A splendid sketch by architect Augusto Romano (1918–2001) was found among the more than 300 drawings for the home and studio he built for himself in 1949 in the Cavoretto hills overlooking Turin, Italy. The drawing depicts the Noordwijk House (1935), an icon of the Dutch Nieuwe Bouwen movement, designed by Jan Brinkman and L.C. van der Vlugt. Romano’s house, fresh, timeless and livable in its sophisticated simplicity, shows its debt to this house and other Northern European modernist designs, especially those lauded by critic Alfred Roth; among the rationalist structures Roth chose for his seminal 1939 book, The New Architecture Presented in 20 Examples, is Le Corbusier’s modest Villa le Sextant (1935) in Les Mathes, rather than the more imposing and flamboyant Villa Savoy (1928–29). Danish and Swedish design, along with Swiss and American architecture, were also important sources for Romano, who graduated in 1944 from the Politecnico di Torino, near the end of World War II. Among the books in his home library (his daughter, Claudia, still lives in the house), is a monograph on Richard Neutra and a very worn Italian translation of American Architecture Today (1954) by Henry Russell Hitchcock and Arthur Drexel.

Like other Torinese architects of his generation, Romano was eager for new directions, and while he emulated Le Corbusier’s concept of the house as a “machine for living,” he considered human needs paramount and his own interpretation embraced Danish and Swedish design and American organic influences.