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THE ITALIAN LEGACY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
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Esteban Prieto Vicioso (May 17, 1950).
Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza; International Center
for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property in Rome, ICCROM; Università degli
Studi di Bologna, Istituto di Antichità Ravennati e Bizantine 1972 - 1974. After graduating with a degree in
architecture from the Pedro Henríquez Ureña National University (UNPHU), he took the intensive specializa-
tion course in Architectural Conservation at ICCROM, where he was a student of prominent Italian professors
such as Piero Gazzola, Carlo Ceschi, Guglielmo De Angelis d’Ossat, Enrico Quaroni, Roberto Bonelli, and
Giorgo Torraca. He also carried out research in Yugoslavia, Bologna, and Venezia. In Ravenna, he completed
a course on Byzantine art and a course on the Italian art history at the Società Dante Alighieri in Rome. One of
the most important specialists in the restoration of monuments and historical centers in Latin America, Prieto
Vicioso served prominently as director of the Office of Cultural Heritage of the Dominican Republic from
1986 to 1996, performing countless works of great relevance throughout the country, particularly in the His-
toric Center of Santo Domingo. He has served as vice president of the International Council on Monuments
and Sites (ICOMOS) and participated in international consulting projects, conferences, and seminars around
the world. Subsequently, he developed a parallel passion for the subject of Dominican vernacular architecture.
For decades he has worked as a restorer of the Basilica Cathedral of Santa María la Menor in Santo Domingo.
He earned his PhD in architecture in Mexico and has been a university professor for over 20 years.
The Dawn of Postmodernism
Italy in the 1980s and the Strada Novissima
The Rise of the Florentine Node
Local University Expansion
Although it has not been a critically established point, there is something of a tacit agreement that Italian ar-
chitecture is so comfortably rooted in its own culture, and its trunk so solid, that it has never been permeable
to avant-garde trends, without them paying tribute to that powerful technical skill that Italianism has devel-
oped over the course of more than 20 centuries. It is more accurate to think that these trends originated, on
many occasions, from within. Such is the case of the birth of the movement called Postmodernism by critics
who coined the term in the late 1970s, particularly Charles Jencks. The Italian texts produced by Aldo Rossi
or Manfredo Tafuri from the 1960s, or by the American established at the Accademia Americana in Rome,
Robert Venturi, were fundamental in the transition from orthodox rational modernism to a more flexible,
open modernity, in which the history of architecture had a predominant role. On this issue, no other country
was as militant as Italy.
This skill manifested in Italian architecture to embed the international influences of the moment within
its own culture has given it extraordinary validity in the face of the eternal dynamics to which it inevitably
submits. Such was the prevailing spirit at the beginning of the 1980s. The first Venice Biennale dedicated to ar-
chitecture hosted a pivotal exhibition in its facilities at the Arsenale, called
La Strada Novissima
, a montage that
consolidated an image that was embraced by the entire planet, as a symbol of the new direction in architecture
during those years. Those who studied in Italy at that time were greatly influenced by the spirit of the times,
not only because of the biennial exhibition but also because of the innumerable professional publications—
Domus, Dedalo, Zodiac, Controspazio
, and particularly the doyen,
Casabella Continuità
—and books written by
intellectuals such as Rossi, Portoghesi, Tafuri, Dal Co, and Gregotti.
This zeitgeist had, in fact, been an undercurrent since the 1970s. From then onward, a second wave of
Dominican architects flocked mainly to Florence, showing less and less interest to Rome. The School of Ar-
chitecture of the Università degli Studi di Firenze was led by a famous team of professors, and both the subject
of project composition—mostly requested in the first half of the 1970s—and the restoration of monuments
and historic centers was palpable in those years, due in large part to the great floods of 1967 in Florence and