* Bruno Zevi; Architecture Critic Admired Wright

Bruno Zevi, 81, doyen of Italian architectural historians and critics who introduced the work of Frank Lloyd Wright to Italian colleagues. Zevi was the founder and editor of the Italian magazine L’Architettura and one of Europe’s most prominent architecture critics for the last half-century. Although a trained architect who designed a few structures, including the Italian pavilion at the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal, he was best known as a writer. His most influential works were “Toward an Organic Architecture,” published in 1945, and “Architecture as Space: How to Look at Architecture,” published in English in 1957. The latter book was based on Wright’s belief that the essence of architecture is found in the voids, not the solid forms that encase them. Born to a prominent Jewish family in Rome, he grew up during Mussolini’s Fascist regime and led anti-Fascist groups in Paris and Boston, while he was pursuing a master’s degree in architecture at Harvard under Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. He began to work on “Toward an Organic Architecture” after moving to London and supporting the liberation of Italy through clandestine radio broadcasts for an underground anti-Fascist organization. In the 1940s, he became a vociferous opponent of the International Style championed by Bauhaus architects, preferring so-called organic designs that fused architecture with nature. He believed Wright exemplified this approach. On Jan. 9 in Rome.