Marcello Piacentini was always deeply connected to his work as an architect, skillfully managing the sequence of architectural procedures in minute detail and often wanting to illustrate, through drawings that today we would call 3D renderings, what would eventually be built. For him, ‘ideas’ were more important than controlling the external or internal elements in their mathematical relationships; he distanced himself from the simple and sterile debate on rationalist architecture, instead seeking practical solutions for the “needs of everyday life.”

With these concepts, he approached the commission assigned to him for the E42, the 1942 Universal Exposition in Rome.

The project for an illuminated EUR Avenue executed in pencil and pastel by Marcello Piacentini, under examination in this sheet, should be linked to the early ideas that arose regarding the creation of a civic exhibition space.