The Built Utopia: The Italian rural centres in colonial Libya (1934-1940) | L’utopia costruita: I centri rurali di fondazione in Libia (1934-1940), ed. Vittoria Capresi, Bologna (2009).

The Built Utopia is a bilingual English-Italian ‘guide’-book to Italian colonial architecture in Libya. As the author notes in the chapter ‘A guide to travel, a search to deepen’, “this volume provides a comprehensive description and introduction to the architecture of the newly founded rural centres in Libya, created by Italian architects during the Fascist colonial occupation. The period analysed, from 1934 to 1940, includes the starting point for the construction of the rural centres, 1933-1934, which saw the establishment of the first centres for the political, religious and administrative management of the territory. The project for the last centre was designed in 1940, but it was never constructed due to the outbreak of the Second World War. Particular attention is given to two key dates, 1938 and 1939, which marked the stages of mass colonization with the transfer of rural Italian families to the coast of Libya.”

The book is available online in PDF form at the above link. A review of the volume can be found in Libyan Studies 42 (2011), p. 160.