Asmara’s #Fiat #Tagliero service station: a history of cities in 50 buildings, day 18
Mussolini’s Italy brought death from the skies to East Africa in the 1930s – but left behind a striking futurist building in the Eritrean capital
Modernist masterpieces in unlikely Asmara
ON A dusty road leading travellers out of the southern outskirts of Asmara stands a small service station. Once owned by AGIP, an Italian petrol company, it was for decades the last place to fill up with fuel between the Eritrean capital and the southern towns of Decemhare and Mendefera, some 40km away. The largest of several similarly designed buildings all over Asmara, it is a modest construction, its mundane commercial purpose only partially belied by the unexpected elegance of the design.
Modernist Asmara : An Italian Architectural Experiment in Africa
In the 1910s, Eritrea — a small East African country bordering with Sudan, Ethiopia and the Red Sea — stood as the industrial center for the administrative territory of Italian East Africa. Powered by Italian Fascists who challenged architect Odoardo Cavagnari to design a “Little Rome,” the Eritrean capital Asmara became a space of experimentation for radical Italian architects. The small village saw hundreds of bold designs sprout, further influencing the vernacular architecture of the region.
▻http://architizer.com/blog/modernist-asmara-an-italian-architectural-experiment-in-africa