"Le avventure della ragione" : Manfredo Tafuri y Thomas Jefferson

The discussion of the last decades about the historic production of Manfredo Tafuri has been mainly focused on his articles and books dealing with Renaissance and Contemporary architecture. Less attention has been devoted to his strong interest in 18th century architectural theories, as those on cities and urban development which occupy the first chapter of PROGETTO E UTOPIA (1973). Within the broad survey traced here by Tafuri, this paper aims to investigate the role attributed to Thomas Jefferson. The two sources are a recently discovered copy of Fiske Kimball's THOMAS JEFFERSON ARCHITECT (19682) which still preserves Tafuri's autograph pencil marginalia; and the audio recording of two lessons on Jefferson gave by Tafuri in 1969, which has just been digitized by the PROGETTO TAFURI of the Università Iuav (http://www.iuav.it/Ateneo1/eventi-del/PROGETTOT/).