s thread in the journey of design, it leads you into the labyrinth, it leads you into the unknown, from the conscious to the unconscious, from the self to the other than itself, from the mental to the natural, from the subject to the landscape; and it is a search,” said Marta, “that especially concerns women.” (M. Bottero 2019)
