suspending-modernity-the-architecture-of-franco-albini_compress

Suspending Modernity:

The Architecture of Franco Albini

Ashgate Studies in Architecture Series

series editor: eamonn canniffe, manchester school of architecture,

manchester metropolitan university, uk

The discipline of Architecture is undergoing subtle transformation as design

awareness permeates our visually dominated culture. Technological change,

the search for sustainability and debates around the value of place and meaning

of the architectural gesture are aspects which will affect the cities we inhabit. This

series seeks to address such topics, both theoretically and in practice, through

the publication of high quality original research, written and visual.

Other titles in this series

Shoah Presence: Architectural Representations of the Holocaust

Eran Neuman

ISBN 978 1 4094 2923 4

Reconstructing Italy

The Ina-Casa Neighborhoods of the Postwar Era

Stephanie Zeier Pilat

ISBN 978 1 4094 6580 5

The Architecture of Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew

Twentieth Century Architecture, Pioneer Modernism and the Tropics

Iain Jackson and Jessica Holland

ISBN 978 1 4094 5198 3

Recto Verso: Redefining the Sketchbook

Edited by Angela Bartram, Nader El-Bizri and Douglas Gittens

ISBN 978 1 4094 6866 0

The Architecture of Luxury

Annette Condello

ISBN 978 1 4094 3321 7

Building the Modern Church

Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955 to 1975

Robert Proctor

ISBN 978 1 4094 4915 7

The Architectural Capriccio

Memory, Fantasy and Invention

Edited by Lucien Steil

ISBN 978 1 4094 3191 6

Suspending Modernity:

The Architecture of Franco Albini

Kay Bea Jones

School of Architecture, Ohio State University, USA

© Kay Bea Jones 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Kay Bea Jones has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,

1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

Published by

Ashgate Publishing Limited

Ashgate Publishing Company

Wey Court East

110 Cherry Street

Union Road Suite 3-1

Farnham burlington, VT 05401-3818

Surrey, GU9 7pt

uSA

England

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Kay Bea.

Suspending modernity : the architecture of Franco Albini / by Kay Bea Jones.

pages cm. -- (Ashgate studies in architecture)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-2728-1 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-2729-8 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-

1-4724-2730-4 (epub) 1. Albini, Franco--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Architecture-

-Italy--History--20th century. I. Title.

NA1123.A525J66 2014

720.92--dc23

2014020390

ISBN 9781472427281 (hbk)

ISBN 9781472427298 (ebk – PDF)

ISBN 9781472427304 (ebk – ePUB)

V

Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,

at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD

Dedicated to my parents,

Mary A. Macklin Jones and Kenneth Buxton Jones Jr.

This page has been left blank intentionally

Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxi

1 Introducing Franco Albini 1

2 Modernity in the Balance: Italy’s Equilibrium 17

3 Albini’s Emergence from Designer to Architect 51

4 The Rationalist House, the Modern Room, and Albini’s Method 85

5 Continuità: CIAM and Neorealism in Post-war Italy 121

6 The Exhibition and the Museum: Albini’s Pragmatic Poetics 143

7 Tradition’s Modern Corollary in Cervinia and Rome 185

8 Strange Siblings: Office Buildings in Genoa and Parma 213

9 Seeking Order: Urban Plans, Popular Housing and Furniture 245

10 Modernity’s Weight: Suspending Optimism in Two Final Museums 279

Appendix 1: Albini on Tradition 321

Appendix 2: Renzo Piano’s “Pezzo per Pezzo:” Recollections of a Studio Albini Intern 323

Index 327


List of Illustrations

1 Introducing Franco Albini

1.1 Franco Albini

1.2 Palazzo Albini on the Castelletto

hillside of Genoa

1.3 “Scipione & Black and White” exhibit at

the Brera Museum in Milan, 1941

1.4 Milan Metropolitana—subway

handrail, 1964

1.5 Studio Albini with Franca Helg and

Franco Albini in 1968

1.6 Portrait of Franco Albini by Roberto

Sambonet

2 Modernity in the Balance: Italy’s

Equilibrium

2.1 Olivetti Store in Paris, 1958

2.2 Museum of Roman Civilization by

Pietro Ascheri, D. Bernardini and Cesare

Pascoletti, 1939–41

2.3 Novocomum apartments in Como by

Giuseppe Terragni, 1927–29

2.4 Stadio dei Marmi at Rome’s Foro

Olimpico (formerly Foro Mussolini) by Enrico

del Debbio, 1928

2.5 Fabio Filzi Housing in Milan by Albini,

Palanti and Camus, 1935–38

2.6 Weissenhof Siedlung at Stuttgart by

Mies van der Rohe, 1927

2.7 Palazzo dell’Acqua e delle Luce

proposed for EUR ’42 (Esposizione

Universale di Roma) by Albini, Romano,

Gardella, and Fontana, 1939

2.8 Fosse Ardeantine by Mario Fiorentino,

Giuseppe Perugini, et al., 1944–49

2.9 Asilo Infantile by Giuseppe Terragni in

Como, 1934–37

2.10 Palazzo dei Congressi at EUR ’42 by

Adalberto Libera begun, 1938–54

2.11 Casa Elettrica at Monza by Piero

Bottoni, Figini and Pollini, et al., 1930

2.12 Sketches for the Milano Verde urban

design proposal, 1938

3 Albini’s Emergence from Designer to

Architect

3.1 INA Pavilion in Bari, 1935

3.2 Fabio Filzi Housing in Milan by Albini,

Palanti and Camus, 1935–38

x

Suspending Modernity: The Architecture of Franco Albini

3.3 Stair for the Villa Neuffer on Lago

Maggiore, 1940

3.4 INA Pavilion in Milan, 1935

3.5 INA Pavilion in Milan, interior with

Carla Albini’s graphics, 1935

3.6 “Italian Aeronautics Exhibition” by

Albini and Giovanni Romano, 1934

3.7 “Hall of Gold Medals”, by Edoardo

Persico and Marcello Nizzoli, 1934

3.8 “Hall of Antique Goldworks”, by Albini

and Romano, Triennale di Milano, 1936

3.9 Plan for “Room for a Man” installation,

by Franco Albini, Triennale di Milano, 1936

3.10 “Room for a Man” by Albini, Triennale

di Milano, 1936

3.11 “Living Room for a Villa” by Albini,

Triennale di Milano, 1940

3.12 “Transparent Radio” by Albini, 1948

3.13 Casabella of April 1937 where both

Enrico Paulucci’s radio on glass planes

and Albini and Romano’s “Hall of Antique

Goldworks” were published

3.14 Albini’s “Veliero” bookshelves, 1940

(replica built by Ohio State University

architecture students in 2005)

3.15 “Zanini Fur Showroom” by Albini in

Milan, 1945

3.16 Holtz Dermatological Institute by

Albini in Milan, 1945

3.17 Movable bookshelf and vitrine

model, Albini, 1945

3.18 Baldini & Castoldi bookstore by Albini

in Milan, 1945

4 The Rationalist House, the Modern

Room, and Albini’s Method

4.1 Albini family apartment in Milan, 1940

4.2 Villetta Pestarini staircase by Albini in

Milan, 1938

4.3 Albini family apartment, 1940

4.4 Apartment for Caterina Marcenaro by

Albini in Palazzo Rosso, Genoa, 1954

4.5 Residential stair at Torre Formiggioni

renovation by Albini and Helg near Varese

4.6 Steel House for the V Triennale in

Milan, 1933

4.7 Pieti Apartment by Albini, 1933

4.8 Villa Vanizetti by Albini, 1935

4.9 Marcenaro apartment entry stair by

Albini

4.10 Site plan for Villetta Pestarini in Milan

by Albini showing the dwelling as garden

wall

4.11 Basement, main floor, and upperlevel

floor plans for Villetta Pestarini

4.12 Villetta Pestarini diagrams showing

Rationalist formal patterns

4.13 Pestarini fireplace with glass shelves

and stone firebox and paving

4.14 Suspended fireplace hood and stone

hearth in Marcenaro’s Genoese apartment

4.15 Marcenaro apartment before 2007

restoration

4.16 Marcenaro apartment following

restoration

4.17 Louis I. Kahn’s unbuilt Fruchter house

plan, 1951–54


xi

4.18 Villa Allemandi plan at Punta Ala by

Albini and Helg, 1959

4.19 Interior loft and stair detail of Villa

Allemandi

5 Continuità: CIAM and Neorealism in

Post-war Italy

5.1 Giancarlo De Carlo, Walter Gropius and

Franco Albini

5.2 New Genoa School of Architecture

building inserted by Ignazio Gardella

into the historic context of the Sarzano

neighborhood near the Sant’Agostino

Museum

5.3 Stazione Termini Rome train station by

Mario Ridolfi, 1947

5.4 Fosse Ardeantine. View from inside the

communal crypt, 1944–49

5.5 Cortile of the Casa Girasole by Luigi

Moretti, Rome, 1949

5.6 INA-Casa Cesate Housing near Milan

by Albini and Helg, 1951

6 The Exhibition and the Museum:

Albini’s Pragmatic Poetics

6.1 Palazzo Rosso façade on the Strada

Nuova, Genoa

6.2 Renovated cortile of the Palazzo

Bianco on the Strada Nuova, Genoa

6.3 Renovated gallery of the Palazzo

Bianco by Albini, Genoa

6.4 Main piano nobile gallery of the

Palazzo Bianco before renovation

6.5 Controversial support structures for

paintings using architectural fragments

6.6 Mobile piston stand for Pisano’s

Margherita di Brabante, originally exhibited

at Palazzo Bianco

6.7 Eleonora di Toledo is the only

freestanding figure in this room in the

Palazzo Abatellis gallery renovated by Carlo

Scarpa, Palermo, 1953

6.8 Palazzo Rosso cortile by Albini and

Helg, 1952–62

6.9 Palazzo Rosso painting gallery

6.10 Original handle mounts at Palazzo

Rosso to adjust paintings to desired viewing

and light

6.11 Scarpa’s hinged painting mounts at

the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo

6.12 Palazzo Rosso frescoed loggia

enclosed in glass by Albini and Helg

6.13 Palazzo Rosso spiral stair

6.14 Museum of the Treasury of San

Lorenzo under the Duomo church of Genoa

by Albini, 1952–56

6.15 Plan and section diagrams of the

Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, 1350–1250

B.C.E.

6.16 Entrance to the Treasury of Atreus at

Mycenae

6.17 Treasury of San Lorenzo gallery

showing off-center installation and stone

pattern

6.18 Treasury of San Lorenzo’s Genoese

silver craft installation

6.19 Sacred robes in display cases

designed by Albini in the Treasury of San

Lorenzo

6.20 Plan of the underground Treasury of

San Lorenzo by Albini, 1952–56

xii


6.21 Plan of Philip Johnson’s underground

Painting Gallery at his New Canaan estate,

1965

6.22 Castello Sforzesco Museum by BBPR

in Milan, 1956

6.23 Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio

renovation in Verona, 1959–73

6.24 Yale Art Gallery cylindrical stair by

Kahn in New Haven, CT, 1953

7 Tradition’s Modern Corollary in

Cervinia and Rome

7.1 Pirovano Youth Hostel by Franco Albini

and Luigi Colombini, Cervinia, 1949

7.2 Third- and fourth-floor plans for the

Pirovano Youth Hostel, 1949

7.3 Mushroom column capitals and

construction details showing Modern and

Traditional techniques in the Pirovano

Hostel

7.4 Pirovano Hostel dining level showing

custom furnishings, ribbon windows

framing horizontal views, and ladder stairs

7.5 Pirovano Youth Hostel section

7.6 Kahn’s Richards Medical Center, 1959

7.7 Piazza Fiume façade of La Rinascente

Department Store by Albini and Helg,

Rome, 1961

7.8 Cornice and construction details of La

Rinascente Department Store

7.9 Model of the first proposal for La

Rinascente Department Store showing rooftop

parking and exterior circulation route

7.10 La Rinascente rear signage along

spiral stair on the Via Salaria

7.11 La Rinascente final plan

7.12 La Rinascente spiral stair vertical

perspective

7.13 La Rinascente spiral stair section

7.14 Yale British Art Center High Street

façade in New Haven, CT by Kahn, 1974

7.15 Yale British Art Center spiral stair by

Kahn

7.16 Yale British Art Center spiral stair

cylinder by Kahn

8 Strange Siblings: Office Buildings in

Genoa and Parma

8.1 INA Office Building on the Via del

Corso in Parma by Albini, 1950–54

8.2 Genoa’s New Municipal Offices

(renamed Palazzo Albini) by Albini, 1950–63

8.3 INA Office Building top level, typical

office, and ground floor plans

8.4 Palazzo Albini ground floor and upper

level structural plans

8.5 Palazzo Albini (formerly called New

Municipal Offices) horizontal cornice and

Modern monumental stairs mediating slope

of the Genoa hillside

8.6 INA Office diminishing façade grid

details and urban cornice in Parma

8.7 Baptistery of Parma begun in 1196

marks the transition between Romanesque

and Gothic periods

8.8 Diagram of INA Parma front and side

façade elevations showing raised non-loadbearing

ornamental pilasters

8.9 INA Parma spiral stair elevation


xiii

8.10 INA Parma spiral stair perspective

8.11 Isolation of the ornamental concrete

lattice reveals proportional relationships to

the pattern of windows and vertical brick

infill panels behind it to form a tartan plaid

8.12 INA Parma elevation detail: slippage

of front façade grid joins windows into

traditionally proportioned units and

provides reading of the façade as a dynamic

surface

8.13 Palazzo Tursi elevated courtyard is

encountered en route to Palazzo Albini

municipal office and city council chambers,

Genoa

8.14 Palazzo Albini section diagram

8.15 Stairs from Palazzo Tursi to

Palazzo Albini—beginning of pedestrian

promenade to Castelletto Panorama

8.16 Palazzo Albini green roof terraces

with view over Palazzo Tursi and the Strada

Nuova

8.17 Palazzo Albini meeting hall with

“Lampada Ochetta” custom lighting and

framed palace view across the Strada Nuova

8.18 Clerestory lighting glazing detail

typical of the office floors throughout the

Palazzo Albini

8.19 Palazzo Albini handrail detail can be

compared to Milan subway handrails and

other expressions of levity, continuity and

the use of the line

8.20 Palazzo Albini rooftop as

contemplative garden

8.21 Green rooftop of Palazzo Albini with

the medieval city of Genoa beyond

9 Seeking Order: Urban Plans, Popular

Housing and Furniture

9.1 Fabio Filzi Housing Quarter on the

periphery of Milan by Albini, Palanti and

Camus, 1938

9.2 Albini’s sketch for Edoardo Persico’s

apartment, 1935

9.3 Recent photograph of Fabio Filzi

Housing Quarter by author

9.4 Albini’s design proposal for efficient

dwellings installed at the VI Milan Triennale,

1936

9.5 Unit plans for Fabio Filzi Housing by

Albini, Palanti and Camus, 1938

9.6 Unit plans for housing projects Ciano,

Ponti, and Sauro by Albini, Palanti, and

Camus

9.7 Ettore Ponte Housing Quarter, 1939

9.8 Fabio Filzi Housing Quarter stairwells

pulled into the public domain

9.9 Mangiagalli Housing in Milan by

Studio Albini with Ignazio Gardella, 1952

9.10 Mangiagalli Housing unit plans

9.11 Corridor bridges for open circulation

at Vialba Housing, Milan

9.12 Piccapietra commercial and

residential complex by Studio Albini and

Eugenio Fuselli, Genoa, 1955

9.13 Piccapietra covered pedestrian

sidewalk detail

9.14 INA-Casa Cesate neighborhood

outside Milan by Studio Albini, 1951–54

9.15 INA-Casa Cesate neighborhood

loggia detail

xiv


9.16 INA-Casa Cesate neighborhood unit

plans

9.17 Bookshelves with versatile column

unit in Caterina Marcenaro’s Genoa

apartment

9.18 “Cicognino” tables by Albini

9.19 “Luisa” chair by Albini

9.20 Model of Albini’s “Gala” chair showing

motion of seat on rattan frame

10 Modernity’s Weight: Suspending

Optimism in Two Final Museums

10.1 Façade of the Sant’Agostino Museum

on Piazza Sarzano in Genoa

10.2 Model of the Sant’Agostino Museum

by Knowlton School of Architecture

students for “Museums and Installations of

Franco Albini” Exhibition, 2006

10.3 Plan of the Sant’Agostino complex

with Cathedral (Repertory Theater),

Museum by Studio Albini, and public

promenade through the historic triangular

cloister

10.4 Urban network facing the

Sant’Agostino Cathedral

10.5 Axonomentric of the Sant’Agostino

complex

10.6 Thirteenth-century triangular cloister

at Sant’Agostino

10.7 Public stair of Ignazio Gardella’s

Genoa School of Architecture (1992) off the

Stradone Sant’Agostino

10.8 Exoskeleton exposed steel structure

of the Sant’Agostino Museum façade

10.9 Studio Albini’s Sant’Agostino

Museum section

10.10 View into new cloister and sunken

glass light well of the Sant’Agostino

Museum

10.11 Sant’Agostino Museum ground

floor entry level gallery plan

10.12 Interior first floor Sant’Agostino

gallery

10.13 Window façade detail for large

exterior openings aligned with the interior

loggias at Sant’Agostino

10.14 Typical Genoese pedestrian scaled

alley or crêuza

10.15 Sant’Agostino’s interior ramp-stair

circulation inspired by the alleys of Genoa

10.16 Sant’Agostino’s upper floor gallery

with missing cloister corner column

10.17 Sant’Agostino’s first floor gallery

with Modern colonnade echoing the

historic cloister contained in a display case

10.18 Sant’Agostino’s lower lever sunken

glass court acting as a source of daylight

10.19 Modern walls inserted into

medieval halls of Verona’s Castelvecchio for

new museum by Scarpa

10.20 Glass display cases in the Eremitani

Museum in Padua by Studio Albini

10.21 Site plan for the Eremitani Complex

of Padua showing the former Roman

amphitheater, the Scrovegni Chapel, the

Cathedral, minor and major cloisters, and

the unbuilt New Pinacoteca by Studio Albini

10.22 Missing corner column of the

Eremitani Museum minor cloister as

designed by Albini

10.23 Centered columns of the Eremitani

Museum minor cloister

10.24 Section diagrams comparing Studio

Albini’s New Pinacoteca and Kahn’s Kimbell

Art Museum


xv

10.25 Exterior façade of Kahn’s Kimbell Art

Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

10.26 Interior of Kahn’s Kimbell Art

Museum gallery vaults

10.27 Maurizio Sacripanti’s proposed

project of the open glass section for New

Pinacoteca as recalled by Franco Purini

10.28 Superimposed section diagrams to

scale of Albini’s New Pinacoteca over Kahn’s

Kimbell vaults

10.29 Boston Globe, April 19, 1964.

Internationally renowned architects

gathered by Jackie and Bobby Kennedy to

consult on the design of the JFK Presidential

library

10.30 Handrail of the Milan Metropolitana

(subway) by Franco Albini, Franca Helg and

Bob Noorda, 1962


Preface

It was a damp, dark day the first time that I wandered into Franco Albini’s Treasury

of San Lorenzo Museum in Genoa. I had been fortunate enough to receive a USIA

(United States Information Agency) research grant to study Modern architecture in

Genoa during the winter of 1989. The city’s miniature streets—in some of which you

can reach walls on both sides with outstretched arms—drew me along labyrinthine

corridors where I found painted façades, traced the common striping of local black

and white stone, discovered medieval loggias, some long since filled in but leaving

embedded columns, and I enjoyed neon-laced storefronts advertising antiquities

or books or old cafes. Narrow, often empty sloping streets eventually led to the

daylight of a piazza or the Sottoripa with its busy traffic and business activities of

the harbor. The stair-stepped ramp paths leading uphill rewarded tired legs with

grand views of the industrial port over silver rooftops. I felt an equal mix of delight

and anxiety as I got lost threading my way through the networks of this hard-worn

port town, its old solid structures and hard working citizens inhabiting a kind of

density I had not known, although I had lived in Rome and Florence. Meanwhile,

grandiose frescoed interiors of elegant baroque palazzi holding private family

collections existed just beyond the surface.

Up from the port and through the Piazza Scuole Pie, I wandered into the duomo

church of San Lorenzo. The monumental façade invited passage through its left

side door—a portal that looked like the section of nested Russian dolls. I passed

the stone lion, climbed the black and white stone steps, and admired the intricate

inlaid marble ornament that Marco Polo and Andrea Doria no doubt had touched

that brought the scale down to human dimensions with magnificent detail and

color. The austere striped and arcaded colonnade formed side aisles that led me

into the sacristy, from which a ticket bought entry underground to the precious

collection of artifacts known as the cathedral’s treasury, a most unusual assortment

of sacred bounty. Among the spoils of seizure was the reliquary of St. Lawrence

brought back by a Genoese crusader from the Levant. It included such “treasures”

as St. Anne’s arm—bone exposed—within a gilded sleeve, the chalcedony chalice

xviii


framed in gold, said to have held the head of John the Baptist when it was served

to Herod, a the green glass bowl called the Holy Graal. Could it be?

Except for the bejeweled and shiny treasures, the crypt was empty. I was

alone; the silence and reflections were dizzying. Intense beams of light focused

on gem-studded cardinal’s robes in custom glass cases, silver statuary and ritual

vessels glistened in the dark chambers—spaces that remained invisible until my

eyes adjusted to the dim light. Gradually, I became aware of the architecture

that allowed for such intimate relations with such unique artifacts. Four small

gallery cylinders and an interstitial hexagon that joined three of the four round

rooms formed a Modern assemblage of interlaced spaces, quite in contrast to the

collections they housed, and in spite of being buried beneath a medieval church.

The rooms were refined and simple, rendered from abstract geometries and

realized in matte finished carved stone producing uniform floor and wall surfaces.

Masterful was the design of almost invisible infrastructure that provided lighting

and air movement with cast-in-place radial concrete structural ribs that included

beads of skylight overhead. Such humble, yet brilliant, and effective architecture

for displaying these historic artifacts was new to my Modern eyes.

Over the following weeks, I discovered three other museums and two office

buildings, all in the heart of Genoa and all designed by Franco Albini. I had been

attracted to each Modern intervention for the subtle way the present was married

with the past, and the fabrication craft was superb, albeit with expression of the

intervention minimized. As I learned that each work of architecture was drawn

by the same hand, I became acutely aware of the profound nature of design that

transcends style. Except for tectonic precision and subtle performance, there

was little to link the look of these different Modern interventions to one another.

Most apparent, each was intimately in sync with its physical surrounds, drawing

selectively from existing conditions and able to revalue and challenge indifference

to history. In his solutions to small problems, Albini had, for me, elevated the

practice of architecture to a new art. In these few projects, his greatness lay less in

the novelty or boldness of his intervention than in its subtly.

Two aspects of this experience were discoveries to me at the time. First, the fact

that Albini’s thesis and signature were not initially perceptible piqued my curiosity.

His very site-specific Modernity was in part rooted in qualities of his well-crafted

architecture for that place. Appreciating his work, for me, required getting into

his buildings. Second, although I had studied projects by Giuseppe Terragni and

other Italian Modernists, I now realized that Albini’s work had been overlooked and

deserved scholarly attention. The combined impact of these revelations left me

searching for more, and so subsequent research, grants, and travels led me on a

12-year adventure.

In the course of this journey through Modern Italy, I’ve met former Studio Albini

collaborators, brilliant Italian Modern scholars, and Albini’s son and grandchildren.

I have attended Albini exhibits and hosted one myself along with a symposium

aimed at situating his contributions within the complex ambitions of multi-faceted

Modernism. The Modernism that Albini’s work defined, along with that of other

artists like T.S. Eliot and Louis Kahn, recognized cultural and building traditions

Preface

xix

in service to ingenuity, creativity, invention and the infusions of the current age,

informing rather than limiting them.

As I began to study Albini’s unique contributions to Modernism, I presented a

paper about similarities between works by Franco Albini and Carlo Scarpa, which

won recognition at an ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture),

East Central regional meeting in Montreal. In 2004, on the occasion of the City

of Genoa being selected to represent the European Union as a City of Culture,

I proposed that Albini and his museums become a focus of the celebrations. While

too late for the EU 2004 events, momentum was building. The next year, Ohio

State’s Knowlton School of Architecture hosted the traveling exhibition assembled

at the Milan Polytechnic that featured Albini’s museum and installation designs. My

students built a series of models (including a nearly full-scale reproduction of his

1940 “Veliero” bookshelves) to accompany photographs of many of his ephemeral

and permanent designs. We shared that exhibit with Kent State University, the

University of Michigan, Arizona State University and the University of New Mexico.

When Do.Co.Mo.Mo Italia featured the work of Albini in Genoa for the 2004 annual

international meeting, I worked with Maristella Casciato and Cristiana Marcosano

Dell’Erba to contribute to and translate the meeting publication. I was part of a team

that then secured resources from the national Beni Culturale, Ministry of Culture, to

fund a centennial show on the anniversary of Albini’s birth honoring his complete

career. The resulting Zero Gravity exhibit installed by Albini’s intern, Renzo Piano,

took place at the Milan Triennale in 2006. The result was a proliferation of writings

by some who had known Albini and even more from a younger generation of

scholars. The event and publication fostered renewed local appreciation of his

public and private buildings, urban plans, and furniture developed over a more

than 40-year career crossing the paths of most great mid-century Modernists.

It is a fitting question to ask why the work of Franco Albini has continued to

draw my attention. As a practicing designer and teacher in a Midwestern American

university town, examples of the greatest Modern architecture have fueled

my interest and research, but discerning among the truly greatest has been a

fluid process. Today, we are witnessing a period of expensive and prolific formal

modeling devices fostering design methods mediated by digital programs. Young

hands invited to produce biomorphic or alien form with increasing plasticity—

because they can—introduce new questions about the craft, inhabitability,

evaluation criteria, purpose and potential of the extant “new” architecture. Novelty

seduces. The problems, patterns, needs, and discord addressed by Modern design

persist, informing designers about what has lasted and what has not in conceiving

and fabricating the Modern city. Albini’s work provides lessons evident in a

methodology beyond style, materials, or ideology. His iterative processes for finding

solutions within the problem that required his disciplined restraint and discerning

eye drove a practice that evolved through Fascism and urban renewal to the postwar

economic boom. Over four decades, he took notable risks. He suspended glass

planes, returned to typology and recognized, but confronted, history when tabula

rasa was the status quo. And although male-female partnerships were rare at the

time, he successfully collaborated with women, and partnered with Franca Helg for

xx


most of his professional career. Chi non risica, non rosica, Italians say—who doesn’t

take risks doesn’t eat, literally. Nothing ventured; nothing gained. With Albini’s

designs from bodily scale of furniture to the urban scale of the Milan subway, the

partnership’s risks are our reward.

Recently, the Fondazione Franco Albini has been formed in his former Milan

studio to preserve his image and make his archives better available to future

scholars. As several of Studio Albini’s mid-century buildings undergo renovations

by knowledgeable restorers, his furniture designs are being commercially

fabricated and marketed, something Albini himself never emphasized. The “Veliero”

bookshelves produced by Cassina, the same artifact my students reproduced, can

now be purchased for the sticker price of a couple of brand new Smart cars. The

value of Albini’s simple ideas and systematic methods transcends fashion, and they

are priceless.

For me, producing this book has been a revealing journey, and there is much

more to pursue in Albini’s legacy, other versions of situated Modernisms, and allied

design innovations, whose contents I have tried to align here. It is my belief that

Albini’s work deserves much greater critical attention than it has, to date, received

on the international stage. This book is my contribution toward that goal.

Kay Bea Jones

Columbus, Ohio

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the many scholars who share my interests in Modern Italy and

great architecture and design. They have prodded me with critical questions

and helpful recommendations over the 14 years I have invested in this project.

I owe a scholarly debt to many who have pursued avenues of parallel research

and provided inspiration and debate: Maristella Casciato, Giorgio Ciucci, Dennis

Doordan, Peter Eisenman, Richard Etlin, Mia Fuller, Diane Ghirardo, Fulvio Irace,

Terry Kirk, Stephen Leet, Brian McLaren, Antonio Piva, Vittorio Prina, and

Michelangelo Sabatino, Thomas Schumacher, most centrally among them.

I owe a significant debt of gratitude to Pippo Ciorra for first making me aware of

that Modern Italian legacy that has informed his generation (along with rock and

roll and all that goes with it) when I believed we traveled to Italy primarily to study

the old stuff. In the years required to develop my ideas I have benefited greatly

from the support and critical feedback of Katerina Ruedi Ray, Mosé Ricci, Maurizio

Sabini, Davide Vitale, Scott Finn, Ferro Trabalzi, John McMorrough, Douglas Graf,

Charles Klopp, Lydia Soo, and in particular, Stephanie Pilat, who introduced

me to Ashgate Publishing. For critical corrections about facts from the Genoese

scene, I thank Franco Boggero and Piero Boccardo. I thank Maristella Casciato and

Cristiana Marcosano Dell’Erba for involving me in Do.Co.Mo.Mo Italia’s feature of

Franco Albini’s work in Genoa for the 2004 Do.Co.Mo.Mo international meeting.

I am grateful to Augusto Rossari and Federico Bucci for sharing their curatorial

collection of the itinerant exhibition of Albini’s museums and installations.

Two former students of Franco Albini, Matilde Baffa and Bruno Gabrielli, have

had noteworthy and long professional careers in Milan and Genoa, respectively.

Because of their personal relationships with Albini, their contributions were

most rich. My conversations with each over several years have painted for me

the portrait of a man with blood in his veins, which I hope to have honored here.

The Fondazione Franco Albini, led by the architect’s granddaughter Paola, and his

son Marco, has been essential to my work. Thanks also to Elena Albricci from the

Fondazione, which has provided almost one third of the images included in this

volume. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with each of them.

xxii


Research assistance over several years from Jane McMaster, head of the

Knowlton School library and more recently from Tina Franks have been of great

help. I appreciate the professional support of Nancy Thorne at the University of

Pennsylvania—Louis I. Kahn Collection and of Elvia Raedelli from the historic

archives of the Milan Triennale. For his beautiful photographs of Albini’s renovated

buildings in Genoa, John M. Hall has made this documentation unique among

other publications of the work of Studio Albini. John found me in the course of

our joint work, and I am deeply grateful for his talent, generosity, passion and

inspiration.

My research for Suspending Modernity began with funding from the USIA

(United States Information Agency) administered by the Columbus Quincentenary

Committee at the Ohio State University. I am grateful for my institution’s on-going

support through grants from the OSU Office of International Affairs. I have been

assisted by the administration of the Austin E. Knowlton School of Architecture

at Ohio State and wish to thank Jean-Michel Guldmann, Beth Blostein, Michael

Cadwell and Robert Livesey. My sincere thanks are due to the students in my G1

Architecture Design Studio for model craft and insightful questions in the process

of installing the exhibit “Museums and Installations of Franco Albini” in the Banvard

Gallery in 2005. Over the past 12 years countless OSU students have listened to my

lectures, reminding me of the importance of Albini’s ability to stimulate, provoke

and teach. Specifically to those who have produced drawings for this volume, I

am indebted. They include Natalie Shovlin, Mengqing Chen, Winna Japardi, and

Haotian Ma. I extend my appreciation to Luke Anderson, Marc Syp, and Evan

Chakroff, Molly Evans, and especially to those who crafted the “Veliero” bookshelf,

now in the KSA library Modern furniture collection, Victoria Fortuna, Patrik

Matthews, Ashley Middleberg, Christie Mills, and Jason Robinson. I wish each of

them could have a Cassina manufactured version of “Veliero”.

I would not likely have sustained this long inquiry or have had the will to

complete this book without the long dialogue and nudge of a few very special

friends, among them, Sylvie Duvernoy, Elizabeth Frolet, Terry Dwan, Pippo Ciorra,

Maristella Casciato, Mosé Ricci, Cheryl Jones (my sister), Kristin Jones (not actually

my sister), Massimo Garavello, Susanna Voltolini, and Anna Soter. I am thankful to

Beatrice Bruscoli for as many years of teaching collaboration in Italy and putting up

with my passion for this subject.

But most critically, this book would not exist without sentences, paragraphs and

ideas, and if they are legible, it is because of the patient edits and wordsmithing

of Christian Zacher. Without him, my images would hang limp like so many

dangling modifiers without structure, tense, or meaning. Like the structure that

holds Albini’s glass shelves in tension and compression, Chris’s enduring poetry

and adherence to craft have provided guidance and a persistent critical dialog

along with invaluable technical support. Above all, I am grateful to him.

1

Introducing Franco Albini

An exhibit must seek to be a success because

this is an indication of its usefulness.

Full approval, contradictory opinions, polemics

don’t matter—they are all signs of success. 1

Franco Albini

Franco Albini (1905–1977) produced some of Modernism’s most

sensual and successful museums by departing from curatorial

standards to compose fresh relationships between the observer

and the artifacts he exhibited. His greatest contributions inhabit

a tight radius around Milan, where he worked, but his influences

continue to be widely recognized. His design language was local,

yet international. Albini’s inwardly focused character and Italy’s

isolation from the avant-garde mainstream during the early part of

his career may explain his relatively subdued profile among Italian

Rationalists and Bauhaus protégés beyond Italy. Yet Albini’s diverse

body of work has left a deep mark on the Modern landscape. His

contributions continue to gain value as this period in Modern Italy

is better understood and his best works grow more familiar. Close

readings of some of his many projects and his contemporaries’

reactions to them reveal a compelling story. His esteem in local circles

is expanding with new scholarly investigations. This compilation of

historic and new depictions of Albini’s most significant works, some

recently renovated, and diagrammatic analyses of revered buildings

will unveil his formal and social ideals while situating him in a primary

position within recent architectural history, conscious of tradition, as

a master of Modern craft.

Scholarship reconsidering Albini’s long career has been inspired by a series of

exhibitions and publications that marked the centennial of his birth in 1905 in

1.1 Franco Albini

2


Robbiate, near Como, Italy. 2 When the Milan Triennale hosted a retrospective in

his honor in 2006, like the traveling shows that have recognized his ephemeral

installations, Albini’s work was presented in isolation from other renowned

Modernists. Italian scholars have reacted to a plethora of his ideas for museums

and housing, office buildings and furniture, and each collection provides evidence

of the depth, integrity, and variability of his formal language during a period when

Italy’s Modern identity was being consciously formed. Yet there exists no single

comprehensive, critical overview that adequately positions Albini among the

international cohort of Modern architects, since there has been little evidence of

his body of work or assessment of it outside Italy, or even much beyond Lombardy.

He has been highly renowned at home, but my efforts to objectively analyze his

contributions along with subsequent studies stand to establish his prominence

on the international scene, where lessons to be learned from his oeuvre, design

methodology and attitude toward tradition remain valuable to practitioners,

historians, students, product designers, and clients alike.

The material phenomena that give presence to Albini’s existing works have

motivated my investigation. Some of his buildings are characterized by sublime

simplicity, while others offer more complex signs of the changing expressions

characteristic of his era. Unquestionably Modern and influenced by the culture

of Modernism in northern Italy before and after World War II, Albini’s work was

not, however, defined by codes, icons, or prevailing style. Nearly all of the results

of his collaborations possess a poetic assimilation of the pragmatic realities of

everyday life. He relied on the essence of the design problem to provide simple

solutions for architecture, like those which can be found in the qualities of a

single room, the comfort of a chair, the flexibility of a table, or the grip of a door

handle. His coherence in producing work of variable scales and functions is the

mark of an introspective designer who developed his personal methods even

often at odds with his surroundings. This quality distinguished Albini, and linked

him more closely to even lesser known figures like Edoardo Persico, during the

formative period of Italian Rationalism, when the highly charged political climate

of Italy shaped, and in a few cases ended, the careers of his cohorts. Through close

readings of some of Albini’s surviving structures, as well as critical interpretations

of his many designs for ephemeral rooms long since dismantled, I aim to reveal a

rare legacy held suspended in each remarkable example of this quintessentially

Rationalist architect.

My title, Suspending Modernity, carries dual implications for the architecture,

furniture and planning interventions of Franco Albini during mid-century

Modernism. As an early member of the Rationalist movement, Albini played

an important role in defining the material palette and innovative construction

techniques of Modern Italian design. He employed glass in ways that exploited its

potential for transparency, reflectivity, and apparent weightlessness. He repeatedly

composed interiors with structures that defied gravity. From his glass bookshelves

to several hanging stairs in his pre-war projects, Albini made objects float in

celebration of the whimsy of structure denied.

Introducing Franco Albini 3

Over his 47-year career, Albini continually explored the use of changing

materials for new structures in relationship to their existing contexts. He built

as he taught in Venice and eventually formed Studio Albini with new partners.

During this period he was responsible for large public works in historic urban

zones. As he addressed more façade studies in extant conditions, he developed

solid figures to infill exoskeleton structures. For his last two museums, he spanned

long spaces with six-foot deep steel I-beams and eliminated corner columns.

These mature works amounted to a demonstration of real weight, a counterforce

to the lyrical levity of his early Rationalist projects. Members of CIAM (Congres

Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) and Europe’s avant-garde old guard

took issue with his Neorealist experiments, especially the Pirovano Youth Hostel

located in an Alpine village. Together with his Milanese cohorts, who changed

course after World War II and produced historicized symbols, including Milan’s

Torre Velasca, and the Roman contingent, who employed more opaque masses

than glass curtain walls, Albini’s late work suggested an early post-Modern

challenge to the status quo of Rationalist Modernity. In this sense he suspended

the forward progress of International Style Modernism.

Albini practiced architecture from the time he completed his studies at the

Milan Polytechnic in 1929 until the late 1970s. His most distinctive buildings

subliminally reflect the technical, political, and societal changes that directly

affected his life and work, yet he also remained true to his Modern sensibilities

and methods. It can be shown that his vast array of projects—including domestic

interiors and popular housing, commercial storefronts and furniture, urban plans

that reshaped prevailing tendencies, iconic Modern buildings in historic urban

settings, museums and exhibition installations, and ultimately his design for the

Milan subway—characterize co-incident cultural transformations to which he

responded with clarity, elegance, and uncanny intelligence. I will also attempt

to demonstrate his responsibility for many aspects of Italy’s architectural identity

on the world stage after World War II. While working in his Milan studio, Albini

recognized emergent patterns that evolved both before and after the war, and

his role in shaping Modern Italian culture is born of his unique sensitivity for

craft with a persistent will to facilitate change. According to contemporaries

and protégés, he worked mostly in silence; he was shy and not prone to selfpromotion

or pontificating. His design rigors demanded coherence, whether

pursued alone or in partnership, to find the essence of the thing made. He was

a difficult taskmaster, rarely if ever satisfied with his own work or that of his

students. He often reconceived, revised, and improved his own novel solutions

to archetypal problems, which he rendered with extreme precision and craft.

While myriad achievements that also include the failings of Modernism are

being reconsidered today for their informative lessons, a reexamination of Albini’s

work also plays a primary role in the desire to portray and understand that period.

His work shows construction methods, material innovation, and spatial simplicity

both familiar and distinct in the context of his international cohorts. His entire

career deserves fresh critical assessment, one informed by comparison with better

known architects, such as Renzo Piano, Carlo Scarpa, Ernesto Nathan Rogers,

4


1.2 Palazzo Albini

on the Castelletto

hillside of Genoa

Philip Johnson, and Louis Kahn, as well as less familiar figures, like Lina Bo Bardi

and Edoardo Persico. The lack of stylistic similarity among Albini’s many works,

along with the paucity of his published writings, has made it difficult for historians

to comprehensively know his intentions and therefore fully assess his legacy. The

consistency among his recurring formal motifs notwithstanding, the different

looks that characterize his public works and his many collaborators introduce a

level of intrigue to any attempt to fully grasp his body of work.

Albini’s ability to translate concepts into real and timeless form, and yet

achieve poetic results within tight physical and budgetary constraints, earned him

significant critical acclaim in Italy. Such design economy was especially relevant

during lean times when sustainable practices were sought in many endeavors.

Albini’s minimalism was neither self-satisfied nor favored for its theory over

pragmatism or craft. The terraced green roof for the new offices of the municipal

town hall located in the heart of historic Genoa provides a sublime example of

the giardino pensile (contemplative garden), a familiar motif that Albini elevated

to a new level in response to a difficult building site. Constructed in the 1950s,

the office building appears highly relevant today as an example of progressive

environmental urban architecture.

By his hand, Modernity’s succinct rationality can also be read as suspended in

time, and delight for Modern material, like glass and grill work, hover still as the

incomplete Modern project continues to evolve. He mastered a readable, accessible

language for the design of gallery spaces and exhibition infrastructure whose details

allowed for parts to move, and transparency made movement evident where statics


and dynamics live in the present tense and the presence of tension. Within these

unique rooms the visual and actual weight of his interior architecture could be

viscerally felt, yet with transcendent levity and humility he directed attention more

toward the exhibited artifacts than toward his careful intervention. His severity

and methodological rigor have endured assorted interpretations, but one thing is

certain—he never relinquished his responsibility to the client, the site, or the artifact.

In Italy, and Lombardy in particular, Franco Albini has long been revered among

Rationalism’s protagonists. He emerged as the progenitor of the revolution in

Italian post-war museum design with leitmotifs for displaying art that grew out of

his ephemeral installations and private commissions for domestic space produced

before and during the war. A single room sufficed as his primary form-giving

object. From his earliest projects for temporary exhibits, Albini developed a formal

language that evolved and matured into a refined palette, and he forged utilitarian

elements that proliferated in defiance of gravity. He was deeply influenced by two

of the most important architectural figures in pre-war Milan, Giuseppe Pagano

and Edoardo Persico, and won their critical acclaim for his distilled installations

and residences. His experimental uses of new materials and lightweight structural

frameworks during the 1930s reflected a dialog shared among his Milanese cohort.

After the war, he was awarded a series of public commissions, due in large

measure to the successes of his temporary installations. One project that earned

Albini significant recognition was his 1941 exhibit in Milan’s Brera Museum

designed to display the works of the Modern painter Gino Bonichi, known as

Scipione. The show was confined to four rooms in the gallery from the Napoleonic

period. Following his success at the Brera, Albini was commissioned by the curator

of Genoa’s artistic patrimony to design four museums in pre-existing structures.

The Genoese projects demanded integrating new ideas into important historic

sites and presented him with challenges that became his catalyst for innovation.

Three of his Genoese museums have recently undergone renovation, fostering

renewed appreciation for his ability to integrate abstract spatial motifs within

historic buildings in order to rejuvenate old structures and artworks. 3

The immediate post-war period found Albini poised for leadership following

the absence of many other significant cultural figures who had died or departed

during the course of the war. 4 Moreover, the authority of other previously

prominent architects had been diminished as the winds of cultural authority

and political power changed, bringing shifts in stylistic trends. Albini had

worked for the Fascist regime but did not promote its ideology or let himself

be subsumed by any correlated design dogma. During reconstruction, while

assuming a more public and academic role than before or during the war, Albini

produced many of his most recognized works of architecture and industrial

design, including the “Luisa” chair, the Pirovano Youth Hostel in Cervinia,

Genoa’s Palazzo Bianco and Treasury of San Lorenzo museums, the INA Office

Building in Parma, portions of the Cesate housing compound outside Milan,

and, later, Rome’s La Rinascente Department Store. Scholars have identified

characteristics in later collaborations that suggest a new realism in the way his

aesthetics and building programs responded to the tendencies of social change.

6


1.3 “Scipione &

Black and White”

exhibit at the

Brera Museum

in Milan, 1941

When oppositional rhetoric dominated Italian architectural debates, Albini’s

public statements, both in words and in his buildings, contributed to bridging

avant-garde trends with tradition, diminishing polemics and ultimately reshaping

interior design, the gallery experience of viewing art, and public transportation

during his era.

From among his varied collective housing complexes, the Cesate residences

on the periphery of Milan reveal Albini’s tendency toward independent thinking.

Cesate was built as part of the post-war INA-Casa federally sponsored housing

initiative. Albini’s row houses along with the housing designs of his collaborators

are frequently included in the loose canon of Neorealist architecture. Neorealism

in Italian film and literature was brought about by resistance to tyranny and the

hope of social revitalization that witnessed the reengagement of everyday life.

This striving for reality, or in Gramsci’s terms, “a new way of feeling and seeing

reality,” eventually came to architecture after resources for reconstruction had

been secured, and new construction of mass housing ensued. 5 Albini’s post-war

buildings found their intended purpose in urban manifestations that progressively

attended to new social problems and territories. He collaborated on major

residential compounds from the mid-1930s for IPFAC, the Fascist housing program,

then later produced housing projects and neighborhood master plans for the

cities of Milan, Genoa, and Reggio Emilia, including sites as far away as Havana.


Albini was engaged in urban design debates and practices that culminated in

his design with Franca Helg and Bob Noorda for Line 1 of the Milan metro, while

simultaneously producing works of industrial design, including lamps, tables,

shelving and hardware, and earning recognition for his finely crafted furniture.

Renewed interest in “spontaneous” or vernacular architecture had been in vogue

since the 1930s, but it was not until after the war that architects re-appropriated

common craft and form for mass housing. New ideas for neighborhoods resisted

previous Modern models of compositional and geographic abstraction. Beginning

in 1938, Albini and his fellow Rationalists encouraged the integration of living

functions, including public and green space, transportation, and infrastructure,

into new collective compounds through urban planning. His master planning

and residential projects during reconstruction aided in the emergence of new

ideas of place, scale, comfort, and individual identity. During this period, Albini

played a key role in the critical reassessment of values extracted from Italian

tradition to reshape Modern culture. His address given to the Movimento di Studi

per l’Architettura (MSA) in June 1955 was soon published in Casabella continuità

(see Appendix 1), and it stimulated much interest and deliberation about the role

of tradition in Modern culture. 6

Several of Albini’s published projects became catalysts for passionate debate.

Observers aiming to protect the ethos of abstraction criticized his Pirovano

1.4 Milan

Metropolitana—

subway

handrail, 1964

8


Youth Hostel (1951) for being too contextual, its upper two floors resembling an

Alpine chalet, while sympathizers recognized his translation of vernacular idioms

into new hybrids. Albini and Helg’s Rinascente Department Store (1961) in Rome

resulted from an earlier scheme that proposed parking on the roof but was

abandoned. Its palazzo-like massing, protruding cornice, and symmetrical façade

evident in the built version appeared to some as a retreat rather than a challenge

in Rome, a place obliged to historic replicas. Yet these controversial works were

also highly regarded by noted critics and proved thematically similar to his

celebrated museums, even as his instincts remained rooted in local solutions

to formal problems and his interventions became more overt as his work grew

in scale. By installing historic paintings in new ways without frames and within

daylit rooms in revitalized museums, he would consciously demonstrate that

“tradition is a living phenomenon.” 7 His oft-quoted adage, “tradizione siamo

noi,” literally, “we are tradition,” revealed Albini’s conviction that tradition can

best be understood in relation to the creative necessity for change that exists in

response to contemporary trends. On his terms, collective recognition of cultural

identity will beget perpetually new expressions rather than a collection of

nostalgic forms.

His interest in the relationship of Modernity to tradition was not only shared

by other architects of his generation, but was in sync with the ideas of Ezra Pound

and T.S. Eliot. Eliot defined tradition by its influence on Modern thinking when

identifying the historical sense that spoke “not only of the pastness of the past,

but of its presence.” Pound lived in Italy from 1924–45, and although circumspect

because of his defense of Fascism, he participated in the progressive period

that forged a continuum between the Quattrocentro and Dada movements that,

through his writings, had a significant influence on Modern literature and the

visual arts. Albini’s inventiveness with construction tectonics and his ongoing

search for essential design solutions situated him as a Rationalist architect

wedded to the continuity of an Italian Modern ethos and the unique cultural

expression of native architecture.

It bears noting that Albini’s most malleable and prolific period stretched

seamlessly from early post-war reconstruction to the Italian economic miracle

of the 1950s and 1960s. His initial furniture designs exploited elegant, if

compulsively worked, details with a knowledgeable devotion to craftsmanship

and the expressive potential of his materials. Even when his work employed

less precious materials, such as wicker, and sought simplified versions of his

well-studied objects, like his personal editions of the chaise longue, the folding

table, or the dining room chair, he produced elegant functional prototypes.

His sequential evolution of his designs involved revising familiar elements to

produce quintessential archetypes.

An example of his recursive process can be seen in the two columns that form

the V-structure of his 1940 bookshelf. The tapered, compression-loaded element

was reconceived as a simplified perforated pole that was then multiplied to create

an ensemble of horizontally wired columns for the Brera Gallery “Scipione & Black

and White” exhibit in 1941. The new components were assembled to suspend


artworks, horizontal cases, and lighting systems on a freestanding matrix that

replaced the gallery wall as a location for exhibiting flat and 3-dimensional works

of art. The concept of the flexible, repeatable element used to position artifacts in

open space evolved into his networked exhibition systems for the Genoese palazzi

installations, and they eventually reappeared, revised again, in his Paris Olivetti

Store in 1958. 8 By re-conceiving the lightweight, modular column as a unit element

for interior infrastructure, the monumental room could be rescaled, viewing

distances and sequences more easily controlled, and lighting systems integrated

into flexible displays. Whole systems could infiltrate precious historic interiors with

minimal permanent impact.

This rarified expression of tension and compression became emblematic

of Albini’s personal vocabulary of transparency and suspension devices.

Serial fabrication ultimately fostered standardization and facilitated the mass

production that promoted widespread dissemination of Italian Design. However,

it would take later designers to exploit such changes in industry practices and

production. Vico Magistretti recognized Albini’s pioneering role when asked

his thoughts about the latter’s impact on Italian design. Magistretti responded,

“He was born too soon.” 9 Albini’s collaborations with other Milanese Rationalists

before the war laid the foundation for his novel material experimentation,

technical precision, and suspension motifs, and he never wavered from an

ethos rooted in a search for coherence that did not succumb to mere effects or

commercial exploitation.

The legacy of Franco Albini can be measured in part by the growing number of

articles that appear about his work during the years of his active career. Prominent

cultural critics of the time regularly published his latest works. Among them was

Giuseppe Pagano, editor of Casabella from 1928–43, who also supported Albini’s

participation in exhibits at the Milan Triennale and Ernesto Nathan Rogers of

BBPR studio, who edited the journals Domus from 1946–47 and Casabella from

1953–65. Pagano taught Albini the necessity of simplicity, standardization

and functionalist logic which he applauded in Albini’s practice over

Giuseppe Terragni’s complexity and Gruppo 7’s rhetoric. Edoardo Persico, who was

among the most respected voices of the era, credited Albini for his sensibilities

and for striking a balance between utility and poetry. Persico also found Gruppo 7

members to be too romantic in their visions, unhistorical, especially in their use

of typology, and “a product of dilettantism.” 10 He preferred Albini’s deployment

of geometry and perception, which linked his architecture to the best

designers of northern and eastern Europe. When referring to Albini’s 1935 INA

Pavilion in Bari, Persico stated that, “The works of Albini, in line with German

or Swedish rationalism, are recognized as ours by the sincere personality of

the designer.” 11

The esteemed art historian and critic Giulio Carlo Argan, who served as Rome‘s

leftist mayor in the 1970s, was among the first to identify Albini’s innovative,

revitalizing approach to museums that radically refigured a plethora of old

artworks and essentially redefined Italian exhibition protocols. He launched

Albini’s Palazzo Bianco renovation (1949–51), produced for arts administrator

10


Caterina Marcenaro, when he called it “Modern and wholly satisfactory in

both architectural and museographic terms.” 12 Cesare De Seta remarked on

the importance of Albini’s consistency and unwavering faithfulness to his own

Modern principles. 13 Manfredo Tafuri recognized Albini’s “technically faultless

vocabulary” in crafting the Museum for the Treasury of San Lorenzo in Genoa

while lauding his interiors as “ephemeral containers for magically transported

historical objects.” 14 Critics praised the virtues of Albini’s novel formal language

for its ability to surpass the conservation of objects while serving as history’s

witness and to reintroduce past works of art in fresh ways for Modern consumers.

Giuseppe Samonà, who had hired Albini to teach in Venice, called his work

a “vigorous critical instrument” owing to his awareness in “working toward

something much deeper than the transient structures to which his spatial vision

was limited.” 15 Luigi Moretti was among the many who applauded Albini’s austere

realization of the Palazzo Bianco Museum renovation. He observed that the

abstract and anti-formalist intervention within a baroque monument essentially

struck a cord that could be heard by his contemporaries’ “somewhat deafened

Modern ears.” 16

Bruno Zevi found the organicism he sought in his interpretation of Albini

and Colombini’s 1949 youth hotel designed for the Alpine slopes. Zevi’s journal,

Metron 17 was also responsible for publishing Albini’s works. Gio Ponti, for whom

Albini had interned from 1929–31, was an early critic of the search for a personal

Modern aesthetic, but recognized in the design of Albini’s own dwelling the

architect’s “love for concepts dangerously balanced between severity and

freedom.” 18 Renzo Piano, on the other hand, left architecture school in Florence

to intern in Studio Albini for three years in the early 1960s, during which he has

admitted that he “stole daily with his eyes.” 19 Given the endurance of some of

Albini’s key works, his recognition by colleagues and critics during his lifetime,

and rekindled interest in him today, it remains curious that more architecture

scholars outside of Italy have not addressed his oeuvre. Although he produced

nothing in the United States, Jackie Kennedy invited him as the only Italian

to serve on her advisory council when interviewing architects to design the

JFK library in Boston. 20

Albini collaborated with many designers and architects throughout his long

career, especially but not exclusively on large-scale interventions. Undoubtedly

several of his partners shared his vision, but few have been recognized for such

coherence of method to achieve formidable results with so varied a palette, nor

were others responsible for the number of astonishing interventions over more

than 40 years of practice as was Franco Albini. His longest collaborator, Franca

Helg (1920–89), began working with him in the early 1950s. She eventually

became a full partner in the studio, and she led the practice of Studio Albini for

12 years after his death. Joint authorship of their many projects makes it difficult

to assign credit for ownership of specific ideas during their alliance. According

to Helg’s testimony published two years after his death, such distinctions seem

unnecessary. She lends significant insight into his character and their working

rapport. 21

1.5 Studio Albini with Franca Helg and Franco Albini in 1968

12


Perhaps what most served to distinguish Albini as a unique Modernist

stemmed from his earliest compositional inclination to establish integrated

formal relationships within a single room. He established an interior language

of transparency and suspension in his first installations that evolved throughout

his mature museums and dwellings to distinguish his body of work. For his own

well-documented 1940 apartment on Via dei Togni in Milan he staged his surreal

“Transparent Radio” (1938) and “Veliero” bookshelves (1940) along with glass

table surfaces, translucent curtains, and artworks suspended freely in space, to

integrate the entire room. The elements cohered to form a unit, and photographs

suggest that each single part was inseparable from the total composition. Similar

interconnections can be observed in his 1935 INA Exhibition Pavilion, 1936

and 1940 Milan Triennale installations, the living room and stair hall of Villetta

Pestarini (1938), and the Brera Museum “Scipione & Black and White” exhibit

(1941), all works that Albini individually authored.

Albini demonstrated early in his formation that Modernity was a powerful

interior idea, and that the room was its quintessential unit element. As his

suspension motifs and devices grew further refined, his notion of Modernity

embodied the same gestalt, one that Louis Kahn would arrive at after critically

reassessing the open plan of his own 1951 Yale Art Gallery. Like Albini, Kahn

came to the understanding that the complete room defines a great work of

architecture—and provided the primary component for the making of Modern

space. This reversal of formal order and priorities invites reconsideration of the

holistic approaches of Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, and other

Rationalist and Bauhaus innovators who conceived of the total building defined

by tectonic novelties as an object that constituted Modernism’s prime unit. This

difference in concept further reveals that Albini responded to specific urban

modifiers in the relationship of the room to the building and the building to the

city. His personal interpretation of the international style paradigm demonstrates

his aim to define his own Modern project, which he carried out with sensitivity and

tenacity. Perhaps his taciturn character played a decisive role in his intellectual

independence—claims have been made that he rarely smiled—yet relationships

with patrons like Caterina Marcenaro endured and were quite formative. Albini’s

Modern room proved exceedingly persistent in the evolution of his own work as

well as for those he influenced.

The prolific and varied nature of Albini’s long career also presents challenges

in editing this account of his work. In my efforts to establish his importance

on the international Modern scene, I have chosen to study some examples in

depth rather than provide a comprehensive account of his long career. I have

drawn my selection of buildings and furniture to investigate his contributions

in two categories: those works that have been consistently recognized by Italian

scholarship and media since they first appeared and signaled a transformation

in trends; and certain lesser known projects that reveal important aspects of his

architecture, especially when compared to work by his contemporaries, and have

sometimes been overlooked in telling his story.


A book that details Albini’s masterpieces and methods seems timely in the

context of reflection about the Modern project. The enduring qualities in his

work, including his museums and public buildings, have stood the test of time to

offer valuable lessons about design rigor, unity, logic, and effects beyond style.

Changes in taste, whether tied to novelty or political symbolism, only secure the

value of the lessons found in Albini’s oeuvre. The rational rigor of his compositional

methodologies for solving pragmatic problems—both physical principles of

weight and statics and utilitarian functions of everyday life—produced wellresolved,

enduring, yet surprisingly poetic, works of architecture. Albini’s original

design for Villetta Pestarini in urban Milan (1938) stands alongside other notable

dwellings of the period, such as Le Corbusier’s Maison La Roche (1923), Mies van

der Rohe’s Tugendhat house (1930), Gropius’s own Massachusetts house (1937),

and Neutra’s Palm Spring’s Miller House (1937). His extraordinary apartment for

Caterina Marcenaro (1954) in the attic of the Palazzo Rosso museum is emblematic

of Albini’s elegant domestic ensembles and demonstrates a persistent principle in

his work. Effectively doing less with more takes more design energy than is often

expended in many minimalist derivations.

Albini’s best works exemplify the integrity of a determined professional who

draws less attention to the figure of the architect and more to the extraordinary

fruits of his labors. The fresh, even whimsical character of Albini’s earliest

experiments, luminous and weightless, that exploited transparency and employed

suspended glass planes, cables, and slender posts to support solid artifacts,

successfully manipulated the perception of gravity. As inspiring now as when

they first appeared, his sublime interiors suspended the limits of time as they also

transcended constraints of style. Later, Studio Albini produced more assertive

urban interventions in which familiar structural and suspension motifs gained

weight and became more aggressive. On more than one occasion he conveyed the

dual meaning of suspension—that of withholding the certainty and ubiquity of

the positivist Modern project even while precious elements dangled in air.

Learning from Albini has required a journey through books and buildings,

conferences and exhibitions, and the redrawing and diagramming of exemplary

projects to sufficiently grasp the dynamics embodied in Studio Albini’s total oeuvre.

My perspective on his ideas comes from examining Albini’s accomplishments in an

international context, both beyond and within Italian culture. His few published

remarks, all transcribed in Italian, in particular those regarding the role of tradition

in design and his museum and exhibit experiences, allow his voice to be heard.

My graphic diagrams complement contemporary and period photographs of key

structures to reveal the level of formal complexity necessary in many cases to

construct a simple idea. Continuity of that idea can thrive neither in dogma nor

by way of formal replicas, but for Albini required an incessant search for an idea

within the problem and its context. Investigations of Albini’s ways of working and

collaborating, which employed significant creative independence throughout his

long career, are served by comparable rigor while also inviting readers to reflect

on his most poetic expressions. As a result of this study, Albini emerges as an

uncommon artist whose ephemeral structures and spaces paradoxically have

grown more visible with time.

14


1.6 Portrait of

Franco Albini by

Roberto Sambonet

Vittorio Gregotti characterized his 1966 book, New Directions in Italian

Architecture, as neither a history of Modern Italian architecture by a historian nor

a systematic survey. My study, similarly, is a product of the methodology and eye

of an architect, with access I have had to a wealth of current Modern histories.

It is aimed at providing other architects and designers of allied practices with

a new source of inspiration, one that does not duplicate the direct experience

of Albini’s spaces but that provides insights about his achievements through

historic reference, diagrams, photographs, and descriptions of his most important

contributions. Critiques and interpretations resituated with the benefit of recent

studies of the history of Italy’s Fascist period along with theoretical frameworks

offered by phenomenology and the practices of the everyday seek to draw


a balanced and respectful picture of an overlooked figure in the international

Modern milieu. More than an appreciative assessment, what I have tried to

produce is a critical and comparative look into a cross section of key examples

of Albini’s work with sufficient depth and visual representation to resituate him

among the Modern masters of the last century.

NOTES

1 Comments at the opening of the 1954 academic year at IUAV (Istituto Universitario di

Architettura di Venezia) in Venice. MSA, Baffa et al. Translated from Italian to English by

Kay Bea Jones.

2 Zero Gravity: Franco Albini Costruire le Modernità (Zero Gravity: Franco Albini Builds

Modernity), opened at the Milan Triennale in September 2006 paying tribute to his

long career. The exhibition was curated by Fulvio Irace and designed by Renzo Piano

and Franco Origoni. The catalog published by Electa Triennale, Milan, 2006, was

co-edited by Irace and Federico Bucci. The Milan Polytechnic hosted an exhibition of

Albini’s museum and installation design work titled “I Musei e gli Allestimenti di Franco

Albini” (The Museums and Installations of Franco Albini) in April 2005. This exhibition

was brought to the United States and Canada by Kay Bea Jones where it was next

shown at The Ohio State University. The catalog, co-edited by Bucci and Augusto

Rossari, was published by Mondadori Electa, Milan in 2005.

3 Do.Co.Mo.Mo, Italia edited by Andrea Canziani, Maristella Casciato, Kay Bea Jones,

and Cristiana Marcosano Dell’Erba published essays about renovations in progress of

Albini’s Genoese buildings on the occasion of Genoa as a European Capital of Culture

for 2004. Issue 15 July 2004 is published in English and Italian.

4 Giuseppe Terragni, original member of Gruppo 7, died due to illness after serving in

the Fascist forces in 1943. Milanese architects Raffaelo Giolli, Gian Luigi Banfi of BBPR,

and Albini’s collaborator Giuseppe Pagano died in German detention camps. Edoardo

Persico had died in 1936. The Monument to the Victims of the Concentration Camps

in Milan (1946) designed by BBPR recognized these men with a white steel grid of

slender members that reiterated the continuity of Rationalist motifs.

5 Casciato, Maristella, “Neorealism in Italian Architecture,” p. 45. From Anxious

Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architecture Culture (Montreal: Canadian

Centre for Architecture and Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000). Goldhagen, Sarah

Williams, and Rejean Legault, eds.

6 Casabella continuità number 206, 1955 “Un dibattito sulla tradizione in architettura,”

Albini 14 June 1955 MSA address is transcribed in full, followed by rebuttals by 10

Italian architects and critics, pp. 45–52.

7 F. Albini, “Le funzione e l’architettura del museo … ,” p. 5.

8 Manfredo Tafuri evoked the formal language of Albini’s own design when he referred

to the series of shops commissioned by Olivetti involving several of Italy’s most

prominent designers, “As a consequence, Olivetti Stores in Italy and abroad became

precious coffers whose character was entrusted to an architectural surrealism that

suspended the project in a void that isolates it from its material context in an attempt

to cancel its mercantile character.” History of Italian Architecture 1944–1985, p. 38.

9 Magistretti’s comment to the author on the occasion of the opening of his

retrospective: “Vico Magistretti design works from the 1950s to the present” exhibited

in Genoa’s Palazzo Ducale as part of the Genoa European Capital of Culture events on

1 February 2003.

16


10 Papadaki, “Edoardo Persico 1990–1936,” p. 60.

11 E. Persico, “certe opere, intellettualissime e raffinate come i padiglioni dell’Ina, provano

che i giovani architetti vanno creando uno stile realmente italiano nell’ambito del

gusto europeo … Le opere dell’Albini, nel indirizzo del razionalismo tedesco o svedese,

sono riconoscibili come nostre per la schietta personalita’ progettista.” (Certain

works, intelligent and refined like the INA Pavilion that are being designed by young

architects, create a true Italian style in the ambience of Eurpoean taste … The works

of Albini, in line with German or Swedish rationalism, are recognized as ours by the

sincere personality of the designer.) “Padiglione Ina a Bari,” in Casabella n. 94 (October

1935), pp. 20–23.

12 G.C. Argan, L’Architettura: cronache e storia, “La Storia di Palazzo Bianco a Genova”

v. 51, n. 594 (2005), p. 251. Originally published in Metron, n. 45 (June 1952).

13 C. De Seta “Franco Albini architetto, fra razionalism e technologia/ Architect Between

Rationalism and Technology,” from them1981 Rizzoli catalog Franco Albini 1930–1970,

pp. 14–44, in Italian with English summary on pp. 44–5.

14 Tafuri, History of Italian Architecture 1944–1985, p. 50.

15 G. Samonà, “Franco Albini and the architectural culture in Italy,” Zodiac n. 3 (November

1958), p. 223. Samonà’s tribute to Albini includes an overview of his complete work to

date.

16 Luigi Moretti wrote “Dal punto di visto architettonico, il maggior merito di Albini é

quello di aver trascritto in termine attuali, di aver fatto risuonare in rime asciutte e più

secche di suono ai nostri orecchi moderni un po’attuiti, la spazialità eccellente delle

sale di Palazzo Bianco senza turbarla e, tanto meno, senza opporsi ad essa” in “Galleria

di Palazzo Bianco” in Spazio n. 7 (December 1952–April 1953), p. 40.

17 Metron would later become L’Architettura: cronache e storia, edited by Bruno Zevi.

18 G. Ponti discussed Albini’s apartment on Via de Alessandria in Milan in “La casa

dell’architetto, Franco Albini.” Domus (November 1939), p. 28.

19 Renzo Piano’s public comments at the opening of the Zero Gravity: Franco Albini

Costruire le Modernità retrospective of Albini’s life and career on 28 September 2006 at

the Milan Triennale, installed by Piano with Franco Origoni.

20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Library. Lewis, Anthony, “Advisers on

Kennedy Library named.” Special to the New York Times (1964), 03–04. Albini served on

the Kennedy Library advisory board at the invitation of Jacqueline Kennedy along with

Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto, Kenzo Tange and others. See also Boston

Globe (19 April 1964), p. 4, “Proposed Library Motto: We Do Not Imitate” depicting

Franco Albini, Robert Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Louis Kahn, Mies van der Rohe, and

others.

21 The number of exceptional collaborations between men and women in the profession

of architecture at the middle of the last century are relatively few, and those most

familiar partnerships, such as Alison and Peter Smithson, Ray and Charles Eames,

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, include a marriage along with the professional

partnership. Helg and Albini had a chemistry and profound understanding but were

not married, and Albini appears distinct among his compatriots for selecting a woman

professional partner. Varying portrayals of office members of Studio Albini suggest the

egalitarian nature of the studio leadership, while the tidy white lab coats that denote

the scientific side to the practice of architecture also provide a gender-neutral mask

beyond the whimsy of style.

2

Modernity in the Balance: Italy’s Equilibrium

Even though the first works of Italian functionalism were clearly

international in character, they also reveal forms of the research marked

by something Latin and personal. The elements of this architecture can

be classified with the cylindrical and volumetric solutions of Russian

constructivism shaped by Italian futurism. It was in this atmosphere

and along these lines that Franco Albini developed his work. 1 Alberto Sartoris, 1990

Situating Franco Albini’s contributions within the evolution of both Modern

international and Italian culture is well served by an historical overview of the central

tendencies, influential figures, and events that defined his frames of reference.

Highlighting the first tendencies must begin with a review of contacts between

Italian innovators and avant-garde architects of northern and eastern Europe,

during a dynamic period of fertile exchange in the 1910s–1920s. It was at this time

that new periodicals, professional congresses, and direct encounters facilitated by

easy border crossings after World War I allowed for formative exchange between

radical contemporaries. Later, because of the rise of Fascism with its nationalist

fervor, Italian protagonists of Modern art and architecture would be severed from

progressive movements beyond Italy’s borders. Recognizing trends that recurred

between the two world wars serves to better understand the role of widespread

political turmoil, the magnitude of construction and urban development at the

time, and allegiances of all kinds forged by Albini and his cohorts, along with the

interpretations of cultural historians.

Primary avenues of cultural exchange were halted during an interlude of forced

isolation and economic sanctions after 1935 when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia.

When World War II ended and contact between Italian architects and their

international cohorts resumed, reformist ambitions in Italy would face new challenges

rooted in social and economic realities. The politics of reconstruction with democratic

versus communist policies and leaders effected new culture-shaping forces.

18


2.1 Olivetti Store

in Paris, 1958

Above all, after 1945, the style wars that characterized debates among formalists

were tempered by social pragmatism, housing and economic need, over symbolic

rhetoric and individualist ambitions.

Italy eventually emerged in the 1950s and 1960s for its industrial design and

standardized production that held wide appeal in Japan, Europe, and the US.

Meanwhile, the proliferation of new architecture during reconstruction took on

a distinctly Italian flavor, including a level of craft born of putting laborers back

to work and resulting in colorful tile work and patterned masonry, although this

building craft and profusion of housing models were perhaps less regarded than

Italy’s furniture, fashion, or film of the era.

Modernity in the Balance: Italy’s Equilibrium 19

Italian Rationalist architecture from the late 1920s and 1930s, however, drew

the attention of Walter Gropius and began to be widely featured in journals with

international circulation, including L’Architecture d’aujord’hui, Werk, Architectural

Review, Architectural Design, Architectural Forum, and CIAM papers. Of equal

importance, Italian journals, including Domus, Casabella, Quadrante, Rassegna,

Stile, Comunità and L’Architettura published in Rome and Milan, were circulating

abroad. This volatile period of cultural transformation at home and abroad, which

bolstered Italy’s renewed economic prosperity, are coincident with Franco Albini’s

most expansive period of architecture and design. Albini’s immediate influence

on cohorts at home and abroad during this time deserves investigation by way of

comparative analysis of his innovations with specific works by renowned figures

including Carlo Scarpa, Louis Kahn, and Philip Johnson.

Innovations by Europe’s most progressive architects were introduced south of

the Alps by various means when the ongoing industrial revolution and political

changes were rapidly transforming the relatively new nation of Italy in 1900.

While Italians lagged behind their neighbors technologically, they encountered

new European buildings and theories by means of exhibitions, publications, and,

especially for those closest to the northern border, by traveling abroad. Most foreign

influences beginning with Art Nouveau, the Bauhaus, Russian Constructivism,

existenzminimum housing in Germany and Holland, and the Chicago School,

were emulated in northern Italy without any equivalent exchange by early Italian

Modernists.

The abstract languages of new architecture that Albini would soon encounter

were introduced by Swiss architects Alberto Sartoris and Le Corbusier, Dutch de

Stijl artists, and Adolf Loos, who taught some of the new generation of Italian

architects shortly after World War I. Albini’s direct contact with Gropius and

Sartoris had the most impact on him, but he was part of the generation that

established functionalist architecture within the confines of Italian Fascism.

International trends felt in Italy immediately provoked questions about national

identity, especially as political leaders partook in the massive building campaigns

and urban cleansing. The early Modern project in Italian architecture grew out of

a consciousness of native cultural history regarding Italy’s own artistic patrimony.

Myths about collective Italian values, monumentality, and Mediterranean

traditions fostered nationalist rhetoric about Italianità (Italianness), that directed

local research, sponsored exhibitions and in some cases led to the awards of

major commissions. Nationalist priorities grew in importance during the 1920s

and 1930s and eventually demanded loyalty from its elite classes. Following

the Fascist invasion of Ethiopia, Italian architects were restricted by economic

and intellectual isolation from all progressive influences outside Italy. 2 Political

pressures leveraged by the regime and its apologists for a progressive Fascist

culture would surround Albini and ultimately lead to the demise of several of his

close cohorts.

20


THE ESSENCE OF MODERN ItALY’S RADiCAL ORiGiNS

Albini’s Milan was pre-empted by Turin, where the first Modern expressions of

architecture appeared. Before World War I, the technological advancements of

reinforced concrete and structural steel inspired the design of taller structures on

a par with the Chicago skyscraper. Turin’s Mole Antonelliana, begun by Antonio

Antonelli as a synagogue in 1863, eventually reached 167 meters in height and

is a frequently cited as the gauge for Italy’s new industrial city. 3 Unlike elevated

structures introduced into newly established urban zones around the world,

potential new structures in Italy would encounter the fact of the historic city,

regulated by height limits, and the physical precedents of those towns and cities

with Classical Roman and medieval origins and legible datum heights. The most

innovative proposals conceived at the dawn of the era remained on paper, and

only a few exceptional towers and unexceptional high rises had been erected

since World War II.

Turin also hosted events that signaled a restless culture prepared for imminent

change. The First International Exposition of Modern Decorative Art, held there

in1902, launched Arte Nuova, the Italian version of Art Nouveau, also known as Stile

Liberty. The name originated with the Liberty & Co. department store begun by

Arthur Lazenby Liberty in England in 1875 that distributed its products, including

imports from the Far East. The exhibition featured several pavilions by Rainaldo

D’Aronco, who received commissions from as far away as Istanbul. Decorative arts

flourished among these imported trends and began a dialogue within Italy about

international influences. Although later surpassed by Milan and Rome, Turin was

initially Italy’s most advanced city for cultural criticism and emerging Modern

ambitions, just as it had been proposed as the first capital before Italy was unified.

It was not long before the Futurist movement jolted Italy into a more antagonistic

relationship with its past. Futurism had international proponents, but was uniquely

Italian in its reactions and protagonists. Artists working in various media—

painting, sculpture, poetry, theater, music, and architecture—were joined by a

shared passion for the machine, the car, Modern progress, and war, and they had a

unifying voice in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944). Marinetti published his

Futurist manifesto in Le Figaro in Paris in 1909 and shook the art world on a par with

the effects of Cubism, but his target for radical transformation was exclusively a

history-obsessed Italy. He gathered allied artists who worked in various visual and

literary media to uphold his assertion to destroy four centuries of Italian tradition

in order to usher in a new age of velocity, dynamic force, and forward momentum.

While Futurism’s glorification of war challenged bourgeois sensibilities, the avantgarde

provocation began to acclimatize some of Italy’s elite and intellectual classes

for Modern revitalization. 4 Futurism was neither commercial nor decorative in

nature, as were earlier imported movements, and although it debuted in France,

the extreme proclamation that idolized speed and the machine was born in Milan.

Manifestations of the Futurist project in poetry, painting, theater, and sculpture

initially produced more tangible results than those in architecture, which were

visualized in the many exuberant and precise drawings by Antonio Sant’Elia


(1888–1916) for La Città Nuova. Yet the comprehensive utopian proposition

he put forth was arrested by his untimely death before it could be debated or

developed. Futurist painters had portrayed inhabited scenes of a tumultuous

urban life on the cusp of revolution with exaggerated three-point perspective

of public plazas and distorted façades. Painter Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916)

produced animated drawings for such scenes as La città che sale (The City

Rises—1910). The urban depiction of scaffolding used to build workers’ housing

assigned social significance to ever-present symbols of Modern construction.

Futurist imagery often presented civic chaos with gravity overturned, swirling

spaces and kaleidoscopic buildings highlighted at night. But architectural

interpretations of the Futurist ethos were by no means a direct result of these

prolific graphic interpretations.

Enrico Prampolini (1894–1956) published the first Futurist manifesto of

architecture in January 1914. In his proposal, he charged architecture with the

“feeling for life” that would result from some combination of dynamism, light,

and air. Boccioni also drafted a manifesto of Futurist architecture in early 1914 in

which he chastised Italian architects for their devotion to the Classical orders and

“enslavement to foreign styles.” 5 More concrete in his directive than Prampolini,

Boccioni called on “necessity” as the essential element bound to Modern life that

would bring about “a radical renewal of architecture.” According to his vision,

“ships, motorcars, railway stations have attained a greater aesthetic expression the

more they have subordinated their architectural design to the needs they were

designed to meet,” which reads as an obvious entrée to a functionalist argument. 6

Aside from Futurism’s explosive rhetoric, the invitation to employ new materials

to express dynamic assemblages using joinery for ornament and acrobatic flights

of fancy foreshadowed the formal innovations of Franco Albini. 7 But as we will

learn, Albini did not accept the Futurist’s sensational rhetoric, denial of history

or inflammatory claims. The architectural imagery conjured by Boccioni was an

overt criticism of the façade veneers and massing typical of concurrent Italian

classicized “Modern” architecture. He concluded with an exalted promise: “The

future is preparing us for a boundless sky of architectural frameworks.” 8 But

when German filmmaker Fritz Lang appropriated Futurism’s visionary fantasy as

the setting for his 1927 film, Metropolis, the story’s gloomy forecast did little to

promote the idea of the Futurist city.

Apparently Marinetti suppressed Boccioni’s version of the manifesto, which

was not published until 1972. Instead, Marinetti invited Antonio Sant’Elia to join

his group after witnessing his fantastic drawings of skyscrapers with elevated

bridges, exposed elevators, and subterranean transportation lines that had been

exhibited in May 1914. Sant’Elia’s renderings offered bold, impressionistic façades

and massing, albeit without plans, physical contexts, or inhabitants. Yet the new

images more powerfully depicted an architectural avant-garde than had any

previous portrayals of a radical Modern city. Sant’Elia’s Messaggio, published in the

exhibition catalog for La Città Nuova, indicated that he was already familiar with

Futurist ideas. His manifesto emphasized exploiting new technology and design

rationality, and called on citizens to embrace new habits of living. Simplicity was

22


to be achieved through the expression of materials for their maximum lightness

and plasticity, which he listed as reinforced concrete, iron, glass, cardboard and

synthetic textiles.

Initially very radical, Sant’Elia’s projections and images would within two

decades appear in works by Albini and other Milanese Rationalists, even though

the later architects held very different attitudes about function and its formal

expression. Sant’Elia’s call for “New” and “Modern” architecture to break with

history, tradition, and style-driven tendencies appeared in subsequent Futurist

publications. 9 Marinetti and Sant’Elia’s ideas were influential beyond Italy among

architects of the Dutch de Stijl, yet they produced no images as close to those

of Sant’Elia as did Le Corbusier. 10 Despite a lack of buildings, Futurism’s impact

was fundamental to Albini’s Milan in part because it stimulated international

interest to situate the Italian avant-garde in a broader field, and in part because

it established ideas that subsequent protagonists would oppose to define

themselves against.

Albini’s experience of Futurism was at the very least a scholarly one, though

his attitude toward the manifesto’s rhetoric was one of skepticism. 11 He found

the emotional content of the manifestos to be out of sync with the collective

Italian cultural ethos. Such rhetoric did not appeal to his emerging pragmatic

sensibilities and more reasoned ambitions. He ostensibly noted that the most

basic Futurist concepts of speed, anxiety, and equating life with motion were “a

bit infantile and exterior.” 12

Later depictions by Mario Chiattone (1891–1957) and Virgilio Marchi (1895–

1960) advanced new impressions of radical Modern architecture, while only a few

buildings, including the many post offices and rail stations constructed by Angiolo

Mazzoni (1894–1979), gave tangible form to Futurist ideals. 13 Marchi’s 1924 book,

Architettura futurista, included illustrations of “primitive constructions” from Capri,

which he argued exemplified “pure forms that appear as if they are just coming into

being.” 14 Albini would be present when Giuseppe Pagano exhibited and published

his tribute to vernacular construction. Albini and his partners later republished

Pagano’s photographs of Italian architecture built without architects in the pages

of Costruzioni Casabella in 1946. Yet it was Mazzoni whose ties to the regime forged

a productive link between Futurism and Fascism, and as Futurism grew nationalistic

through its increasing association with right-leaning politics, patterns of allegiance,

party authority, and economic independence became compulsory. As early as

1920, Marinetti had also voiced his insistence on the complete transformation of

Italian society with attacks on the monarchy, parliament, marriage, and the papacy.

Eventually he proved too radical even for Mussolini, who softened his own positions

on government, church, and family relations after badly losing elections in 1919.

Yet Marinetti maintained prominence among the artistic and intellectual

elite and had no incentive or obligation to diminish his role as social agitator. To

advance Futurism’s avant-garde stance, he adopted aviation as a formidable new

factor in transportation and urban design, and began to perceive architecture

from a new altitude. In 1934, along with Mazzoni and journalist Mino Somenzi,

he published a “Futurist Manifesto for Areo-Architecture” in the journal Sant’Elia.


The latter pair had proposed cities as linear strands of housing, commercial,

and industrial programs, each separated by additional bands of transportation

infrastructure, and all graphically represented as aerial views in bird’s eye

perspective. 15 Futurism provided a fundamental conduit to other coincident

avant-garde movements, especially Russian Constructivism, whose short-lived

period nevertheless influenced Italian designers, and in particular some early

projects by Albini. However, as the political winds began to shift, no formal

trends, regardless of their provocation, could gain purchase in Italy in the 1920s

without the ability to signify locally.

Novecento Architecture and Rationalism

Tangible architectural innovation began to emerge in Italy only after the

political upheaval and severe economic austerity that accompanied World War I.

While Albini was growing up in the Brianza region outside of Milan in a middleclass

family, two succeeding Modern tendencies known as the Novecento, or

Milan 900, and Rationalism began being defined in sharp contrast with previous

avant-garde trends. 16 They presented positions dialectical from each other, albeit

false oppositions, which established a dynamic exchange that filled journals

and aligned the various protagonists who would vie for prominence to be the

regime’s preferred style. Each born of a position taken against Futurism, they

sought formal distinction from one another, and those disparities indeed grew,

especially as the first Rationalist buildings appeared. Initially, however, both

groups seemed rhetorically aligned; both demanded departure from the status

quo of Neoclassicism while rebuking imported Modern styles. The lead voices

of each group identified their movement as the ideal of progress and called

for a “return to order,” while distancing themselves from avant-garde agitation

and promising new stability after World War I. Significantly, each linked its

primary sources of ideas to Italian tradition and reacted against what had

come to be considered as Futurism’s nihilist, destructive, and anti-national

individualist posture. 17

Two buildings built in the north in the 1920s can be invoked to exemplify

the coincident trends. Giovanni Muzio’s Cà Brutta, or ugly house, in Milan and

Giuseppe Terragni’s Novocomum in Como illustrate, respectively, the more

conservative and more abstract styles of early Italian Modern architecture.

Both are apartment buildings that were known to have ignited controversy

when their construction scaffolding was removed to reveal unexpected façades

that eventually challenged public opinion toward both formal languages.

The relatively rapid acceptance of these two symbols of change suggests a

society ready to modernize, yet both Novecento and Rationalist designers would

suffer growing pains and manifest more defensive rhetoric in favor of their own

experimental buildings in the early post-war period.

24


2.2 Museum of

Roman Civilization

by Pietro Ascheri,

D. Bernardini and

Cesare Pascoletti,

1939–41

Milan remained northern Italy’s progressive cultural center where, along

with Turin, Novecento architecture took shape. The second design for

Cà Brutta, constructed by 1922, presented an 8-story flat façade composed

in three horizontal bands of travertine, gray and white stucco with simple

repetitive arched windows and horizontal stringcourses delineating each floor.

Classical motifs were freely interpreted and reduced to applied ornament

between windows, and the edifice had no apparent front or main entry.


Controversy about the new urban street introduced to separate residential

blocks required revisions in the approval granting process. Muzio responded

with a flattened Palladian arch gateway joining the two building segments.

The scandal this tame but unprecedented novelty ignited was short-lived, with

Marcello Piacentini speaking in defense of its new urban aesthetic that echoed

the metaphysical expression of a De Chirico painting in a new mural style. Soon

similar simplified Classical expressions with increasingly monumental massing

would come to be the dominant look of conservative Modern Italian architecture

known as the Novecento.

Further north in Como, Antonio Sant’Elia’s hometown, Giuseppe and Attilio

Terragni’s Novocomum apartment building provoked uproar when the project

completed in 1929 was again significantly different than the one approved by

municipal authorities. This time the proposed façade resembled a Novecento

composition with each of its 6 stories outlined by stringcourses and stacked to

align windows in a streamlined Classical surface. Instead, the resulting apartment

building had an abstract and colored stucco skin with oval corner towers of

glass cut into massive multilevel voids. The geometrical language evoked

foreign Constructivist trends and produced a Modern machine for living that

dramatically contrasted with its neighbors. The designers argued the virtues

of its interior emphasis on Modern utilities with qualities and furnishings for a

more hygienic and comfortable lifestyle for its dwellers. Dramatic photographs

of the Novocomum shot upward using its forms to frame the sky, abstracted the

structure from its context and repositioned next to Como’s gothic cathedral, were

immediately published and traveled in exhibitions establishing it as the chosen

symbol of Italian Rationalism. 18

Each of the two young Italian movements staked their claim on orderly,

technologically advanced urban architecture. Both Novecento and Rationalist

architects sought to be Mussolini’s state architecture, and waged skillful battles

for the attention of il Duce. Fascism required not just massive construction of

new buildings, but new building types, and the expression of these new types

for new functions posed the chance to create new symbols of the regime’s

accomplishments. The modernization of Italian life required transportation and

communication hubs, especially train stations, and government office buildings,

such as new post offices, administrative centers, and party headquarters. New

university facilities and Olympic stadiums in Rome had few corollaries in Milan or

other urban centers. Construction would become one of the most overt signals

of the regime’s power, progress, and effectiveness. 19

New forms of mass housing were necessitated by two demographic shifts. First,

urban centers grew as industrialization brought more workers to the city. Mussolini had

created elaborate social programs simultaneously for both rural and urban populations.

Secondly, he built new towns in the freshly drained marshes south of Rome, then

relocated poor agrarian populations to that region from less fertile lands in the north.

2.3 Novocomum apartments in Como by Giuseppe Terragni, 1927–29

2.4 Stadio dei Marmi at Rome’s Foro Olimpico (formerly Foro Mussolini) by Enrico del Debbio, 1928

28


2.5 Fabio Filzi

Housing in Milan

by Albini, Palanti

and Camus,

1935–38

He also sought to redefine historic centers as monumental bureaucratic hubs for the

regime by transferring residents from medieval neighborhoods at the core of the city

to new quarters on urban fringes, a pattern easily recognized in his plan for Milan.

The IFACP (Istituto Fascista Autonomo per le Case Popolari/Fascist Institute for Public

Housing) government housing organization was established to administer major

projects, several of which were completed in Milan by Albini and his partners.


Albini worked with Giancarlo Palanti and Renato Camus to design 13 housing 2.6 Weissenhof

complexes between 1932–44 for IFACP in or near Milan. Of them, three important Siedlung at

neighborhoods were realized. 20 The Fabio Filzi Quarter was immediately published Stuttgart by Mies

in Casabella Costruzioni by Pagano, who called it an “oasis of order.” 21 van der Rohe, 1927

Typical of

the urban low-cost housing model of the period, these residential quarters were

composed of several 5-story delineated parallel blocks, each containing public

stair towers to access three apartments per floor. Fabio Filzi provided the setting

for Visconti’s 1960 Neorealist film, Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers)

depicting the tough life for rural southern immigrants to the dense, spare,

anonymous industrial city.

While many Rationalists sought regime recognition by putting forth styles of

architecture that fulfilled a nationalist agenda, some in the north looked past Italy’s

borders. Since Albini’s first travels to Barcelona and Paris, he understood Modern

trends as an international imperative and sought inspiration from the best practices

in Europe. Sartoris has suggested similarities between his 1935 INA Exhibition

Pavilion to the work of Ernst Plischke in Austria and Walter Gropius’s Fagus Factory.

He has also linked formal characteristics from the Fabio Filzi Quarter to Gropius’s

Siemensstadt Settlement and Otto Haesler’s low-cost housing in Germany. 22 In

noting that “the Fascist regime … excluded contacts with the most open trends in

Europe,” Franca Helg wrote that Albini, always a student, consistently looked more

widely than local influences, and was particularly interested in Eastern European

architecture for Modern compositional models that met Italy’s need for mass

housing. 23

30


Mussolini’s most aggressive intervention conceived of as Rome’s third capital

and his headquarters, EUR (Esposizione Universale di Roma), was planned for

the 1942 World Exposition, a celebration that never took place. However, this

incomplete new town produced some original structures and competition

proposals. The grand site plan by Marcello Piacentini extended an overscaled

axial avenue, then called Via Imperiale (now Via Cristoforo Colombo), joining

Rome to the Ostia seacoast. The new highway was demarked with ample

white marble columns, porticoes, an obelisk and buildings that subscribed to

a monumentality integrating object buildings with grand views. Planning for

EUR began in January 1937 by a team led by Piacentini that included primarily

Rationalist architects, Giuseppe Pagano, Luigi Piccinato, Ettore Rossi, and Luigi

Vietti. The plan was interwoven with a web of cross axes, long perspectives,

and public spaces and extended to include a regional communication network.

Adalberto Libera’s proposed forerunner to Eero Saarinen’s Saint Louis Arch was

intended as a gateway to the primary axis of the Via Imperiale but the grand icon

was never realized.

Italy’s most ambitious and talented architects were invited or competed to build

at EUR. Aiming to define a new Modern monumentality, the resulting satellite

city has left a formidable trace of the Fascist past. Franco Albini participated in

two unsuccessful EUR competition entries: the first for the Palazzo della Civiltà

Italiana (Palace of Italian Civilization) in 1937, and the second for the Palazzo

dell’Acqua e della Luce (Palace of Water and Light) in 1939. 24 The abstract

field proposed by Albini with Gardella, Palanti e Romano for the Palazzo della

Civiltà Italiana was a tour-de-force of monumental horizontal and vertical grids.

2.7 Palazzo

dell’Acqua e delle

Luce proposed

for EUR ’42

(Esposizione

Universale di

Roma) by Albini,

Romano, Gardella,

and Fontana, 1939


The 40-meter high square tower in contrast with the single-story building seems

unusually pretentious for Albini, but was characteristic of other EUR structures. 25

The Palazzo dell’Acqua e della Luce proposal has been identified as the likely

inspiration for the post-war monument to the German massacre of more than 300

innocent Italians known as Fosse Ardeatine, built in the Ardeatine caves near Rome’s

catacombs by Mario Fiorentino and Giuseppe Perugini and others (1944–47).

Today EUR displays the enthusiasm of dueling conservative and progressive

elements characteristic of the Fascist era. Transition from the vision of il Duce to

capitalism and construction speculation are also now in evidence, since Mussolini’s

new capital has become a bureaucratic hub with impressive but underutilized

municipal museums. Diane Ghirardo has characterized the contradictions between

the progressive intentions of Novecento and Rationalist architects in the pre-war

period as “a vacillation between an apparently adventurous Modernism and a

recalcitrant traditionalism.” 26 Fascism’s appearance as both radically new and

inherently linked to Italian tradition may have appealed to Pagano, Albini and their

collaborators who saw the possibility of influencing EUR’s plans, although few

northern architects gained a foothold there.

2.8 Fosse

Ardeantine by

Mario Fiorentino,

Giuseppe Perugini,

et al., 1944–49

From Milan to Rome: Beyond Style

To appreciate the originality of Albini and his Rationalist cohorts, it is useful to

recognize the dominant formal and social trends they encountered. Novecento

architecture in Milan found a versatile source of available symbols in historic

32


precedence, especially Classical motifs, to qualify its Italianità (national character).

Lombard architects were increasingly required by cultural critics to distinguish

themselves from northern European Modernists. The new style of decorative mural

architecture legitimized Modernity for the Milanese middle class and clad many

aristocratic dwellings built to infill areas of the city center. New collective housing

structures stimulated greater density in the form of taller massing with eclectic

ornament to replace the villini (smaller houses), set in bucolic gardens. 27 With mass

migration to cities, detached structures quickly proved to be too expensive and too

low in density with inefficient land use and construction costs. A denser fabric of

urban housing that would define continuous street edges would also furnish new

canvases for Novecento façades as the face of the Modern industrial city.

Novecento architecture resisted categorization by taxonomy, since architects

as dissimilar as Giovanni Muzio and Gio Ponti, who were practicing in the milieu,

did not follow established standards or unifying principles. Ponti, who had

mentored the young Albini, initially produced everything from neo-Classical

ceramics to decorative housing with cornices and finials like the Casa Borletti

(1927) in collaboration with Emilio Lancia. Later, Ponti and Lancia’s work would

develop a more geometric, abstract Novecento style exemplified by the triad of

6-story apartments on Via di Togni, Domus Fausta, Domus Carola, and Domus

Julia (1932–33). By seeking to create unique artifacts through ornamental

manipulation, with its only novelty an increase in scale and height over the

existing context, Novecento designers appeased the sensibilities of a growing

middle class. The variation and experimentation of architectural motifs remained

largely within the dimension of the façade while monumental volumes and

sequences of interior spaces were dependent upon symmetrical organization

and Classical ornament rendered in marble or stucco.

Designers working in the Novecento style at this time ran the universities

and produced the new character of Milan, where Albini was living and studying.

The College of Architects and Engineers that made up the academy in Milan

had almost unanimously rejected Muzio’s Cà Brutta, but over the decade of the

1920s adapted Novecentismo as the dominant identity for urban planning and

architecture. Giuseppe De Finetti, who had been a student of Adolf Loos in Vienna,

built Casa della Meridiana in Milan, producing a more austere image, one that has

been likened to Loos’ Scheu house. Yet plans of these structures offered few spatial

innovations. Elevators typically replaced the common public stair as an expression

of Modernity and luxury. Works produced by leading architects from the 1920s,

including Emilio Lancia, Gio Ponti, Mino Fiocchi, Piero Portaluppi, Pino Pizzigoni,

and Giovanni Greppi, presented variations on the character of neo-Classical mural

composition and massing, but no particular leaders emerged from the Novecento

group to rival the persona of Marinetti. 28

The scene in Rome was more politically charged from the onset of the post-World

War I era with the election of Mussolini’s Fascist party in 1922. Marcello Piacentini

(1881–1960) provided essential leadership to those architects building within a

historically informed vocabulary similar to that of the Lombard Novecento. His

contribution reached a grander scale both formally and politically once he became


Mussolini’s chief architectural advisor. 29 In 1930, Piacentini published the first

Italian text on European Modernism, called Architettura d’Oggi (Architecture Today).

He discussed in it the emergence of Rationalist and nationalist tendencies, which

were necessarily linked to give credence to new formal principles. While Piacentini’s

interests were broad, he was among the Romans who promoted ambientismo, or

contextualism. Of even greater local impact was the architect Gustavo Giovannoni,

who, following on the teachings of Camillo Boito, emphasized the continuity of the

spatial, graphic and figural characters of new interventions in keeping with existing

geographical and historic contexts. Piacentini was enormously influential but is a

picture of contradiction: while he argued against skyscrapers in Italy, he designed

the Martini and Rossi Tower in the historic center of Genoa in the late 1930s, a

dominant figure on the Genoese skyline once heralded as having Europe’s fastest

elevator. And although his 1916 memorandum on planning in Rome insisted on

the total preservation of historic urban sites and scales, he was later responsible for

eviscerating Italian city centers on behalf of the regime.

A group of architects who emerged from the Milan Polytechnic a few years

after World War I brought the next wave of reaction to Futurism’s clamor and

the Novecento’s lack of innovation. Its effect on Albini would be significant. They

published the Rationalist manifesto in four consecutive phases beginning in

December 1926 in the journal Rassegna italiana. Claiming the “birth of a new spirit,”

the young men of Gruppo 7 who initiated Rationalism included Ubaldo Castiglioni

(replaced by Adalberto Libera the next year), Luigi Figini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano

Larco, Gino Pollini, Carlo Enrico Rava, and Giuseppe Terragni. Gruppo 7 posed

their ambitions as more progressive and less individualistic than the academic

Novecento group from whom they were separated by the years of the war. The first

installation of their manifesto read:

The new architecture, the true architecture, must result from a strict adherence

to logic and rationality. A rigid constructivism must dictate the rules. The new

architectural forms will have to receive their aesthetic value solely from the

nature of their necessity, and only subsequently, by means of selection, a style

will be born … we do not claim to create a style … but from the constant

employment of rationality, from the perfect correspondence between the

building’s structure and its intended purpose, the selected style will result. We

must succeed in ennobling the indefinable and abstract perfection of pure

rhythm, simple constructability alone would not be beauty. 30

The Swiss connection by way of Luciano Baldessari and Alberto Sartoris linked

Gruppo 7 to progressive ideas north of the Alps. Fortunato Depero returned

from the 1925 Paris Fair and supplied them with copies of Le Corbusier’s Vers

un Architecture (Towards a New Architecture) and catalogs of the works of other

European and Soviet contributors to the fair. The Rationalists embraced Le

Corbusier’s Esprit Nouveau concept but departed from his machine aesthetic by

clarifying that the house was not literally a machine for living, as he famously

insisted, and that necessity instead would be the driving force to achieve a “perfect

correspondence between the structure of the building and the purpose it serves.” 31

34


In the Rationalists’ view, Le Corbusier was both an innovator and a traditionalist.

Albini sought to meet Le Corbusier during his 1929 travels to Paris when visiting his

studio. 32 With Le Corbusier’s example, every attempt was made to shift the focus

away from style and toward a process of establishing pioneering responses to new

problems. Akin to the Novecento architects, the Rationalists confronted Futurist

rhetoric when stating that they need not break from tradition because tradition

is capable of transforming itself as an organic response to changing needs, an

attitude that proved formative for Albini, and he would more clearly articulate it

through his work and lectures over the next three decades.

The second issue of the Rationalist manifesto, published in February 1927,

presented ideas emerging in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, Russia,

and Sweden as similar to their own. The young Italians proposed examples of logic,

order, and restraint while also calling critical attention to works they considered

too extreme, such as Rietveld’s Schroeder House. Le Corbusier was criticized for

being too clinical and excessively rigorous in his paradigm of the machine. The

third issue of the manifesto appeared the next month. It focused on criticism of

the Italian architectural education establishment and the conservative nature of

the Italian public, which was hostile to Modern structures that did not use familiar

symbols or details. They insisted that concentration on technical problems in the

education of the architect would result in a technological aesthetic that would

replace superficial ornament. Gruppo 7’s final installment came in May of 1927

and returned to its emphasis on the new spirit of optimism inspired by the

possibilities of the latest construction materials, the simplicity and perfection

of form, the integration of Modernity and tradition, and “the renunciation of

individualism.”

While the production of Modern architecture that began in earnest in the 1930s

did not eclipse individual initiative or ideas, joint efforts like those of Gruppo 7

became a model for design ateliers, exhibition and competition entries, journal

publications, housing quarters, and commissions for major public works. Patterns

of teamwork that established collective endeavors also fostered public debate, and

these social trends continue today. Initiatives for urban masterplans and cultural

organizations like MIAR (Movimento Italiano per l’Architettura Razionale), CIAM

(Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), MSA (Il Movimento di Studi per

l’Architettura) and APAO (Associazione per Architettura Organica) demonstrate

Italians’ political nature manifesting their desire to unite to advance revolutionary

agendas. While these collaborations take place in both pre-war and post-war eras,

and their intentions change with concurrent political agendas, they are an indication

of the tendency to work together at the scale of urban intervention. Albini worked

with Gardella, Pagano, Romano and others to propose a comprehensive plan for

the city of Milan in 1938 called Milano Verde (Green Milan). As the war neared the

end, Albini again led teams of designers that drafted the AR Plan (Architetti Riuniti/

Reunited Architects) for Milan, established the MSA, and revived the professional

organization of Milanese architects. He actively participated in CIAM until dissuaded

by disputes and was predisposed to collaboration with various cohorts throughout

his long career.


I will return to examine the role of CIAM and Albini’s impact as a member in

the following chapters. At this point, more extensive consideration of key pre-war

figures from both Milan and Rome who impacted Albini’s early career is

warranted. During the 1930s, protagonists emerged through ongoing debates

about the true Modernity as evidenced by many publications of journals and

manifestos, exhibitions, and exemplary new buildings. Among the most influential

figures in the north, Giuseppe Pagano-Pogatschnig (1896–1945) completed his

architectural education in Turin in 1924 and, along with Gino Levi-Montalcini,

produced an early example of Rationalist design for the enlightened industrialist,

Riccardo Gualino. 33 Pagano was later responsible for the Physics building at the

new University of Rome campus (1932) and the Bocconi University campus in

Milan (1937–41). Neapolitan critic and interior designer Edoardo Persico met

Pagano in Turin. 34 As theorist and art critic, he supported Rationalist principles

embraced by Turin’s Group of 6 (Enrico Paulucci, Carlo Levi, Francesco Mesunco,

Giorgio Chessa, Nicola Galante, and Jessie Boswell), a collective of painters and

designers influenced by late French Impressionism.

Persico and Pagano moved to Milan in 1929 and began writing for the journal

first known as La Casa Bella, soon to become the voice of Rationalism under

Pagano’s direction beginning in 1933. Casabella flourished throughout the

1930s by disseminating the best examples of progressive Modern buildings in

Italy and beyond with astute critical writing and exceptional black and white

photography. Persico, who became co-editor in 1935, provided authoritative

criticism and graphic design that updated the publication and argued in favor

of Rationalism’s cause to promote new architecture for new ways of life while

actively opposing Beaux Arts academicism and challenging trends toward

stylish interpretations of Rationalism. Franco Albini’s sister, Carla Albini, was

a painter who also edited and wrote for Casabella. The journal was later shut

down under political pressure after Pagano joined the Resistance in 1942 and

was captured and sent as a political prisoner to the German concentration camp

of Mauthausen. He died there in 1945. According to Helg, prior to Pagano‘s

deportation to Austria, Albini hid him in his Milan apartment. In 1946, along

with Giancarlo Palanti and Anna Castelli-Ferrieri, Albini re-launched the journal

then known as Costruzioni Casabella and published three volumes, one of which

was in homage to Pagano. 35

Casabella helped establish Milan as the center of the Modern movement in

Italy. Persico remained an anti-Fascist and, although he sustained the architects

of Gruppo 7, he criticized the nationalist spirit of the movement and the

Rationalists’ willingness to succumb to the will of the regime. 36 His design for

the 1936 salone d’onore, a monumental interior produced along with Marcello

Nizzoli, Giancarlo Palanti, and sculptor Lucio Fontana for the Milan Triennale, has

been acclaimed as one of the purest expressions of Modern monumentality to

emerge from the period.

36


2.9 Asilo Infantile

by Giuseppe

Terragni in

Como, 1934–37

Persico proved to be perhaps the most direct influence on the work of the

young Albini. Marco Albini, Franco’s son, believes it was his sister, Carla, who first

introduced Albini to Persico. 37 Albini’s interior design collaborations with Persico

during the early 1930s introduced their first applications of transparent and

translucent planes, space-making grids, and tensile structures while featuring

new themes, such as the Aeronautics Exhibition of 1934. Persico’s critical writings

and projects with Nizzoli were continual points of reference for Albini even after

the war and well after Persico’s disappearance. His untimely death in 1936 marks

for some historians a retreat in the radical tendencies of northern Modernism,

which became increasingly subject to the regime’s ambitions. During this period

opportunities for architects like Albini to build were also significantly diminished

except by way of private commissions, which would, however, positively impact on

Albini’s later career.

Giuseppe Terragni’s (1904–43), who along with his engineer brother

designed the Novocomum apartment building, constructed a series of novel

buildings in Como and Milan over a 15-year period that would define Italian

Rationalism and provide its most often represented images outside of Italy.

The scandal that erupted when the Novocomum scaffolding was removed in

1929 may have raised questions of national identity and Terragni’s loyalties.

His use of color on stucco, handrails and door and window frames was as

foreign as the building’s forms, which echoed Russian Constructivism with

cylindrical glass corners, horizontal windows and steam-lined balconies.


The building became the object of immediate ridicule but was ultimately

accepted, most significantly by members of the Milanese Novecento elite. 38

Terragni and his partner, Pietro Lingeri (1894–1968), continued to produce

avant-garde buildings in Como and Milan using horizontally and vertically

layered façades, such as the Casa Rustici in Milan, and the Sant Elia pre-school and

the Casa del Fascio, both in Como. Yet Terragni’s direct appeal to Fascist ideology

and his relationship with Mussolini positioned these great works to be ignored

after the war. 39 His most symbolic project was commissioned by Mussolini for

the Danteum, an allegorical monument to Dante Alighieri, by organizing the

Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise on a golden rectangle. It was to be located on the

Via dell’Impero in Rome near the Coliseum, but it was not built. 40 Terragni went

to serve in the Fascist infantry, and his military experiences left him physically

wounded and apparently with profound doubts about the regime. Since he did

not survive the war, he was not asked to defend his alliance with Mussolini and

was spared the difficult questions of signification and purpose that faced his

fellow Rationalists. 41

Persico and Pagano most directly criticized Terragni for his formalist attitude

lacking any social will and his apparent naiveté regarding the holistic progressive

goals of the Modern project. The problem of meaning and symbol has since cast

a long shadow over the entire period of Modern architecture built in Italy between the

two wars. Early backlash was felt in different ways in disparate regions of the country.

2.10 Palazzo

dei Congressi

at EUR ’42 by

Adalberto Libera

begun, 1938–54

38


While Gruppo 7 dissolved early during the height of polemics around “style,”’

Rationalist proponents had exhibited outside Italy between 1928–31 including in

Essen, Breslau, Budapest, Rome and New York, while also participating in CIAM. 42

As early as 1933, Persico astutely foreshadowed the reason for the groups demise:

The major obstacle to an integral affirmation of rationalism in Italy consisted in

the incapacity of its theorists to rigorously propose the problem of the antithesis

between national and European taste. At this rate, aspirations toward a modern

style are reduced to a series of compromises. 43

Most notably, Italian scholars have for decades been reluctant to value the

formal products of the failed regime. Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Albini’s closest

counterpart, who was also imprisoned, offered a contrite explanation for

misunderstanding Fascism’s revolutionary potential. His reflection, published in

Domus in 1946 and titled “The House of Man,” was an honest attempt to clarify

the fog of ideology that affected the better judgment of some of his colleagues. 44

In recent years, scholarship focused on the relationship between Fascist politics

and architecture has opened discussion about previously shunned topics, and

years of historic distance have proved constructive. Contrarily, some latter-day

enthusiasts attempting to strip symbolic forms of their original intentions remain

controversial. Richard Etlin’s exposure of political ties held by many early Italian

Modernists has contributed clarity to the continuing polemic of social progress

versus Fascist order, and he aptly encourages the long view of their aesthetic and

cultural contributions in forming judgments. 45

First Influences on Albini and His Partners

The Fourth International Exposition of Decorative Arts, held in 1930 at Monza,

outside Milan, primarily featured the ideals of Novecento surface décor and

derivative neo-Classical motifs. In sharp contrast to the image-oriented pavilions,

the new Italian electric company, the Società Edison, commissioned members of

Gruppo 7 to design a prototype of the Modern Italian house that employed electric

power, called Casa Elettrica. Figino and Pollini invited Guido Frette, Adalberto

Libera, and Piero Bottoni to collaborate on a functionalist glass house that begs

comparison to coincident structures by Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe.

The result was a simple box with a double glazed terrarium façade that opened

directly from the living and dining space onto the landscape of the Villa Reale. The

entire single level dwelling occupied a plan of 8 by 16 meters. The interior featured

synthetic materials, including linoleum in bright colors. An L-shaped curtain served

to isolate the dining area from the living room without compromising the openness

and proportions of the central void. The kitchen designed by Bottoni divided food

preparation, delivery, and storage from cleanup functions while maintaining visual

separation between staff and guests.

The Casa Elettrica prototype was presented in a 12-page brochure that

explained the merits of its standardization, with plan alternatives for houses of


varying sizes. The Novocomum had provided a physical model for Rationalism

as an urban façade; now the Casa Elettrica demonstrated the essence of

streamlined interior space and transparency. Albini would borrow several of its

motifs, including the interior curtain as a pliable wall, the open stair and a new

chromatic palette, for his subsequent residential designs. In particular, his design

for the Villetta Pestarini emphasized facility of function along with its sleek and

streamlined aesthetic, mediated transparency, and specific connections to the

outdoor surroundings. Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion and subsequent Modern houses

by Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies and Johnson will present extreme ideas about

dwelling, new aesthetics, and standardization. Characteristics born of these

domestic spaces would eventually inform Albini’s own ideas for the coherent

Modern room, and his work in turn will play a role in the evolution of the

Modern house.

The Florence Train Station emerged as another important victory for Rationalist

architecture in the national arena. Angiolo Mazzoni, state architect for the railway,

had been working since 1929 on proposals for the new terminal to be located on

a controversial historic site immediately behind the medieval cathedral of Santa

Maria Novella, also renowned for Leon Battista Alberti’s magnificent Renaissance

façade. 46 Mazzoni succeeded in producing a sufficiently monumental design that

was subordinate to the historic context as required by the Florentine Belli Arti

Commission. After his proposal had been publicly criticized in the local press,

Constanzo Ciano, transportation minister overseeing the State Railway System,

who was married to Mussolini’s daughter, suggested a solution to the controversy

by holding a design competition for the new station, which occurred in 1932.

Selected from among the 105 entries was the proposal by a group of six young

Rationalists called Gruppo Toscano, led by Giovanni Michelucci. Their proposal

satisfied the railway station program without overpowering the site, and marked

the first time a Rationalist design was openly chosen in a national competition

for a major public building. 47 Although their project was also subject to scrutiny,

it gained the support of Marcello Piacentini. The design was characterized by a

low horizontal mass faced with the warm-toned local stone called pietra forte. A

digital clock at one end balanced the façade’s asymmetry, and a continuous slice

of glass overhead marked the ticketing entry. The station was bold and abstract,

with a Modern day-lit interior, yet submitted in scale to its historical surroundings.

In February of the same year, Michelucci published a series of photographic

comparison studies in Domus, attempting to show that abstract compositional

principles could be derived from Italian vernacular buildings. The series was titled

“Contacts between Ancient and Modern Architecture.” In the August edition

of Domus he published drawings that extracted abstract formal patterns and

principles from examples of non-monumental Italian vernacular architecture that

he described as “Sources.” 48 Michelucci’s photo pairings illustrated a quasi-Modern

geometric simplicity along with modest and stylisticly simple medieval buildings

and their frescoed surfaces. 49 Shortly afterward, at the 1936 Milan Triennale,

Pagano exhibited his photographs of rural Italian farmhouses and published

them in the book Architettura rurale italiana, written with Guarniero Daniel. 50

40


2.11 Casa

Elettrica at Monza

by Piero Bottoni,

Figini and Pollini,

et al., 1930

Source: Archivio

Fotografico © La

Triennale di Milano

At a time when Rationalist architecture was being criticized as un-Italian, examples

like those in the exhibit that connected Modern buildings with the folk tradition of

Mediterranean architecture served as an effective defense. Tafuri’s archeology of

architectural neorealism begins with Pagano’s photography to demonstrate what

he termed the “myth of naturalness.” 51 The revival of appreciation for architecture

without architects would become fundamental to Albini after the war when he

republished Pagano’s photographs and remarked on the essential role that

embracing tradition would play for Modern architects.


In Rome, the Rationalist cause had been taken up by groups of young architects

and persuasive critics, yet the southern faction produced different results from

those in Lombardy, Piedmont, and Liguria. As Mussolini prepared his monumental

plans for Rome, local academics and professionals entered into heated debates

waged through public media and exhibits, many calling for both more abstraction

and new materials as the appropriate paradigm to symbolize the regime. In 1928,

Adalberto Libera, an architect from the Trentino region who had studied in Rome,

and Gaetano Minnucci, who spent three years in the Netherlands after graduating

from the School of Engineering in Rome, prepared the first Roman exhibition of

Rationalist architecture, with sponsorship from the Fascist Union of Architects. Five

hundred projects from five regions in Italy showed the nation’s exuberant Modern

spirit. 52 The exhibit catalog produced by Libera and Gaetano Minnucci offered an

attempt to define their inherited focus, but its vague language exemplified their

distance from the northern origins of Rationalism:

Rational architecture, as we understand it, rediscovers harmonies, rhythms, and

symmetries in new schemes of construction, in the nature of materials, and in a

perfect response to the requirements for which a building is intended. 53

This event brought Roman Rationalists widespread recognition, as their focus

became nationalist intentions of the Fascist “spirit.” Nationalism as Italianità was

primarily a rhetorical problem, and Piacentini’s published assessment of the show

fueled debate about aesthetics, pragmatics, materials, objectives, and styles that

remained largely apolitical. Roman critic, journalist and gallery owner Pietro Maria

Bardi associated Fascist ideology with Rationalist forms by claiming origins for

Modern ideals in the Latin qualities of robustness—mass and weight—typical of

some Rationalists’ works. 54 In 1931, Bardi argued for architecture as a state art in his

book, Rapporto sull’architettura per Mussolini, which raised the political temperature

of the debates. Bardi would later marry Lina Bo, who had studied architecture in

Rome and relocated to Milan where she worked with Gio Ponti. Lina Bo Bardi would

be responsible after the war for commissioning Albini to design an exhibit in São

Paulo where she was intent on importing northern Italian Rationalist tendencies.

Milan’s design exhibitions during the 1930s were less volatile and politically

charged. Here Albini and other young architects found some of their first

opportunities to present work to an erudite, culturally incisive audience. Shows

at the Triennale and other Milanese galleries were experimental rather than

demonstrative and proved formative for the evolution of shared local interests.

Ephemeral installations at the scale of buildings were produced for industries,

including INA (Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni), the national insurance

association. The Triennale took on Modern dwelling, with proposed innovations

for construction methods, interiors, and furniture to propose aesthetically integral

housing. After the 1930 Monza exposition, Giovanni Muzio designed the Triennale

Hall in the Parco Sempione, thereby shifting the epicenter of progressive culture

from the urban periphery to the center of Milan. The new facility and public

gardens hosted well-attended shows in 1933, 1936, and 1940 under the curatorial

direction of Giuseppe Pagano. While a more regional venue than Rome’s national

42


exposition pavilion, the Triennale gave northern architects the opportunity to

explore new materials and construction methods in full-scale fabrication with

less intimidation from academic or political rivals. Albini was active in each of the

three Triennale events. His finely crafted installations both in collaboration and for

independent installation during subsequent shows were the results of innovative

and inventive uses of new materials and techniques of assemblage. He received

widespread recognition for his experiments, which in turn informed his later

commissions, especially his post-war museum projects. His aeronautics exhibit,

antique goldsmiths show, surreal interiors, and other novel furniture and designs

will be discussed in the next chapter.

New civic structures resulting from Roman competitions began to establish a

more monumental and solid expression than those presented by the northern

version of transparency and weightlessness. The best examples, however, avoid

the tradition of Roman pretension of adorned surfaces and figurative symbols.

Mario Ridolfi’s post office at Piazza Bologna, built in 1933, characterized the

gravitas of Roman Modernity in a single solid mass, while Mario De Renzi and

Adalberto Libera built a second post office near the Pyramid of Cestius. 55 Both

postal centers have entrances marked not with giant doors but with sweeping

voids that introduced luminous, Modern public halls made more generous by

their horizontal proportions, elegant details, and daylight.

Several new urban interventions in Rome demonstrated the power of the

Fascist regime to accomplish grand projects while suppressing public controversy.

Piacentini controlled both monumental new plans and sventramenti, or the

gutting of existing neighborhoods for urban renewal. His masterplan for Rome,

presented to Mussolini on October 28, 1930, surpassed the previous “Grande

Roma” plan of 1925 and reversed his preservationist position following Camillo

Sitte in preference of the grandiose. The Foro Italico (previously called Foro

Mussolini) begun in 1928 for the Rome Olympics, the University of Rome (1932–

35), and EUR ’42 were each planned by Piacentini for Rome’s periphery, and each

of his interventions strategically integrated contributions by both Rationalists

and Novecento designers. 56

Although Rationalist architects had already received impressive commissions

in the regime’s modernization campaign, their new buildings had to date

made little impact at the scale of urban design. That changed with the new

towns of the Agro Pontino south of Rome. The Opera Nazionale Combattenti

(ONC), the organization of national war veterans, was assigned responsibility

for constructing the commercial and residential centers within the agricultural

areas of the newly drained swamps. The new towns were fast-tracked and

received widespread promotion, becoming a source of pride for the regime.

The first competition was held in 1933 for the town of Sabaudia on the seaside

south of Rome. 57 Mussolini kept close watch on the project’s development,

since it was intended to satisfy his social objectives as well as serve as a formal

symbol for his new economic programs. Sabaudia and other Fascist new towns

could not have differed more from the Milano Verde plan (1938) by Albini and

his companions, conceived to address pressing needs of the existing city.


EUR, begun in 1937 and abandoned by 1941, can also be contrasted to the Milano

Verde plan that focused instead on housing and the well-being of residents and

the future of the Modern city over grand axes and political monuments. Albini

co-authored the plan with leading Lombard architects while he built new massive

housing complexes in Milan. 58 The plan resulted from research that linked dwellings,

services, social activities, and infrastructure within satellite neighborhoods, and

was quickly disseminated by way of CIAM and journal publications, and they record

important transformations in Albini’s designs for collective housing.

It is worth noting that the PNF (Partito Nazionale Fascista/National Fascist Party)

produced an unprecedented amount of high quality Modern construction in a

variety of architectural expressions, and in doing so sustained ample exposure

without ever asserting a regime style. Open discussion was never prohibited, and

formative debates about controversial Modern ideas flourished to foster critical

inquiry during a period of prolific construction. Experimentation and variability of

expression distinguished Fascist architecture from that of other totalitarian powers,

which tended toward more formulaic classicism and monumental statements,

often subverting human scale. Recent scholarship has nuanced the differences

between these two branches of Italian Modern architecture that often confront

Milan with Rome, weightless transparency with solid plasticity, and Fascist with

anti-Fascist tendencies.

What remains significant from the period of Italian architecture from 1922 to 1943

is the complexity and sophistication of buildings and proposals that evolved as

human needs, construction techniques and qualities of materials changed, wherein

2.12 Sketches

for the Milano

Verde urban design

proposal, 1938

44


both classicist and avant-garde Modern trends were supported and critical voices

from various persuasions could flourish. Recent studies have also addressed the

challenge of affiliating buildings by style with the regime, especially since many

architects changed their position with respect to the PNF as the war progressed,

and not all architects succumbed to political pressures. Albini was among those

who remained politically neutral in spite of the increasingly oppressive climate.

A wide variety of symbolic structures expressing Modern themes built during

Mussolini’s regime were censured after the war along with those architects who

had worked for him. As a leading figure in Gruppo 7, Terragni’s direct affiliation

with Mussolini brought suspicion to a broad category of Rationalist structures.

Deeper understanding of the role politics played in Italy’s architectural avant-garde

throughout the century remains important, especially where post-war eclecticism

recognized a noteworthy but hard fought continuation of the Modern project and

myriad expressions of architecture associated with it. Evident in Albini’s post-war

work, along with his involvement in the MSA, CIAM, master planning proposals,

and teaching in Venice, is his reinforced commitment to Rationalism. Yet he and

many of his colleagues faced somber political and economic realities in the war’s

immediate aftermath that limited their abilities to build.

Poverty and scarcity made aesthetic debates an unaffordable luxury. Socially

conscious urban design, already exemplified in the Milano Verde and Architetti

Riuniti plans, continued to evolve with new urban demands for affordable

housing, transportation, and social services. The Christian Democratic government

sponsored new construction that tried to distance itself from the architectural

expressions of Fascism. However, many of the architects responsible for advancing

Modern technology, construction methods, and building types who were

associated with Rationalism were among those best equipped to address postwar

construction needs. Influential international trends resurfaced in Italy through

publications and professional interactions and were revived and expanded after

trade sanctions were lifted, while some Italian exiles returned home after living

abroad. The second post-war gathering of the CIAM Congress took place in Italy at

Bergamo, near Milan, with its focus on art and architecture, and Albini was among

its planners. The Italian urban plans were exhibited along with Le Corbusier’s

proposal for the reconstruction of Saint-Dié. The meeting was characterized by a

new sense of purpose with an open playing field and resulted in a pronouncement

of seven aspirations for the post-war city. Pioneer Italian Rationalists joined an

evolving generation of young designers. Although the academic realm in Italy was

slow to change, the emergence of new historians and critics, including Giulio Carlo

Argan, Leonardo Benevolo, Bruno Zevi, and Manfredo Tafuri, was among the many

factors that triggered the branching of Modern Italian architecture into organicist,

Neorealist, and Neorationalist tendencies in the immediate aftermath of the war.

These will be defined and discussed in greater depth to more specifically situate

Albini’s unique contributions and post-war advances.

Before describing the important role CIAM played in reintegrating Italian Modern

architects in the international milieu and recognizing the fertile terrain of postwar

Italian neorealism, I will later examine Albini’s first Modern innovations, which


provided foundations for his aesthetic language of suspension. In Chapters 3 and 4,

borrowing from a selection of his collaborations and independent installations,

I will illustrate those formal themes that he incrementally developed through

various iterations of scale and material sophistication. He used small public exhibits

to produce motifs that he later exploited in a series of domestic commissions and

furniture designs, many of which have been often overlooked by Modern historians.

Albini’s sequential experiments revealed a constancy of method and commitment

to craft that distinguished his contributions among his Rationalist cohorts and

positioned him to be selected for his first major museum commissions after the war.

Notes

1 Alberto Sartoris, founding member of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture

Moderne) and Rationalist theorist commented on Franco Albini’s role as a Rationalist

in his essay for the 1990 exhibition catalog edited by Stephen Leet, Franco Albini

Architecture and Design 1934–1977 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1990), p. 45.

2 Forced autarchy, or political and economic isolation, provoked by the League of Nation

sanctions against Italy, went into effect after Mussolini conquered Ethiopia in 1935.

Nonetheless, colonization of the African nation brought design opportunities to many

party affiliated architects.

3 Alterations to the Mole Antonelliana during construction brought delays and

increased costs. Before completion the Jewish community made an exchange for the

building with the city of Turin, and it was dedicated to the king, Victor Emmanual II.

The Mole currently hosts the National Cinema Museum and is featured on the two

cent Italian Euro coin.

4 In 1915 Marinetti wrote his manifesto of war titled, “War, the World’s Only Hygiene.”

In it he belittles the pacifists of World War I and calls on “Futurist poets, painters,

sculptors, and musicians of Italy! As long as the war lasts let us set aside our verse,

our brushes, scalpels, and orchestras! The red holidays of genius have begun! There

is nothing for us to admire today but the dreadful symphonies of the shrapnel and

the mad sculptures that our inspired artillery molds among the masses of the enemy.”

Sadly, several important Futurist artists were casualties of the war.

5 Boccioni’s Architettura futurista (Futurist Architecture) Manifesto was first published

in Birolli’s Umberto Boccioni: altri inediti e appariti critici (Milan, 1972). Reprinted in

Architectural Design Profile (1981), pp. 17–19.

6 “When I wrote that the formula of plastic dynamism enclosed within itself the ideal

nature of our age, I intended that it enclosed within itself the need of our age. In

Modern life NECESSITY = SPEED … Dynamic necessity of Modern life will necessarily

create a revolutionary architecture.” From Boccioni’s Futurist Architecture Manifesto,

1914.

7 Boccioni targeted materials and methods of fabrication when demanding a Modern

look composed of vividly painted construction details and “plastic” or curvilinear forms

that suppress primal platonic geometries.

8 “We must ennoble the excellence of rapid construction materials (iron, wood, brick,

reinforced concrete) and keep their characteristics alive. These materials will be used

in construction following the pure and simple concept of economy + utility + speed

creates tonal contrasts and extremely precious colours. The girder preserved in red

lead can be painted, with all the bolts coloured iris. The bolts will create the decorated

spaces.” Idem, p. 18.

46


9 This was probably a result of Marinetti’s influence. There is some dispute about whether

the Futurist Architecture Manifesto is the words of Sant’Elia or Marinetti. Sant’Elia’s

comments were included in Messaggio, the catalog for the “Nuove Tendenze” exhibit,

and echoed those of Boccioni. In August 1914 his drawings for The New City were

published along with his revised manifesto in Lacerba, the Florentine journal.

10 Le Corbusier’s “Cite Contemporaine” proposals expanded on Sant’Elia’s urban

congregation of monumental high-rises, high density, high-speed environments. Le

Corbusier’s propositions had an enormous impact on the proliferation of Modern

collective housing, both built and theoretical.

11 Antonio Piva, a later partner in Studio Albini, has writtened that Albini owned a copy

of Umberto Boccioni’s Pittura e Scultura Futuriste and left margin notes revealing his

critique of the formalist theories. The citation was noted in the Edizione Futurista di

“Poesia,” published in Milan 1914. From Piva, Franco Albini 1905–1977, p. 42.

12 Ibid.

13 Mazzoni married the daughter of Mussolini’s Minister of Communications, Galeazzo

Ciano, and consequently his commissions for post offices and train stations are due to

his intimate connections with the Fascist regime. He built hundreds of state facilities,

many of which are still operational and in good condition, while others have been

insensitively altered or abandoned. In 1948 he accepted a university chair in Bogotà,

Colombia and only returned to Italy for family reasons in 1948. His post offices in

Palermo (1934) Grosseto (1930), Latina (1932), Gorizia (1932), Sabaudia (1933) and rail

stations in Venice (Santa Lucia, 1934–43), Bolzano (1929), Latina (1932), Siena (1935),

Florence (1934), and others provide evidence of the transition in Mazzoni’s work from

heavy and Classical to dynamically Modern and original in massing composition.

14 Etlin, Richard, Modernism in Italian Architecture 1890–1940, pp. 153–4.

15 Doordan’s Building Modern Italy, Italian Architecture 1914–1936 (New York: Princeton

Architectural Press, 1984), pp. 23–4.

16 Some historians consider the Novecento as a primarily Milanese movement due to

its geography of origin, while coincident works in Rome are affiliated for procedural

or political correlations rather than formal distinction. The Roman branch of non-

Rationalist, monumental architecture is generally associated with Marcello Piacentini,

but many architects and urban designers worked in the same vocabulary. Richard Eltin

distinguishes between Decorative Novecento and Geometric Novecento architecture,

both derivative of neo-Classicism and distinct from Rationalism, but the prior example

is characterized by ornamental features while the later abandon Classical surface

motifs in favor of abstract geometrical patterning integral to the fabric of the façade.

17 Dennis Doordan has distinguished the static nature of traditionalism that glorifies past

beliefs and practices from tradition, which derived from past practices is open to new

interpretation and therefore to change. Picasso’s oft-quoted aphorism, “Tradition is not

wearing my grandfather’s hat but begetting a child,” characterizes the distinction. See

Building Modern Italy, p. 4.

18 See Etlin, Richard, Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890–1940, p. 266, reproduction

of Pier Maria Bardi’s original publication of the photomontage in Belvedere

dell’architettura italiana d’oggi (1933) (View of Italian Architecture of Today).

19 Eventually Rationalist architects produced the bolder, more obvious symbols of

the two emerging camps by designing buildings for unique functions that were

conscious of their innovation and suggested a novel vocabulary of layering abstract

planes with transparent surfaces or voids contrasting with more opaque structures.


Urban designers and those producing major public infrastructure, on the other

hand, capitalized on the desire for monumental expression by drawing from Classical

architecture. Novecento architecture’s simplified historic motifs were the appropriate

ornament for the sweeping gestures of urban renewal not bound by human scale.

20 Unbuilt projects began with a competition for workers housing (IACP in 1932) for

the Francesco Baracca Quarter in the San Siro district of Milan. Completed IFACP

neighborhoods include Fabio Filzi (1936–38), Gabrielle D’Annunzio (1939) and Ettore

Ponti (1939). Unrealized projects for IFACP include Reginaldo Giuliani (1937), Costanzo

Ciano (1941–43), Nazarro Sauro (1941–44), and row houses in 1942.

21 G. Pagano, “Nel disordinato mosaico delle abitazioni milanesi questo quartiere Fabio

Filzi rappresenta una rarissima eccezione … al posto dei soliti campionari della

vistosità novecentesca … un quartiere di casa economiche e senza tare monumentali

si è trasformato in una lezione di urbanistica inequivocabilmente chiara ed esemplare.”

In Casabella Costruzioni, December 1939, republished in Franco Albini 1905–1977, by

Piva and Prina, p. 96.

22 Alberto Satoris identifies non-Italian origins for Rationalism in “Franco Albini and

Rationalism” in Leet et al., Franco Albini, pp. 45–6.

23 “He believed in studying models of central European Rationalism that proposed

exemplary contemporary solutions in Modern terms and in reflecting upon works

from all eras, realized by others, in order to grasp the value and the interactions of

proportions, measures, volumes, and transparencies, and to understand the substance

of the architectural language in question.” Ibid., p. 14.

24 Albini’s collaborators for the Palazzo dell Civiltà italiana competition entry included

Ignazio Gardella, Giuseppe Romano, and Giancarlo Palanti. He worked with Gardella,

Romano and Palanti along with Giuseppe Minoletti on the Palazzo dell’Acqua e Luce.

Sculptor Lucio Fontana was responsible for the proposed grouping of figures.

25 See Piva, pp. 106–7, Costruzioni Casabella, vol. 158 (February 1941). Leet, p. 58.

26 Diane Ghirardo, “Italian Architects and Fascist Politics: An Evaluation of the Rationalist’s

Role in Regime Building.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians v. 39, n. 2 (May

1980), pp. 109–27.

27 The villino was originally intended as a healthy urban residential type for the middle

classes, and alternative to the urban superblock, joining three or four apartments

in a distinct structure surrounded by greenery. For additional discussion of the

evolution of urban residential building types, see “The residential paradigm of Roman

professionalism in the postwar period,” by Claudia Conforti in Zodiac n. 17 (Mar.–Aug.

1997), pp. 96–113.

28 In addition to the Cà Brutta, see buildings by Giovanni Muzio: 1921 Exhibition Building

at Diano Marina, Tennis Club of Milan (1922–23), Catholic University of the Sacred

Heart (1929) and Hall of Italian Marble for the Monza Biennale (1930), Via Longhi

numbers 7 and 11 (1933) and Casa Bonaiti at Piazza della Repubblica (1936). In Milan,

other examples of Lombard Novecento design include Casa Collini, 12 (1919) by

Giovanni Greppi: House on Via Randaccio (1924–26), Casa Borletti, 40–42 (1927–28),

model vacation house for the Monza Biennale (1930) house and ramparts at Porta

Venezia (1934) and Domus Fausta (1933), Domus Carola (1933) and Domus Julia

(1932) by Emilio Lancia and Gio Ponti; Palazzo Fidia and other houses in the Sola-Busca

Garden (1926–30), and the apartment building on Via Serbelloni (1924–30) by Aldo

Andreani; Villa Pizzigoni (Bergamo 1925–27) and Monza Atrium with painter Achille

Funi (1930) by Pino Pizzigoni; Corso Venezia Building (1926–30) and Italian Pavilion at

the International Exposition (Barcelona 1929) by Piero Portaluppi.

48


29 In addition to EUR ’42, Piacentini oversaw designs for monumental interventions all

across Italy, including additions and extractions in Rome, the Piazza della Vittoria in

Genoa, the Piazza della Vittoria in Brescia, the Palazzo di Giustizia in Messina, the War

Memorial monument in Bolzano, and the redesign of the center of lower Bergamo. His

writings in journals, including Architettura e arti decorative (1921–31) and Architettura

(1932–43) which he co-edited, record an array of positions from early progressive

leanings to monumental urbanism characterized by rigid symmetry, pompous scale,

and neo-Classical style.

30 Kruft, Hanno-Walter, A History of Architectural Theory, from Vitruvius to the Present, p. 409.

31 Ibid.

32 Albini had just begun working in the office of Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia. He traveled

to Barcelona to see Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and to Paris to make what

Franca Helg described as a reverential visit to the office of Le Corbusier. Little else is

known about Albini’s early travels. Leet, et al., Franco Albini, Architecture and Design

1934–1977, p. 13.

33 The 1928–29 Palazzo Gualino was composed of seven stacked L-plans on a corner site

that compositionally made the vertical structure read horizontally, with elongated

windows and major stringcourses as the only ornament on the otherwise smooth,

unadorned façade.

34 Persico’s apriori role in the progressive art movement drew him to Milan to work for

the gallery Il Milione, and writing for the journal Belvedere with Pietro Maria Bardi until

they had a falling out, and Persico took over operation of the gallery. As a Neapolitan

in Milan, he merged Catholic culture with Modern trends.

35 See Costruzioni Casabella (Sept.–Dec., 1946), pp. 195–8, constituted a single issue of

the journal dedicated to the memory and contribution to architecture and Italian

culture by Giuseppe Pagano, the former director of Casabella. That issue featured

his photographs of rural Italian buildings suggesting the perpetuation of tradition

in architecture as a progressive strategy. The journal later continued publication in

another form when revived as Casabella continuità by Ernesto Nathan Rogers.

36 Edoardo Persico moved to Milan in 1929 to work in the Galleria Bardi, owned by Pietro

Maria Bardi, progressive art critic aligned with the regime. He later took over the

gallery and renamed it Galleria del Milione, where he influenced the progressive art

movement through exhibitions and writing for the journal Belvedere.

37 M. Albini, “Evoluzione di una Poeta.” Zero Gravity, p. 202.

38 The corner solution of the Novocomum bore a striking resemblance to Aleksandrovic

Golosov’s City Worker’s Club built in Moscow in 1928 damaging Terragni’s reputation

with allegations of plagiarism.

39 Later research by Peter Eisenman and Thomas Schumacher restored formal interest

in Terragni’s brief but important activity through their teaching and publication that

in part stripped his work of its political symbolism. See Peter Eisenman’s Giuseppe

Terragni: Transformations, Decompositions, Critiques (New York: Monacelli Press, 2003).

Also Schumacher’s Surface and Symbol: Giuseppe Terragni and the Italian Rationalist

Movement (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1990).

40 See Thomas L. Schumacher, The Danteum (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1985).

41 Giuseppe Terragni died on July 19, 1943, after returning from the Russian Front in

January. He was reportedly apologetic and overwhelmed by the responsibility he had

realized late in his involvement with the regime. See Etlin, p. 378.


42 Ellen Shaprio in “The Emergence of Italian Rationalism,” AD (1981), p. 7.

43 Edoardo Persico, “Gli Architetti Italiani,” in L’Italia Letteraria (August 6, 1933).

44 Rogers was displaced to an internment camp in Switzerland from 1943–45 during

which he continued writing and activist participation in the anti-Fascist Partito

d’Azione.

45 “… to understand the participants of the Italian Rationalists in Fascism, it is important

not to begin with the memory of the last days of Fascism, but rather with Mussolini’s

march on Rome and to consider the relationship of young intellectuals and artists to

the growth of Fascism both as an ideology and as a political system that progressively

gained greater control over professional life.” Etlin, p. 379.

46 Mazzoni was later responsible for the boiler building and offices at the Florence Train

station built in his our bold language in red stucco 1934. Similar support facilities

were built alongside the Rome Termini station in 1940 in white travertine. Mazzoni

was responsible for rail stations in Trento (1934–36), Siena (1933–35) and Montecatini

Terme (1933–37) as well as an elegant post office in Sabaudia (1934).

47 Gruppo Toscano was made up of Pier Niccoló Berardi, Nello Baroni, Italo Gamberini,

Baldassare Guarnieri, Leonardo Lusanna and Giovanni Michelucci, some of whom were

still students at the Florence school of architecture, and worked with Michelucci was

their teaching assistant. Etlin, p. 308.

48 Richard Etlin reprinted several examples of Michelucci’s research on pp. 300–307

of Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890–1940. D. Medina Lasansky has studied

the regime’s promotion of national Italian heritage through its reuse of medieval

structures and has demonstrated the dominant influence of local over central

authorities in determining historic urban interventions.

49 See Lasansky. The author notes Michelucci’s selection of Rationalist works by Ridolfi

and Libera for comparison with medieval abstractions to note the importance of

historic reinterpretation for progressive Modern thinkers, pp. 194–6.

50 The beyond pictorial similarity, the exhibition titled “Funzionalità della casa rurale”,

showed houses with loggias and other repetitive elements. They demonstrated

principles of standardization and evolution of desirable typologies for similar solutions

to constant needs. See also Michelango Sabatino’s “Back to the Drawing Board?

Revisiting Vernacular Tradition in Italian Modern Architecture.” Annali di Architettura

n. 16 (Vicenza: Centro di Studio Andrea Palladio, 2004).

51 Tafuri, History of Italian Architecture, pp. 9–10.

52 Works by members of Gruppo 7 represented the region of Milan. Projects at large

made up a sixth category, but few works in the exhibit had been built.

53 Kruft, p. 410.

54 In 1945 Pietro Maria Bardi and his wife, architect Lina Bo Bardi, relocated to Brazil

where Lina designed the new Museum of Modern Art, which was directed by her

husband. Lina Bo left Rome after completing her architecture training there to inhabit

the more progressive Milanese milieu. She worked in the design office of Gio Ponti as

well as on the editorial staff of his new journal, Stile, until she joined the Resistance in

1943.

55 Libera and De Renzi were also responsible for the Italian Pavilion at 1933 Chicago

World’s Fair called “A Century of Progress.” Motifs of transportation suggested

train, oceanliner and airplane, with an airplane wing over the entrance. An explicit

association was established between Fascist Italy, world leadership, and Modern

communications.

50


56 Architects received commissions either by decree or by winning national

competitions, processes that fortunately brought diverse responses from myriad

jurors of disparate affiliations. Piacentini consistently presented monumental

site plans composed of a symmetrical axis and a series of cross axes, abstract

organizations not responsive to the specifics of their locations. These new

interventions were less contentious than the simultaneous evisceration of Rome’s

historic center, which casually obliterated entire neighborhoods. Among Mussolini’s

embellishments were the Via dei Fori Imperiali, opening Piazza Venezia to the

Coliseum, the gutting and rebuilding around the Mausoleum of Augustus, and the

intrusion of Via della Concilazione completed after the war to artificially cut an open

approach to St. Peter’s Basilica.

57 Luigi Piccinato, Gino Cancellotti, and Alfredo Scalpelli, three former members of

the M.I.A.R., were awarded the project. The plan was composed of a primary and

secondary axis that separated the traditional town hall and its bell tower from

the cathedral and its campanile. Sabaudia was dedicated in 1934; the entire town

completed in less than a year.

58 Milano Verde collaborators included Ignazio Gardella, Giulio Minoletti, Giuseppe

Pagano, Giancarlo Palanti, Giangiacomo Predaval, and Giovanni Romano. See Baffa,

Matilde, “La Casa e la Citta’ Razionalista.” Zero Gravity, pp. 35–41.

3

Albini’s Emergence from Designer to Architect

Albini carries further than any other architect the system based on frames

articulated in space, and to this he assigns the role of heightening the illustrative

structural mass. Thus, he achieves considerable effects of modulated depth in

relation to the balance of the fundamental rhythm of the frames, which, due

to a highly detailed and continually modified experience, has led to a basic

figurative tendency in the development of modern architectural taste in Italy. 1

Giuseppe Samonà

The irony of Persico, in his problematic way of evaluating the questions,

lucidity without compromise, taught Albini the necessity to attain

“coherence with conscience and language” and research would become

the dominant motive behind his methods and his poetics. 2

Franca Helg

Comprehending the poetic qualities of the architecture of Franco Albini presents

a particular challenge. Many have tried to resolve the paradox that finds his

taciturn, tough, detail-oriented and practice-minded professionalism in an

artist nevertheless able to express himself in making the most lyrical of spaces.

Albini’s serial design methodology, repeatedly returning to the same problem

and applying unrelenting rigor to discover new solutions, was undoubtedly

responsible for his continuous growth as an architect. His evolving attitude as he

matured affected the compositional integrity of his design vocabulary but can

already be recognized in his first years of practice. His heterodoxy and freedom

from the confines of style may best be understood in his introspective focus and

persistence of craft, which resulted from small-scale projects that were critically

validated in his earliest years of practice.

Witnessing Albini’s initial projects before and up to the time of his first exhibit

installations and housing collaborations reveals key aspects of his formation. An

examination of a few examples will show that he thoroughly studied each spatial

problem and its precedents. When he worked independently, even in culturally

52


3.1 INA Pavilion

in Bari, 1935

well-connected Milan, where a new collaborative Modern spirit prevailed, his

personal vocabulary emerged, and his clarity of purpose served to guide his

co-authored works. Critics and collaborators alike noted that his iterative process

and introspective personality were paramount. He first needed to exhaust all

possible formal solutions to a problem before settling on a singular theme that

would carry his design through to refined execution. Neither typology nor dogmatic

regimen was of use to him. The solution existed within the problem, which had

to be assessed without preconceptions and measured against the complex

tradition inherent in any architectural theme. Such distillation of the fruits of his

research was essential for Albini to expose the one concept that could validate the

Albini’s Emergence from Designer to Architect 53

project, no matter how small. His synchronic method was independent of popular

architectural styles and offered no certain repetition of material or form, making

efforts to catalog or synthesize Albini’s architecture seem overly simplistic. I will

use a more nuanced approach by comparing selected buildings within his body

of work to one another and to works by other renowned architects in an attempt

to invite a deeper understanding of particular ideas rather than try to codify his

contributions.

The first images produced by the young architect span the period from his

thesis project at the Milan Polytechnic (1929) to his early co-authored housing

projects and they include proposals for Milan’s airport, a school, a pre-fabricated

cottage, office and apartment interiors, and product design items as small as an

ashtray. The myriad scales and impressions of these projects provide evidence

of a search for a vocabulary that is more apparent than any emergent ethos or

process at this stage.

Albini established his independent design practice in 1930 after his internship

with Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia. Formative relationships with the partners had

been established before he departed, and Ponti watched over his protégé’s career,

publishing several articles about Albini’s work in Domus in subsequent years. Ponti

designed the Italian Pavilion in Barcelona in 1929, providing the young Albini

direct access to Mies van der Rohe’s iconic German Pavilion. Ponti recognized

an immeasurable talent in the young Albini, who would later design his own

atmospheric residence that would serve as his most productive experiment in one

of Ponti’s apartment buildings in Via De Togni in Milan.

Ponti was involved in the 1933 Triennale Exhibition, along with Giuseppe

Pagano, that provided Albini with his first opportunity to collaborate on a series

of installations. Pagano built a full-scale construction for an experimental steel

structured house at the Milan Triennale, Albini and others produced furniture

and interiors that demonstrated the functional virtues and sensible aesthetics

of Modern living most suitable for the new Italian society. In this way, the “casa

a struttura d’acciaio” (Steel-structure House) presented a clear alternative to the

home of luxury to distinguish the Mediterranean dwelling later celebrated by

Ponti. These and other ephemeral Triennale exhibits complemented Albini’s INA

Fair Pavilion projects and forged opportunities for dialog among young Rationalists

about their novel notions, interactions that appear to have been more productive

than the polemical battles over verbal manifestos waged in popular journals.

Albini’s projects in these venues would draw attention, especially from Persico, to

his material manipulations and superbly crafted interiors.

By 1931, Albini had begun a partnership with Renato Camus and Giancarlo

Palanti for work on larger commissions, including numerous housing projects, San

Siro, Fabio Filzi, Reginaldo Giuliani, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Ettore Ponti for IFACP

in Milan among them, with other proposals for Bologna and EUR. By the end of a

decade of experimentation, Albini had distilled his ideas into simple, clear strategies

that he tested in urban plans as well as in his own living room. Finding favor in

dematerialized walls, suspended artifacts, and reflective glass furniture, these trials

defined the primary themes and that would recur throughout his career.

54


3.2 Fabio Filzi

Housing in Milan

by Albini, Palanti

and Camus,

1935–38

A single image of Albini’s thesis project from the School of Architecture of the

Milan Polytechnic depicts a monumental façade, viewed in perspective, for an

anonymous, heavy civic structure. 3 It can best be classified as Novecento style,

which as we have seen was acceptable as standard of the academic culture in

Milan at that time. Albini produced nothing else similar to it in his subsequent

practice. Instead, Russian Constructivist influences are apparent in his Mandello

Lario school project (1932), the Milan Airport competition entry (with G. Romano,

1933), the Milan INA Fair Pavilion (1934) and the Fiera del Levante INA Pavilion


at Bari (1934) indicating Albini’s interest in progressive tendencies developing

beyond the Alps. Vittorio Prina has argued the similarity between Albini’s airport

project tower and V.G. Suchov’s 1922 metallic tower in Moscow. 4 Prina has

also noted the possible role of Melnikov’s stair in the 1923 Makhorka Pavilion

in Moscow for inspiring one of Albini’s most persistent motifs, the transparent

suspended spiral stair that first appeared in the Villa Neuffer at Ispra in 1940,

a motif that later reappeared in many of his public projects, including the INA

Office Building in Parma, the Palazzo Rosso Gallery, his La Rinascente Department

Store in Rome and his unrealized Padua Pinacoteca. Generally, Constructivism

was superseded in Italy by Futurist fervor, but Albini’s use of tensile structures,

spiral stairs, and super-scaled vertical elements incorporate more directly Russian

and German trends, and this broad, non-political perspective legitimated him in

the eyes of Edoardo Pesico.

During the 1930s, Albini designed several INA Exhibit Pavilions in cities

around Italy from Milan to Bari. Although none remain standing, black and white

photographs of these small constructions depict a prolific collection of refined

volumes that provided Albini with useful experiments to generate his interiororiented

Modernity. Typically, a single central room was exploited for its double

height dimension, transparent edges, and infiltration of daylight to release the

dynamic of tensile structures and suspended surfaces. His composition of point,

line, and plane to subdivide spaces drove his temporary designs more than any

codified façade principles or contextual influences. 5 Albini’s expressive power

was being unleashed as he distilled the Constructivist-Futurist elements of

superimposed multi-scale surfaces, vanishing grids, translucent planes, and their

roles in measuring his spaces all, in the service of publicizing the government

insurance program.

For his first temporary INA Pavilion in Milan, Albini elongated super-scaled

INA letters to the size of the building to signal the twentieth anniversary of the

national insurance institute. The Grand Pavilion measured space and time with the

profile of Il Duce shadowing a less familiar insurance administrator. Insurance, as we

conceive of it as a market-driven actuarial product, is hardly a subject that invites

such fanfare, which was apparently complete with waving banners and public

announcements. But in 1934, INA was an early regime promise, and Albini’s artifact

characterized it. He extended the façade of an existing pavilion in Milan using

the large singular gesture of a bent vertical plane, again employing graphic text

and flagpoles as vertical lines to construct a bold statement. He carried abstract

elements inside in the form of a circular skylight over a tall gridded glass wall used

to support text and photographs. Russian Constructivist motifs again figured in

Albini’s INA Pavilion for Bari’s Fiera del Levante during the same year. There his first

use of Mannesmann tubing—construction scaffolding—was extended vertically

to form a partial surface that floated above a cylindrical solid. 6 Albini deployed the

curvilinear diagram to situate diagonal stairs at several locations in the plan. The

shapely lightweight structure formed an upward gesture providing a skeleton to

raise the INA logo into the sky. The round room at the base grounded the dynamic

thrust while unifying the whole.

56


3.3 Stair

for the Villa

Neuffer on Lago

Maggiore, 1940

The next two INA Fair Pavilions for Bari and Milan, built in 1935, were

planned as permanent structures. In both cases, solid rectangular shells made

of superimposed grids at varying scales provided surfaces with maximum

transparency and huge volumes of vertiginous space. Light passing through

gridded glass planes cast changing shadows. Albini’s exterior volumes composed

of intermingled boxes and layered planes recall the uses of abstract planes and

transparent surfaces by Bauhaus masters, but also echoes the work of Austrian

Ernst Plischke, as noted by Sartoris. Each container appeared to be broken down

from the ideal cubic to form pieces that could not apparently be reassembled.


Albini’s parts created their own landscape with little separation between interior

and exterior. The Bari INA structure of the same year is composed of a 3-story interior

volume revealed on the front and back planes, each composed of asymmetrical

nine-square grids. The simple, generic exterior belies the dynamic central void,

flooded with light and shadows cast across photomontage panels that suspend

the insurance ads. The interior graphics were designed by Albini’s sister, Carla.

Vertical rods, horizontal and vertical gridded glass panels and suspended text

graphics provided a marvelous illusion of atmospheric floating signs, intersecting

perspectives, and luminous weightlessness.

Even when exhibiting material that lacked tangible substance, as in the case

of government insurance propaganda, Albini ennobled the problem. During his

first five years of practice, he used these experiments to reflect a new zeitgeist,

and these projects revealed motifs that he would continue to develop over his

long career. Stephen Leet has noted that while Albini was advertising national

insurance, he was also promoting “Modern architecture to the public and

industry” with experiments that would provide the theoretical framework for his

later projects. 7 Samonà recognized the importance of the unique process that

resulted in a “constructive network of articulated frames, which is one of the

fundamental recurrences in Albini’s compositions.” Samonà distinguished Albini’s

language from the style-bound rhetoric of Sartoris or the limitations of Gruppo 7

3.4 INA Pavilion

in Milan, 1935

58


3.5 INA Pavilion

in Milan, interior

with Carla Albini’s

graphics, 1935

when noting that “no particular reference to neoplastic elements is shown or

elaborated with any finality of taste, as would be fairly spontaneous in this kind

of spatial construction based on the expressive qualities of lines and surfaces.” 8

Albini’s formal exploration through his designs for ephemeral spaces continued

throughout the 1930s, facilitated by his relationship with Giuseppe Pagano.

Albini enjoyed much artistic freedom when working in the public venue of the

Milan Triennale; such freedom was a precious asset during times of exasperating

politics, professional and cultural polemics. Pagano’s prolific writings in support of

Modernism with a pragmatic social focus, and of Albini’s work in particular, argued


for an uncompromisingly rigid functionalism. Franca Helg, who encountered Albini

a decade later, discussed his relationship with Pagano as having a profound and

lasting influence on the younger architect. Helg recalled Albini’s commitment

to Modern fabrication methods and efforts to recover artisan practices of

vernacular architecture. 9 As we have seen, Persico was an equally important voice

for Modernism’s social and material integrity, and he was a close collaborator of

Pagano’s. Yet he was often at odds with him, both politically and in the pursuit

of a more lyrical and inventive language, as was evident in his own designs.

While Pagano was describing abstract formalism in nationalist terms, Persico was

examining the expressive potential of Italian developments to the European and

international tendencies of radical rationalism. Yet both men saw in the work of

Franco Albini an idealized version of their idea for new Modern Italian architecture.

Albini may have bridged the disparities between the two key figures, both of

whom were responsible for keeping Italy’s progressive culture centered in Milan

and in the vanguard. Persico’s and Pagano’s premature deaths abruptly shortened

their roles in defining Italian Modernism, yet Albini’s inheritance from each architect

is apparent in the poetic qualities of his work from the 1930s and 1940s. He found

ample means to show his indebtedness.

In 1934, Persico with Marcello Nizzoli produced a temporary display in the

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan with a vocabulary similar to Albini’s 1934

Bari Pavilion. Steel tubing, a ready-made common material, was assembled as a

scaffolding to display photo mural panels in the public arena of the famous arcade.

The use of a steel frame to display temporary exhibits is so ubiquitous now as to

be unremarkable, 10 but what the installation demonstrated during the peak of

Rationalist experimentation was the vitality of immediate and utilitarian structures

that appealed to a popular audience. The imposition of Mannesmann tubing

erected in a public space was important symbolically, expressing the medium’s

constructivist origins and flexible, affordable uses. Speaking in Venice in 1954 after

reviving several Genoese museums, Albini would distinguish the role of ephemeral

exhibits from museums:

the exhibition by nature is temporary. Its short duration affects its character and

sets it apart from the museum … the exhibition has affinities with entertainment,

in its visual language as well: like entertainment, it requires a clear, definite,

complete theme, and an ordering that proportions the parts, devising and

concluding them, like directing the action in a performance. 11

In collaboration with Nizzoli, Pesico produced other mesmerizing interior

constructions that exploited serial frameworks for both cultural and commercial

functions. In the case of the Galleria installation, the contrasting aesthetic of

lightweight and transitory scaffolding inside the existing thick-walled monumental

construction played upon the tension of their opposite qualities. Persico and

Nizzoli manipulated the weight of paradox and provided levity by using simple,

unspectacular materials thereby presenting itself in Milan’s prestigious Galleria as

an alternative to Pagano’s rigid functionalism. The cross sensibilities of a kind of

cage in a cave expressed immediacy and the freshness of experimentation giving

currency to the moment.

60


3.6 “Italian

Aeronautics

Exhibition”

by Albini and

Giovanni

Romano, 1934

From June to October 1934 the “Italian Aeronautics Exhibition” held at

Giovanni Muzio’s Palazzo dell’Arte in Milan’s Parco Sempione included Albini’s “Sala

dell’Aerodinamica”. The exhibition was curated by Pagano, Carlo A. Felice, and

Colonel Francesco Cutry of the Aeronautical Ministry. Like the insurance pavilions,

the exhibit was intended to celebrate a series of events rather than put precious

artifacts on display. Albini again used his scalable lightweight motif of grids and

lattices forming transparent planes to subdivide the room and support suspended

panels of information. Carefully composed graphic text and photographic

images could be viewed simultaneously at close and distant ranges, in various

combinations and from different viewpoints, while the entire room was stitched

together by vertical and horizontal lines and surfaces.

Persico and Nizzoli installed the “Sala delle Medaglie d’Oro” (“Hall of Gold

Medals”) for the same Aeronautics Exhibition using a refined and orderly version of

the same spatial grid. The unifying framework held narratives and images along with

fragments of airplanes and death masks to commemorate the lost lives of 26 Italian

aviators during World War I. Federico Bucci has discussed the affinity between the

two simultaneous installations, notable in their use of similar organizing devices, to

represent associated themes of national military heroism. In the exhibit catalog for

the same exhibit, Persico lauded both solutions by recognizing that they “avoided

any rhetorical representation of the people and facts, preferring to express their

objective reality,” foreshadowing the Neorealist tendencies he would not live to see. 12


3.7 “Hall of

Gold Medals”, by

Edoardo Persico

and Marcello

Nizzoli, 1934

Stephen Leet recognized the show’s transcendent and persistent qualities, “… the

exhibit scheme suggests a relentless, internal logic and permanence that belies its

temporary status as an exhibition.” 13

In the subsequent 1936 Triennale exhibition, a similar light matrix of floor to

ceiling rods with luminous white walls and black horizontal surfaces reappeared in

Albini and Romano’s installation for the “Sala dell’antica oreficeria” (“Hall of Antique

Goldworks”). The pair’s debt to Persico and Nizzoli’s design has been recognized by

many scholars of Albini’s early work. 14 Yet a difference in the two shows concerns

the phenomena of the contents they exhibited. The artifacts in the “Sala dell’antica

oreficeria” were made of gold, and therefore had tangible weight, while they cast

warm reflections of light. These precious gold relics were enclosed in glass cases

and supported by white painted steel frames, a substantial variation from the light

wood infrastructure of the prior exhibits. Casabella published the “Sala dell’antica

oreficeria”, as part of the Securit glass competition, conceived to promote the use of

Italian tempered glass. 15 Both installations resulted in the unification of the entire

room through use of an abstract grid structure, while Albini and Romano’s project

also introduced a lighting system to highlight its gilded and gem-studded artifacts.

Samonà admired the carefully resolved proportions, pure rhythms, and clarity of

form of the installation: “… within its severe shapes lay the elegant naturalness

which marked the representations and composition of every subject.” 16

The VI Milan Triennale 1936 Mostra dell’arredamento (Interior Design and

Furnishings Show), coordinated by Pagano, prescribed modernized residential

design for everyday life. The catalog, Tecnica dell’abitazione (Technique of the

Dwelling), focused on functionalist principles intended to guide the industrial

standards of mass production for efficient living. Albini was invited to install a

62


3.8 “Hall

of Antique

Goldworks”,

by Albini and

Romano, Triennale

di Milano, 1936

“Room for a Man,” in which he compressed the activities of daily life for a single

person by layering the most essential activities into a 30-square-meter room.

Later, for the VII Triennale in 1940, Albini installed the “Living Room of a Villa”

within 42 square meters. 17 Both rooms appeared like stage sets with curtains

and perceptively contrived parameters extruded from a plan grid. Each space

was based on a geometric floor surface that organized dual concepts juxtaposed

within each room’s two halves. He set up playful contradictions by separating

daily life into dialectic realms that coexisted within a single matrix. In an address

to students in 1954, Albini discussed the virtues of temporary exhibitions such as

these in contrast to standard museums that rarely allowed for variability, flexibility,

and didactic freedom: “At times it is fundamental for the success and the appeal

of the exhibition to detach the visitor from external reality, introducing him to

a particular atmosphere … making his sensitivity more acute without causing

fatigue.” 18

Albini’s address stressed the importance of the well-chosen theme for any exhibit,

whether permanent or temporary. Each of his domestic installations for the 1936 and

1940 Triennale shows employed spatial formula to lend clarity to his symbolic pairings.

These shows represented a departure from Albini’s previous pavilions and interiors,

all of which had prescribed objectives or artifacts that guided the design intentions.

3.9 Plan for “Room for a Man” installation, by Franco Albini, Triennale di Milano, 1936

64


3.10 “Room

for a Man” by

Albini, Triennale

di Milano, 1936

Albini’s commentary on the polemics of Modern dwelling make these two

installations worth examining in the trajectory of his work because they can be

read as original statements about the “unstable equilibrium” between utility,

poetry and theatricality in Modern life.

The life of the mind and body of the individual were simplified and polarized

in Albini’s “Room for a Man.” The familiar lightweight frame served in this case

to position utilitarian needs such as a bed, shower, washbasin, desk, closet, and

training equipment in precise relationships within a single room composed of

industrial materials (glass, steel, linoleum, and foam rubber). His two zones nearly

merge to imply a relationship between one’s physical wellbeing, gained through

rest and exercise, and mental activities of reading or work. Stephen Leet has

suggested that the playful formal assemblage of everyday objects, including a

suspended bed and glass shower, exceeded Pagano’s functionalist expectations.

He noted that Pagano was reluctant to recognize Albini’s more poetic thesis. 19

Five meters in height, the room formed a square end elevation contained by a

virtual ceiling at four meters that supported a transparent black curtain. The end

wall was faced in rough-cut beola stone, Italian granite, suggesting organic origins

to ground the “body” within the room and visually deepen the scenic backdrop.

Refined and highly crafted wood outlined closets and signaled a machine aesthetic.

Skiing and mountain climbing equipment were systematically organized on the


3.11 “Living

Room for a Villa”

by Albini, Triennale

di Milano, 1940

open closet grid. 20 The suspended bed was poised to float as if in a dream, yet it was

an unlikely place to rest. The horizontal body became the measuring device for the

plan module. A see-through book-wall, or libreria, extended from floor to faux ceiling

locating books on glass shelves. The shelving unit was slid into the “mind” zone of the

room to become the protagonist, symmetrically positioned but off-grid. As such it

stood to mark an inseparable condition of mind and body, integrating the delicate

balance of essential elements for Modern habitation.

In the same year that Albini designed the Villa Neuffer on Lago Maggiore and

his own apartment interior in a new building designed by Gio Ponti on Via De

66


Togni, he also produced the experimental interior acclaimed by the critics as the

only example in the VII Triennale capable of defining Modern principles. 21 His

installation called “Soggiorno per una Villa” (“Living Room for a Villa”) provided

compelling physical evidence for Antonio Monestiroli’s claim that Albini felt with

intensity the contradiction of consistently living according to reason. 22 Like his

previous Triennale interior, “Living Room for a Villa” was organized by the most

ordinary of structures—a gridded frame used to proportion the space—yet

this time he went further, using both plan and section strategies to establish a

contrast between interior and exterior spaces. In this scenario, the 6 × 7 format

was subdivided in half to juxtapose outside and inside spaces through material

distinctions within the same conceptual environment. The room was also

bifurcated in section by a platform made with open wood slats that hovered

over the “indoor” half of the room and from which two swinging chairs straddled

the edge to the exterior. Reflections from transparent horizontal glass surfaces

merged interior and faux exterior space. The ground plane was made of glass

panels on a gridded frame covering a grassy terrain below. Several figural elements

occupied the abstracted spaces, including Carlo del Bon’s mosaic tabletop, Jenny

Mucchi’s pink female sculpture, a live tree, and an inhabited birdcage, its silence

compromised. The interior floor was again made of rough-hewn beola stone.

The collision of natural and man-made elements resulted in a surreal

expression of Modern domesticity where nature and Modern culture overlapped.

A hammock and two striped swings sat along Albini’s Fiorenza chair prototype.

A cantilevered bookshelf and suspended open tread stair supported by wires

helped to express the lightweight, sensuous atmosphere of Albini’s idyllic

domestic realm. In this lyrical, ambiguous shelter, Albini was credited for finding

liberating qualities in the Rationalist milieu and defining a corollary for abstract

art in interior architecture. 23

FURNITURE AND THE MODERN DOmESTIC ARTIfACT

The Triennale installations gave Albini the chance to play with Modern

domesticity as a subject for contemplation and expressive invention. He gave

special attention to everyday activities of reading, working, dining and sleeping,

while researching unforeseen material compositions. His experimentation led to

novel inventions in furniture design that in turn invited more abstract, custommade

pieces into the homes he designed for clients as well as for himself. In his

next series of commissions for domestic interiors he pursued motifs for temporary

room separations and displays of artworks that would become performing parts

of his subsequent gallery installations and integral Modern rooms. During the

same years, Albini produced two pieces of furniture for which the essence of

a basic function was extracted to discover poetry in simple form. Exploiting

the potential for glass and transparency with flawless attention to detail,

Albini crafted a radio as a coffee table and fabricated a freestanding bookshelf as

room divider.


3.12 “Transparent

Radio” by

Albini, 1948

Albini’s “Transparent Radio” (1938) exposed the operational necessities of speaker

and transmitter between glass planes. 24 By doing so, he revealed the components

of sound technology and eliminated its cabinetry. He allowed the electronic viscera

of speaker and control panel to exist on its own and set up a compositional dialog

between opposites. Two planes of tempered glass braced by a third formed a frame

to hold the perceptually heavier and more stable rectangle above the circle. Both

appear suspended in air, allowing sound, music, and voices to float into the room.

During the mid-1930s, the journals Domus and Casabella promoted a design

competition sponsored by the glass manufacturer, Securit, which recognized

selected designers for employing their product. 25 Securit’s tempered glass was

among the Italian materials that fulfilled building needs during the autarchy in

the 1930s when trade into Italy was restricted. Albini and Romano’s exhibition hall

for the display of gold antiquities at the VI Milan Triennale received Securit’s first

68


3.13 Casabella

of April 1937

where both

Enrico Paulucci’s

radio on glass

planes and Albini

and Romano’s

“Hall of Antique

Goldworks” were

published

place award and was subsequently published in Casabella in 1937. On the facing

page of the same issue were a series of furniture and hardware designs by the

Torinese painter Enrico Paulucci. Among them was his portable radio supported

by two glass planes that had effectively replaced the legs of Figini and Pollini’s

1933 “Mobile radio-grammofono” (Portable radio phonograph). 26 Paulucci’s radio

appeared along with his other glass household details in that same April 1937 issue

of Casabella. 27 His design very likely provided the inspiration for Albini’s interioronly

version that appeared the next year. 28

In 1940, Albini produced another prototype, the tensile bookshelf called “Veliero”

(Sailboat), with glass shelves hung on steel ties. Like the glass radio, only one

version of the artifact was made. “Veliero” served as a room divider in Albini’s own

apartment, and it was first published in a photo taken there. 29 The shelf system was

more lyrical than functional, as it could accommodate a relatively small number of

books. The structure consisted of two diagonal ash wood columns that formed a ‘V’

anchored to the center of the wood base over a steel frame held in tension by four

tie rods fastened to a steel base. Each angled column was composed of a bowed

frame with wooden spacers, allowing the steel ties supporting the shelves to pass

through it. Paired glass shelves were suspended on either side of the structure.


3.14 Albini’s

“Veliero”

bookshelves,

1940 (replica

built by Ohio

State University

architecture

students in 2005)

A reveal at the base slab gave the appearance that the assembly did not rest

on the ground and was lifted by gravity in tension. The triangular section of the

meticulously refined wooden column demonstrates Albini’s capacity for detail

precision and reveals his roots in artisan-crafted furniture. 30 His bookshelf was truly

static only when loaded with books, which were pictured upright, lying flat and

open. Alternately, when shelves were empty and engaging no load, the structure

was unstable. Tafuri read the poetry in what he called Albini’s “useless machine.” 31

Yet in this small piece of furniture Albini developed one of the motifs that would

reappear to solve interior display problems in many of his subsequent projects.

70


He designed several iterations of the lightweight serial column that would

thereafter be installed vertically and be held laterally by steel ties for exhibitions and

commercial interiors. One example includes the use of a similar column, multiplied

and positioned upright, filling the Paris Olivetti Store to display typewriters, which

he designed with Franca Helg in 1958. 32

Both the radio and the bookshelf give witness to Albini’s persistent argument

that there are no passive objects. Each was conceived to express utilitarian tools

in a dynamic way. Neither the “Transparent Radio” nor “Veliero” shelves was massproduced,

nor could either be affordably replicated. 33 After several stages of

development over almost 20 years, it would be Albini’s “Luisa” chair, a low backed

armchair, through which he found possibilities for manufactured reproduction. The

ideal chair first appeared in 1936 as a metal prototype, similar to the chairs in the

“Room for a Man,” and later evolved into a wood frame version built for his Pestarini

residence in Milan. Albini continued to refine the upholstered wooden chair, and

eventually “Luisa” won the prestigious Compasso d’Oro award in 1955. 34 For Albini,

design at any scale was an iterative process. He was reportedly never satisfied, and

his critical sensibilities demanded repeatedly revisiting the same problem of craft

and utility.

“Scipione & Black and White” Exhibit at the Brera Museum

In 1941, Albini was presented with another opportunity to design a temporary

art installation in the Napoleanic Galleries of the Brera Pinacoteca in Milan. The

show featured Gino Bonichi, paintings and works on paper depicting traditional

figurative and landscape subjects. Bonichi, nicknamed “Scipione,” was one of the

founders of a 1920s school of Roman painters influenced by Expressionism whose

work opposed the official Fascist sanctioned art. The Brera “Scipione & Black and

White” exhibit, gave Albini his first opportunity to produce a temporary show in

an historic building and demonstrated a pronounced evolution of his previous

ephemeral exhibits. His interior scaffolding pictured in the first chapter was made

of perforated uprights strung together and inserted into four existing vaulted

galleries. The four rooms were joined overhead with a paper ribbon threaded

through aligned portals. The tapered wood columns, drilled with circles to visually

lighten their weight and provide sites for connection, were held in place by the

overhead tensile grid. Wiring threaded through the columns allowed them to also

support light fixtures. Paintings ordinarily hung on gallery walls were for the Brera

show instead positioned on a continuous grid throughout the galleries, anchored

to the columns, allowing them to perceptually float in air. Some of Scipione’s most

significant works were set in brick apses; others were reframed by partial walls or

detached outlines. Albini’s infrastructure unified the exhibit and provoked fresh

ways of seeing artworks. The observer perforce viewed paintings in juxtaposition

rather than in a sequential order one at a time. His kit of parts was not simply a

collection of ready-mades, since each element was specifically designed for the

Brera installation; yet with this internal structural device he achieved the systemic

flexibility and fluidity of a single idea capable of solving multiple problems of

public display.


When addressing students in 1954 about the design of museums, Albini

described his experience at the Brera to illustrate his quest for a vibrant atmosphere

in which the viewer would “feel immersed and stimulated without noticing what

is happening.” 35 Continuity and unity were constants, but a specific theme for

each show was derived from the character of the objects on display. Albini revised

his installation devices with each new commission, and the atmosphere varied

notably with each show. As his ideas developed, he was able to redefine the use

of traditional galleries, while minimally impacting the permanent architecture of

an existing room, and he thereby initiated a new attitude toward historic displays

through his museum and installation design. Expectations for viewing paintings

on walls in heavy frames shifted in favor of superimposed views and relationships

between works presented out of chronological sequence that challenged viewers

of old paintings to see them in the present tense. With a field of paintings filling the

gallery seen at the same time as other paintings in the viewer’s frame of reference,

new relationships would be revealed. Later interventions by Carlo Scarpa, Ignazio

Gardella, Lina Bo Bardi, and BBPR would benefit from Albini’s successful challenge

to static museum conventions.

The work of art, detached from the environment from which it was once

connected, having lost its practical destination, acquires its essential autonomy

as a work of art, and becomes a source of spiritual pleasure by way of

contemplation. 36

Franco Albini

The novelty of placing paintings in a gridded series to float within the space

of the room deserves explanation, since it was neither efficient nor obvious but

produced useful effects and thereafter became a familiar and important motif in

Albini’s work. He had first relocated canvases from walls onto mounted steel rods

in his residential interiors, including his own 1940 apartment. The act of removing

paintings from the wall has a counter example in the easel picture, which, when

taken from its independent site and hung on the gallery wall, lost its illusion as

a portable window capable of conveying distinct space. 37 The psychological

container provided by grandiose Beaux-Arts frames was a convention that captured

the image’s contents to define it and isolate it from the viewer. The reified subject

once identified was then available for scrutiny from an objective distance. Framing

maintained the perception of artificial space encased within boundaries of historic

time to delimit and distance the viewer.

By challenging and redefining those rules, Albini repositioned the viewer relative

to the canvas. Observer and painting occupied the same space, thus establishing

a new psychological relation between the viewer’s present domain and the past

time and place depicted in the painting. The unframed edges of a canvas let its

contents slip into the viewer’s space. By getting closer to the artwork, physically

and psychologically, one could more readily imagine inhabiting the locus and era

that it represented.

Among the many architects directly influenced by Albini’s new attitude toward

installing art in museums, perhaps none extended his influence as far from Milan as

72


did Lina Bo Bardi. Born Achilina Bo, she completed architecture studies in Rome in

1940 when powerful Novecentists, including Piacentini and Giovannoni, dominated

the school, then later moved to Milan where, like Albini, she began her career

working for Gio Ponti. Ponti introduced her to the Triennale and Domus magazine,

for which she served as deputy director from January 1944 until 1945. Bo very likely

encountered Albini’s Brera exhibit installation and his other seminal works through

her editorial direction, and she could not have missed the two-part publication

of Albini’s own apartment in Domus in 1941 where she would see his use of rods

to float canvases in space. 38 As her own designs for museum installations would

reveal over the next 20 years, Bo was captivated by Albini’s suspension motifs that

allowed artworks to hang in the air and occupy the same space as the viewer.

Ponti left the editorship of Domus in 1940 to publish Lo Stile, for which Bo designed

several covers. She co-founded a new journal with Bruno Zevi, and eventually met

and married Pietro Maria Bardi, the renowned art critic and publisher who had

worked aggressively to convince Mussolini to adopt Rationalism’s Modern aesthetic

as that of the regime. Bo and Bardi fled Italy a year after the war. The couple had no

apparent connections in South America, but it is likely that political complications

after Mussolini’s demise threatened Bardi’s large art and book collection and

inspired the couple’s swift transfer of those materials to Brazil In 1946. 39

The Bardis had an enormous impact on the culture of their adoptive home of São

Paulo. They brought European Modernist interests to the city where they published

the journal Habitat, and eventually established São Paulo’s most important Modern

art museum within two years after their arrival. Their connections with Francisco de

Assis Chateaubriand Bandeira de Melo, journalist, senator, diplomat, and owner of a

powerful newspaper chain helped the couple build a network of cultural aficionados

and resources. Through Chateaubriand they formed alliances with wealthy bankers

and industrialists, which led to the funding of a superb art collection. Bo Bardi first

designed installations for the 1947 Museum of Art of São Paolo (MASP) housed in

temporary facilities, then in 1957 she received the commission from her husband,

the museum director, to design the grand new museum. Her first major building

after their own glass house, the new MASP, was completed in 1968 as an enormous

glass box suspended between two concrete slabs. The single 29 × 70 meter gallery

extended views on all sides while covering an open public plaza and underground

galleries beneath. 40

Bo Bardi’s initial installation of artworks at MASP reveals a clear debt to Albini

although here sense of scale and the experiential differ greatly. Notably she placed

painting and drawings in the viewers’ realm distributed across an open field similar

to his 1941 Brera installations. For MASP, Bo Bardi produced glass sleeves mounted

on concrete blocks that could either enclose or support graphic works placed to

float at the viewer’s height within the open plan of her monumental gallery. In 1950

she wrote, “The museum’s aim is to create an atmosphere that puts the visitor into

a frame of mind adapted to understanding works of art and, in that sense, there is

no distinction between old and Modern works.” 41 She echoed the sentiments that

had guided Albini’s work for his client, Caterina Marcenaro, in the renovation of

the Palazzo Bianco Gallery in Genoa (1949–51), where paintings were hung from

rods anchored in stone relics and a medieval sculpture by Pisano was anchored to

a piston on a mobile stand.


In 1954, Albini was called to São Paulo to install the Italian sixteenth- and

seventeenth-century painting exhibit that was being hosted by the museum.

During the same year, Bo Bardi published images of his Palazzo Bianco Museum

in the journal Habitat along with his comments explaining his aim to produce

atmospheric qualities of light and air that would “push vibrations into the

atmosphere” as exemplified in his previous experiments. 42 As we have seen, Albini

sought to immerse museum visitors in the experience of art by offering fresh

experiences of particular historic conditions and collections. The series of works

that began with the Brera and Palazzo Bianco earned Albini much acclaim for

offering alternatives to traditional treatments of art. Bo Bardi’s “easel panels” used

for the 1968 installation at MASP constituted an overextended appropriation of

that notion that lacked subtlety and respected no boundaries. 43

While Albini’s exhibits focused inward and specifically composed selected

artworks in well-proportioned rooms, Bo Bardi’s centrifugal scope aimed for the

grandiose, the countless, and the general. She featured infinite complexity in her

single enormous gallery in contrast to Albini’s more orderly cohesion in smaller

scaled rooms. Her fascination with alternative uses of glass, including her library

shelves in the 1951 Bardi glass house, and her passion for spiral stairs suggest

additional influences from his work, although Bo Bardi’s design methods, drawings,

and relationships to her newly adopted Brazilian context depart from the design

rigor, pragmatism, and discipline for which Albini is renowned. For example, her

red spiral stair that threads through the Sports Center at Pompeia (1977–86) bears a

striking physical resemblance to Albini’s intervention in the Palazzo Rosso Museum

in Genoa (1952–62), but its ingenuity is less the result of a clever solution to a wellstudied

circulation problem than a willful dramatic gesture. 44

“There are no ugly objects”

Franca Helg often quoted Albini’s well-worn sentiment, that no job was too small

or undeserving of good design. “There are no ugly objects, they need only be

displayed properly,” Albini frequently stated as he sought the quintessential idea

that would guide an installation, regardless of the scale or qualities of its container.

Helg was sympathetic: “beautiful or ugly, the work had to be done in the very

best way, without diminishing the smallest obligation.” 45 All work mattered, and

Albini’s commitment to a design practice of discipline, conceptual restraint, and

experimentation continued through most of his career, which introduces new

problems as the scale of Studio Albini’s projects increased.

In the war’s immediate aftermath before major museum commissions brought

Albini new opportunities to design monumental public interiors for prestigious

collections, he continued to manipulate and refine his modes of installation

design. Funds initially available for cultural projects were very limited and the

look of new interventions grew increasingly eclectic. Albini’s efforts to refine his

formal gestures and suspension systems appeared to revive his Modern pragmatic

simplicity. Several commercial projects posed for Albini the display problem in a

new urban context where views in from the street, full glass façades, and lighting

ordinary products for sale invited new spectacles.

74


3.15 “Zanini

Fur Showroom”

by Albini in

Milan, 1945

Edoardo Persico’s continuing influence on Albini can be observed in the

commercial realm nearly 10 years after Persico’s untimely death. Two Milan

storefronts for the Parker stationery shops designed by Persico and Nizzoli,

one on Largo Santa Margherita in 1934 and the other in 1935 on Corso Vittorio

Emanuele, transcended the simple scaffolding and ethereal air of their Milan

Galleria installation. 46 Both vitrines suspended glass display cases and exposed

perspective foreshortening to draw the shopper into the store.

A decade later, Albini produced two shop fronts in Milan with the same delicacy,

levity, and use of full transparency, that reiterated his Rationalist allegiance.


3.16 Holtz

Dermatological

Institute by Albini

in Milan, 1945

For the “Zanini Fur Showroom” (1945) Albini borrowed the glass-mounted translucent

graphics from the Parker shops to compose permanent signage within the glass

wall. Inside he appended a white steel structure to support fur coats draped across

floating glass tables, thereby producing visual tension through the contradictions

of real and abstract, heavy or light, and hard versus soft sensibilities.

Fabrizio Rossi Prodi identified Persico’s imprint on the Zanini shop as a

“vague charm of a sheet of glass suspended above the earth” and interpreted

the maneuver as signaling Albini’s psychological distance from the war. 47

At that time, some of Albini’s cohorts were subject to suspicion for collaborating

76


with the regime, and their abstract architectural expressions were held hostage

as a new government sought to change the kinds of buildings to emphasize

as symbols of a new government. Public housing projects that provided badly

needed jobs for low skilled labor were prevalent and necessary, and democratic

housing councils established formal guidelines across Italy. Albini’s Zanini shop

demonstrated that he had no intention of abandoning his pre-war sensibilities

on political terms. He was not driven by stylistic agendas or populist demands.

He had remained employed earning small commissions while continuing

to produce his novel furniture. Whether inspired by post-war optimism or

internally driven by his own poetic ideas, Albini paid tribute with these early

shop interiors to Persico, his esteemed friend and one of Italy’s most astute

Modern critics.

The Holtz Dermatological Institute (1945), also in Milan, depicted another

example of what Cesare De Seta described as Albini’s “unstable equilibrium”,

a characteristic of his apparent desire to transcend mere functionalism. 48

The detached rectilinear grid of white steel structure that extended from

floor to ceiling was woven together with black cross bracing. The implied

horizontal plane became a datum that recalled his domestic stage sets for the

Triennale and established a similar theatrical set for shoppers to view into the shop

from the street. The Holtz Institute also used suspended glass shelving familiar

from Albini’s “Veliero” bookshelf. He embedded lighting and dismountable

interior supports to maintain the self-sufficient integrity of the system.

Albini’s commercial interiors provided him with yet another chance to employ

elementary geometry for minimal intervention using a portable, modular

structure and a transparent network reduced to grids and wires. His details invite

extensive study to discover his underlying motifs and devices. This version of

his Modern room required that the infrastructure was independent of the shell,

like an ephemeral exhibit. By now it was apparent that the real distinction of

Albini’s work from his Rationalist counterparts was one of personal method,

systematic self-criticism, and patient research, not a look or a style.

The “Veliero” bookshelf, Albini’s “useless machine,” became a template for

several dismountable designs that followed. Descendants of the prototype

were employed for a variety of problems and sites, especially for locations that

called for transparent figures and surfaces to produce a display layer without

obstructing views. The concept model was light and flexible and allowed for

lighting to be integrated into an element that could be viewed from both sides.

He subsequently revised his counterbalanced modular components for two 1946

vitrines: an armature for Boggeri and a second permanent exhibit armature for

which Albini proposed hanging glass shelves with wires and turnbuckles in an

ensemble that could be dismantled and repositioned to accommodate artifacts

of various vertical dimensions. 49 The armature would eventually become the

LB7 Library produced by Poggi in 1957.


3.17 Movable

bookshelf and

vitrine model,

Albini, 1945

Albini studied a series of storage and display models for book suspension

and storage during this period that preceded his major museum commissions.

These projects offer some insights into his recurrent motifs where books were

the celebrated objects of display. Books invite interactions with readers, and the

bound physical element in hard cover imposes notable weight, especially when

collected en masse. Each book is a container that is standardized on the outside

but differentiated within. To release its contents, a book must be removed from its

shelf, handled and consumer. Albini’s architecture for books was characterized by

a loaded mainframe that was charged by the opposing forces of compression and

tension. The embodied energy of his spaces and objects was released through the

activation of its architecture.

Albini worked with Luisa Castiglioni to design a two-level sidewalk bookstall

that could be easily mounted, disassembled, and moved for temporary streetside

installation. Their new model was cross-braced with cables on the upper

level; books provided the weight necessary to stabilize its walls. By multiplying

78


3.18 Baldini &

Castoldi bookstore

by Albini in

Milan, 1945

the single cell into a continuous structure, the designers proposed a series of

provisional shops for Piazza Fontana in Milan. In the same year, Albini designed

the Baldini & Castoldi bookstore in Milan’s Vittorio Emanuele Galleria. He inverted

the outdoor model to form an interior space, as he inserted the multi-level tensile

bookshop within the store, resulting in a new tension between the container and

its contents. Book browsers inhabited the stairs and mezzanine—a structural

mainframe that was suspended from above and detached from existing walls—


leaving the walls apparently free to support only the bookshelves and books.

Albini emphasized the central access of the elongated narrow shop with a central

stair that produced a dynamic space of intriguing intimacy, uniquely appropriate

for book browsing. Albini’s ubiquitous thin white steel rods produced a sensation

of lightness in color and weight. The Baldini & Castoldi bookstore remained

almost unchanged until its demolition within the last decade.

The post-war phase of Albini’s career would be his most fertile, with museum

commissions that demanded the full extent of his expertise. By then he held

clear formal ideas and possessed sophisticated technical know-how that he had

developed through many smaller public and private projects. He would receive

his next major commissions after these small installation designs that had been

lauded by critics who understood his exhibition intentions as unequivocal and

purposeful. At this time, when ideologies were being abandoned in other areas

of arts and politics and architects were criticized for abstract expressions that

ignored the needs of common people, Albini never abandoned his Rationalist

rigor. Self-criticism by other Italian architects faced with aesthetic and professional

doubts often failed to recognize the virtues of an emerging pluralism. New

problems of historic reconstruction addressed with fresh local perspectives could

be easily distinguished from CIAM mandates and International Style dogma. Luca

Molinari has suggested that the “fragile Rationalist vocabulary of the thirties” was

transformed into an “affirmation of individual poetics in search of a distinct relation

to history, context and local traditions.” 50 Albini continued his well-established

agenda and expressive design language, while also questioning Modern isolation,

individualism, and the grandiose urban scale of some renewal projects. He was

among the first to confront Modernist hegemony with the sophistication and

subtlety of his Genoese museums, preceded by his Pirovano youth refuge in the Alps.

Each project can be shown to have been uniquely drawn from his interpretation of

Italian tradition. Later museum masterpieces in Italy by BBPR for Milan’s Castello

Sforzesco (1956) and Carlo Scarpa’s Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo (1953), Verona

Castelvecchio (1957), Venice Accademia (1945–59) and Correr Museum (1957–60)

were undoubtedly made possible by Albini’s series of experiments beginning with

his highly acclaimed Palazzo Bianco Museum in Genoa (1949–51). 51

The Palazzo Bianco established a new paradigm in Italian museum design by

reviving the historic palazzo gallery, maintaining its public exhibition function,

while introducing new light and materials that radically altered the ambience of the

old monumental building. Setting examples for later museums, his new model was

quickly acclaimed by progressive critics, while it provoked controversy from others

for challenging expectations when assigned to rehabilitate the status quo. Genoa

had been exposed to Rationalist Modern architecture by Carlo Luigi Daneri and to

Piacentini’s Novecento urban interventions at Piazza Vittoria and the Martini Tower,

but the Genoese were not ready to overexpose its invaluable artistic patrimony

from extraordinary precious family collections. Most notably, Albini’s exhibits and

interior renewal projects made collections more accessible and visibly attractive,

often by situating artworks in contrasting Modern environments. The key to his

strategy for placing specific work of arts in the right rooms while maximizing

80


the quality of light depended upon a productive tension between them. And

as Albini’s other Genoese museums would show, successful outcomes would

not and could not employ the same idea if the contents of each exhibit differed.

Therefore, his method was consistent, but since formal contexts, collections, and

curator objectives differed, his work never exactly repeated itself or constituted a

discernable style.

Albini’s variable vocabulary of project-specific galleries provided alternatives

to Modernist dogma while exploiting rational synthesis, updating construction

methods, and introducing new uses of old materials. His expressive Modern roommaking

that began in dialog with Persico, Pagano and other early collaborators

underpinned his public commissions. His post-war successes largely depended on

his perseverance and deep commitment to his personal progressive methods and

maturing Rationalist vocabulary. There can be little doubt about the critical tension

under which Albini was forced to reexamine his past accomplishments after the

war, as would be true for all of his Italian colleagues affiliated with the CIAM and

who had worked for the regime. Mounting disagreements culminated in Reyner

Banham’s denunciation in the Architectural Review in 1959 of the Northern Italians

for their “retreat from Modern architecture” and “Neo-Liberty” tendencies. 52

In the wake of collective architectural confusion and ambivalence in Italy,

Albini’s forays into tradition while eschewing stylistic trends and mediating

abstract appearances have withstood the test of time. He held reverence for each

project’s unique physical and historic location and each problem’s essence that

he knew how to exploit resulting in some architecturally confident masterpieces.

I will return to examine Albini’s greatest museum architecture after first

investigating in depth the impacts of his domestic experiments on his emerging

vocabulary. Residential commissions between the two wars afforded Albini the

patrons and projects for which he refined his motifs and occasionally let his

poetry be revealed.

Notes

1 Giuseppe Samonà, “Franco Albini and the architectural culture in Italy.” Zodiac 3 (1958),

p. 224.

2 Franca Helg, “Testamonianza su Franco Albini,” (“Testimony about Franco Albini”)

L’Architettura (October 1979), p. 551.

3 Ibid., p. 551.

4 Vittorio Prina, “in una rete di linee che s’intersecano” (“in a grid, the lines intersect one

another”) in Franco Albini 1905–1977, pp. 21–2.

5 Descriptions of the pavilions that include graphic and photographic images published

by later Studio Albini member Antonio Piva, remind us that many of the early icons

were brightly colored with painted and natural materials in greens yellows and reds.

Franco Albini 1905–1977, pp. 58–77.

6 Mannesmann AG, the Dusseldorf-based German steel producer, provided seamless

steel tubes since its foundation in 1890. Wikipedia.


7 Stephen Leet, “Franco Albini and the Scrutiny of the Object.” Franco Albini Architecture

and Design 1934–1977 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,1990), p. 21.

8 Samonà, p. 224.

9 Franca Helg, “mi si é chiarito ancor piú il valore del legame che esisteva tra Albini e

Pagano, malgrado il divario tra le due personalitá. … Tuttavia Albini parlava poco

dei suoi rapporti di lavoro con lui. Dava per nota e scontata la grande, chiarente

influenza che Giuseppe Pagano aveva avuto sui colleghi piu giovani e sull’evoluzione

dell’architettura modern in Italia; tanto evidente questa influenza che anche valeva

la pena ripeterlo. A Pagano Albini atrtribuiva il merito sia di aver messo a fuoco molti

dei principi informatory della moderna metodologia di progettazione, sia di aver

stimolato l’interesse al recupero dell’artigianato povero e dell’architettura spontanea.”

“Testimonianza su Franco Albini,” p. 553.

10 For an example of the ready-made frame used to provide temporary public exhibition,

see L’Economia Italiana tra le Due Guerre: 1919–1939, installed at the Coliseum in Rome

in October 1984. See catalog of the same title published by the Comune di Roma,

(1984) that includes two essays about the design of temporary installation at the

historic monument: “Una mostra al Colosseo” by Giorgio Gullini, pp. 546–7, and

“Un progetto neomoderno” by Ascarelli, Macciocchi, Nicolao, and Parisio, pp. 547–9.

11 Albini’s 1954 talk presented at the beginning of the academic year in Venice, titled

“My experiences as an architect in Italy and abroad,” is republished with English

translation in Casabella v. 72, n. 764 (March).

12 Edoardo Persico cited by Federico Bucci in I musei e gli allestimenti di Franco Albini (The

Museums and Installations of Franco Albini), p. 26.

13 Leet, p. 32.

14 Cesare De Seta, “In effetti Albini negli anni della formazione subisce l’influenza di

questi amici e se aderisce agli statuti funzionalisti di questi amici … di Persico che con

estrema chiaroveggenza scorse tutti i limiti di una strada a senzo unico … certamente

l’eredità di Persico critico ed artista,” p. 16 in Franco Albini 1930–1970 (Firenze: Centro

Di, 1979), for additional discussion of Albini’s evolving exhibition motifs, see Marcello

Fagiolo, Genesi di un linguaggio L’astrazione magica di Albini e la ‘via italiana’ al design e

alle esposizioni (1930–45), pp. 28–44.

15 In 1937, the journals Domus and Casabella jointly sponsored a design competition to

promote the use of Securit, tempered, high-resistance safety glass, made with sand

from Tuscany and the Veneto, by awarding interior installations and new product that

showed innovative uses of the material thereby endorsing Modern aesthetics in office

an domestic settings.

16 Samonà, p. 225.

17 Albini opened a studio jointly with Camus and Palanti in 1931. He worked with the

pair on most housing commissions and competitions, including the San Siro public

housing competition in 1932, the Triennale Steel Structure House in 1933, the Fabio

Filzi Quarter built in 1936, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ettore Ponti Quarters built in 1939,

and Nazario Sauro and Costanzo Ciano Quarters proposed in 1941. “Stanza per un

uomo, VI Triennale di Milano, 1936,” Franco Albini 1905–1977, pp. 86–7, and “Stanza di

soggiorno per una villa, VII Triennale di Milano, 1940,” pp. 145–7.

18 Albini in translation from original Italian address in 1954 at the IUAV: “Le mie esperienze

di architetto nelle esposizioni in italia e all’estero,” MSA, Baffa et al. eds, pp. 497–9.

82


19 Pagano, “… The idea of this room is not based on rhetorical, purely formal avantgarde

concepts, but on more Modern principles of life, whereby every physical and

intellectual activity is established as an equally necessary part of the individual.”

Abitazione, p. 44 (translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore).

20 Albini was himself an avid Alpinist skier and climber and knew well the tools necessary

for these mountain activities, which contribute to the mystique of his severe, taciturn

character.

21 Piva and Prina, “C. Zanini in ‘Costruzioni Casabella’ del 1941 definisce l’ambiente di

Albini come l’unico esempio che mostra ‘principi di modernità … ,” p. 145.

22 See Antonio Monestiroli’s introduction to the catalog “I musei e gli allestamenti di

Franco Albini,” p. 9. Former dean of the Facoltà di Architettura Civile del Politecnico di

Milano, Monestiroli was Albini’s thesis student in 1965.

23 Stephen Leet has drawn from the comments of Albini’s sister, Carla Albini Zanini, in

Casabella of the same year to conclude, “This interpretation of Modernity, as expressed

by Albini in ‘Living Room for a Villa’ included conditions of paradox, whimsy, and the

incongruous juxtapositions of artisanal mass-produced objects, figurative and abstract

elements, and organic and man-made materials.” See Franco Albini, Architecture and

Design 1934–1977. Franco Albini Architecture and Design 1930–1970, pp. 25–9.

24 Piva and Prina, “Apparecchio radio trasparente,” p. 110.

25 The jury included: Massimo Bontempelli, Giuseppe Gorla, Antonio Maraini, Giuseppe

Pagano, Marcello Piacentini, Gio Ponti, Gustavo Pulitzer Finali, and Senators Piero

Ginori Conti and Edoardo Rubino. Casabella v. 112 (April 1937), XV, pp. 42–5.

26 See drawings by Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini in Gregotti Il Disegno del Prodotto

Industriale, Italia 1860–1980 (Milan: Electa, 1986), p. 173, and view the radiophonograph,

predecessor to the post-war Hi-Fi, in the context of other Modern

household objects in Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, Achievements and Problems

of Italian Design, edited by Emilio Ambasz (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1972),

p. 310.

27 Casabella v. 112 (April 1937), XV, p. 45.

28 Paulucci was among Persico’s Milan salon in these years, and a founding member

of the six avant-garde painters from Turin known as the “gruppo dei Sei.” The issue

of Casabella 112 in Studio Albini shows a hand-marked arrow under the image of

Paulucci’s radio. Having pushed the Modern domestic object to its quintessence,

Albini’s 1940 version of the radio has been recognized as the epilogue of the genre.

29 Piva and Prina, “Liberia ‘Veliero,’” p. 123.

30 Manfredo Tafuri in “Design and Technological Utopia,” Italy: The New Domestic

Landscape, Achievements and Problems of Italian Design, edited by Emilio Ambasz (New

York: Museum of Modern Art, 1972), p. 388.

31 Ibid.

32 Albini and Helg’s 1958 store on rue du Fauborg-St.-Honore was one of a series

of Olivetti showrooms around the world. Other prominent designers who built

international showrooms included Carlo Scarpa, Giorgio Cavaglieri and Leo Lionni,

Egidio Bonfante, Ignazio Gardella and Gae Aulenti. See Patrizia Bonifazio and Paolo

Scrivano, Olivetti Costruisce Architettura moderna a Ivrea (Milan: Skira Editore, 2001),

pp. 142–7. Manfredo Tafuri has commented on the fact that Olivetti entrusted his

international image to those architects who had contributed the most to Italian

museum redesign, thereby charging his typewriters with “an impalpable aura.”

Tafuri, p. 38.


33 It would be 70 years before “Veliero” would be reproduced for a public market. Cassina

now makes two commercial models in white oak or chestnut. They range in price from

23,000 to 30,000 Euros, perhaps in part due to the architect’s trademark and revived

fame.

34 See: Franco Albini 1930–1970 (New York: Rizzoli International, 1979), images on

pp. 99–100 and Paolo Farina, “Design prima del design,” p. 77.

35 L’Architettura (2005), p. 9 in Italian followed by English translation.

36 From Albini’s address to students “The Function and the Architecture of the Museum:

Some Experiences,” at Turin Polytechnic School of Architecture to open the 1954–55

academic year, published in Zero Gravity, catalog for the 2006 Milan Triennale

retrospective. Author’s translation.

37 Brian O’Doherty’s discussion of Modern minimalist painting and murals indirectly

speaks to Albini’s curatorial manipulation of the frame of traditional painting. See

Inside the White Cube, The Ideology of the Gallery Space (San Francisco: The Lapis Press,

1986).

38 “La casa dell’architetto Albini a Milan,” Domus n. 163 (1941 (1940)) and “Come arredare

e quanto costa. Arredamento di un alloggio in affitto dell’ architetto Franco Albini,”

Domus n. 159 (1941 (1940)).

39 Esther de Costa Meyer has raised skepticism about the nature of Bo Bardi’s memories

of wartime events and introduced the probable motivation for the couple’s move to

Brazil in “After the Flood, Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House,” Back Issue Hard/Soft, Cool/Warm

n. 16 (Winter/Spring 2002).

40 See Olivia de Oliviera, “Subtle Substances. The Architecture of Lin Bo Bardi”, The MASP

pp. 258–99.

41 Lina Bo Bardi, “O Museu de Arts de Sao Paulo, Funcao social do Museus,” Habitat n. 1

(Oct.–Dec. 1950), p. 17.

42 Franco Albini, “A arquitetura dos Museus e os Museus na Urbanistica Moderna,” Habitat

n. 15 (Mar.–Apr. 1954), pp. 29–31.

43 de Olivieira. See interior exhibition image of MASP on p. 281.

44 Ibid., p. 184.

45 Franca Helg (1979), p. 557.

46 Leet, “These two small commissions exhibited to Albini and others a lyrical minimalism

and a more expressive interpretation of Modernism than was allowed by a simple

interpretation of functionalism.” See additional discussion about “The Influence of

Persico and the Refuge of the Neutral Grid,” pp. 32–4.

47 Fabrizio Rossi Prodi, ”La vaghezza di una lastra di vetro sospesa da terra, nella vetrina

del Negozio Zanini a Milano (1945), segna la distanza dai drammatici avvenimenti del

conflitto mondiale, rivelando un desiderio di movimento e di gioia a lungo impedito.

Ci appare infatti come il sedile di un’altalena (che rievoca Persico, presente anche nella

purezza classica dell’intervento),” Franco Albini (Roma: Officina Edizioni, 1996), p. 63.

48 De Seta, “Se non avessimo timore di metafore troppo facile potremmo dire che Albini

e’ l’architetto degli equilibri instabile: appunto tra Pagano e Persico, tra la tradizione

del funzionalismo e l’aspirazione al suo superamento,” p. 17.

49 Piva and Prina, pp. 190 and 195.

84


50 Luca Molinari, “Postwar Italian Architecture 1944–1960.” 2G International Architecture

Review n. 15 (2000/III), p. 5.

51 Material similarities in BPR’s renovation of the Castello Sforzesco and Albini’s galleries

are not surprising, given their mutual involvement and close relations on the Milan

cultural scene. Further, respect and praise was mutual between the studios. Mountings

for artifacts and detail of public stairs show some allegiance. Scarpa’s direct influence

gained from Albini or his work is less apparent. Yet where Carlo Scarpa has received

much greater renown for his intuitive compositions and obsessive attention to detail,

Franco Albini’s oeuvre arguably offers more applicable lessons of design process and

diagram.

52 Reyner Banham, Architectural Review n. 747 (1959).

4

The Rationalist House, the Modern Room, and

Albini’s Method

When I first began to work for [Albini], he’d show up some mornings with an

envelope stuffed with little tortured sketches. He had thought continuously of

the problem that was on the boards in studio at that moment—while sleeping,

right after he awoke, while bathing—and he hoped to have found the solution.

He never stopped thinking about “his work.” Every project deserved his attention,

no matter how modest and apparently uninteresting. If enough energy were

dedicated to it, it might become interesting, but it was not to be discussed. 1

Franca Helg

Franco Albini’s legacy has been most popularized in Italy by his post-war museums,

some with haunting interiors that question the very nature of the museum

experience. Scholarship has revealed the importance of his best-known works and

has typically viewed his private residences and domestic interiors as exquisite in

their essence but independent from and secondary to his public commissions.

Yet Albini’s experiments with those small-scale projects provided him with a

certain artistic freedom. They therefore deserve closer inspection before we turn

to a discussion of his museums and other urban scale buildings. His experimental

interiors and houses designed both before and after the War reveal the key to his

unique vision of the integrated Modern room, a critical feature that has come to

characterize his architecture. The fruits of his modest domestic commissions offer

insights about his iterative design process and those atmospheric motifs that

exploit transparent, weightless phenomena, since they evolved parallel to and as

laboratories for many of his defining works.

First comes the awareness that much of the innovation evident in Albini’s

residential designs was informed by his introspective attention to simple

activities of everyday life. In the international milieu, the home is the architectural

domain that has most resisted Modern aesthetics in popular culture, a few

glass houses notwithstanding. Frank Lloyd Wright successfully led a residential

revolution in favor of the open plan, while spectacular dwellings by Mies van

86


der Rohe, Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler, and Philip Johnson are viewed as

masterpieces. Yet most people do not prefer to live in glass houses. Milan was

culturally progressive, perhaps the most open to new ideas in Italy, when Albini

began to practice architecture there; still, conservative tendencies prevailed

in many sectors, not the least of which was the university. Futurism and other

avant-garde movements inspired a backlash and hastened a move to more

moderate trends. Meanwhile, a few of Albini’s minimalist residences received

local renown and placed him at the center of a paradigm shift in stylistic values

for the Mediterranean home. Albini’s simplification of the Modern home, an

effort repeated by many others of his generation, began with the elimination

of the formal salon. His interiors grew distinct as he used curtains as space

dividers, transparent tabletops and bookshelves, open stairs, and streamlined

Modern furniture to integrate each room with a formal gestalt that appealed to

a new population of Modern dwellers. His Modernity was also characterized by

attention to comfort, convenience, and simplicity.

Secondly, Albini’s museums and myriad commissions for gallery installations in

Italy and beyond developed as refinements of many ideas that he first tested in

private apartment interiors, including his own. For Albini, art and the experience

of art belonged in the spaces of everyday life. Gio Ponti, renowned for his elegant

interiors, was among the first to point to Albini’s capability as an engineer while

also recognizing his rigor and compositional skill. For Ponti, domestic spaces were

designed to host “a clear and ordered life, illuminated by interior discipline and

civility.” 2 Albini’s earliest collection of residential exhibits and interiors delineated

the clarity and logic initially shared, but later abandoned, by many of his fellow

Rationalists. 3

Finally, the nature of the Modern room, largely subverted by the breakdown of

the box and the elimination of the wall in seminal Modern masterpieces, is intact in

Albini’s interiors, and works to reinforce the room as the unit element of his mature

architecture. He was among the first designers to critique through his own work

the limitations of the open plan. Some architects defined the Modern condition

by revolution in social class structures and the coincident lifestyles of the common

man. Previous bourgeois standards of the class system were evident in baroque

palazzi that housed wealthy nobles. If the contained and discrete rooms of the urban

palazzo, the Palladian villa, Shingle Style and Victorian houses were relinquished

for an unlimited spatial flow and minimalist dwellings, the transformation might

have social consequences, perhaps allowing better housing for more citizens.

With the loss of the formal room, Classical principles of sequence, proportional

relationships, and monumentally scaled interiors could also be discarded.

By examining idealized Modern dwellings, including the Tugendhat and

Farnsworth houses, Villa Savoye, and the New Canaan Glass House, we realize that

indefinite “spaces” had come to replace proportioned rooms, while the exploded

box that previously contained discrete elemental spaces emerged as the metaphor

for a new architecture. Mies van der Rohe linked the detail to the building as a whole

and effectively collapsed the individual room. In contrast, Albini’s architecture

emerged from the inside out and was profoundly informed by Mediterranean

The Rationalist House, the Modern Room, and Albini’s Method 87

exteriority. Even as the Rationalists were redefining international Modern trends, a

regional northern Italian ideal was beginning to form. Like Mies, Albini also worked

through an idea of architecture dependent upon the resolution of extraordinary

details, crafted with material finesse, but Albini’s tectonics were project-specific

and would not be applied universally in any setting. He interpreted the room as

an integral unit that would result intact, with furniture, surfaces, artifacts, and the

atmosphere of the whole space as a single idea, thereby reinforcing the defined

room to establish a variation of the emergent paradigm.

Manfredo Tafuri has identified several qualities in Albini’s Modernism that

transcended purely rational logic and order. 4 According to Tafuri, Albini sublimated

pure abstraction in favor of the client’s lifestyle, thereby designing installations for

specific artifacts that his intervention could serve to enhance. His authority over

technology and building craft resulted from careful study of details and materials,

persistently pursued, which exalted new forms, while “hiding under a cloak of

modesty.” 5 Albini devised motifs for arredamento (interior décor) to evoke an

unreal dimension of “abstraction as suspended image,” resulting in a “dreamlike

suggestiveness,” exploiting its lyrical potential but with severity that “alludes to

absence without ever becoming tragic.” 6 The uncanny, liberating expression that

various Italian critics found in Albini’s houses of art resulted from the accumulation

of ideas that were first tested in private residences.

Albini was not alone among his generation of Italian architects to work at various

scales; designing furniture, interiors, housing, and urban plans; and experimenting

with new conditions for Modern life—but few arrived at the level of integration

that he achieved. His perseverance and intellectual discipline fostered a unique

tension between the defined room and its contents that became his personal

formal language, and it was through the composition of the total room that his

architecture would have the greatest impact on his era and among his peers.

Albini effectively interiorized transparency as he generated ideas that emerged

from the inside out, since interiors were his most common form of commission

before World War II. He tested new construction techniques throughout his

residential projects and installations producing a sequence of atmospheric spaces.

His use of novel suspension devices and translucent materials in those works

built from the mid-thirties through the early sixties were consistently driven by

Rationalist logic during a period of upheaval in Italian society. Inherent in the

nature of his commissions for apartments, where he focused inward and employed

ephemeral materials, was his effort to maintain privacy as an urban imperative.

Albini manipulated reflectivity and perceptions of transparency using structural

glass and all kinds of fabric in horizontal and vertical layers (curtains, shelves,

vitrines, and tabletops) with contrasting hard and soft sensibilities. He managed

to sublimate harsh daylight with translucent fabrics, glass block and tinted glass to

control direct sunlight and glare. He also integrated his own fixtures to prescribe

the focus and quantity of artificial light. He used reflective surfaces, including

tabletops, floors, shelves, and his “Transparent Radio”, which had the effect of

rendering ambiguous the sources of lighting. The experience of Albini’s domestic

rooms was focused inwards in contrast to those of Adolf Loos’ Raumplan, which

were more porous, as he exploited staged views between rooms and to spaces

beyond. 7

88


4.1 Albini family

apartment in

Milan, 1940

Albini’s personal vocabulary grew from finding liberating opportunities in

restricted conditions even while solving pragmatic problems. Staircases in double

height spaces proved to be useful devices for animating some interiors. Networks

of suspension cables and gridded infrastructure provided him with systematic

methods for hanging paintings, sculpture, shelves, and light fixtures. As Tafuri has

aptly noted, Albini acquired a skill for balancing instability. Inserting curtains to

subdivide individual rooms was an effective strategy for both monumental and

small-scale environs. Each space-defining element—a stair, window, or chair—was

employed in a complex balance of parts to the whole. The code that could bind the

whole was determined by relational transparency, that is, seeing through and past

the interconnected elements that manifest tension between the parts to coexist

with the harmony of the entire space.

From Albini’s early residential commissions and domestic experiments, the

following observations about his work can be made:

1. He internalized transparency to refocus attention away from Modern

Miesian exterior-to-interior phenomena in order to develop interior-interior

spatial relations. Albini’s tactics maintained separation between public and

private domains, further isolating domestic rooms from the public street,

while exploiting weightlessness, transparency, and visual connectivity


4.2 Villetta

Pestarini staircase

by Albini in

Milan, 1938

within. Albini’s internalized transparency was theorized and materialized in

the Triennale installation, “Living Room for a Villa,” as surreal set design.

2. He mediated the composition of “pure space” in favor of deferential

treatment of the container in relation to its contents, and as he weakened

the edge or the abstract building mass, he gave preference to the collection

that formed the room and its perceiving subject. Many of Albini’s residential

interiors exemplify the emergence of the primary room, perhaps none as

effectively as his own 1940 apartment.

90


4.3 Albini family

apartment, 1940

3. His tectonic experiments for rooms demonstrated his belief in the empirical

role of materials. Precise detail and craft were essential to the diagrammatic

clarity, legibility, and endurance of his work. Among his most complete

examples is the apartment in Genoa that he designed for his patron,

Caterina Marcenaro, completed in 1954.

4. He carefully negotiated radical form and Modern materials, often within

historic structures, to transcend ideals of simple purity or erasure and to

realize more complex themes with non-standardized assemblages. He

and Franca Helg converted the seventeenth-century Torre Formiggioni

near Varese into a single-family residence. To provide access to the three

round rooms of the tower, he ran a Modern ship’s ladder stair with a sinuous

tubular metal handrail to form a harmonious composition of ancient and

new elements.

LA CASA All’ITAliANA AND FASCISM

However apolitical Albini was able to remain throughout his career, it cannot be

overlooked that his formative professional years overlapped with the rise and fall of a

Fascist dictatorship. 8 Fascism’s dogma included pursuits to “nationalize” Italian social,


family, and cultural life with particular attention to urban renewal and collective

housing programs focused in the city of Milan. 9 During the 1920s and 1930s,

Modernist practices thrived in many sectors of the arts and technology with most

advances in the north, where industrialization provided jobs and economic growth.

Whether the regime supported Modern architectural experiments in their various

forms and debates about style remains a point of controversy. One might ask whether

Fascism’s engagement with the Modern Movement was essentially revolutionary

or reactionary. The regime’s efforts to build monumental public structures in the

form of government offices, transportation hubs, universities, mass housing, scaleless

oversized urban plazas and Olympic stadia, not to mention archives full of

incomplete proposals for Rome, has left symbols open to multiple interpretations.

Yet the regime’s housing programs were among its most important efforts.

Modern Italian living was yet another paradigm for nationalist fervor. The home was

an obvious target for a revolution in Italian lifestyles, for which the regime sought social

control. The International Style posed a threat to cultural hegemony, so as a counter

initiative every aspect of Classical and Rural Italian building methods would eventually

be revived in an effort to link Modern trends to Italian roots. 10 Essays by prominent critics

of the day, such as Argan and Giedion, provoked battles between the false opposites of

tradition and Modernity. Writings and exhibition fairs provided immediate platforms

for design innovations, with the notions of Mediterraneità (Mediterraneanness) and

Italianità (Italianness) as frequent watchwords in the search for national identity.

4.4 Apartment

for Caterina

Marcenaro by

Albini in Palazzo

Rosso, Genoa, 1954

92


4.5 Residential

stair at Torre

Formiggioni

renovation by

Albini and Helg

near Varese

Albini’s breakthrough becomes even more apparent when we reconsider Edoardo

Persico’s early reflection on the inability of Rationalists to effectively define

Modernism as an Italian idea distinct from predominant European tendencies. 11

Albini’s familiarity with Northern and Eastern European architecture provided him

with models that solved similar design problems and were not limited by nationalist

rhetoric. Working among other renowned Milanese Modernists, Albini’s expression

became Italian primarily by virtue of his nationality.

Modernization in Italy was associated with scientific and technological progress,

which eventually rationalized the dwelling as both a formal and an economic

construct. Throughout the 1920s, with the introduction of existenzminimum

(domestic minimalism) or machine a habiter (machine for living), foreign notions

contributed scientific principles for organizing domestic life that focused new

attention on changes in hygiene, family size, and women’s roles. 12

Gio Ponti’s essay, “La Casa all’Italiana,” published in his first issue of Domus in

1928, distinguished the Modern Italian house from its neighbors north of the

Alps. He claimed that Italy’s mild climate diminished the need for distinction

between inside and outside, allowing spaces and materials to be continuous. In

response specifically to Le Corbusier’s Esprit Nouveau, and the Rationalist manifesto

published the previous year, Ponti insisted that the “new spirit” should not be

concerned only with what was purely functional but with “spiritual comfort” over


pragmatic practicalities. He wrote that to live well required a comfortable place,

rather than a machine for living, by focusing on more holistic needs:

[For the Italian home] ‘comfort’ is something higher, in giving us—through

architecture—a measure for our very thoughts, in safeguarding our customs

through its simplicity, in giving us with its generous welcome the sense of a

confident and rich life, and finally, for its easy, cheerful and ornate opening out

and communication with nature, the invitation that the Italian house offers to

our spirit of re-creation in reposing visions of peace: herein lies the full sense of

the fine Italian word conforto. 13

Maristella Casciato has identified Ponti’s three primary concerns for the Modern

Italian house as aesthetic, social, and technical programs, all providing a sense of

style. 14 Ponti’s emphasis on lifestyle and spiritual comfort was considered bourgeois

by the young architects of Gruppo 7, in part because such concerns ran counter

to the Rationalists’ “adherence to logic and order.” 15 The very notion of Modernity

as described by Ponti in the pages of Domus varied greatly from that put forth in

the writings of Gruppo 7 in La Rassenga Italiana only a year earlier. The Rationalist

manifesto concerned itself less with the specifics of domestic architecture per se

than with a methodology and an ideology applicable to all new architecture:

The new architecture, the true architecture must result from a rigid adherence

to logic, to rationality … . Since we do not pretend at all to create a style,

… but rather to allow from the constant use of rationality, from the perfect

correspondence between the structure of the building and the purposes it serves,

a style to be born through selection … We must succeed in this: to ennoble with

indefinable and abstract perfection of pure rhythm the simple construction,

which alone would not constitute beauty. 16

The authors of the Gruppo 7 manifesto elaborated on the artificial intentions of

style, insisting instead that the aesthetic for the new house must be the result of a

strict observance of new necessities, while simultaneously criticizing Le Corbusier’s

machine and airplane metaphors. As part of its urban project, the regime would

produce new, dense public housing to address growing needs in major cities, but

these projects served a very different population of residents than Ponti’s clientele

or those of the initial Rationalist experiments. By the late 1920s, ambiguous ideals

for the Modern Italian house stimulated a highly productive laboratory of new

interiors, furniture, and urban neighborhoods. Since Albini was first employed in

the studio of Ponti and Lancia, he apprenticed with prolific, effete talents during

one of Italy’s most fertile and polemic periods. There he began to design furniture

and residences with conscious, careful attention to craft and detail, while he could

hardly avoid debates about style. 17

In 1931, Enrico Griffini produced a manual of new domestic design principles

entitled Costruzione Razionale della Casa (Rational Construction of the House). 18

More pragmatic and specific than previous manifestos on the Modern house,

Griffini’s handbook provided detailed information about choice materials and

methods of Modern construction. He applied his principles in collaboration with

94


4.6 Steel House

for the V Triennale

in Milan, 1933

Gruppo 7 member Piero Bottoni for the San Siro public housing competition in

1932. Bottoni and Griffini installed models for “elements of public housing” at full

scale for the Vth Milan Triennale in 1933, demonstrating cost effective ideals for

mass housing interiors. 19 Bottoni stressed that popular housing depended too

much on the concept of upper class housing, and the pair sought experimentation

in affordable local materials such as linoleum, ceramic tile, and native woods. 20

Yet among the most influential models for the Modern Italian dwelling was the

vacation house sponsored by Società Edison and built at full scale as the Casa

Elettrica 21 (Figure 2.11).

The Casa Elettrica was the first majority glass house programmed for Modern

living, built just a year after the Barcelona Pavillion. 22 The exhibition house was

streamlined, economical, and efficient, with special emphasis placed on dining.

Bottoni included an architectural foil to divide food preparation from eating areas

with an assembly line of production, distribution, collection, and elimination.

Convenience and efficiency took precedence in the model home over Ponti’s

idea of domestic comfort and style. The sala da pranzo (dining room) was part

of the open central salon that was separated from the dwelling’s night zone on

the opposite end of the same floor. To allow flexible uses of the room, an unusual

space-defining element appeared in the demonstration villa. A dark curtain that

could be drawn to isolate the dining area from the stanza di soggiorno (living room)

introduced an option for subdividing an intimate area within the grand salon.


Although publicized in black and white illustrations, color was also predominant

in the composition of its Modern interior spaces. The small house included redorange

columns, lemon-yellow ceilings, black and grey linoleum floors, and

shades of blue, green and ocher walls to characterize the Casa Elettrica as a

quintessentially Modern way to dwell. 23

Albini had completed his architectural studies at the Milan Polytechnic one year

before the Monza Biennale. He visited the Barcelona Pavilion the same year. In

forthcoming exhibitions, he would contribute to three experimental shows at the

Triennale and realize several domestic interiors. As we will see in both his domestic

experiments and public venues, these projects trace the evolution of his themes for

inhabitation of the Modern room. At the Vth Triennale, Albini participated with six

architects on a team headed by Giuseppe Pagano to produce the 4-story steel frame

house. Persico had singled out their proposal for “providing practical solutions to

national problems.” 24 On the third floor, the sala da pranzo was separated from

the corridor by a veil-like curtain, similar to that used in the Casa Elettrica. Also in

1933, Albini transformed an artist’s studio into the Pieti apartment with a single

room accommodating functions of sleeping, writing, dwelling and eating. He used

black waxed sailcloth to isolate the bedroom nook, while a smoked glass partition

flanked the dining table made of black glass. The dark materials allowed for some

privacy in a small room, while their glossy surfaces reflected light.

4.7 Pieti

Apartment by

Albini, 1933

96


4.8 Villa Vanizetti

by Albini, 1935

Albini’s rooms typically contained several functions and often engaged the

vertical dimension of the room, which in some cases necessitated the introduction

of a Modern stair. The traditional residential stair was contained between walls and

was invisible from the formal living zones of the house. Albini’s room paradigm

often incorporated an open stair, as shown in two dwellings for the Vanizetti family.

The 1935 villa and 1936 apartment for Vanizetti’s included distinct staircases in

respective rooms as dynamic elements. In the first case, an exposed view of the

stair, and in the second open stair risers featured the staircases as formal objects

in these rooms. Albini frequently exaggerated the stair’s length by minimizing the

tread width to extend a horizontal gesture, but it was his signature spiral stairs

introducing a vertical axis that redefined the genre. 25

Francesco Tentori has referred to Albini’s spiral stair motif as “a fragment that exalts

the lyrical capacity of the architect.” 26 As previously noted, he realized one of the earliest

examples with suspended handrails and treads in the entry hall of the Villa Neuffer

at Ispra (1940, Figure 3.3). He renovated the nineteenth-century country house by

removing exterior additions and interior partitions to simplify its volume and open

the vista toward a lake. Albini centered five enfilade rooms and cut a new glazed

exterior wall on upper and lower floors where the hanging walnut stair was allowed

to fill the space. Stair treads and runners were hung from the continuous handrail by

white tensile rods, pairs of twisting vertical lines like DNA, supported from the ceiling. 27


4.9 Marcenaro

apartment entry

stair by Albini

Albini’s first suspended stair produced at domestic scale remains his most ethereal.

He reinterpreted the motif for many subsequent public venues in more robust steel

construction tackling tectonic challenges in both new and existing structures in

his Parma INA Office Building (1950), Palazzo Rosso Gallery (1952), La Rinascente

Department Store (1959), and Luigi Zoja baths (1963–70), among countless others.

Perhaps his most unique model for dealing with tight constraints was his entry stair

solution for the Marcenaro apartment.

Albini grew skillful at diminishing mass and defeating gravity to locate playfully

expressive phenomena in transparent space. He used staircases, veils, curtains,

98


glass shelves and tables, and other furniture to explore the space between

material layers that mark shifting boundaries. But he largely avoided the dilemma

of compromised privacy and the voyeur. His internalized subdivisions of the room

might suggest a psychological journey within, recognizing the paradox between

body and mind, culture and nature, and the organic and the man-made as we

have seen in his 1936 and 1938 Triennale Installations. The fluid stair inside the

existing Casa Neuffer recognizes the tension of a new spirit in an old building and

provides an early exposé between tradition and Modernity. As such, invention is

one of the fruits of his patient and recurrent revisions. Notions articulated in Ponti’s

geo-cultural definition of the Mediterranean house are realized in Albini’s

projects, but without the stylistic self-consciousness or elitism for which Ponti was

sometimes criticized. Albini solved everyday, utilitarian problems with figures that

activated his rooms. His formal integration of suspension motifs and relational

transparency challenged the banality of functionalism and abstract geometries as

ends in themselves.

Villetta Pestarini

Albini’s 1938 house, designed for Umberto Pestarini, is a Rationalist artifact par

excellence. With this house, Albini effectively illustrated his principles of relational

transparency, using the open plan before reviving the complete, well-articulated

single room. Instead, in the Villetta, a series of room functions were joined into a

single unit defined by structure instead of walls, which were in turn locked to its

site. The new house made a strong statement for Modern allegiances in the style

wars, and as such represents one of Albini’s last major works on a totally empty

site, immune to the complexities of historic context, and public and professional

scrutiny that would soon follow.

Pestarini’s small villa is located outside central Milan on the Piazza Tripoli in a

neighborhood planned for single-family houses. The 380-square-meter dwelling

(including basement) occupies a corner site on Via Mogadiscio measuring

17-meters wide by 26-meters deep. Albini’s site design formed a contained garden

by placing the linear house at the edge of the property to define its perimeter.

The original 2-story dwelling hugged the southwest corner of the site with a

submerged level to accommodate storage, workspace, and parking. 28 Automobiles

entered a gate north of the kitchen and turned while descending to enter a hidden

garage beneath the terrace. The exterior terrace is an extension of the living room

and aligned with the stairwell bay serving to interlock indoor and outdoor dwelling

areas.

The formal clarity and simplicity of the house resulted in visual harmonies and an

aesthetic gestalt that inspired Pagano to provide complete documentation of it in

Casabella in 1939. 29 Calculating the cost per cubic meter (1,305 cubic meters), Pagano

lauded Albini for producing an economical and efficient Taylorized dwelling by

applying scientific principles for organization of Modern domestic life. Parallel bars

of space compose all three of the levels of the house into served and service zones.

4.10 Site plan for Villetta Pestarini in Milan by Albini showing the dwelling as garden wall

100


4.11 Basement,

main floor, and

upper-level

floor plans for

Villetta Pestarini

The 3-meter-wide bar at the outer edge contained corridor, stairs, bathroom, and

storage, while the 4.5-meter-wide zone facing the garden accommodated living,

dining, working, and sleeping on two levels. The service bar buffered the living

zone from the street and was slid northward, away from the urban intersection, to

leave space for a raised entry threshold overlooking the piazza. A contemporary

ceramic image of the Annunciation graced the threshold. One of Albini’s favorite

motifs, the long stair with open treads, reinforced the slippage of the west bar. The

stair met grade on the tangent to its curved steel support. The vertical climb along

a wall of glass block landed at the small balcony over the entry, offering views

across the park. The lightweight stair, powder room, dumbwaiter, and spiral service

stair were all aligned in the 1.25-meter service bar that buffered the dwelling from

street activities.

Interior modular bays produced a pattern that regulated the exterior

elevations. Each of the five cells of the living space was marked by columns

or pilasters on the main level (3.4-meters by 4.5-meters) adjoining a wellproportioned

sequence that formed the total room. The entire 17-meter length

was subdivided by furniture arrangements into zones for working, dining, or

conversation near the hearth. Two bays of glass opened onto a garden terrace.

The studio in the southernmost bay could be isolated with a sliding wall and was

accessible from outside by a door near the front entry. The northernmost dining

bay was separable from the salon by a curtain and was accessible by a door from

the kitchen. The narrow hall stair was silhouetted by the west wall of translucent

double height glass block that mirrored the terrace doors. The entire house was

integrated by simple planar geometries and carefully composed proportions.

The diagram of the house forms two slipped bars anchored in place with a cross

cutting void that connected interior and exterior rooms. With this small dwelling,

Albini achieved an ideal of logic and order.


From the exterior, the glass block void was crowned with a clerestory band 4.12 Villetta

above and grounded outside with a foundation layer of beola stone beneath Pestarini diagrams

showing

the stucco façade. The rough stone juxtaposed with the abstract planar surface

Rationalist

recalled Albini’s “Room for a Man” installation exhibit. The diagonal stair, formal patterns

silhouetted by afternoon daylight, rested on pink structural beams that appear

to slide on the white marble floor. The omission of the pilaster from the structural

grid in the west exterior glass block wall reveals the east-west cross axis. 30 The

repetitive windows with well-conceived proportions and alignments complete

the understated compositional gestalt. Daylight is the primary protagonist of

the house.

Albini’s integration of color in Villetta Pestarini facilitated relationships of

natural and man-made materials. The wood and marble floors and stone façade

assembled a palette of refined surfaces, while color was applied to abstract

materials, including steel and tinted glass. Like many Modern houses, the Villetta

was published in black and white, disguising the architect’s original composition.

Wood was used for those areas in physical contact with human touch, including

hardwood floors and pear wood handrails. A tapered geometric stone firebox was

set into a white wall. It hovered over a single block of granite submerged flush

into the wood floor with inset glass shelves on either side. Custom designed light

fixtures made of thick glass bars and disks surround bare bulbs. Glass shelves

float over hot water radiators. Most horizontal surfaces, including tabletops and

shelves, were made of clear glass to diminish their presence and bounce daylight

back into the predominantly white rooms.

Colored ornament was used sparingly to add warmth and depth to the

abstract container. Albini introduced two planes of tinted etched glass: a rose

colored swiveling panel at the front entry and a blue fixed plane in the upper level

bathroom at opposite ends of the private sequence. Steel trim details were cast

in a range of hues. Window frames, C-sections and balustrades for the stair, and

overhead window boxes alternated between rosey-pink, dark green, or golden

yellow. Steel had no single color of its own in Albini’s palette. Dark or light elements

were emphasized or diminished impacting the perception of their presence and

weight. Subsequent owners of the house invited Franca Helg to consult on its

restoration after Albini’s death. Upon seeing the bold interior color scheme, Helg

remarked, “I didn’t think he used color before I came to the studio.” 31

102


4.13 Pestarini

fireplace with glass

shelves and stone

firebox and paving

This modest urban villa characterized by sophisticated transparencies and

an open plan constituted one of Albini’s rare solitary designs. By locating the

dwelling at the edge of a contained yard, then pulling the garden terrace through

the house with several visual and spatial clues, he made the Villetta Pestarini a

fine example of Ponti’s Mediterranean house:

In the Italian home there is not a great architectural distinction between

outside and inside; … for us the architecture of the outdoor penetrates the

interior, and does not exclude the use of stone, plaster or frescoes; in the

hallways and in the galleries, in the rooms and in the staircases, with arches,

niches, vaults and with columns regulating and ordering, in ample measures,

the atmosphere of our life. 32

The original Villetta Pestarini facing onto the Piazza Tripoli in 1938 as a bold

statement of abstract massing and Bauhaus rigor. In 1949, Albini added a third

floor to the house to provide a separate dwelling area for the same client.


The unfortunate transformation has shadowed the clarity of the original project

and is inexplicable in the context of his other contemporary urban exteriors.

It has been suggested that Albini was critical of the 1938 villa in the post-war

period for “expressing two different cultural worlds that cannot be reconciled,”

a transformation in values that occurred as the architect began to develop new

strategies born of studies in rural vernacular traditions after the War. 33 The addition

provides no clear statement either on its own or in relation to the prior house.

Albini later designed several single-family houses, some of which employed

translated and rotated geometries, moving away from planar abstraction and the

open plan. Thereafter only the Casa Corini (Parma 1967), designed with Franca

Helg, employed a flat roof. 34

Private Apartments for his Patron and Himself

Albini’s next important domestic project was his family’s 1940 apartment on

Via De Togni in Milan. He designed for himself what would begin a series of

experiments juxtaposing historic artifacts with contemporary furniture in open

spatial constructions. He introduced several motifs, including his glass furniture,

translucent curtains-as-walls, and appended artworks to launch an important

new thesis for the integration of past and contemporary artifacts. His personal

collection, including his “Transparent Radio”, “Veliero” bookshelf, glass-topped

tables, and “Fiorenza” chairs, appeared together among the family’s collection of

eighteenth-century paintings. 35 He introduced floor-to-ceiling white steel rods to

support those paintings, which he removed from their frames and positioned with

strategically placed overhead lighting. 36 By relocating his collection of artworks,

then reducing their visual and physical weight, the subject of each canvas could be

perceived anew (Figures 4.1 and 4.3).

Once the paintings were relocated, Albini further dematerialized the major wall

surfaces in his apartment with sheer white curtains that hung the entire dimensions

of the perimeter walls. Fabric extended beyond window frames to reach cornerto-corner

in the room and was suspended from ceiling to floor with concealed

hardware. By veiling the entire wall, Albini reduced the quantity and cooled

the quality of daylight and softened the room’s planar edge. Windows seemed

detached from the public realm outside, while the wall was rendered ambiguous,

focusing attention on the artifacts within the room. An opaque azure curtain in

the salon also separated dining and living functions while maintaining the room’s

flexibility. The way Albini combined old and new elements would foreshadow his

more radical post-war installations that called for displaying historic collections in

revitalized monuments.

In 1949, Albini was awarded the first of four prestigious museum commissions

by the director of the cultural ministry for the city of Genoa, Caterina Marcenaro. 37

Marcenaro had spent many years in cultural arts public administration and brought

well-informed insights about updating the city’s vast collections. Further, she

possessed the authority to intervene on several monumental buildings in Genoa’s

104


relatively conservative cultural environment. It had become her responsibility to

restore bomb-damaged historic sites in the city center while providing public

access to medieval and Baroque collections once belonging to the Church, now

property of the municipality. She found sympathetic sensibilities in Albini, who had

demonstrated in the 1941 Brera exhibit his ability to modernize the experience of

viewing timeless collections (Figure 1.3).

Marcenaro first called Albini to Genoa to design the installation of the works of

Alessandro Magnasco in Palazzo Bianco in 1949. She then commissioned him to

redesign the entire museum. His abstracted white Modern gallery inserted into

a baroque envelope would earn him the acclaim of Giulio Carlo Argan, renowned

Modern art historian who was later elected mayor of Rome when the museum

reopened in 1951. Marcenaro awarded him subsequent restoration projects of

the Palazzo Rosso (1952–60), the Treasury Museum under the Cathedral of San

Lorenzo (1952–56), and the Sant’Agostino Museum (1963–79) even as controversy

over Albini’s radical response to the past had been aroused. 38 Each of these

unique galleries, distinct from one another, will be more thoroughly discussed in

subsequent chapters.

Marcenaro would eventually commission Albini to design her apartment in the

reconstructed penthouse or attico of the seventeenth-century Palazzo Rosso during

the same time that he worked on the renovation of the museum housed therein. The

complete project took almost ten years. The palazzo is located on Genoa’s splendid

Strada Nuova and aligns with other baroque palazzi that likewise house private

art collections. The Palazzo Rosso had been home to various generations of the

Brignole-Sale family. When the Duchess of Galliera, the last remaining heir, donated

the palazzo to the city to become a museum in 1874, she specified that service areas

in the building should be rented to finance the museum. 39 When dedicated as the

Palazzo Rosso Museum, the collection maintained its character as a house-museum.

Marcenaro paid rent to the city to live in her newly acquired apartment that was

filled with her own art collection. Upon her death in 1975 and respecting her will, her

furniture and art collection were dispersed.

The Palazzo Rosso roof had suffered damage during the War and had already

been reconstructed with replica vaults by Marcenaro’s predecessor. Prior to 1954,

Albini had removed the new “historic” roof and replaced it with deep concrete

beams spanning the old walls. Albini designed the new penthouse to become

both her dwelling and office. High above the narrow streets of Genoa, Marcenaro

was integrally joined to the museum, since her private apartment was also entered

directly from the gallery sequence. She had become a part of the building that

defined her professional life. Administration areas of the museum were directly

linked to her home office.

Marcenaro’s private collection of artworks was notable, and the apartment

project for his museum patron gave Albini the chance to exercise his ideas

of relational transparency by intermingling old art with his contemporary

furniture in open space. His allestimento (interior finish details) included black

steel tensile members that supported canvases from a steel band cornice.

A cherubic sculpture dangled from a single steel rod in the living area.


The open tread loft stair was hung from the library mezzanine. It did not reach

the ground. The beola stone fireplace hearth appeared to float, while the

trumpet-shaped exhaust cap and tray hovered above it. Marcenaro’s apartment

constituted Albini’s most impressive private interior to date where one would

again find antiquities married to Modern spatial motifs. 40

Yet controversy arose when Gio Ponti published “The house of an art lover

on the last floor of an ancient palace,” in Domus in 1955. 41 In spite of the lack of

identification of the client or specific location, a journalist claimed to have recognized

a work from the public collection in the private dwelling, which was untrue and

eventually dismissed. While Ponti aimed for discretion, he was nevertheless overtly

complimentary. “This interior by Albini represented the perfect house, one in which

he found his motive for integrating ancient and Modern contents, and that practice

which grew widespread among our best architects, has come to define the Italian

character … and there is a justification for this, since our Modern bookstores have

the works of current and historic authors and our music libraries have the works of

old and contemporary musicians, so in our houses, we have paintings and furniture

by past and present artists.” 42

Following Marcenaro’s death and the dismantling of her collection, her

apartment was divided with temporary partitions and used for storage and

staff offices. Fortunately, custom elements of Albini’s original intervention

were conserved. In 2007, the Marcenaro apartment was opened to the public

with a faithful attempt to replicate Albini’s original design. Missing from

renovation, due to safety and accessibility limitations, is the original open-riser

slate stair with carved treads cantilevered from a spiraling steel bar (Figure 4.9).

4.14 Suspended

fireplace hood

and stone hearth

in Marcenaro’s

Genoese

apartment

106


4.15 Marcenaro

apartment before

2007 restoration

This part of the previous entry sequence had provided her direct access to the

street. It is now isolated as an improbable emergency exit. 43 But by including the

apartment as part of the public museum sequence, the unique character of the

dwelling lends insights into Genoa’s most important curator’s perspective on art

and her collaboration with Albini. The symbiotic relationship between the two

was responsible for several revived galleries during the most productive period in

Italian museum design.

As recently as the last decade, controversy surrounding Albini’s apartment

design for the museum director had reduced it to storage space. With the cultural

activities focused on the city of Genoa, including a gathering of G8 nations and

selection by the European Union as a City of Culture during 2004, the dwelling

has been renovated. Gallery visitors get an approximate idea of Marcenaro’s

apartment, whose bright Modern interior exits in a sharp contrast to the alleys of

medieval Genoa.

By the time that Marcenaro’s apartment was completed, in 1954, Albini

had produced one museum and was in the process of designing two others

with her, each resolving familiar challenges, those of confronting new

sensibilities in consideration of art from the past to produce a locally specific

and Italian Modern architecture. The exhibition functions of both Marcenaro’s

galleries and her residence were catalysts for Albini to situate historic objects

with new technologies to acclimatize visitors to Modern points of view.


The same month and year that Marcenaro’s apartment appeared in publication,

Albini spoke to colleagues and students of the MSA (Il Movimento di Studi per

l’Architettura) about the relationship between tradition and Modern architecture:

4.16 Marcenaro

apartment

following

restoration

The history of mankind is not the history of nature in which everything that can

happen happens. It is brought about through the repeated conscious acts of

human beings who forever alter the course of its flow. The continuum of events is

not in itself tradition. It becomes tradition when it enters human consciousness.

Tradition does not inhabit the works, objects, or activities of men just like that.

It becomes tradition when people in the present become aware of it and can

recognize it in these works and activities … tradition takes on the force of a law

that is accepted by everyone. It is thus a collective value consciously accepted and

respected … . Tradition as discipline is a barrier to capricious license, the vagaries

of fashion, and the harmful errors of mediocrity. 44

Albini’s personal insights about the role of tradition in Modern architecture

had formed during his first 25 years of practice surrounded by discussions that

frequently polarized Modern versus Historicized tendencies. While the Rationalists

“new spirit” sought no tabula rasa, neither had they conceived of strategies for

physical integration with historic cities and artifacts. There was little room for

compromise between new and old in any prior theories or practices of Italian

architecture. Albini’s ideas about Modern design conserving Modern lifestyles

108


that can and must embrace tradition connected him to the thinking of Ezra Pound

and the writings of T.S. Eliot. Like the visions of a few other late Modern architects,

Albini’s model for situated Modernism forged connections between innovation

and extant conditions.

Expanding the Modern Dialog Beyond Italy: Louis Kahn

Ever since Pagano, Michelucci, and other Rationalist architects had suggested

indigenous Italian buildings as Modern precedents, interest in connecting the

past to the present had gained momentum. By providing photographic evidence

that vernacular architecture was essentially “functionalist,” in contrast to the

bombastic historicizing of the Novecentists, these architects hoped to “infuse

‘rational’ Modern architecture into Italy with a regional dimension without lapsing

into nostalgia.” 45 In 1946, Albini and Giancarlo Palanti republished Casabella, the

progressive journal long edited by Pagano, with publication of his photographs

from Funzionalitá della casa rurale (Functionalism of the Rural House). Still taboo

among CIAM protagonists and other European architects, the idea of marrying

tradition and Modernity was uniquely important in the post-war stage in the

evolution of Italian Modernism. On several occasions, including the design of his

1949 alpine youth hostel, Albini’s work had demonstrated such a crossover, yet

his sensibilities on the topic differed slightly from those of his contemporaries,

including Rogers, Scarpa, and Gardella in the north, and Libera, Ridolfi, and

Quaroni in the south, all of whom were exploring new trends to incorporate

Italian cultural roots.

Albini’s 1955 address on the topic was soon published in the pages of Casabella

continuità where he described the role of tradition as a “dynamic equilibrium,”

responsible for “the repeated conscious acts of human beings who forever

alter the course of its flow.” Albini insisted that new ideas and forms become

part of a culture’s tradition only when they enter human consciousness, and

this process of assimilation, reflection, assessment and finally establishment

“ensure[s] that progress continues,” while tempering “capricious license and the

errors of mediocrity.” 46 The same article invited responses from contemporary

architects provoked by the polemic of integrating Modern and historic forms.

Their contributions revealed coincident thoughts among lead design voices, yet

none was as eloquent as Albini. His reflection on the inherently dynamic nature

of tradition and the role it might play in contemporary architecture defended the

‘logic and order’ of the Rationalist project while insisting on the necessity of new

outcomes and ever-changing ideas to continually reshape collective culture.

At virtually the same moment in his career, Louis I. Kahn was practicing

architecture in Philadelphia when his work, too, made a departure from the

omnipresent International Style. Kahn had begun to express himself in a new

formal language, not beholden to abstraction and tabula rasa tendencies, but

instead drawing from ancient origins, especially the Roman Empire. He had begun

to study Roman construction, Classical geometry and form, monumentality and


Mediterranean light while filling sketchbooks with ideas he would later translate

into Modern idioms. In his enigmatic fashion, and as if channeling Albini, Kahn

claimed that “Nature does not build a house, nature does not make a locomotive,

nature does not make a playground. They grow out of the desire to express.” 47

For Kahn, human nature had its roots in the Classical tradition, which persisted in

western human consciousness. Kahn believed that by implementing a reformed

language of mass, light and space, that very rich tradition could be appropriated

and would continue to evolve. 48

The careers and buildings of Albini and Kahn indicate some remarkable

intersections and overlaps. Comparisons of selected works that coincide suggest

their shared sensibilities and the possibility of mutual influences, perhaps facilitated

by international meetings and through publications. The two evidently bore

similarities in their rigorous methods, expressive use of materials and dedication

to construction craft. Common intentions, even more than formal resemblances,

situate the pair in the same international milieu and hint at the importance of

Albini’s critical role in redefining Modern architecture, influences not limited

to Milan or Genoa or the geography where most of his work resides. Parallels in

their formal developments, and their museum commissions in particular, invite

comparisons between their most venerated buildings. Kahn became renowned

on the global stage at the height of his career in the 1950s as one of the most

important architects of the century. Albini, who made instant impacts in Italy, is only

now being reexamined as a central contributor to the transformation of Modern

architecture, primarily for his museums and furniture design. Specific overlaps and

similarities in the ideas and buildings of these two architects will become evident

as I analyze individual works by Albini in comparison with those of Kahn.

In 1955, when Albini gave his famous address to the MSA specifying the

continuity of tradition , Louis Kahn was working on the Jewish Community Center

Bathhouse in Trenton, New Jersey. 49 The commission was a minor public work, but

Kahn’s strong structural volumes for the series of outdoor pavilions based on a Greek

cross plan demonstrated the first use of his well-known architectural hierarchy of

‘served’ and ‘servant’ spaces. Kahn considered this project to be a turning point in

his career, and wrote years later in his sketchbook, “If the world discovered me after

I designed the Richards tower building, I discovered myself after designing that

little concrete-block bathhouse in Trenton.” 50 In the baths, Kahn worked with Anne

Tyng to balance masses and carefully manipulate scale with an eye for geometry.

He had spent part of a year on fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in

1951, where he encountered ancient Roman masonry construction first hand and

meditated on the endurance and grandeur of geometrically proportioned forms.

He may have crossed paths with Albini’s work as well at that time, since publications

of Albini’s novel projects were prolific. Kahn’s drawings from that period show a

fresh and willful abstraction of ancient artifacts, including vibrant public spaces like

Siena with whimsical interpretations in colors depicted by the Mediterranean sun.

Kahn had come to recognize the essence of timeless form, and his architectural

vocabulary grew to include a new monumentality, bold volumes, symmetrical

surfaces, and a solid expression in weight and mass.

110


Simultaneously with Albini, Kahn abandoned the open plan and argued for

the formal containment and identity of the room. The coincidence of the primacy

of the room in the search for contemporary architecture is the most salient

connection between Kahn and Albini. Since Bauhaus Modernists had privileged

the presence of the entire building as the unit element of Modern architecture,

departures made by Kahn and Albini become particularly important as reactions

against the prevalent types and trends of their time. Albini’s understanding of the

essential Modern room had begun with his Triennale installations and evolved

through his many domestic experiments. Like much of his preceding work, Kahn’s

Yale Art Gallery, also produced in collaboration with Tyng, was characterized by an

open plan with malleable interior space. The lack of hierarchy and neutral space is

revealed in the Art Gallery’s blank façades made of undifferentiated panels of solid

masonry and glass. Kahn later grew skeptical of the open plan for its loose flexibility

and weakly defined volumes. According to Kahn historian David Brownlee, “Kahn’s

commitment to open planning had declined as he came to see the discrete ‘room’

as the basic architectural unit. By 1959 he was already announcing that his next

museum would be divided into spaces with ‘certain inherent characteristics.’” 51

As Kahn’s work matured, he drew and captioned a cartoon showing his idea of

the room’s centrality to demonstrate his prevailing sentiments:

Architecture comes from the making of a Room.

The plan—a society of rooms—is a place good to live work learn.

The Room

Is the place of the mind. In a small room one does not say what one would in a

large room. In a room with just one other person could be generative. The vectors

of each meet. A room is not a room without natural light. 52

Like Albini, Kahn seemed wholly sympathetic to the growing need during the

1940s and 1950s to reroute the course that ideological or minimalist Modernism had

taken. His desire to return phenomenal weight to the art of building and replace the

monumentality that contemporary architecture had come to lack, a loss mourned

by Giedion, led the American émigré to discover new forms with roots in Western

Classical traditions. Kahn knew the rigors and patterns of formal relationships

inherent in classicism by virtue of his Beaux Arts training at the University of

Philadelphia with Paul Cret. After Kahn’s first European tour, in 1928, during which

he was exposed to the Bauhaus School in Germany, he returned to apprentice with

Cret. 53 Kahn was for the most part unemployed during the Depression in the 1930s,

but his affiliation with Modernist George Howe and the short-lived T-Square Club

Journal of Philadelphia gave him the chance to remain engaged with a cohort of

like-minded designers. He generated collective housing complexes during the

1930s and 1940s that clearly showed his evolving Modernist sensibilities were

guided by his studies of siedlungen (German settlement houses) and new models

of urban planning. He was eventually employed to produce workers housing

with partners Stonorov and Kastner (Mackley Houses) and received government

housing contracts for Philadelphia. 54 During the same period, Albini’s largest works

consisted of government-sponsored popular housing in Milan, which he designed


with partners Renato Camus and Giuseppe Palanti, as he, too, was studying the

genre produced by Eastern European functionalists. Alberto Sartoris has likened

Albini’s Fabio Filzi Housing from 1938 to Gropius’ Siemensstadt in Berlin and Otto

Haesler’s housing in Celle. 55

Career parallels between the two architects are certainly conditioned by

differences in their cultures, countries, and conversations with colleagues at

this time. Each of the two men demonstrated strong personal ambition, each

was relatively shy, and each emerged as an independent spirit to challenge the

respective status quo. The first personal encounter between Kahn and Albini may

have been at the last CIAM gathering in 1959, when Kahn presented his Richard’s

Medical Center project. Albini by then had ceased his involvement in the planning

of congress events. 56

Both architects maintained their own professional studios while teaching at

the most progressive architecture schools of the time. Kahn turned down offers

to join the faculty at Harvard, and instead accepted a teaching position at Yale

under Howe, his mentor, where he could be closer to his Philadelphia studio and

his families. Kahn never drove a car. He had “complicated family arrangements”

with three women with whom he bore children, two of whom he employed, each

within walking distance from his studio. 57 From 1949 to 1964, Albini commuted

to teach interior design in Venice under the direction of Giuseppe Samonà,

who had demonstrated enormous respect for Albini’s realized work and ways

of working. 58 Albini also taught briefly in Turin, but his practice remained based

in Milan among Lombard sensibilities. 59 Each architect avoided the pitfalls of

professionalism and disseminated his ideas through academic venues, a model

of practice for which daily encounters favored innovation and investigation over

the tasks of a businessman.

Like many designers of their generation, Kahn and Albini each worked with

collaborators throughout their early years. Around the time they began teaching,

both developed formative professional relationships with architects who would

become permanent influences on their respective practices. Franca Helg

joined Albini’s studio in 1951 and eventually became his professional partner, a

partnership that lasted for the rest of their lives. Kahn’s collaborations with Anne

Tyng and Harriet Pattison would prove less egalitarian but have noteworthy

influences on his professional practice and personal life.

A few of Kahn’s and Albini’s built and unbuilt houses suggest early indications

of their common formal interests. Albini’s Villa Minorini (1955–62) and Kahn’s

Fisher House (1960–67) both use collisions of distinct boxes with intersections

cleverly finessed. Kahn’s unrealized Fruchter House plan (1952–53) with a

triangular hearth nested in a triangular void was designed at the same time

that he was building the Yale Art Gallery. Although incomplete, his proposed

residence invites comparison with Albini’s Canavese project for Roberto Olivetti

and his Villa Allemandi, built at Punta Ala some years later (1959–61). The Fruchter

House and Villa Allemandi are each composed of three volumes, rectangular

in plan, rotated on 120° angles to form a three-sided geometric center. 60

112


This figure has intentionally been removed for copyright reasons.

To view this image, please refer to the printed version of this book

4.17 Louis I.

Kahn’s unbuilt

Fruchter house

plan, 1951–54

Source: Louis I.

Kahn Collection,

The University of

Pennsylvania and

the Pennsylvania

Historical

and Museum

Commission

Kahn’s rough diagrammatic sketch depicts a novel space with open corners that

served to arrange dwelling functions grouped into discrete areas around a core.

Handwriting on the sketch noted that the middle area was planned as a “playroom

and no purpose,” while the label included, “this space is best not defined. Play,

dine, work, sleep, etc., are all possible.” Additional functional activities were noted

as “study corner,” “entrance,” and “entrance court.” The triangular mass contains a

fireplace with the opportunity for a multiple-sided hearth. 61

Albini and Helg had been investigating the rapport between new dwellings and

local traditions before they received the commission from Roberto Olivetti for a

house on a wooded site in the Canavese Region (1955–58). 62 The sloped roof, which

often alluded to a traditional rather than Modern expression, had entered the studio’s

vocabulary when Albini built the controversial Pirovano lodge in the Alps in 1949.

The fan-shaped Olivetti proposal sought to embed the dwelling into the hillside

slope and incorporate radial views of the landscape. Cesare De Seta noted what he

called a reference to the ancient hut or vernacular cabin (capanna) that emerged

in Albini and Helg’s work during the Olivetti studies, a typology that was realized

four years later in their Villa Allemandi (1959). 63 Type innovation and technological

adaptation may have altered the look, but the essence of their dwellings was

grounded in the search for a site specific, functional, innovative interior organization.


The similar but more modest house in Tuscany at Punta Ala bears a striking

resemblance to Kahn’s Fruchter house plan in which both diagrams join similar,

yet discrete, parts to form a complex ensemble for which the roofscape would

necessarily become the unifying element. However, since Kahn’s house was never

realized and was not likely published or presented in venues accessible to Albini,

perhaps a more likely conclusion is that plan similarity is a coincidence revealing

similar predispositions of the two designers to exploit discrete rooms and simple

geometries. Kahn’s work in the United States would witness the emergence of

the room paradigm after his collaboration with Tyng and his foray into primary

geometries and symmetry. Kahn’s frequent appearances in Italy, especially in

publication venues, invite an eventual narrative that could explain a possible fertile

dynamic linking these two Modern architects.

The Villa Allemandi was a simplification of the unrealized Olivetti proposal that

preceded it, with both projects composed of distinct or paired rooms organized

around a hexagonal nucleus. In both projects, the elemental rooms serve night

functions and are complete with adjoined bathrooms. Coverage of the middle

room with a sloped polygonal roof introduced a radial organization while echoing

the profiles of traditional cottages. Gathering toward the center hexagon was a

formal motif used by Albini for the San Lorenzo Museum less than a decade earlier.

The motif effectively draws energy inwards rather than thrusting forces outwards.

4.18 Villa

Allemandi plan at

Punta Ala by Albini

and Helg, 1959

114


4.19 Interior loft

and stair detail of

Villa Allemandi

At Punta Ala, the south-facing entry was met by a ladder-stair and closet that

supported a sitting area nestled off-center in the skylit nucleus. The hexagonal

space was open and loose-edged, but defined by a central oculus, geometric plan,

and legible structure. The massing strategy denied the usual front façade, while the

interior composition was characterized by tension between solid and void elements;

between the platonic geometry of closed right angles and the open, amorphous

space in between. Served and servant hierarchy was conceptually reversed in this

case since the less defined middle became the dominant volume and the radial

ceiling composition was strong enough to hold the rotated elements in place.


When published in 1963 in L’Architettura: cronache e storia, the Punta Ala dwelling

was revered for employing local workmanship to produce a simple, “almost tentlike”

structure, while simultaneously eschewing “an excessively monotonous and

classicist envelope.” 64 In the journal Zodiac in 1965, Francesco Tentori analyzed the

formal similarities of Albini and Helg’s two house projects searching for the motive

in the diagrams for the unusual dwelling. Tentori had previously credited Albini for

following the only consistent development of Rationalism during and since the

war years, so he challenged Albini’s lack of fidelity to early Modern principles in his

review of these houses, stating that he remained unconvinced by them. 65

Evidence shows that Albini was focused throughout his career on the internal

integration of Modern space and furniture, beginning with his first projects in the

early 1930s. This synthesis of content, motif, and space continually evolved and

distinguished his work from that of some better known Modern masters. 66 Albini’s

affirmation of the room as architecture’s unit element takes a particular twist in

this house. The Villa Allemandi allowed both the rectangular solid and the resulting

hexagonal void to define interdependent conditions of the new room. The novel

centerpiece to the house was geometrically defined, but not easily contained. The

three box volumes that appear in plan do not support the roof. Instead, the roof is

established as an independent element that serves to unify the whole and diminish

the appearance of the independent volumes as read in plan. This intersection of

archetypes resulted in a tight organization, notable in its simplicity and clarity. The

interior experience suggests a duality and new organization with ample possibility

for the Modern room as a “Mediterranean Raumplan.” 67 Once again a pattern can

be found in the interstitial volume between platonic forms in the underground

Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum. Geometry establishes rules that are open to

interpretation, while radiating centers of volumes provide lines of force that pull

the parts together.

Albini’s dwellings demonstrate that scale did not limit his sophistication and

rigor, but instead offered experimental opportunities that helped him to develop

his vocabulary. His long collaboration with Franca Helg was particularly productive,

during their association the majority of his museum commissions would be

realized. Albini’s highly original and timely galleries that bridged temporal divides,

renewed interest in historic artworks, and revived the integrity and materiality of

late Modern architecture to draw attention to the private commissions that he

rendered so productively in his evolving architectural language.

In the next chapter, I review the history of CIAM, which invited Kahn and

Albini into discussions about changing trends and exposed them to new work by

international Modernists while also presenting their projects to a global audience.

In the context of the Italian cultural shift to Neorealism, I will look at Albini’s next

sequence of public projects, and his role in an emerging situated Modernism. The

post-war period unleashed his most influential works, museums and urban office

buildings frequently reviewed by critics, which had grown from seeds planted in

his residential and installation designs. In subsequent chapters I will argue that

Albini’s breakthough in concept and craft generated ideas and produced places

that eventuate in even more uncanny formal similarities with Louis Kahn and other

116


prominent design figures. These coincidences will be investigated in the final five

chapters when “Suspending Modernity” for Albini becomes less phenomenological

and more symbolic of an era in transition.

Notes

1 Franca Helg, “Testamonianza su Franco Albini,” (Testimony about Franco Albini)

L’Architettura: cronache e storia (October 1979), p. 554.

2 Gio Ponti, “Stile di Albini, ovvero il ‘gusto’ di Albini,” (Albini’s style, or Albini’s ‘taste’) in

Stile 38 (February 1944), p. 19.

3 Political associations of pre-war progressive design tendencies with Fascism and the

loss of several decisive figures, Albini’s cohorts, rendered the “continuity” of post-war

Rationalism one fraught with tension. Studio Albini’s projects were continued by his

office, led by Franca Helg, Marco Albini, and Antonio Piva, after his death in 1977. See

Franco Albini 1905–1977, Antonio Piva and Vittorio Prina (Milan: Electa, 1998).

4 Manfredo Tafuri, History of Italian Architecture 1944–1985 (Cambridge: The MIT Press,

1989), p. 50.

5 Tafuri, p. 27.

6 Tafuri’s description of Albini’s “magical abstraction” distinguishes his architecture from

that of his contemporaries because for him “a secret convention was always a dialectic

overcoming of “rationalism,” p. 28.

7 Where Loos designed volumes with section variations that defied simple plans,

Albini conceptualized the particular sensibility that inhabited a rationalized plan

to integrate logical space planning with inventive manipulation of suspension and

perception. Both architects approached the design of dwellings with a personalized

moral rigor, but had differing compositional and material sensibilities and worked

in different physical and cultural climates. Albini’s earliest dwellings embraced their

Mediterranean locus to connect interior and exterior space, light, and views.

8 The full analysis of the political climate during Fascism and roles played by practicing

architects is beyond the scope of this discussion. It should be noted that Albini’s

silence on political matters is characteristic of his taciturn stature in other debates. He

received public commissions for popular housing from IFACP (Istituto Autonomo Case

Popolari Milano). He associated with anti-Fascist critic, Edoardo Persico, and Giuseppe

Pagano who initially supported the regime but later after joined the Resistance and

died in a German concentration camp. For clarification of the political motives of

the Rationalists and state commissions, see: Diane Ghirardo, “Italian Architects and

Fascist Politics: An Evaluation of the Rationalist’s Role in Regime Building.” Journal of

the Society of Architectural Historians 39 (May 1980), pp. 109–27. For a cogent synthesis

of the key players and power struggles of the époque from 1914–36, see Dennis

Doordan, Building Modern Italy, Italian Architecture 1914–1936 (New York: Princeton

Architectural Press, 1988).

9 For discussion of Mussolini’s social project and corresponding urban strategies for

Milan, see “The Sterile City” in David Horn’s Social Bodies, Science, Reproduction and

Italian Modernity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

10 See Michelangelo Sabatino, “Space of Criticism: Exhibitions and the Vernacular in

Italian Modernism.” Journal of Architectural Education (2009), pp. 35–52.

11 See Edoardo Persico’s statement discussed in Dennis Doordan’s Building Modern Italy

(1988), p. 111.


12 Taylorization and Fordism, introduced through venues such as the Fourth International

Congress on Household Economy held in Rome in 1927, served the social programs of

the regime. Management of the household was linked to the wellbeing of the family,

which supported parallel directives regarding the education of the housewife and the

efficiency of domestic organization. See Maristella Casciato “La‘Casa all’Italiana’ and the

idea of Modern dwelling in Fascist Italy.” The Journal of Architecture v. 5 (Winter 2000),

pp. 335–53.

13 Casciato, p. 337.


15 In December 1926, Rassegna Italiana published the first of four segments of the

manifesto of Italian Rationalism signed by seven young architecture students from

the Milan Politechnic. The members of the Gruppo 7 were Ubaldo Castagnoli (later

replaced by Adalberto Libera), Luigi Figini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco, Gino Pollini,

Carlo Enrico Rava, and Giuseppe Terragni. Doordan, p. 45.

16 Doordan, pp. 46–7.

17 Through prolific design production and the editorship of Domus, Gio Ponti indeed

defined Mediterranean style over the next 50 years, beyond and including his

characterization of the Italian house. He filled contemporary dwellings with artifacts,

vessels, furniture, fabrics, and suggestive symbols that have come to connote the

softer, more flamboyant side of mid-century Modernity, a Modern idiom that remained

in continuous flux.

18 See Vittorio Gregotti, Il Disegno del Prodotto Industriale, Italia 1860–1980 (Milan: Electa,

1986), pp. 195–6.

19 Demonstration housing designed for the Vth Triennale was sponsored by the Istituto

Casa Populare (Public Housing Institute). Doordan, pp. 111–15.

20 Gregotti, p. 196.

21 The Casa Elettrica was conceived for the IVth Biennale in Monza in 1930 by five

members of Gruppo 7, Figini, Pollini, Frette, Libera, and Bottoni.

22 The central glazed façade allows the interior to extend outside to the lakefront, much

like the spatial intentions in the later Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe and in

Philip Johnson’s New Canaan house. But the glass is actually a pair of planes housing

a greenhouse inside, similar to the wall of Mies’ Tugendhat House of the same year.

Doordan, pp. 60–63.

23 Doordan, p. 60.

24 Doordan, p. 119.

25 The primary linear staircases in the Villetta Pestarini (1939) and the Sant’Agostino

Museum (1962) exhibit different scales of the same linear stair type, while his more

common spiral stairs at Palazzo Rosso (1962), La Rinascente Department Store (1960)

are more often singled out as spatial icons.

26 Francesco Tentori, “Opere Recenti dello Studio Albini-Helg.” Zodiac 14 (1965), p. 99.

27 Vittorio Prina has suggested that Albini’s suspended stairs were influenced by Joost

Schmidt and Walter Gropius’ 1934 Deutsch Volk-Duetscher Arbeit show in Berlin in 1934

and Melnikov’s 1929 Moscow Pavilion. Further, he asserts that “the structure of spiral

stairs suspended by cables (including Villa Neuffer at Ispra and Palazzo Rosso in Genoa)

establish explicit reference to the works of M. Ginsburg or the Vesnin brothers, citing

without doubt not only the formal character but also an understanding of design and

construction methods. “In una rete di linee che s’intersecano,” pp. 12 and 22. Lina Bo

Bardi borrowed the motif for her Pompéia SESC sports center in São Paulo.

118


28 Later Albini added a third story to the house for the same client. See Piva/Prina, p. 114.

29 “An examination, not just external, of this latest work helps us to gauge the

professional rigor and lofty artistic sensibility that make the platform on which

true architecture should be built … . In Franco Albini this is so deeply rooted that it

can transform theory into a moral stance, giving every element of his architecture

that controlled adherence to an apparently cold, absolute artistic scheme that is

actually alive with the tenaciously pursued artistic ideal.” Casabella Rivista Mensile di

Architettura, Giuseppe Pagano n. 142, Ottobre 1939, “Una casa a Milano dell’architetto

Franco Albini,” includes plans sections, elevations, technical details and 31 black and

white photographs along with Pagano’s detailed description of construction method,

cost and materials, pp. 6–15.

30 During the 1949 intervention, the glass block grid wall was modified by replacing the

square blocks with half size rectangular glass bricks.

31 Reported by Gianfranco and Modesta Ferretti, current owners of the Villetta Pestarini,

to the author during a visit to the house in November 2002.


33 See Federico Bucci, “Franco Albini, Villa Pestarini, 1937–38/1949.” Casabella n. 764

(March 2008), pp. 82–93.

34 The attentive construction of the Pestarini north wall may explain his change of roof

motif for other than stylistic reasons. To avoid moisture build up on the north façade,

Albini built a double external wall with a ventilation channel between planes. The

outer layer measured 25 cm in thickness and the inner layer was 8 cm, while the entire

house was sealed in a water resilient cementitious layer and stuccoed with calcified

plaster. Overhead window boxes included aeration circulation manually operated

from inside. Albini was cognizant of the technical complexity necessary to construct

the ideal, simple Modern box and constructed it accordingly.

35 Piva and Prina, “Appartamento Albini. Via De Togni, Milano, 1940,” pp. 140–42.

36 The apparatus used in series in his Triennale installations (“Aerodynamic Hall,” “Antique

Gold Show,” “Room for a Man”) reduced the repetitive frame to a single element and

the virtual line supported paintings with weighty subjects, such as “Madonna and

Child.”

37 Piero Bottardo, director of the Palazzo Rosso Museum, and Clario di Fabio, director of

Albini’s later San Agostino Museum in Genoa, have each written about Marcenaro’s

accomplishments during her term as administrator for Genoa’s municipal art

collections from 1949–71 to assess how her contributions and historiographic

analyses led to the series of progressive museum interventions. See: “Una

protagonista della scena culturale genovese fra 1950–1970: Caterina Marcenaro

fra casa e musei,” by Di Fabio, and “Palazzo Rosso dai Brignole-Sale a Caterino

Marcenaro: luci ed ombre di un caposaldo della museologia italiana,” by Bottardo.

Genova e il Collezionismo nel Novecento. Torino: Umberto Allemandi, and Medioevo

Demolito, Genova 1860–1940 (Genova: Pirella editore, 1990).

38 Tafuri addressed Albini’s achievements of museology as high points that unleashed

repression during this period, and specifically credited Albini’s contribution to the

renewal of museum design whose themes ranged “from the ‘civil’ role of form to

the encounter between memory and innovation.” Manfredo Tafuri, History of Italian

Architecture 1944–1985 (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989), p. 49.

39 Frederico Tranfa, “Marcenaro Albini.” Domus (February 2007), p. 113.


40 Marcenaro’s apartment had been dismantled and used as a storage area for the

museum in the 1980s. With restoration of the Palazzo Rosso Museum inspired by the

2004 Genoa Capital of European culture, the apartment was restored and reopened

in 2007 with Albini’s original allestimento and replacements of his chairs, but without

Marcenaro’s original furniture or art collection.

41 Ponti, “La casa di un amatore d’arte, all’ultimo piano di un antico palazzo,” Domus

n. 307 (June 1955), pp. 11–18.

42 Ibid., p. 16.

43 See interview with museum director Piero Boccardo by Frederico Tranfa, in “Marcenaro

Albini.” Domus n. 900 (February 2007), pp. 110–15.

44 Transcribed original talk by Albini, edited by Baffa et al., Il Movimento di Studi per

l’Architettura (Roma: Laterza & Figli, 1995), p. 498. English translation provided by

author.

45 Michelangelo Sabatino, “Space of Criticism: Exhibitions and the Vernacular in Italian

Modernism.” Journal of Architectural Education (2009), p. 36.

46 See Franco Albini, “Un dibattito sulla tradizione in architettura svoltosi a Milano nella

sede dell’MSA la sera di 14 giugno 1955.” Casabella continuità n. 206 (1955), in the

Adendum.

47 Michael Brawne quoted Kahn, Brawne cites Wurman from the International Design

Conference at Aspen, Colorado, 19 June 1972. Kimbell Art Museum, Louis I. Kahn,

Architecture in Detail series (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1992).

48 Kathleen James-Chakroboty has discussed Kahn’s role in US international propaganda

during the Vietnam conflict via USIA (United States Information Agency) involvement

through his work in Southeast Asia decades later.

49 Matilde Baffa first brought to the attention of the author the similarities between

Kahn’s residential architecture and Albini’s project for the Canavese villa for Roberto

Olivetti.

50 David B. Brownlee discussed the importance of the period of transition in Kahn’s career

between 1951–61 in Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture (Los Angeles: Museum of

Contemporary Art, 1991), p. 78.

51 Among the “certain inherent characteristics” inferred by Brownlee is Kahn’s

composition of natural light. The quotation from Kahn is noted as from his talk given at

the CIAM Otterlo Congress in 1959. Brownlee, p. 130.

52 See Romaldo Giurgola and Jaimini Mehta, Louis I. Kahn (Zurich: Verlag fur Architektur

Artemis, 1975 and Bologna: Zanichelli Editore S.p.A., 1981), p. 151.

53 Although Kahn visited his friend in Paris who was employed by Le Corbusier on this

trip, it is not known that he visited any of Le Corbusier’s buildings.

54 In 1935 Kahn went to Washington D.C. to work for the US Housing Authority (originally

Roosevelt’s Resettlement Administration) and later was employed by the Philadelphia

Housing Authority. As an expert on housing design, his role went beyond planning

and executing efficient Modern structures in viable neighborhoods. Kahn also found

himself required to work as an activist for a national housing program in 1940 when

Philadelphia’s mayor opposed federally-funded social assistance based on a moralist

argument. On May 30, 1940, Mayor E. Lamberton called public housing an untested

social experiment and cautioned, “some people are so utterly shiftless that anyplace

they live becomes a slum.” Kahn had worked with Catherine Bauer and Frederick

120


Gutheim during 1939 on a public education campaign that included Kahn’s sketches

in pamphlets about the US Housing Authority’s mission and products. He mounted

the New York MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) show on “Houses and Housing,” and

campaigned to direct wartime allocations toward permanent projects with lasting

social value. Brownlee, pp. 26–8.

55 Leet, p. 45.

56 Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960 (Cambridge: The MIT Press,

2000).

57 Nathaniel Kahn’s film about his father, My Architect: A Son’s Journey, revealed that Louis

Kahn fathered three children with three women, two of whom, Anne Griswold Tyng

and Harriet Pattison (Nathaniel’s mother), were for several years his collaborators on

major works, including the Trenton Bath Houses (Tyng) the Yale Art Gallery (Tyng), and

the Kimbell Art Museum (Pattison). Only recently have Kahn’s female collaborators

received credit for their contributions. My Architect: A Son’s Journey (2003) and

Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_I_Kahn.

58 See Giuseppe Samonà, “Franco Albini e la cultura architettonica in Italia,” “In questa

situazione di lavoro la personalita’ di Albini prende un singolare rilievo con la sua

qualita’ estremamente concise e penetranti a cui si lega un metodo di lavoro che

potrebbe sintetizzarsi in questa verita,’ assiomatica per l’artista: ogni problema deve

sempre porsi come un grande problema, anche se si riferisce a piccole e modestissime

cose.” Zodiac n. 3 (1958), p. 84.

59 Albini shifted his tenure to the Milan Polytechnic in 1964, where he taught until his

death.

60 Tyng, see Kahn’s letter to Tyng of March 16, 1954, which includes a freehand diagram

of the Fruchter house, p. 113.

61 Graphic sketch was published in “The Mind Opens to Realizations,” by Brownlee of

Louis I. Kahn, p. 55.

62 Matilde Baffa, Albini’s research assistant At IUAV in Venice, described to me in March

2014 her memories of her interactions with Albini when she built the model for the

unbuilt Olivetti house. She described Albini as a tough taskmaster who demanded

detail and perfection in the scale model. The proposed house had been exhibited and

may have been seen by Kahn.

63 De Seta, Cesare, “Franco Albini architetto, fra razionalismo e technologia” in Franco

Albini 1930–70 (Firenze: Centro Di, 1979), p. 23.

64 Marisa Cerruti, “Una casa unifamiliare a Punta Ala.” L’Architettura: cronache e storia n. 87

(1963), pp. 596–601.

65 Tentori, p. 99.

66 Albini’s innovative Modern room can be observed in many early interiors including

residential interiors in Milan, Villetta Pestarini, and Palazzo Bianco. See also Kay Bea

Jones, “Seeing through Franco Albini: Domestic Modernity in Rationalist Italy.” Why

does Modernism Refuse to Die? (ACSA Montreal Proceedings, 2002), pp. 111–20.

67 Although Albini’s idea of the Modern room differed significantly from the perceptual

and section strategies of Adolf Loos, Fabrizio Rosso Prodi has argued that Albini’s

persistent patterns could be identified as the Mediterranean version of the new open

space or Raumplan. Franco Albini (Rome: Officina Edizioni, 1996), p. 151.

5

Continuità: CIAM and Neorealism in Post-war Italy

For all groups, the continuity of the Modern Movement—continuità—

was a major consideration. They, as we, saw their job as pushing Modern

architecture to become relevant to postwar conditions. However, in Italy

there was much more discussion of tradition and heritage than there

had been among the Brutalists, and their take on the Neue Sachlichkeit

and the realities of urban life had to do with pre-industrial and peasant

societies rather than with mass urban society and the scale of industry. 1

Denise Scott Brown

Denise Scott Brown encountered Franco Albini while traveling in Italy at the time

of CIAM’s final gatherings. A participant at CIAM’s 1956 Scuola Estiva (Summer

School) in Venice, she described her awareness of Italy as a leader at the time in

reconceiving the relationship of tradition to Modern thinking and innovation.

The school was staffed by a range of old-guard, mid-career, and young members;

she wrote that she was particularly moved by Franco Albini’s comments about

“what a beacon of hope Modernism had been for them during Fascist times.” 2

Albini represented continuity of the expression of Modern ideas in built form. By

establishing the MSA along with some of his collaborators and returning to the

international congress that for almost 30 years had defined Modernity, he helped

to validate the ambitions of the progressive Milanese beyond Italy. Albini’s

output had perpetuated Rationalist principles, those that characterized the most

progressive buildings in post-war Italy. By the late 1940s and 1950s, his work and

that of his cohorts began to openly embrace their distinct traditions and was

becoming subject to criticism. Meanwhile, the young antagonists of Team 10,

including Giancarlo De Carlo (1919–2005), were challenging CIAM’s core values

that had come to symbolize too narrow a definition of the Modern project for

most socio-cultural progressives to endorse.

122


5.1 Giancarlo

De Carlo, Walter

Gropius and

Franco Albini

CIAM (Le Congres Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne/The International

Congress of Modern Architecture), which began in Switzerland in 1928, established

a union of mostly European architects and planners dedicated to supporting avantgarde

Modern tendencies and interventions. 3 In spite of Albini’s less visible role

compared with that of some of his peers, CIAM was formative for his early projects

and studies, and afforded him direct contact with the international Modern

scene. CIAM served as a worldwide venue for the sustenance and advancement

of progressive agendas, especially in town planning, for three decades. A total

of ten congresses and intermittent planning meetings took place between 1928

(La Sarraz, Switzerland) and 1956. CIAM officially disbanded with the concluding

1959 meeting at Otterlo. The Athens Charter, published by Le Corbusier in 1942,

established guidelines for “The Functional City,” which resulted from the CIAM

Continuità: CIAM and Neorealism in Postwar Italy 123

gathering that took place on an ocean liner in 1937. Although all meetings occurred

in Europe, CIAM attendees also came from India, South America, North America,

North Africa, and Japan. While there was probably never perfect unity of intent

among the delegates, cultural identity for the time being remained dormant, as

they jointly sought a well-defined international Modern agenda.

Congress encounters during the 1950s led to a new generation’s reaction

against the scientific certainties of CIAM’s formulas for housing and other Modern

efficiencies, and eventually splinter groups formed, including the reactionary Team

10, led by a younger contingent. 4 If CIAM overstated its ownership of the avantgarde

Modern Movement and proved more divisive than unified, nonetheless it

remained one of the few politically neutral sites for debates about progressive ideas

in urbanism and architecture. Above all, its leaders offered a welcome alternative

to relatively conservative university faculties. CIAM established intercontinental

networks of intellectuals and practitioners, and individual architects who emerged

were as heterogeneous as was the Modern Movement itself.

Several Italian Rationalists established important linkages with CIAM members

before World War II, and continued to find legitimacy at the Congress for their

furniture, housing, and urban designs. These personal contacts and references

were particularly important during the autarky and isolation that followed 1935.

Linkages to Modern iconoclasts were especially significant after the war when

Modernism at home faced popular disapproval for its apparent symbolism of

Fascist agendas. Gruppo 7 members Piero Bottoni and Gino Pollini were early

CIAM participants. 5 Publications resulting from CIAM 1 and CIAM 2 along with

photographic panels of projects by some of its founding members were exhibited

as part of the Milan Triennale in 1933. Enrico Peressutti of the Milanese Studio BBPR

organized the CIAM 7 meeting, while his partner Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909–69)

and Albini became the Italian delegates to the CIAM commission during the 1950s.

Albini attended interim planning sessions for various events that led up to 1957.

Sigfried Giedion published A Decade of New Architecture in 1951 as a report on

CIAM 6, held at Bridgwater, England in 1947, which he considered a successful

reaffirmation of Modernism’s objectives following the hiatus brought about by the

war. 6 Having firmly established the ethos of rational science, “truthful expression,”

and social equity as guiding notions of CIAM, Giedion wanted to underscore the

role of art in designing for the physical environment. He illustrated his summation

with a selection of exemplary works of sculpture, furniture, architecture, and

urban planning that had evolved in the period between CIAM 1937 and CIAM

1947, but he provided no criteria for his selection or aesthetic evaluation of valid

Modern ideas. He included three works by Franco Albini in his widely distributed

compilation—a “wooden chair,” the “Zanini Fur Showroom” in Milan (1945), and

“Exhibit of Goldsmith’s Work” (sic 1939). 7 In addition, new urban master plans for

Milan and Genoa on which Albini had collaborated with northern Italian colleagues

were exhibited in 1937 and 1949.

The subsequent CIAM 7, which took place in Bergamo—the only meeting of the

group to be held in Italy—was considered a failure compared with previous Congress

gatherings, and Albini was part of a small group that submitted an ‘auto-critique’ of

124


the events. Prescient critics charged that participants had not been well prepared,

the program was excessive in content, and CIAM risked losing its reputation as a

productive workshop. 8 In fact, CIAM by now had lost its pre-war focus as an avantgarde

organization, and, due to differences in politics and urban conditions faced by

both its longtime and new members, was beginning to break down.

The last meeting, at Otterlo in Holland, was attended by a growing cadre of

Italians, including Albini, Rogers as CIAM’s secretary general, Ignazio Gardella

(1905–99), Vico Magistretti (1920–2006), and De Carlo, who had joined the

organization as a ‘youth member’ in 1955. 9 De Carlo gave a “Talk on the Situation

of Contemporary Architecture” in which he addressed the growing animosity

between its senior and junior members.

Louis Kahn presented his Richards Medical Center at CIAM in 1959, the only such

gathering that he attended. Kahn had been a fellow at the American Academy of

Rome in 1951, and after his Otterlo presentation, he became a sensation among

Italian contemporaries. At the same meeting, Rogers presented BBPR’s Torre Velasca

skyscraper that dominated the Milan skyline with its gothic buttresses and stone skin.

Looming over the center of Milan, Velasca’s tower form fueled vicious controversy

for its overt historicism, a challenge to everything that CIAM represented. 10

The debate that surrounded the Milanese skyscraper and projects considered

neo-historicist, including Albini’s 1949 Pirovano Youth Hostel, coincided with Italian

architects’ insistence on the protection and reconstruction of the centro storico,

(historic centers) of Italian cities and towns. While several charter CIAM members—

Giedion, Pevsner, Hitchcock and Le Corbusier—withstood the Congress’ essential

ground, the widespread experience of loss, new social needs, democratic hopes,

and cultures reshaped by the experience of war, including requirements to rebuild,

made evident the need for a revised idea of Modern architecture.

In her reconsideration of the era, Sarah Williams Goldhagen has described

a more complex definition of mid-century Modernism based on a breakdown

of social, political, and cultural schema. Recognizing diverse outcomes, she has

stretched possible types of Modernity from the abstract machine aesthetic to

what she has called situated Modernism. Grand ambitions for new forms and fresh

expressions that benefitted from the latest technologies, while not beholden to

nostalgia, produced Modern buildings that varied widely in ethos and expression.

Those authorities that exclusively privileged the zeitgeist of Modern construction

and demanded tabula rasa urban interventions at the expense of the past were

being challenged by new breeds of socially conscious realists. Modernists as

dissimilar as Alvar Alto, Aldo van Eyck, Hannes Meyer, Eileen Gray, Eero Saarinen,

and Bruno Taut produced work that reflected radically different images of Modern

society from those projected by Mies van der Rohe, Gropius, and Le Corbusier.

Yet most CIAM members still found affinity in the break from a recalcitrant past,

eschewed nostalgia, and believed in the optimism of cultural progress. It was

specifically the work of Louis Kahn that would most convincingly adapt progressive

formalism to exemplify Goldhagen’s concept of situated Modernism, allowing for

heterogeneity and poly-functional design agendas, featuring new expressions of

monumental architecture, with the capacity to situate users in their place and time.

In Goldhagen’s terms:

5.2 New Genoa School of Architecture building inserted by Ignazio Gardella into the

historic context of the Sarzano neighborhood near the Sant’Agostino Museum

126


Architectural historians have come to view the several decades in architectural

culture that followed the Second World War as an interregnum between expiring

modernism and a dawning postmodernism: an inchoate moment when

corporate culture co-opted early twentieth-century avant-gardes that eventually

bled out, precipitating the putative collapse of modernism … . This is a tidy

narrative that oversimplifies and distorts this period’s architectural culture … This

narrative obscures the diversity and the complexity of motivation that led some

architects to truck with architecture’s tradition. 11

Goldhagen has unpacked disparate examples from post-war scenarios to offer

signs of a molting architecture and raise criticism of the oversimplified formalism of

the early Modern project. Post-Modernism’s tendency to characterize Modernity as

a singular notion is inadequate to comprehend differing American and European

trends in the 1950s. Her individuation of authenticity, monumentality, and

community, which she employs to critique technologically and functionally defined

Modernism, helps nuance the varied forms of mid-century design and urbanism.

Internal debates among Modern protagonists proved productive, and it is in this

place of transition that Italian Neorealism and Albini’s post-war architecture gain

cogency and traction. 12 Factors including mass consumerism, standardization and

industrialized production, regionalism, capitalism, post-colonial critiques, class

conflicts, and nationalist identities play a role at this time. Much more scholarship

on this rich period is warranted. My focus on Albini’s changing work assumes the

complexity of the immediate post-war international milieu to demonstrate his

active participation in defining early Rationalist tendencies, optimism he later

suspends as his expression of Modernity gains gravity. His last two museum

projects in Italy will show the deeper tone of his Modern language as his design

methods and outcomes are resituated in Genoa and Padua to repair war damaged

basilica complexes and their adjacent monuments.

Sustained Voices; New Visions

In Milan, the remaining committed Rationalists and leading architectural idealists,

Albini among them, had founded the MSA as a venue outside the academy in

which to hold local debates. 13 The MSA facilitated discussions between 1945 and

1961 for the period that coincided precisely with Neorealist cinema. Central issues

to both film and architecture were urban restoration and expansion from the

citizen’s point of view, the role of tradition in designing for the vanguard, and a

growing middle class who would replace political authority in redirecting Modern

society. MSA was critically necessary at the time when the Polytechnic, the only

school of architecture in Milan, was dominated by conservative academicians who

still favored Novecento stylistic trends.

At that time, Italy’s most progressive design school was in Venice, ironically one

of Italy’s least progressive cities, at least on the surface. Venice had been mocked by

the Futurists and was without a single Modern building or public space. IUAV (Istituto

Universitario di Architettura di Venezia), led by Giuseppe Samonà from the early


1940s until the late 1960s, was vital for its didactic experimentation and the quality

and ingenuity of its practitioner/teachers. Samonà invited Albini to join his faculty

in the late 1940s to teach interior design along with Ignazio Gardella, Giancarlo De

Carlo, Ludovico Barbino di Belgiojoso (of BBPR), Carlo Scarpa, with urbanists Luigi

Piccinato and Giovanni Astengo. Historian Bruno Zevi who had recently returned to

Italy from studies at Harvard was also among them. And in their respective pursuits

to connect with international Modern trends, IUAV brought Frank Lloyd Wright,

Richard Neutra, Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn to the Institute.

Ernesto Nathan Rogers emerged as a leader of architectural innovation in

the 1950s and 1960s even amidst controversy. He was Albini’s friend and fellow

Rationalist at a time when the relatively small group of progressive architects in

Milan forged tight bonds. Rogers had first introduced Albini to Giuseppe Pagano.

As a principal in studio BBPR (Banfi, Belgioiosi, Peressutti, and Rogers), 14 Rogers was

a prolific writer and an astute critic. He co-edited Quadrante from 1933 to 1936,

continued writing while imprisoned during the war, edited Domus from 1946–47,

then took over Casabella continuità as editor from 1953–64. Through journalism,

Rogers gained an international reputation while promoting the continuity of

pre-war Rationalism, albeit with a revised social, urban, and contextual focus. He

was invited to succeed Gropius as dean of Harvard’s architecture program in 1954,

but he turned down the position. 15 He later taught at the Milan Polytechnic, where

he received a professorship in 1964 and continued to practice as principal of one of

Italy’s premier design firms.

Bruno Zevi (1918–2000) returned to Rome in 1945 where he had studied at

Harvard with Gropius and grown enthusiastic about the work of Frank Lloyd

Wright. As a Roman Jew, Zevi was forced to leave Italy in 1940 and was deeply

influenced by his experience of exile. His interpretation of Wright’s organicism

became his paradigm for the open plan and democratic ideals that inspired his

widely published writings and establishment of the journal Metron. Zevi formed

the APAO (l’Associazione per l’Architettura Organica/Association for Organic

Architecture) with branches in Palermo, Turin, and Rome. Long after having taught

in Venice, he joined the faculty of architecture in Rome where he became part of a

school of architectural historians at the University of Rome—La Sapienza.

Zevi’s APAO argued for a significantly different concept of architecture from the

MSA’s continuation of Rationalist Modernism. According to Manfredo Tafuri, Zevi

passionately insisted on an organic definition of Modernity rooted in formalism,

and although he was prolific and highly regarded, it remains difficult to trace his

influence on the works of Italian architects of the post-war establishment, including

those of Albini. He resigned his university position in revolt with the advent of post-

Modern tendencies in the Roman School in 1979. 16

Post-war Modernism

During reconstruction, the economy grew slowly, first under a leftist government,

then in 1948 when the Christian Democrats were elected with the support

of American interests. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the PCI (Partito

Comunista Italiano/Italian Communist Party) opposed the avant-garde for its

128


earlier affiliation with the right, and instead promoted Marxism through the lens of

phenomenology. The writings of Theodor Adorno and Giulio Carlo Argan’s study of

Gropius and the Bauhaus gave Modernity a radical political orientation. Otherwise

‘Modern’ textbooks took the form of manuals, including Franco Marescotti and

Irenio Diotallevi’s Il problema sociale economico e costruttivo dell’abitazione (The

Social, Economic, and Construction Problem of Housing, 1948) and the Manuale

dell’architetto (Architect’s Manual, 1946). The quality of Modern architecture grew

more complicated as architects struggled to shake connections with the PNF and

eschewed problems of semiotics, directing their efforts to solving problems at hand

and subordinating questions of style. Vernacular building traditions, presented by

Pagano, Michelucci, and others, as previously discussed, contributed to the changing

formal vocabulary. Mussolini-era Modern architecture was denied on theoretical,

political, and pragmatic grounds, yet the post offices, train stations, housing and

new towns built by the regime now formed the backdrop of Modern life.

Contemporary research by renowned and budding historians continues to

provide fresh insights about the subtle currents that coexisted between the 1940s

and 1970s, the three decades when Albini’s studio was most prolific. The crises

and economic challenges of the immediate post-war period eventually gave way

to prosperity, and Italy gained worldwide repute with the explosion of a thriving

design industry. No dominant personality at this time could be compared with

Marcello Piacentini’s pre-war status; there was no single voice or any authoritative

school of Modernism in Italy. Rogers wrote that the “only new orthodoxy in Italian

architecture was heterodoxy itself.” 17 Albini’s success during this period was a

result of his problem-solving experience, his sensitivity to Modern materials,

technology and craft and his creativity, especially reconceiving tradition’s role

during a period in flux. He was well beyond the dictates or popularity of style.

Cesare De Seta has identified the consistency in Albini’s work over the trajectory

of his more than 40-year career as having contributed to a steady course of

Modern ideas and practices in the volatile post-war period. 18

Vittorio Gregotti’s 1966 book on “new” Italian architecture, read together with

his essay Reconstructing a History, published almost three decades later, provide

insights into his perceptions of progress during the era. 19 He demonstrated Italy’s

emergence in the 1960s on many design fronts that resulted directly from the

magnitude of the challenges faced. In 1994, Gregotti benchmarked projects and

predominant contributing architects after 30 years of reflection. He cited in both

synopses the variety of buildings and works of engineering that characterized the

period from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s, and included among them several of

Albini’s best known buildings. 20 Gregotti called attention to the “sublime solution

of the Palazzo Bianco Museum” and cited Albini as one of the few architects who

inspired admiration among his peers and students. 21 (Figures 6.2–6.6) He discussed

Albini and Helg’s mature works, including the Treasury of San Lorenzo in Genoa and

the La Rinascente Department Store in Rome (Figures 6.14 and 7.7) as instrumental

in connecting Modern discourse to the enduring questions of memory and

tradition. For Gregotti, these projects showed that dual forces could coalesce to

respond to historic sites and transform culture. 22


Gregotti’s more recent and personal reflection, in 1994, diminished the roles

of industrial design, urban master plan proposals, and turmoil in the schools

of architecture, emphasizing instead noteworthy specific buildings and the

culture surrounding each, to show their influence on the city. Two simultaneous

texts, Samonà’s L’urbanistica e l’avvenire della città (Urbanism and the Future of

the City, 1959) and Leonardo Benevolo’s Storia dell’architettura (two-volume

History of Architecture, 1960) argued for the need to think beyond the building

to a grander scale of comprehensive intervention. The initial catalyst for this

kind of integral planning was their 1944 Architetti Riuniti Plan for Milan. Urban

conservation was complemented by the development of comprehensive satellite

cities on the periphery of the city with multi-modal public transportation. The

AR Plan’s breakthrough was in establishing critical regional interrelationships by

decentralizing nuclei of housing, industry, and access systems. Shortly afterward, in

1946, a group of prominent urbanists and designers was asked to develop a traffic

network for Rome’s outer perimeter. 23 The AR Plan foreshadowed Studio Albini

being commissioned to build Milan’s first subway line with Bob Noorda in the early

1960s (see Figures 1.4 and 10.30).

In Florence at the same time, Giovanni Michelucci’s proposal for rebuilding

the war-scarred historic center with non-nostalgic new interventions fell on deaf

ears. Tafuri has shown that dogma plagued post-war Italian urbanism, rendering

its ambitions as ineffectual in dealing with mounting demands and rapid

development. Yet the national conversation had changed, and complex agendas

during economic recovery for building types ranging from affordable housing to

new museums produced eclectic results. These less iconic but more complex and

essential projects continued to shape a progressive vanguard not easily defined by

any canonical rules or list of bona fide criteria as a litmus test for the Modern style.

Nascent concerns for the city as a whole with a rise in consumerism led to some

disappointing post-war trends. The INU (Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica/National

Institute of Urbanism) attempted to pre-empt rampant building speculation, and

was in large part supported by the progressive industrialist, Adriano Olivetti. The

INU published the journal Urbanistica, edited by Giovanni Astengo. Ultimately,

Olivetti’s sponsorship of Modern buildings in the company town of Ivrea had a

more lasting effect than the theoretical or data-driven research of INU. He hired

prominent contemporary architects, including Albini, to build the town and to

design Olivetti installations abroad. Albini designed the dining hall and changing

facilities for OET (Officine Elettrochimiche Trentine) in Calusco d’Adda in 1942 and

the Olivetti showroom in Paris in 1958 24 (Figure 2.1).

New Symbols: From Monuments to Housing

As Gregotti, Tafuri, Argan, and De Seta have argued, Albini established himself among

those who shaped Italy’s Modern identity. The most innovative architecture of the

post-war era and the design industry helped to define the Italian economic boom.

In the late 1940s, two monumental structures built in Rome effectively identified the

new tendency of formal abstraction anchored to its respective location in the city.

130


5.3 Stazione

Termini Rome train

station by Mario

Ridolfi, 1947

Each intervention responded boldly and decisively to events belonging in place

and became unexpected Modern symbols in the capital city. Gaining widespread

public exposure, the social gravity of cultural history and events were understood

as catalysts for ideas that could be symbolized in Modern architecture.

The Fosse Ardeantine by Fiorentino and Perugini was built between 1944 and

1947 to honor the innocent victims executed in reprisal for a partisan attack on

German troops. (Figure 2.8) The monument literally expressed the weight and

darkness of the occurrence it sought to represent. Composed of a heavy mass

appearing to levitate over a dark habitable collective tomb honoring more than 300

innocents may not have been the ideal Modern theme, but it captured the souls of

the Roman citizens, who revere it to this day. Quaroni and Ridolfi’s Stazione Termini

commission to build Rome’s new central train station was awarded in a 1947 design

competition. The new station was located over ancient Roman ruins and fronted

the Classical Baths of Diocletian, while part of the fourth century B.C. Servian Wall

could be viewed from the undulating volume of the ticketing hall. Floating among

a field of nineteenth-century structures, the station’s tall slab of offices and grand

hall stitched together north and south neighborhoods with monumental linear

volumes of void and solid perfectly scaled to the capital’s transit activities. Both

Modern projects emerged as symbols of “the image of difficult liberation.” 25

The Fosse Ardeantine competition called for a site-specific monument on a highly

charged landscape outside the urban center of Rome near the ancient catacombs.

The project was awarded after the war to the team of Roman architects who struck


an emotional cord. The interiorized memorial was composed of minimal abstract

architectural elements, a continuous 48.5-meter × 26.65-meter and 3-meter thick

elevated mass, the space beneath it, and a promenade connecting volumes carved

into the ground. 26 The memorial was experienced as a dark sequence of dreamlike

spaces rather than as a heroic object raised on a pedestal. The path begins in an

open plaza bypassing the massive thick plane, like the lid of a tomb that appears

suspended above a green hill. It leads into Modern-day catacombs before arriving

at the mausoleum within the hill under the huge slab. 27 The similarity between the

Roman architects’ design for Fosse Ardeantine and the unbuilt proposal by Albini,

Gardella, Minoletti and Fontana for the Palazzo dell’Aqua e della Luce (the Palace of

Water and Light) at EUR has been suggested by Manfredo Tafuri. Yet Albini’s foray

underground would begin later with his Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum in Genoa

in 1952 that mimics a tholos crypt, his first expression of architectural gravitas,

darkness and carefully choreographed artificial light.

Gregotti and Tafuri each attributed some of the best works of architecture to

emerge from the post-war period to a collective struggle with questions of tradition.

The cultural restlessness manifested in BBPR’s Torre Velasca, along with experimental

works that include Albini and Luigi Colombini’s Pirovano Youth Hostel (Cervinia,

1949–51, Figures 7.1–7.5), Ignazio Gardella’s house for a viticulturist (1945–46), and

Giovanni Michelucci’s Pistoia mercantile exchange (1949–50) signaled a poignant

study in the marriage of Modern technology, cultural evolution, and Italian

ritual. Questions about links between tradition and Modernity were not new, yet

5.4 Fosse

Ardeantine. View

from inside

the communal

crypt, 1944–49

132


possibilities suggested by Mediterranean culture and Italian vernacular buildings

were brought to the fore by Albini and Palanti, who revived Architettura Rurale

Italiana (rural Italian architecture) in Costruzioni Casabella in 1946 reviving Pagano’s

exhibit a decade earlier. Albini’s statement to the MSA in 1955 acknowledged the

risk of mediocrity when considering Modernity’s historic roots. But he called for

greater consciousness of cultural and geographic environmental variants that led

traditional architecture to respond to real conditions. 28 He described an idea of

tradition that was neither nostalgic nor obvious, one familiar to many Modernist

painters, sculptors, poets and writers, from Picasso to T.S. Eliot. Albini insisted on

rethinking those forms and their essential functions that belong to the collective

consciousness. The evolution of his buildings during this period furnishes the best

evidence of his intentions.

The early 1950s witnessed a period of fertile architectural experimentation,

which as we have seen Albini and his studio led by example. Gio Ponti answered

the Torre Velasca in Milan with his Pirelli Tower (1956–60), a sleek, vertical glazed

slab that at more than 30 stories rose well above its surroundings. The tapering

of its structure, designed with engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, and its non-rectangular

plan departed from the boxy regularity of the familiar Miesian tower type. Luigi

Moretti’s Casa Girasole (1950) and Via Jenner palazzine in Rome borrowed the

Roman housing type yet distinguished these derivatives in plan organization,

materials, and façade expression. 29 In the Casa Girasole, the sunflower house,

the entire front façade is sliced down the center. Sliding panels extend beyond

the front, which faces south, to filter daylight and make controlling the sun a

compositional feature. The carved travertine base set back from the street,

with overhanging horizontal bands and broken pediment above, form a

tri-partite composition of Modern parts that distinguish Girasole among the

other palazzine on the street. In Complexity and Contradiction, Robert Venturi

called it an example of ambiguous architecture poised between tradition and

innovation, and perhaps found here the broken pediment that suited his famous

house for his mother.

Technological Modernism on a grand scale had gained national traction when

some regional differences in expression began to appear. Carlo Scarpa was widely

acclaimed beyond Italy for his superbly crafted idiosyncratic works, including

museums in Verona, Venice, and Palermo. His language of glass tesserae, labyrinths,

Byzantine mosaics, and water belonged to the Veneto and did not invite imitators,

but he shared an affinity for craft and tradition with Albini. Large-scale projects in

Tuscany by Leonardo Ricci and Leonardo Savioli flexed tectonic muscle to produce

monumental industrial spaces, institutional buildings and new housing. Giovanni

Michelucci’s San Giovanni Battista del Autostrada (1964) outside Florence most

assertively broke from his previous Rationalist clarity with a sinuous concrete

structure that supported a tent-like copper-covered canopy over undulating stone

walls. Capitalizing on an unusual site for a pilgrimage church, located at a freeway

off ramp, the anthropomorphic building invites interaction at both a pedestrian

pace and the speed of a car. Tafuri lauded Michelucci’s ability to make space fluid

and embed structure with meaning.

5.5 Cortile of the Casa Girasole by Luigi Moretti, Rome, 1949

134


The majority of Italian post-war construction produced housing and office

buildings, with poured concrete and masonry as the preferred structural

technology, while museums, installations and new products became its bestknown

contributions to international design. Albini’s six museums and many

exhibition installations from Brazil to Sweden situated him as the paramount

example for Modern Italian gallery design, as argued by critics and proven by

his clients. His new museums were acclaimed by Argan, De Seta and Tafuri, and

they influenced subsequent works by Rogers (BBPR), Scarpa, Michelucci, Gardella,

Johnson and Bo Bardi. Re-presenting Italy’s historic patrimony rekindled tourism

that had diminished during the war years but grew quickly afterwards to help fuel

the economic boom.

The return to publication of Casabella and Domus and the initiation of new

journals, including Comunità, Spazio & Società, Parametro, Ottagono, Rassegna, and

Lotus, kept Italy in the eye of the design-conscious international public. Industrial

design innovation flourished even before the war. With mass production there

followed a proliferation of Italian lighting, tables, chairs, and other functional objects

on the international market. Alliances between urbanism, architecture, industrial

and graphic design practices and schools were common Modern practices in Italy.

Roger’s slogan, “dal cucchiaio alla città,” from the teaspoon to the city, characterized

the typical Italian disposition for attacking problems with innovative solutions not

bound by scale. Architects such as Vico Magistretti (1920–2006) and Marco Zanuso

(1916–2001) chose industrial design as their primary activity.

Albini worked with a generation of architects that moved fluidly among the scales

of furniture, interiors, architecture and the city. He had mastered the fabrication of

detail joinery and developed deep respect for craftsmanship during his period in

the studio of Ponti and Lancia. His installation infrastructure that evolved through

iterative variations made spaces with industrial and custom designed elements.

His production of furniture with the manufacturers Poggi and Bonacina grew into

enduring, vital relationships of mutual respect. Gregotti identified Albini’s work

with Franca Helg and Bob Noorda for Lines 1 and 2 of the Milan subway (1964) as

foremost models and “the only Italian examples which use design coherently for

constructing a series of environments commissioned by a public agency.” 30

Perhaps no building type more evidently epitomized the challenges of postwar

realities than did collective housing. Even with cities to repair and enormous

housing shortages, construction was postponed by a lack of investment funds,

which brought recession to the building industry. The political left that formed

the first post-war government was replaced with a Christian-Democratic coalition

in 1948. External financial support arrived via the United Nations Relief and

Rehabilitation Administration (1945) and The Marshall Plan (1948, also known

as the European Recovery Program). The Manuale dell’architetto (The Manual

of the Architect) was commissioned to gather essential documentation of Italian

vernacular construction techniques and details characterized by the highest level

of craft. 31 Published in 1946 and widely distributed, it facilitated standardization

in Italian construction. The Fanfani plan passed in 1949 began two seven-year

cycles of the INA-Casa (Istituto Nazionale Assicurazioni/National Housing Institute)

housing program that was focused on meeting vast demands for housing urban


populations, while also providing jobs. 32 Some new neighborhoods were planned

as pieces of the city, such as Rome’s Tiburtino Quarter (Quaroni, Ridolfi, et al.),

while Spine Bianche at Matera (Valori, Aymonino) and Cesate outside Milan (Albini,

Albricci, BBPR, and Gardella) aimed to create suburban neighborhoods with

densities lower than the cities they abutted, while also providing schools and

amenities. Several of the most noteworthy results of the INA-Casa program differed

from previous more abstract, self contained, and monumental academic models of

the Fascist era. Post-war housing provided one of the tableaus of the new urban

design gestalt.

The best examples of publicly funded housing projects came to be identified

with the Neorealist movements in Italian literature and cinema. Filmic and literary

modes of reflection provided the means by which a new national identity was

forged. Cinematic Neorealism often depicted social networks struggling for

rebirth and were characterized less by a particular form than by a composite of

disparate voices and faces striving for a common purpose. Roberto Rossellini,

Luchino Visconti, and Vittorio De Sica shot film epics on site that addressed human

suffering, and they framed historic Italian cities and landscapes as protagonists

of their stories. Using scientific studies of user needs and physical and cultural

contexts, architectural solutions of the early post-war period produced thematic

buildings without any distinct style. Again, the journal Casabella represented the

most progressive voices and projects by featuring “aspirations to reality” with

examples that included Albini’s row housing in the Cesate low-cost residential

neighborhood planned just outside Milan in 1951. 33 Tafuri has called architectural

Neorealism an “unedited language” that could signify a “general feeling more than

a single event.” 34 Maristella Casciato stated that Italian Neorealist architecture

was grounded in objectives that overshadow the simplification of fashion while

allowing “a kind of redemption after defeat and liberation from the Fascist regime.” 35

As she has explained:

… the emergence of a definition of Neorealist architecture (like that of Organic

architecture) signaled a phase in Italian architectural culture during which the

legacy of the modern movement, even as it was being tenaciously defended and

publicized as an emblem of reestablished democracy, was challenged through a

contamination by idioms of history and tradition. 36

Heterogeneous expressions of existing cities inspired many Italians with

fresh creativity and abundant design energy in spite of concerns for growing

land speculation. Mario Ridolfi and Ludovico Quaroni, along with several

younger collaborators and their students, designed the Roman Quarter on the

ancient Via Tiburtino (1950–55), a residential complex providing 771 dwellings

in three distinct unit types ranging from row houses to 8-story apartment

towers in clusters of non-orthogonal arrangements. Simultaneously, La

Martella (1951–54) by many of the same designers was built to accommodate

the displaced residents of Matera. The design resulted from systematic study

of the needs of those who previously occupied the ancient Sassi, the natural

caverns in deep ravines that had been used for dwellings over millennia.

136


5.6 INA-Casa

Cesate Housing

near Milan

by Albini and

Helg, 1951

It was the designers’ aim to reintegrate new structures with the physical features

of the natural environment. 37 Ridolfi’s housing at Terni (1949–51), at Cerignola

(1950–51 with Wolfgang Frankl), and on Via Ethiopia in Rome (1950–54) along

with the Cesate complex (1950–54) by Albini, Gardella, BBPR, and Albricci

proposed housing that favored looser arrangements of neighborhood streets, as

will be discussed later.

Some new housing displayed degrees of awareness of international models

among Italians. Carlo Luigi Daneri’s Forte Quezzi housing in Genoa multiplied

Le Corbusier’s Unite’ d’habitation building prototype in the form of curved bars

shaped to the landscape to provide thousands of low-cost residential units on the

mountainside with spectacular Mediterranean vistas. 38 Outside Rome, Adalberto

Libera built matte housing at Tuscolano that has yet to be surpassed as a highdensity

low-rise prototype. The project included an open public area for social

gathering, a field of 1-story courtyard units, and a 4-story slab of apartments

organized by an outdoor corridor to combine a hybrid of Modern and vernacular

trends.

Albini’s many post-war residential collaborations deserve re-evaluation in the

context of these better-known examples, especially since his preceding grand scale

urban projects in Milan were tempered by his mature work. Albini’s projects steered

clear of the mass spectacle culture and his best work evolved at a moderate scale.


Working from the 1950s through the 1970s with Franca Helg, his studio responded

to social needs with aesthetics rooted both in Rationalist pragmatism and in

tradition while investigating ever-changing means of Modern construction.

The expansiveness of the more successful early experiments did not last, as

speculation and increased housing demands led to denser developments that

resulted in taller structures. Mario Fiorentino’s kilometer-long Il Corviale project,

named for the zone in which it was built outside Rome’s beltway, and Aldo Rossi and

Carlo Aymonino’s Monte Amiata neighborhoods at Gallaratese in the periphery of

Milan revived formalism at a monumental scale but lacked the services necessary to

provide habitable and hospitable neighborhoods so remote from the city center. 39

These complexes invite comparisons with the projects accommodating similar

numbers of dwellers with those that Albini, Camus and Palanti built for the Fascist

housing administration during the 1930s, which will be discussed in Chapter 9.

Reflections on Albini and Neorealism

A sometimes nihilistic, sometimes realistic wind blows through present-day

architecture, sweeping away the gestures, the words, and the images that the

architecture generated during the crisis climate of the 1950s could still posit.

That moment was underpinned by the pathos of insecurity, of the horrors of war,

and of the contradictions of social life, and was accordingly cushioned by an

architecture that promised an optimistic alternative. 40

Ignasi de Sola-Morales

A final comment is warranted regarding the post-war trend of “moving toward

reality.” This was decidedly the period that Franco Albini’s career came to fruition

and his work earned distinction. Although he had lost friends and close colleagues

to the war and faced a society in economic distress, he remained confident about

the role of architecture to support cultural growth, especially in historic cities and

divisive circumstances. During the latter half of the century, intellectual pluralism

and formal freedom grew across Italy along with societies of spectacle and threats

of overdevelopment of the land. He produced architecture that remained true to

his Rationalist origins during times of stylistic confusion by employing a rigorous

and iterative design process not driven by a predictable end product. He taught his

collaborators and office staff his ethos of hard work and humility. 41 He presented

new ideas about a tradition-informed Modern architecture that he disseminated as

a teacher, CIAM delegate, and instigator of MSA discussions, and most significantly

through his many built works.

The economic boom brought an international market for Italian designers and

expanded the terrain for many architects, Albini among them. Cities were building

both inwards and on their periphery and functionalism brought efficiency to

meeting human needs pressed by housing shortages. Product design modernized

everyday life. Scarcity gave way to opportunity when Italy dominated the

international design market and land speculation began to take its toll on historic

cities, especially, but not exclusively, at their perimeters. Albini was active in all

138


spheres of design. He returned to Milan in 1964 from Venice to join the faculty of

the local Polytechnic and received commissions in São Paulo, Stockholm, Havana,

Riyadh, and Alexandria (Egypt), as well as regionally in Genoa, Padua, Milan, and

Rome.

Cesare De Seta lauded Albini as a renowned Rationalist, yet the inability to tie

him to a single legacy, style, or formal language is consistent over his long career

and may explain his lesser fame compared with his many cohorts and protegés.

His lack of orthodoxy or ideology and his distance from the public eye may also

explain his professional endurance. Part Rationalist, part Neorealist, Albini is a poet

in a white lab coat who was able to bring the weight of new architectural symbols

and social realities to bear. In extraordinary times it has been argued that the

freedom associated with Neorealism came to provide a more comfortable, loose

fit for Modern Italy, providing some artists with a path out of troubled times. Rossi

Prodi has found in Italo Calvino an apropos description of the post-war ambience.

Calvino provided a lucid portrayal of the new realities he observed following his

efforts as a partisan during the war:

Trains began to run again. We existed in a multicolor world of stories. We

expressed ourselves through personal narratives: Life’s rough taste, which we had

just experienced. Yet there were never such obsessive formalists as ourselves …

[with] naïve desire to create literature with the characteristics of a ‘school’ … The

problem was entirely one of poetics, of how to transform that world which was

for us the world into a work of Literature … . Neorealism was not a school. (Let me

try to be precise about these matters.) It was many voices combined, … manysided

revelations of the different Italies that existed … each of them unknown to

each other … . The local settings were intended to give a flavor of authenticity to

a fictional representation with which everyone the world over would be able to

identify … which was to be the starting point for all of us, working with our lexis

and landscape. 42

Calvino lets us appreciate the visceral nature of a work of art, that which appeals

to the intellect directly through the immediate reality of the senses and the thing

itself, as if “built entirely from scratch.” 43 He also makes us aware of the disconnect,

the lack of certainty of any theory that could gather a group of designers or

effectively categorize their new directions. The post-war entourage of artists and

architects was a changed bunch, and can barely be compared to their dynamic

avant-garde parentage or younger selves. They brought fresh memories, good and

bad, to inform their new ideas, and it was often from difficulty and struggle that

the best work emerged. Calvino continues: “Memory, or rather experience, which

is the memory of the event plus the wound it has inflicted on you, plus the change

it has wrought in you and which has made you different. Experience is the basic

nutrition. Experience is the source of wealth of any writer.” 44

Albini seemed at home in that poetic, multi-faceted world of personal narratives

and formal motifs that were inspired by the rich variations of specific locations in

which he built and a cacophony of embattled voices. Albini’s reserved confidence

allowed him to continue taking risks with transparency, suspension, and technically

superb details, all seeds planted during an apprenticeship that extended back to


Futurism. Some of his patrons deserve credit for recognizing his progressive vision

and exploiting it. It can be argued that the evolution of Albini’s work, which emerged

from the inside out, beginning with sublime interiors, was determined more by

his introspective personality than by belonging to a Milanese school, yet he was a

product of both. Albini grew up as a Rationalist and helped to define the Tendenza

(collective tendency) which was perpetually in flux. His formal language is indebted

to Pagano and Persico, yet his tectonic sophistication and material exploration

were rooted in a deep sensibility for steel and glass suspension motifs, material

construction, and a long career of experimentation. He embraced Italian tradition

as an evolution that must not become nostalgic, clichéd, or oversimplified, and

as such continues to change. His last projects are emblematic of the significance

of that trajectory. They will be discussed in the final chapter, evidence of his own

relinquishing of a dominant and unified Modern ethos.

Notes

1 Scott Brown Denise and Robert Venturi, Architecture as Signs and Systems:

For a Mannerist Time, William E. Massey Sr, Lectures for in the History of American

Civilization (2004), p. 111.

2 Ibid.

3 CIAMs beginning is the same year as the inception of Italian progressive journals,

Domus and Casabella, and while coincidental, it marks a significant moment in

international Modern influences.

4 Core members of Team 10 included Jacob Bakem and Aldo van Eyck (The

Netherlands), Alison and Peter Smithson (England), Georges Candilis (Greece),

Shadrach Woods (USA/France) and Giancarlo de Carlo (Italy). After the eighth CIAM

meeting at Hoddeson, Team 10 grew based primarily on a reactionary premise until

its final encounter in 1977, the Dutch and English factions having already formed

splinter groups.

5 Pollini and Bottoni attended CIAM 3 in 1930. Both were involved in deciding the

themes of early meetings and Bottoni became a member of the commission at CIAM 4

held in 1933.

6 Geidion, S. (Sigfried), A Decade of New Architecture, 1937–1947 (Zurich: Girsberger, 1951).

7 See Giedion: Albini’s wooden chair is depicted on p. 61. The fur store on p. 132

includes the caption, “The whole shop is treated like a large window. All equipment

is interchangeable and is suspended from the ceiling. It is of black and white painted

steel and there is a general impression of great cleanliness and refinement,” and on

p. 166 Giedion notes, “Exhibition of ancient goldsmith’s craft at the 7th Triennale in

Milan—given new value by being placed in a Modern setting, Mirrors and shafts

of burnished iron. Artificial light only.” The “Mostra dell’Antica oreficeria italiana”, or

ancient goldsmith’s craft, designed with Giovanni Romano, had actually appeared at

the 1936 Milan Triennale.

8 Mumford, p. 196.

9 Although Franco Albini is not listed in Mumford’s book as an attendee of the 1959

meeting, Franco’s son, Marco, has stated that his father attended that meeting, which

was likely his first encounter with Louis Kahn.

140


10 “[Peter] Smithson felt compelled to point out the design’s historical allusions but its

overall ‘responsibilty.’” Cited in Harry Francis Mallgrave, Modern Architectural History,

p. 359.

11 Goldhagen, Sarah Williams, ed, “Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar

Architecture Culture,” p. 12.

12 I take issue with Goldhagen’s definition of Italian Neorealism as anti-Modernist for its

celebration of pre-Modern values and interest in examining local traditions.

13 See Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura, edited by Matilde Baffa, Corinna Morandi,

Sara Protassoni, and Augusto Rossari (Milan: Università Laterza architettura, 1995).

14 Gian Luigi Banfi died in the German concentration camp of Mauthausen on April 10,

1945, but his name was frequently associated with the studio even after the war.

15 Brazil’s Oscar Neimeyer had first been invited for the post, then rejected due to

assumptions of his left-leaning political stance. Jose Luis Sert then accepted the post.

16 Some of Zevi’s books include Towards an Organic Architecture (London: Faber & Faber

Limite, 1949); Saper vedere l’architettura (How to Look at Architecture) (1950); Storia

dell’Architettura Moderna (1950); Erich Mendelsohn: Complete Works (1970); Poetica

dell’Architettura Neoplastica (1974); The Modern Language of Architecture (St. Louis:

Washington University Press, 1978).

17 See Ernesto Rogers, “L’Ortodossia dell’eterodossia.” Casabella 215 (April–May 1957),

pp. 2–4 and citation by Joan Ockman in her introduction to Architecture Culture

1943–1968, p. 20.

18 De Seta, “Franco Albini: Architect Between Rationalism and Technology.” In Franco

Albini, Rizzoli, 1981. “His tenacity becomes even more significant in a country which

is a kind of port-of-call, where life is full of conflict and bartering. Albini appears

untouchable, indifferent to these goings-on right up to the finish. This is perhaps what

makes discussing his work so difficult,” p. 26.

19 Four of the chapters in Gregotti’s 1966 New Directions in Italian Architecture, “Striving

for Reality,” “Professional, Political, and Productive Contexts,” “The Role of Industrial

Design,” and “The Revolt in the Schools of Architecture” summarize the key events

that influenced post-war Italian Modernism. Gregotti’s next book, Il Territorio

dell’Architettura, was considered his post-Modern manifesto and dealt with issues of

urbanism and speculation. “Reconstructing a History,” reads like a personal memoir.

It appeared in the exhibition catalog for the New York Guggenheim Exhibition on

The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943–1968 that accompanied the show in 1994.

20 Gregotti’s article includes depictions of the Pirovano Lodge in Cervinia (Albini and

Luigi Colombini, 1949–51), the INA Office Building in Parma (1950–52), the installations

of the Palazzo Bianco museum (1950–51), Treasury Museum of San Lorenzo in Genoa

(Albini and Helg, 1952–56), La Rinascente Department Store in Rome (Albini and Helg,

1957–61), and the Line 1 stations of the Metropolitana subway system in Milan (Albini

and Helg with Bob Noorda, 1962–64).

21 Ibid., p. 559.

22 Ibid., p. 561.

23 The commission included Luigi Piccinato, Mario Ridolfi, Aldo Della Rocca, Franco

Sterbini, Ignazio Guidi, Cherubino Malpeli, and Mario De Renzi. See Tafuri, History of

Italian Architecture, pp. 6–7.


24 For the OET project, see Franco Albini, Rizzoli (1981), p. 133. Albini and Helg also

designed a project for the Villa Olivetti in Ivrea for Roberto Olivetti between 1955–58

that was not realized.

25 Tafuri, History, p. 11. Termini Station occupies the site long planned for the new Roman

rail station near the ruins of the ancient Baths of Diocletian and the Republican Roman

wall. The project resulted from a design competition awarded to the team with Mario

Ridolfi and Ludovico Quaroni. If Fosse Adreantine is characteristically Roman in its solid

mass and carved space, the new public terminal provided an airy alternative to the

weight and compression of traditional Roman architecture. Both new public works

share the accomplishment of redefining Modern public architecture as monumental

in scale and innovative in craft and material expression, with each carefully controlled

in scale to fit its specific site and program. Termini’s grand roofs define two enormous

public interiors, one that acts as a continuation of the public street, and the other

that functions as a filter for ticket sales covered by an undulating cantilever canopy.

Speaking directly to its surroundings, the station provides a backdrop for the bus

terminal, while yielding for the ancient Republican Roman wall made visible by its

glazed end plane. The 5-story bar building of offices supported by the covered piazza

is camouflaged from the front by the entry portico and is disguised from a distance by

its double bands of windows that illuminate office floors and imply a building of twice

its actual height.

26 The team of architects responsible for the Fosse Adreantine included Mario Fiorentino,

Giuseppe Perugini, Nello Aprile, Cino Calcaprina, and Aldo Cardelli. Lotus 97, p. 13.

27 Visitors comprehend their stature below ground level with a new horizon established

through the linear void above. The menacing, hovering rectilinear mass appears to

float over the 335 individual tombs that compose a collective grave to honor each

of those individuals brutally massacred by Nazi soldiers during the occupation of

Rome. After passing through the subterranean areas where the dead were first found,

the sequence offers a glimpse of daylight before continuing into the enormous

carved chamber where eyes gradually adjust to perceive the grid of tombs, many still

frequented and marked by fresh flowers and hand written messages.

28 “I believe that architecture at the present time is moving toward reality, abandoning

idealistic positions, theories, principles, and diagrams in favor of the present as it really

is. The present era is made up of numerous actual and past components that should

be brought to consciousness. While the components from the present have been

generally absorbed and show only a limited amount of variation between geographic

and cultural environments, what remains from the past supplies many profound and

important variants. Thus, the task of clarifying through study has been bequeathed to

us by our predecessors.” From Albini’s comments to the MSA in June 1955, published in

MSA edited by Baffa et al., p. 499, and reprinted in English translation in this volume.

29 For discussion of the palazzina type, see Conforti in Zodiac n. 17 (Mar.–Aug. 1997),

pp. 96–113.

30 Gregotti, New Directions in Italian Architecture, p. 117.

31 Manuele dell’architetto was produced by Gustavo Colonnetti, Bruno Zevi, Pier Luigi

Nervi, Biagio Bongiovanni, and Mario Ridolfi and was sponsored by CNR (Consiglio

Nazionale delle Ricerche). The USIS (United State Information Survey) distributed

25,000 free copies. See Casciato, p. 27.

32 Pilat, Stephanie, “Reconstructing Italy: The Ina-Casa neighborhoods of the Postwar Era”

(Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2009).

142


33 “Yet is was above all Casabella that first opened the discussion about the phenomenon

of neorealism in architecture—or rather, the discussion about what might be called an

aspiration to reality, which was constant in all the different forms of Italian architecture

throughout the 1950s.” Gregotti from Reconstructing a History, p. 561.

34 For Tafuri, the angst of the period was born of a lack of understanding, or what he

calls contamination, between the individuality and the collectivity brought on by

disturbing images of reality reflected back in an unexpected mirror. History, pp. 9–19.

35 Casciato, Neorealism in Italian Architecture, p. 45.

36 Ibid.

37 Sassi di Matera refers to the “Stones of Matera,” which houses an ancient town among

caverns along two major valleys carved in the tufa rock, a volcanic geology of the

Basilicata region of southern Italy. The area was inhabited in prehistoric times and may

be among the first human settlements in Italy. Recognized as one of Italy’s poorest

isolated villages after World War II, people were relocated from it into the new housing.

With the support of the European Union and UNESCO Matera is developing tourism

and witnessing a revival.

38 Referred to as “Il Biscione,” the enormous low-income neighborhood dramatically

contrasts Daneri’s luxury Rationalist housing at the Genoese seaside designed more

than a decade before.

39 Mario Fiorentino, designer of the Fosse Ardeantine, led the team responsible for what

more accurately is known at “Nuovo Corviale” (New Corviale), the 1972 public housing

addition to the existing peripheral neighborhood. Romans refer to it as “il Serpentone”

(the big snake). The similarity between Aldo Rossi’s Modena cemetery and his

portion of the Gallaratese popular housing project on Milan’s periphery, have led the

Modenese to refer to the cemetery as “gli appartamenti dei morti”, or the “apartments

of the dead”.

40 Ignasi de Sola-Morales, Differences, Topographies of Contemporary Architecture,

translations by Graham Thompson, edited by Sarah Whiting (Cambridge: The MIT

Press, 1997), p. 25.

41 See Renzo Piano’s essay “Pezzo per Pezzo” included in the addenda for my remarks and

his testimony about the experience of working as an apprentice for Albini.

42 Italo Calvino, Il sentiero dei nidi di ragni (The Path to the Spider’s Nests), 1964 preface to

his 1947 work of fiction, often cited as one of the first Neorealist works of literature,

and also Calvino’s last. Translated by Archibald Colquhoun (New York: Harper Collins

Publishers Inc, 1998), pp. 8–10.

43 Calvino, p. 10.

44 Ibid., p. 29.

6

The Exhibition and the Museum: Albini’s Pragmatic Poetics

We affirm the educational function of the museum and the necessity

to insert it into modern life. With attention to both, architecture tries to

mediate between the two. Architecture must acclimatize the public as

well as the artifact … . Regarding the architectural problem, whether new

construction or adapting an existing historic structure, while respecting

the curatorial criteria, the building must be alive and autonomous. 1

Franco Albini

Albini created masterpieces of representational

virtuosity and dreamlike suggestiveness. 2

Manfredo Tafuri

Eight years after his breakthrough Scipione installation at the Milan Brera

Museum (Figure 1.3) and following his many domestic experiments, Albini

received a commission for the Palazzo Bianco Museum. The renovation project

would engage him fully and distinguish him as Italy’s foremost exhibition

designer. When charged to invigorate an existing art collection in a damaged

historic palazzo, he did what was at the time unthinkable—he introduced into

the old structure on Genoa’s grand and glorious street, the Strada Nuova, the

notion of an abstract white volume, a typology as yet unknown in Italy. 3 Several

of the avenue’s noble Renaissance and Baroque residences now house significant

public and private collections of époque paintings in galleries resembling their

former status as noble dwellings. For decades they retained their old ambience,

furniture, densely ornamented wall covering, and poor lighting, a common

paradigm for the Genoese domestic museum at the time.

144


6.1 Palazzo

Rosso façade

on the Strada

Nuova, Genoa

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

In 1954, just three years after Albini’s Palazzo Bianco opened to the public,

George Kidder-Smith published Italia Costruisce (Italy Builds), a book intended

for an international audience. In his discussion of Albini’s revitalized museum

Kidder-Smith wrote, “It might be said with more than a grain of truth that Italians

have the finest art but the worst museums in the world.” 4 He then lauded Albini

for having introduced a new paradigm, “With the outstanding exception of the

recently restored museum shown here [Palazzo Bianco] and part of the newly

refurnished Brera Museum in Milan … .” He called attention to Albini’s control

of changing daylight and delicate suspension infrastructure, which required the

removal of heavy gold frames, to effectively lighten the experience of historic

paintings. Albini’s subsequent public projects for cultural institutions became his

most acclaimed design work for the very fact that they altered a priori concepts

The Exhibition and the Museum: Albini’s Pragmatic Poetics 145

6.2 Renovated

cortile of the

Palazzo Bianco

on the Strada

Nuova, Genoa

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

of Modernity while bringing back to life passé environments that housed great

artworks. He demonstrated that Rationalist sensibilities rigorously applied where

least expected could effectively revive old structures and their collections, of

which Italy was well endowed. He showed that with cautious risk, the continuity

of Modern ideals confronting clichéd versions of the past, but not eliminating

the existing envelope in its entirety, could infiltrate these notable enigmas and

produce highly successful results.

Upon completion of Palazzo Bianco, Albini immediately received commissions

in Genoa for two more museums, and in each case he applied a similar strategy.

6.3 Renovated gallery of the Palazzo Bianco by Albini, Genoa

Source: © John M. Hall Photographs


However, since both the precise artworks and the existing building and its site

played key roles in the design, each solution solicited different results. By virtue

of the specificity of his response to site context and museum contents, differing

outcomes showed that he was driven by a rigorous method, but not by a style.

His Palazzo Bianco Museum soon drew international and national attention and

influenced his contemporaries. Art historian Giulio Carlo Argan witnessed the

status quo of the genre: “Nearly all Italian museums are housed in ancient buildings

of a monumental character. This fact has an adverse influence on the development

of studies on museum architecture and museographic research.” 5 Argan was one

of the most important art critics to call attention to the genius of Albini’s radical

approach to historic gallery renovations.

Critics, curators, and historians today concur that not only was the immediate

post-war period the most successful and innovative period in Italian museum

design, but that Albini was responsible, along with a few cohorts, for ushering in

a new language and methodology to revive the experience of viewing art, and

the initiatives of that period remain unsurpassed. Albini’s direct encounter with

antique artifacts and his rehabilitation of them by revising their contexts naturally

inspired his argument for creative integration of tradition and Modernity.

Perhaps as a result of the difficult tension in reconciling perceived opposites, he

produced several architectural masterpieces as he sought the essential scheme

and intervened with skillful and rigorous craft. New exhibition typologies,

expressive materials, and formal ideas specific to unique buildings and artworks

became thematic in post-war Italy, and eventually became a product that Albini

also exported. At the same time, he never abandoned his Rationalist methods

or restraint. Italian self-criticism by architects at the time faced with ideological

and professional doubt often failed to recognize the virtues of their emerging

pluralism over uniformity, but those with the vision to see Modern ideas in

traditional forms provided a positive catalyst for change.

Albini’s Genoese museums would not have come about but for the patronage

of Caterina Marcenaro, who held authority over the city’s municipal art collections.

The four museums the pair eventually created or recreated together share a

common element—they diminish the psychological distance between the viewer

and the artifact. Albini’s spatial strategies developed with a sympathetic curator

aimed for operative contact between viewer and historic art to enhance the

connection between the artwork and its audience. To do so, he employed new

methods for hanging canvases, resurfacing interior walls, and integrating custom

lighting. Subsequent museum masterpieces from the period reveal the influence

of Albini and Marcenaro’s Genoese experiments. In Milan, BBPR inserted many

similar Modern motifs, including open stairways, freestanding infrastructure and

new lighting that contrasted with the cavernous old stone spaces at Castello

Sforzesco (1956). In Palermo, Carlo Scarpa mimicked Albini’s pivoting armatures for

paintings in Palazzo Abatellis (1954), and in Verona’s Castelvecchio Musuem (1957)

he borrowed similar installation tactics of freestanding paintings and dynamic

sculpture armatures. Scarpa, Gardella, and Michelucci renovated the Uffizi galleries

in Florence (1956) with mechanisms made possible by fresh expectations forged

148


by Albini and Marcenaro’s renewed museums. I will compare in greater depth some

of the shared ideas of Italy’s greatest talents and then return to some observations

about influence among these protagonists of Modern design culture.

Recognizing Albini’s new collaborators during this fruitful period for him is

warranted before describing his museum projects in detail. After having lost

beloved colleagues with whom he had shared his most formative years, two women

would enter his professional sphere, one as client and the other as professional

partner. Each would reshape his practice for the rest of his career. Franca Helg

became a partner in Studio Albini in 1951, during the installation of the Italian

Decorative Arts Show in Stockholm. Helg subsequently described Albini’s restraint

as a designer, lending insights into their partnership, which lasted more than

25 years:

As it happens, [Albini] said, one has to know: one idea is enough. You must

conduct the project and that idea must be the full authority. Not only is it difficult

to find the right idea, but to avoid the tendency to deviate from it, to enrich it too

much, to transform it, to divide it. … This exercise of discipline is an intellectual

exercise. 6

Helg’s reflection on her career in Studio Albini lends intimate insights into his

thoughts and methods and serves to frame his legacy, while providing ample

evidence of her respect for him as he influenced her own design work.

As previously noted, Caterina Marcenaro, Albini’s patron and collaborator,

had recently been named Direttore dell’Ufficio Belle Arti del Comune di Genova

(the Head of the Municipal Office of Arts and Culture). After the war, she gained

responsibility for Genoa’s cultural patrimony and was anxious to overturn the

deeds of her predecessor, Orlando Grosso. Grosso had been active in Genoa’s Fascist

political scene, and was dismissed after the war, yet he has also been credited for

heroic efforts to protect the artistic assets of the city. 7 The new director focused on

the need to update the gallery experience, and few cities had a comparable wealth

of material to work with than the extraordinary collections that had remained in

Genoese family collections for centuries. Marcenaro commissioned a selection of

progressive architects to intervene on the entire chain of galleries and collections

under her authority. From among them, Marcenaro clearly found a soul mate in

Albini, whom she chose to design four sequential museums as well as her own

dwelling. Concurring with Albini’s formal ideals, Marcenaro wrote about her

intentions for the domestic museums of the Strada Nuova, “… the palazzo concept

has been abandoned to adhere strictly to the idea of a museum. In other words, the

work of art is not treated as decoration, but as a world in itself sufficient to absorb

the full attention of the visitor.” 8

It has been surmised that a relative of Giovanni Romano who worked in

Genoa’s civic planning offices first recommended Albini to Marcenaro for the

museum restorations. 9 Fertile collaborations between Albini and Romano,

including the Triennale Antique Goldworks exhibit, gave Romano a basis on

which to recommend him. During her 21-year reign as culture czar, Marcenaro


commissioned Albini to design unprecedented Modern galleries inside

monuments in the centro storico when resources were extremely scarce: Palazzo

Bianco (1949–51), Palazzo Rosso (1952–61), and the Treasury Museum of San

Lorenzo (1952–56). She later retained Studio Albini to design the Sant’Agostino

Museum on a bombed convent site of the deconsecrated medieval church complex

that was only completed after Albini’s death. During the same period, Marcenaro

entrusted the design of the Edoardo Chiossone Oriental Museum to Mario Labó

and the reconstruction of a house commemorating Christopher Columbus to

Ignazio Gardella in Genoa’s Piazza Dante. 10 Marcenaro, herself a socialist, drew

support for these ambitious and numerous projects from local industrialists of

means. She has been described as having had a commanding presence with

exceptional visual and political sensibilities. Of the clients for whom Albini

worked, Marcenaro was perhaps his closest collaborator. Their relationship has

been documented, but less than it has been locally mythologized. 11 As we have

seen, Albini’s design for Marcenaro’s apartment in the reconstructed penthouse

of the Palazzo Rosso assured the depth and frequency of their interactions. The

apartment interior provided a site for experimentation of his strategies for spatial

layering and installation innovations beyond the public eye.

PALAZZO BIANCO

Maria Brignole Sale, Duchess of Galliera, donated two palazzos from her family

holdings to the city of Genoa during the nineteenth century. The original Palazzo

Bianco (1530–40) was built by Luca Grimaldi and named Bianco for its exterior

renovation in the early 1700s. It passed to Brignola Sale in debt to her as creditor.

In 1884, she dedicated the nucleus to the palazzo for a civic museum and in

1887 purchased private collections that after curatorial exchanges with other

museums has resulted in a prestigious collection of paintings from the twelfth

to the seventeenth centuries. The Palazzo Bianco currently exhibits Caravaggio’s

Ecce Homo, along with works by Luca Cambiaso, Paolo Veronese, Filippino Lippi,

Rubens, Van Dyck and many others.

Allied bombing in 1942 had damaged both Palazzos Bianco and Rosso, with

the greatest damage occurring to Palazzo Bianco. 12 The monumental interior

was rebuilt between 1945–49 by Marcenaro’s predecessor, who had restored the

enfilade rooms to their original Palladian proportions, retaining their high ceilings

and époque cortile. The only truly new space was built as a storage area under

the reinforced roof where bracing structures were revealed to recreate the historic

pitched slate roof. Marcenaro commissioned Albini to redesign the entire gallery

interior after first inviting him to install a temporary exhibit in the gallery. Albini’s

interior design indeed lived up to the name Bianco, as the grand interior walls are

primarily simple white stucco and matte-finished slate providing an occasional

alternative. With characteristic restraint, he modernized the monumental volumes

with enormous windows retaining room proportions on the piano nobile level

and their enfilade sequence where less intervention provided the proverbial more.

150


6.4 Main piano

nobile gallery of

the Palazzo Bianco

before renovation

The insertion of a Modern interior into the Renaissance palace resulted in a

surprising harmony and serenity. In his 1952 article for Metron, Argan unequivocally

praised the entirety of Albini’s Palazzo Bianco Museum renovation, from the quality

of the experience of viewing art to the new storeroom in the attic, calling the

intervention “unquestionably the most Modern Italian museum” of the day. Most

notably, he recognized the importance of Albini’s collaboration with Marcenaro,

whose vision complemented Albini’s perseverance, courage and rigor. 13 Tafuri

called Palazzo Bianco a “masterpiece of museological function and neutrality and

a patient reconstruction of textual fragments.” 14 Luigi Moretti commented that

Albini’s renovation was music to “somewhat deafened ears” as a clarion call for

more continuity after the war with Rationalist practices. Nothing comparable was

being done to revitalize Renaissance antiquities in Moretti’s Rome.

Marcenaro argued for the importance of distancing a historic work from a faux

period ambience to avoid confusion and to revive the artwork. “An exhibit is alive

by virtue not of the light it throws on a dead past, but of the significance it assumes

against the background of our own personal experience.” 15 While the Classical

notion of monumental prestige no longer sufficed to show historic artworks

to Modern eyes, Albini managed to utilize the full character and volume of the

existing room to display art and engage the viewer. Figure-ground relationships

embedded in the architecture help dislocate the artifact from private ownership

to situate it in the contemporary public realm, thus diminishing the mental


distance between the artwork and the viewer. Marcenaro sought mobility and

flexibility of these collections, as new curatorial paradigms required systematic

methods for displaying works of various dimensions within fixed rooms. Albini’s

non-judgmental stance about the quality of individual artifacts complemented

the curator’s spatial requirements. He took seriously his responsibility to present

each artwork or object with integrity and intelligence, without judgment, and in

a Modern context.

For Albini, establishing the appropriate distance between art and viewer

required systematically recomposing interior surfaces, introducing innovative

display motifs, and revising methods for controlling daylight and artificial light.

His palette of black, gray, and predominantly white surfaces unified the galleries.

Whitewashed walls revealed the abstract character and cubic proportions of the

Palazzo’s original rooms. Windows were veiled with venetian blinds that allowed

subdued daylight to enter, while a thin band of fluorescent tubes was hung

in the galleries and corridors to delineate the geometric spaces and provide

ambient light. Albini lined some interior walls with local “ardesia” slate, a matte

finished cool gray continuous surface that provided a neutral visual backdrop to

set off white marble sculpture and other selected works. Its intermediate tone

served to relieve the viewer’s eyes in contrast to predominate white planes. His

comprehensive design rendered a net effect of suspended time, with medieval to

baroque artworks reviewed in the light airiness of neutral space. Fluidity between

spaces was achieved through glass doors with simple thresholds and smooth

transitions of white and gray walls, so that the confines of rooms disappeared,

giving way to the direct experience with the art objects on display. The new black

and white floors, patterned with a traditional Genoese motif, established a solid

base to the rooms and reinforced the illusion that the artworks in the collection

appeared to float. 16

Connecting the gallery visitor to the artifact also called for visually sensitive

notions for displaying works of art. The frame on a painting typically separates

the viewer from the depicted scene by employing a spatial device that also

establishes distance in time. As we have seen in Albini’s past installations, he

controlled the type of frame for each artifact in its respective context. For those

paintings in which the frame was not consistent with the period, Albini removed

the heavy barrier to perceptually lighten the image. As he later stated: “Perhaps

you cannot say that the frame is necessary or that it is useless: but you can say

almost always that it is an opportunity for space to act as the intermediary

between the image and the environment as a frame or a wall, on the surface or

background, or volume of air assigned to the painting, almost a zone of influence

in its pictorial space.” 17 Manipulation of the picture frame, already familiar from

Albini’s apartment and the Brera Scipione exhibit, demonstrated an important

transformation of the gallery experience at Palazzo Bianco and was generally

positively assessed. Carlo Scarpa would similarly control frames and other

installation devices for his first major gallery renovation, the Palazzo Abatellis in

Palermo.

152


6.5 Controversial

support structures

for paintings

using architectural

fragments

Once freed from the weight of false period

style and time-bound frames, paintings in

the Palazzo Bianco collections required a

flexible, yet consistent, way to be hung that

fit the tall interior volumes. Albini introduced

a network of suspended iron cables the

length of the wall to allow paintings to

hover at eye level above, closer to the floor

than the ceiling, and thereby outline the

geometry of the tall gallery rooms. The effect

was to delineate the prismatic spaces like a

series of guidelines, while smaller canvases

were mounted on steel posts anchored in

Gothic and Romanesque marble fragments.

With this unconventional motif, Albini could

continually alter the viewer’s relationship

to the canvas. Contrasting the abstraction

of the white space, Albini furnished folding

pearwood frame chairs covered in warm

leather that bore the marks of human contact.

Marcenaro discussed the importance of the

mobility of furniture to provide relaxation to

visitors. Albini’s Modernism was aesthetically

rigorous but not “pure,” that is, not obliged

to rules of style. In Genoa, he was able to

idealize a new version of his Modern room for exhibition inspired by the historic

palazzo so reconceived to distance past from present while establishing an

“encounter between memory and innovation.” Albini’s relational transparency

and abstract lightness in Palazzo Bianco is most pleasing in contrast to the

surrounding city of dark, narrow streets that still characterize Genoa’s medieval

fabric. Albini also adapted other spaces in the existing structure for functional

necessity. He equipped the spaces of the reconstructed attic level for art storage

with an efficient system for hanging paintings that Argan called “an authentic

and most decorous secondary gallery of light.” 18

This first collaboration with Marcenaro was inevitably risky, and Albini’s use of

architectural fragments as base weights for the painting stands that mimic easel

paintings drew criticism from the museum community. Albini designed another

installation device to support the museum’s most prized object in the Palazzo

Bianco collection. Sculptural fragments from the tomb of Margherita di Brabante

(1313), Giovanni Pisano’s medieval masterpiece, were grouped on a pivot that

gave viewers control of its height and orientation by hand. The ensemble was

later relocated without the mobile armature to the Sant’Agostino Museum, also

designed by Studio Albini. The Pisano complex and its custom pedestal is echoed

by the shaft support designed for the bust of Eleanor of Aragon in Scarpa’s


6.6 Mobile piston

stand for Pisano’s

Margherita

di Brabante,

originally exhibited

at Palazzo Bianco

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

Abatellis Museum that similarly allowed the detached female bust to appear to

float. 19

The immediate post-war years constituted a period of cultural restlessness in

Italy, yet Albini offered continuity for Modern values via his museum design. Widely

appreciated by renowned critics and architects, Palazzo Bianco received public

exposure, and soon gave way to other developments of the careful interface between

traditional and contemporary forms. With Marcenaro’s collaboration, several more

monumental structures would provide opportunities for experimentation. Tafuri has

underscored the success of the model and its role in Modern history:

154


the design of Palazzo Bianco by Albini

immediately became a necessary point of

reference for a culture intent on safeguarding,

in all situations, reassuring equilibrium. Albini’s

design is a masterpiece of its kind: the extreme

and rigorously developed museological

function accompanied by a refined neutrality of

the décor displaying works; at the same time, it

allows other signs to shine through like filigree,

reducing them to respectful interlinear glosses

of patiently reconstructed textual fragments. 20

Palazzo Rosso

A superb Baroque monument, Palazzo Rosso

in Genoa has now been completely restored to

its original entirety, and to contemporary life,

as a public museum; of which the principal art

piece is the beautiful building itself. Domus,

Nov. 1963 21

6.7 Eleonora di

Toledo is the only

freestanding figure

in this room in the

Palazzo Abatellis

gallery renovated

by Carlo Scarpa,

Palermo, 1953

Across the Strada Nuova from Palazzo

Bianco sits the former Palazzo Brignole Sale

(1671–77), known as Palazzo Rosso. Designed

by Pietro Antonio Corradi, this palazzomuseum

was also bequeathed to the city by

the Duchess of Galliera, in 1874, along with

its valuable collections with the stipulation

to “increase its artistic splendor and practical

resources.” 22 More ornate and less damaged

than the Palazzo Bianco, Albini’s scheme for the Palazzo Rosso demonstrated a new

alternative compared with his previous work. The original seventeenth-century

palazzo was built as stacked dwellings for two brothers and therefore contains two

superimposed piano nobile levels, or monumental floors, a distinct organization of

vertical spaces for a baroque palace. 23 The upper level dwelling had been sequentially

frescoed with period images on the walls, while the premature death of the brother

occupying the lower apartment resulted in an unadorned interior. The current

museum collection includes works by Van Dyck, Guido Reni, Veronese, Guercino,

de Ferrari, Albrecht Dürer, Bernardo Strozzi, and a host of others. Albini’s objective

for the Modern palazzo-museum was to reframe artworks with a detachment from

the very architectural space that surrounded them, thereby enhancing the visibility

of individual works in the collection. Palazzo Rosso presented a new challenge,

itself partially frescoed, thus increasing the complexity of seeing an added layer of

artworks and curating them to create legible juxtapositions. His revised concept

and overall strategy inspired new devices for mounting artworks with motifs that

heightened the focus on the relationship between Modern and Traditional ideas.

6.8 Palazzo Rosso cortile by Albini and Helg, 1952–62


156


6.9 Palazzo Rosso

painting gallery

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

Franca Helg worked for Albini in collaboration with Marcenaro on the Palazzo

Rosso Museum, which took over seven years to complete. Soon after, Bruno

Zevi described it as a “further step ahead” in museum adaptations. He noted the

innovative results as more complex and subtle, integrating a plurality of solutions

that soften the essential confrontation with history. 24 While some characteristics

of the palazzo’s Baroque splendor were maintained, faithful restoration of the

building to some pre-existing condition was nearly impossible and not the

architect’s priority, which calls into question Ponti’s feature headline in Domus.

Absolute historic restoration to an “original” state was never the aim of either

Marcenaro or the architects. Ponti’s attribution claiming that the building was

“restored to its original entirety, and to contemporary life, as a public museum”


is comprehensible only in the context of period polemics regarding old buildings

where such acclaim was aimed at blunting historians’ criticisms. The design team

was united behind Albini’s thematic restraint, with respect for curatorial aims while

instilling autonomy and vitality, as he later expressed:

The components of the problem are variable and complex: I want to note that

the architectural solutions need never be simply according to taste—they may be

updated and cultivated—but must be truly authentic. 25

Palazzo Rosso had been altered in the years since the 1962 project, making it

difficult to recognize Albini and Helg’s comprehensive project, yet the most recent

renovations, executed in 2007, have been directed by architects sensitive to the

Modern museum’s revitalization. Some controversy over the gallery continues

today, as recent historians have reconsidered the degree of subjectivity involved

in the shared decision by architects and curator to privilege eighteenth-century

interiors over frescoes, spatial sequences, and uses from previous eras. 26 Some

walls and ceilings throughout the palazzo’s history had acquired various layers

of painted ornament as inhabitants and their tastes changed, so the history of

the interior is not simple to ascertain. In Albini and Helg’s original project, rooms

with frescoed surfaces, were treated differently than those originally left plain in

the Baroque palazzo.

Confronting myriad challenges, Albini and Helg were committed to addressing

the dense memory embedded throughout the monument with Modern means,

and with new tactics that best facilitated access to the collection of paintings and

its other objects. In doing so, they similarly erased the expression of domestic

inhabitation. Several ingenious motifs were introduced to the Palazzo Rosso

gallery with the detailed precision and craft that had come to characterize the

Studio’s installation projects. Steel support structures were custom designed for

selective artifacts to feature them among other works. Some paintings in their

frames were supported on pivoting armatures that could be manipulated by

hand to give viewers control to position them for ideal light conditions. Similar

to the Eleanor of Toledo pedestal, this flexible painting pivot mount was also

used by Scarpa in his renovation of Palermo’s Palazzo Abatellis Museum. 27 Many

canvases occupied grand salons in suspended sequences that offered flexible

reorganization to meet curatorial needs similar to the installations of Albini’s

Palazzos. Overhead mobile pendant lamps allowed for light to be focused on

individual paintings, with uplighting from the same system available to highlight

ceiling frescoes.

Two Modern elements of the Palazzo Rosso intervention have left unmistakable

signs of Albini’s handiwork. The glass enclosure of the cortile and loggia (Figures

6.8 and 6.12) and his 4-story spiral stair (Figure 6.13) are moments of sublime

elegance that solved problems of adaptive reuse and supported the museum’s

primary function. Both concepts have endured changes in architectural and

curatorial tastes. Maintaining spatial transparency and introducing daylight by

158


6.10 Original

handle mounts at

Palazzo Rosso to

adjust paintings

to desired viewing

and light

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

way of the deep courtyard were priorities that resulted in the glass enclosure of

the loggia. The superbly crafted glass enclosures facilitated seamless circulation,

maintained vistas, and allowed conditioned air to flow between galleries.

Tempered glass panels at the scale of the column loggia voids were joined with

tiny brass fittings without window frames, leaving minimal hardware to detract

from the well preserved frescoed loggia. The spectacular views from the loggia

over medieval Genoa and the port integrated the cultural context and real time

into the experience of the historic sequence of art works.

Palazzo Rosso’s irregular section heights were an inevitable inheritance of the

original Brignole Sale palazzo composed of two superimposed dwellings. Albini

and Helg designed a new connection that was able to unify the whole sequence

by introducing a suspended freestanding octagonal stair with open risers and

visually floating handrails. The lightweight spiral stair motif that first appeared

in Villa Neuffer in 1940 gained refinement with this larger public installation.

To simplify the flow in section, the transparent Modern element served as a

single clarifying gesture that was able to choreograph fluid public procession

and twist as necessary to land on each floor of differing section height. Eight

steel rods form a central suspension ring that works with eight tension rods


6.11 Scarpa’s

hinged painting

mounts at the

Palazzo Abatellis

in Palermo

on the stair perimeter, supporting the leather sheathed handrail and outside

tread band. The stair treads are surfaced in red carpet both above and below

with fine finish detail. Some of Albini and Helg’s more precise interventions in

Palazzo Rosso can be found in minor section areas that were used to exhibit

smaller works, including coins, Ligurian ceramics, and artisan sculpture, and

served as archival storage and work areas. Antonio Piva, who would later

work with the pair as a partner of Studio Albini, has noted breakthroughs in

the redesign of Palazzo Rosso: “The restoration was executed with expressive

freedom. The glass walls, the large octagonal steel stair that joins all the floors,

the red carpet that covers all the pavements, testify to a freedom outside the

scheme and fears of breaking official laws which disciplined the interventions

of restoration of that époque.” 28

6.12 Palazzo Rosso frescoed loggia enclosed in glass by Albini and Helg


6.13 Palazzo Rosso spiral stair


162


6.14 Museum

of the Treasury

of San Lorenzo

under the Duomo

church of Genoa

by Albini, 1952–56

Treasury of San Lorenzo

Genoa is also host to the Museum for the Treasury of San Lorenzo, widely recognized

as one of Albini’s greatest accomplishments. 29 Favorably discussed by every major

critic and historian, Antonio Piva also describes the Treasury Museum as the

project by Albini that reveals his principles and rules around which he established

a school. 30 The underground gallery is a total environment, and the first cultural

building he designed ex novo and without collaborators other than Marcenaro.

His series of intimate Modern rooms effectively transport visitors to another time.

San Lorenzo is an archive and a crypt, a public repository with an unexpectedly

intimate scale that provides a refreshing exposure to a unique collection made up

of precious reliquary and collections of the Church. The commission was Albini’s

second from Caterina Marcenaro, who was alleged to have sent him to Mycenae

to visit the tholoi tombs of the Treasury of Atreus as inspiration for the project. 31

In fact, the circular subterranean chambers of hand-dressed ashlar stone buried

in the hilly city of Genoa do bear some resemblance to the silent, monumental

tholos of Atreus. The geometric diameters of neighboring tombs at Mycenae are

proportional to three of Albini’s four chambers. 32 Differences in the pre-Classical

sloped walls of the ancient tombs derived from beehive dome structures appear in

section, yet the aura of the underground tomb carved into the hillside to conceal

its treasures suggests an apt precedent for Albini’s San Lorenzo intervention.


Tafuri called Albini’s assignment “a precise allegorical problem, not unrelated

to Marcenaro’s intervention: the shrine of the Holy Grail was coupled with the

memory of the treasures of Atreus. Albini managed, however, to sublimate the

esoteric nature of his references.” 33 In Albini’s 1956 essay about this project, he

did not mention the Mycenaen tholoi as inspiration for the San Lorenzo treasures.

However, the term “tholos” has been repeatedly used to identify the type of

room Albini utilized for this unusual project whose underground placement

resulted primarily from a lack of buildable territory near the duomo in this dense

medieval city.

Albini’s geometrically figurative, dark buried treasure for a Modern museum

produced a startling new architectural statement. The four round rooms almost

disappeared in the darkness, which masked its simple craft and construction

technology, letting the context of the duomo dominate. Reawakening the myth

of Mycenae constituted a part of the mystique of this jewel of a museum, which

offered a poetic, yet chthonic, intensity with an authenticity that had been missing

from so much concurrent Modern architecture. 34 Albini’s Treasury museum

indeed seemed to have satisfied yearnings for long awaited advancements

in Modern design, as can be discerned in the essay about the building by

Paolo Chessa in 1957, in which he wrote: “And yet this architecture is without

time, and Albini is new.” 35 Albini found tradition to be the soul of his Modern

design ethos.

The Cathedral of San Lorenzo, the duomo church for the City of Genoa, displays

periodic strata of medieval and Renaissance superimpositions typically found

across Italy but especially concentrated in this ancient seaport. The church borrows

the familiar material palette of black and white horizontal striping characteristic

of domestic, civic, and ecclesiastical constructions of the Genoese Republic.

6.15 Plan and

section diagrams

of the Treasury of

Atreus at Mycenae,

1350–1250 B.C.E.

164


6.16 Entrance

to the Treasury of

Atreus at Mycenae

Stone prevails with massive weight and hard wrought textures. White marble

from Carrara and slate from Lavagna on the east coast of the Liguria Region

were accessible to the Genoese by sea and provided an ample supply of long

lasting building materials. During the Crusades, merchant, military leader, and

patron son of Genoa, Guglielmo Embriaco returned from Jerusalem with the

reliquary and spoils attributed to Saint Lawrence, an early Christian martyr, to

whom the City’s duomo is dedicated. The Treasury constituted an invaluable

collection of precious metals and gems, including an ancient green glass plate,

an onyx platter alleged to have held the head of John the Baptist, the Byzantine

cross of Zaccaria, the arm of Saint Anne wrapped in a silver sleeve, along with

chalices, ecclesiastical robes, bas-reliefs, and other relics. The artifacts long held

by the Cathedral became the joint property of the Church and the municipality

of Genoa.

In 1951, Marcenaro determined that a new museum for the Treasury of San

Lorenzo was necessary to protect these precious collections, while making individual

artifacts accessible to scholars and the general public. The specificity of the collection

redirected Albini’s intentions away from the illumination and flexibility of his prior

installations to produce a museum made up of closed spaces that permanently

fixed and isolated its objects underground. The composition of determinate,

geometric rooms was a significant departure from his previously adapted interiors.


6.17 Treasury

of San Lorenzo

gallery showing

off-center

installation and

stone pattern

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

Proximity to the Duomo was necessary for access by clerics to chalices, vestments,

and other artifacts among the treasures that served religious rites and ceremonies.

Locating the gallery presented a particular challenge, since the density of

historic structures in the medieval center of the city rendered a new building

impossible. 36 After considering the reuse of various existing structures, the site

under the Archbishop’s Palace adjacent to the Duomo was selected because it least

risked damage to nearby monuments and allowed for a direct connection from the

sacristy to the Treasury museum. Albini’s original proposal for the path of access

differed from the version he built, which he described as resembling an entry into

166


a crypt or catacomb. 37 The eventual approach was revised to create an entrance

via an angled stair descending from the rectory after traversing the nave of the

cathedral. Similar to passage through the black frescoed hall at Pompeii’s Villa of

the Mysteries preparing visitors for its red rooms, the sequence into the Treasury

is necessary for adjusting one’s eyes and mind to the change in light and spirit.

Working below ground, Albini was well aware of these physical qualities of Genoa,

itself an inexhaustible quarry of ideas and networks of tight spaces. Genoa is best

understood as an extreme topography to which all buildings must adapt. The use

of this subterranean pedestrian passageway as connective tissue allows time and

space to prepare visitors for a journey to the past.

Each of the four round chambers was submerged in section with stepped

thresholds to emphasize the separation of rooms designed to hold selectively

grouped objects. The entire museum, composed of the four cells and an interstitial

zone, is made of matte hand-finished charcoal gray promontorio, a stone now

exhausted from local quarries. Promontorio resembles slate but does not splinter.

Planar walls within the galleries were unnecessary since there are no flat or onesided

pieces in the collection. Thus Albini exploited the specific nature of each

unique artifact in the rare Treasury assemblage to design ideal exhibit conditions.

He produced a plastic, excavated, multi-centered environment that is carved into

the ground. Walls and floors were uniformly textured with rectangular blocks of

varying dimensions. Each block of stone was rendered in detail to produce the

interior elevations and paving patterns. The horizontal delineation of stone served

to scale the spaces and reinforce the radial design of each chamber. Ceilings made

of cast-in-place concrete reinforced the radial geometry of three multi-centered

wheels as spokes of support spines—all meticulously crafted. As Tafuri observed,

Albini’s interior design constituted “a magical abstraction … one of the most

original ingredients in Albini’s poetics: a surrealism all the more subtle in that it was

resolved in a technically faultless vocabulary.” 38

Albini’s careful coordination between volumes, materials, and lighting design

was compositionally appropriate to the phenomena of the collection displayed.

Simple glass and steel, bent to address each cell’s center, effectively lifted artifacts

to eye level with hidden supports so that their encasements appeared suspended

in each chamber cell or interstitial area. Display boxes contained diffused light

fixtures so that only reflective light off the glistening silver and gemstone reliquary

was visible; no bulbs or fixtures were apparent. Pinpoint lighting located inside the

glass display cases minimized surface glare. The non-reflective slate walls and floors

did not detract from the splendor of the sublime treasures, while the chambers felt

like geometrically carved earth. The space between cells contains the sixteenthcentury

processional ark, “Corpus Domini”, along with an eighteenth-century silver

Madonna and two Renaissance gilded textile vestments encased in Albini’s glass

boxes. 39 The second cylinder holds the ninth-century gold Zaccaria cross, named

for the Genoese family that acquired the relic, which is traditionally moved to the

Duomo at each Good Friday service. The third tholos contains the ark claimed to

contain the ashes of John the Baptist, and a Roman platter carved of chalcedony

(quartz) from the first century claimed to have carried the head of the saint.


The largest tholos has two silver altarpieces and numerous chalices that contain

precious works of Genoese silver and gold craft from the last three centuries. As

each cylindrical room increases in diameter, the age of its contents decreases. As

Mario Labó wrote, “In these spaces that are so reduced, every object lives.” 40

The total assemblage is a study in controlled movement, focused attention, and

perspectival surprise. Albini’s Rationalist severity is evident in the simple, elegant

form, tectonic precision, and internalized transparency of his essential idea. Yet

his mystical geometry, attributed to historic references rendered in dark carved

stone, was wholly new and stretched his Modern vocabulary. A black steel strip

carrying electric conduit at floor and ceiling levels provided for precisely focused

lighting on artworks contributing to the aura of an ancient Modernity. Albini’s

exposed structure and refined use of material increased the sensual range of his

Modern language. His abstract plan introduced the idea of negative space as

the geometrically linked area between round figural rooms. 41 His project for San

Lorenzo was ingeniously planned; a materially inspired architecture that poetically

transcended the dogma but embraced the ethos of functionalism.

Returning to the urban site problem that drove the project into the ground,

Argan found in Albini’s small museum confirmation of the continuity that tied

the object to the building and the building to the city, which he defined as

a unity of method that presides over all built form from design to planning.

6.18 Treasury

of San Lorenzo’s

Genoese silver

craft installation

Source: Courtesy of

Franco Boggero

168


6.19 Sacred

robes in display

cases designed

by Albini in

the Treasury of

San Lorenzo

Source: Courtesy of

Franco Boggero

Argan’s reference for the tiny museum was to Romanesque architecture, rather

than ancient Mycenae; it nonetheless presented closed volumes, an interiority

without comparison, as a space “that cannot have a horizon or place to escape.” 42

Philip Johnson’s interest in Albini’s buried treasure of San Lorenzo may

explain the submerged location of his Painting Gallery at his New Canaan estate.

Similarities between galleries by Johnson and Albini can best be read in plan

where the geometric sequence of the four adjacent circles in each demonstrates

an uncanny link. Johnson’s Painting Gallery was added to his walled compound in

1965, the home of his famed Meisian Glass House (1950). He located the gallery to

be invisible on his rolling 47-acre landscape, which is instead defined by clearings

and pavilions, a comprehensive site composition that he produced over his many

years in residence at New Canaan. Albini’s Treasury Museum was published widely

in Italy, as well as in the journal Architectural Forum in the U.S., shortly after it opened

in 1957. 43 Beyond the likeness in plan between the two galleries, wherein each is

composed of four circular rooms with geometrically related radii, the underground

location of Johnson’s painting vault and his floor paving graphics render Albini’s

influence on his new gallery to be highly likely.

From Johnson’s transparent dwelling he was able to observe his little folly on

the pond, a figure that he reduced in scale to extend the perception of the lawn.


6.20 Plan of

the underground

Treasury of San

Lorenzo by

Albini, 1952–56

Johnson’s ensemble of 14 structures includes a library, a guesthouse, a sculpture

pavilion and later additions to the compound that added dimension and character

to his piece of the Connecticut landscape. His decision to bury his painting collection

remains a curiosity because it could have been another element in his pictorial

landscape. The desire to protect his art collection from daylight seems inadequate,

especially relative to his grander concept of site design, which was based on

views between carefully positioned constructions on the land. Johnson referred

to his sunken 2,990 square feet of exhibit space as “a cross between a Mycenaean

beehive tomb and an atomic shelter.” 44 If Johnson’s attraction to Albini’s project is

the source of his reference to the ancient precedent, it would be consistent with

his interest in Italy’s most concurrent museums and his dalliance into historic

references. No innovation from abroad would elude Johnson, who “pursued the

new as naturally as a moth moves to light.” 45 As has been discussed by Adele Tutter

and others, Johnson’s interest in historical references for a regenerated Modern

vocabulary was an attempt to distance himself from Mies van der Rohe and other

influential Modernists. Again, this would argue for Johnson’s fertile discovery in

the Italian Rationalists’ post-war innovations, and in particular a small relatively

unknown Genoese gallery buried underground, that would allow him to resurrect

his interest in the Mycenaen gem with the most suggestive dome constructed

before the Pantheon. 46

6.21 Plan of Philip Johnson’s underground Painting Gallery at his New Canaan estate, 1965


Architecture historian Vincent Scully, who had a long relationship with the

architect and his Glass House estate, has addressed assorted questions about

Johnson’s possible inspirations for the landscape ensemble. Beginning from his

encounter with Hadrian’s Villa in the early 1950s, Scully discussed what he referred

to as Johnson’s “Roman phase” in which he began appropriating forms from the

villa. Yet in describing Johnson’s references, Scully also succumbed: “At the Glass

House his art gallery looks like the tomb of Agamemnon,” another name for the

Treasury of Atreus. 47 It is possible that Scully had heard reference to the allusion

from Johnson himself.

Francesco Dal Co established a conceptual connection between Albini

and Johnson by following the thread of Johnson’s labyrinth in the “pavilion

system” employed to construct his landscape autobiography. 48 Johnson had

the “historicist attitude,” according to Dal Co, typical of a collector, and his

half-century of building within his own walls demonstrated an intent to create

his own constructions worth collecting—the accumulation of artifacts fit for

decoding that Dal Co has referred to as Johnson’s “relics.” The primary figure in

the complex, the Glass House, operated as a physical shelter with neither center

nor edge that projected perpetually outward toward the independent structures,

each of which anchors the thrust of views and activities. Among them the buried

Painting Gallery was the most enigmatic as it was also invisible. It is all interior,

manifesting one of Johnson’s hidden traces, and using multiple centers with an

inward focus completely antithetical to his Glass House. The geometry of circular

rooms sufficed to establish an appropriate gallery character by joining the two

qualities of monument and interior, interpreted to formulate the idea of museum,

and precisely this museum. Johnson’s pop-art and abstract expressionist

collection invited a new type of gallery, one suited to the “ironical or disconsolate

sublimations” of Modern art, which Dal Co witnessed was being best integrated

by being buried beneath underground domes. 49

Johnson’s breadth of knowledge and historic interest manifested itself in a restless

imagination and insatiable cultural appetite. He defined an entire era through his

Museum of Modern Art exhibitions that flowed into his all male salons held at

his Four Seasons Manhattan restaurant. Some have claimed that his intellectual

contributions to Modern architecture have surpassed his talents as an architect,

but he was an unquestionable figure of influence during high Modernism. “Mimicry

is one of the keys to his architecture,” wrote Dal Co, recognizing nonetheless that

Johnson denied direct influence through his writings, with which he tried to

establish a less specific history as a source of his inspirations. For Paul Goldberger,

the Glass House presupposes the necessity of legacy—“… architecture, even the

most radical architecture, doesn’t begin with a clean slate, but owes much to what

has come before,”—and he has predicted that the Glass House will accept new

layers of interpretation by future generations. As situated Modernism evolved to

embrace tradition, the reinterpretation of historic references entered the design

language of many renowned designers. Franco Albini’s small museum deserves

renewed study and recognition in the stratification of Modern ideas capable of

transcending cultural limits to inspire Johnson, among others.

172


Yet Albini’s interiority was more subdued than Johnson’s. Materially and

conceptually, the two museum sequences could not be more different. Johnson

may have borrowed Albini’s geometrical composition of circles and plan graphics,

but he compressed the negative interstitial spaces to form a single clover-leaf

room defined by flexible exhibition apparatus that can also be found in Albini’s

pivotal exhibition devices at Palazzo Rosso. Johnson’s pivots occupy the center

of his round galleries, while artifacts were instead installed off-center in Albini’s

cylindrical rooms to allow for visitors’ circulation of the pieces while they occupy

the center of each room. Johnson’s Painting Gallery contained pivot structures

with radiating arms to hold large canvasses, allowing six paintings to be viewed

simultaneously. The sterile and somber ambience that characterizes Johnson’s

“kunstbunker” is a product of carpeted panels as rotating gallery walls, rather than

the stone sheathed geometric rooms themselves, to define a gallery. In its rational,

self-contained interiority, Johnson’s Painting Gallery occupied only the present

and now appears dated. Its underground placement did not transcend time, nor

did the Modern canvases in his collection call for such displacement. The poetry

of Albini’s Treasury Museum designed for a timeless collection of sacred artifacts

remains unsurpassed. Albini accommodated each unique tactile and iconic piece,

yet through the spatial abstraction of the architecture, he invited the artifacts into

relationships with each other as well as with the Modern viewer:

It was the same abstraction that characterized Albini’s interiors: ephemeral

containers for magically transported historical objects. … Albini created

masterpieces of representational virtuousity and dreamlike suggestiveness. …

Albini’s severity alludes to an absence without ever becoming tragic. 50

Influences in Modern Museum Design:

Albini, Johnson, Kahn, Scarpa

My studies of Albini’s museums have led me to some discoveries about similar forms

and ideas in his work that appear to be shared by other internationally acclaimed

Modern architects, not only Johnson. I have found relevant several comparisons

that have also been noted by architecture scholars. While I am not convinced,

for example, by de Oliveira’s assertion that Lina Bo Bardi inspired Albini’s primary

installation motifs, my interest lies not it proving authorship or originality but in

better understanding the impacts and avenues of Modern influence. Inherent in

the question is the difference in attitude toward founding a school of shared ideas

in contrast to venerating the individual architectural genius. Modern culture and

mass communication offered ample channels of exchange through congresses,

publications, public lectures, and traveling exhibits. Coincidences in projects take

many forms—from atmospheric qualities observed when comparing photographs

of the rooms to more concrete details of craft, materials, and building technologies.

Similarities may also be limited to mere plan graphics or esoteric references, as in

the case of Johnson’s Painting Gallery. Other pairings suggest more profound crossfertilization

as they involve deeper conceptual questions and shared interests.


Project comparisons between Albini’s and Kahn’s public and domestic projects

question the very nature of the Modern room. Further, the disparities in

circumstances raise questions about the consciousness, continuity and significance

of arrays of similarity. Do similar project outcomes describe a school or a collective

zeitgeist? Are some architects the object of particular influence by virtue of their

successes or notoriety? Or are formal echoes mere coincidences?

Cultural and geographic overlaps that find contemporaries and countrymen

involved in dialogs suggest conditions in which creative individuals benefit

from the influences of one another. Relationships in particular between BBPR,

Scarpa and Albini seem more likely to lead to commonalities due to their shared

opportunities to experience each other’s projects. Additionally, architects that

studied and worked together in Milan and are responsible for the Italian Rationalist

Movement, like most agents of change, shared radical ideas, explorations of craft

and new technologies, and previously unknown aesthetics that could only emerge

collectively. There is also the question of generations and mentors during the ages

of anxiety that so valued originality. As Ponti had been Albini’s mentor, and their

careers then overlapped; Albini was Piano’s mentor, yet they were not peers, for

Piano’s practice developed mostly after Albini had died. The pertinent question

becomes one of consciousness, debt, and authorship as historic evaluations assign

credit or criticism in recording an architect’s legacy.

6.22 Castello

Sforzesco

Museum by BBPR

in Milan, 1956

174


Tafuri identified the scale of Albini’s interventions to note that humble

projects and restrained responses established a high standard. He contrasted

Albini’s preference for resolved efficiency with Scarpa’s more extravagant taste. 51

Argan noted differences in strategies between the two, arguing that Albini

systemized the whole space with installation sequences and ideas drawn from

guidance by the museum curator, while Scarpa’s more idiosyncratic genius

focused on individuating the artfully designed part or single project. 52 Giuseppe

Samonà asserted that Albini’s talent lay in the fact that he situated every problem

as a big problem while rejecting the superfluous to achieve simple outcomes

that could appear commonplace regardless of the problem’s complexity. Bruno

Zevi reviewed the XXXIV Venice Biennale project for which Paul Rudolph,

Louis Kahn, Albini and Scarpa were invited to install their recent research on

new structural systems in 1968. He acknowledged Albini’s range of career

contributions, but praised Scarpa above all others; when he was at home in

Venice and within the Central Pavilion he had designed in the Biennale gardens.

More recently, Antonio Monestiroli has refocused attention on the contrast

between these two great Modernists on the occasion of the Milan Polytechnic

exhibition, Zero Gravity, featuring Albini’s museums and installations of his fellow

Milanese Rationalist and professor. 53 He called on the lessons evident in Albini’s

craft and construction research. Monestiroli echoed Helg to note that Albini

typically aimed to identify an essential theme within the project itself, while

employing simple forms so as not to detract from the artifacts being exhibited.

Albini’s intentional scope, therefore, differed from Scarpa’s tendency to creatively

invent eccentric solutions that celebrated a personal interpretation of the design

or exhibition problem.

Subsequently, Orietta Lanzarini and Marco Mulazzani have documented the

joint history of Albini and Scarpa assessing their respective impacts on post-war

museum design. 54 The two architects had countless encounters and opportunities

to share ideas. Both participated in Milan Triennales in 1933 and 1936. 55 Both

taught at Venice from 1949 onward, where Albini, along with Gardella, taught

interior design and building construction, while Scarpa taught “decoration.” At

one point before Scarpa began the Palazzo Abatellis, he wrote to Albini requesting

lighting details of Palazzo Bianco. A difference in tactics is apparent in the way

each architect used drawings to develop his ideas. Albini’s renderings served to

precisely solve the construction problem. Scarpa’s multicolored drawings were

instead complex artworks in themselves with layers of studies, often populated

with erotic female figures. As Scarpa translated his ideas into markings and

eventually built projects, the artfulness of his interior constructions came to life.

Lanzarini and Mulazzani’s critical review somewhat oversimplified their disparate

characters, claiming that Albini’s architecture was born of reason while Scarpa

produced an expressive architecture of the body, yet nonetheless both deserve

credit for successfully producing an atemporal architecture that revitalized Italian

museums during a period of unique opportunity. 56

6.23 Carlo Scarpa’s Castelvecchio renovation in Verona, 1959–73

176


We tend to pose the question of influence from the Beaux Arts period very

differently in the evaluation of neo-Classical architecture when all design was

intended to be shaped by historical precedence. We are reminded that the anxiety

of influence, and myths of originality and sole authorship, are Modern problems—

that is, problems that emerged when the expectations of innovation were

provoked by rapid changes in social, cultural and political needs and creations,

like the automobile, mass transit, and new housing for migrating populations

from rural/agrarian to urban/industrial society. These are not small demands,

and they impacted design professions from the scale of utensils to cities, as in

Rogers’ oft-quoted adage, and included adaptations of existing structures as well

as new typologies. To be Modern was eventually equated with being original,

one of a kind, and distinguished among one’s cohorts—perhaps even a design

genius. Modernity in this sense suggests freedom from pre-existing influences

and expectations that may be burdensome, while tradition became synonymous

with the weight of the past.

Eschewing psychological issues of the ego—and humility versus limitless

ambition—I am particularly interested in collective cultural responses and their

implications for design methods as we re-evaluate the best works of the Modern

era. Le Corbusier, like Rousseau before him, cautioned about exposure to the past,

including the traditional fabric and ruined, yet ageless, monuments of Rome. At

the risk of overcomplicating the mind, Le Corbusier recommended jumping over

four centuries of bad taste to concern oneself only with the Renaissance, because

the whole of history is appropriate only for those “who can resist and can verify.” 57

These evaluations unequivocally have important implications for the specific

buildings and projects that are preserved, studied, and visited. Such dogma

has limited the scope of formal and conceptual ideas believed to have provided

lessons for a new generation of architects.

We visit, describe, and analyze past architecture for many reasons. The

evolution of places and their physical form reflect a dynamic and elastic cultural

identity. It can be argued that the International Style, the prevalence and

collective appreciation of some buildings throughout the developed world, have

created an international culture of design. It has a vast citizenship that continues

to struggle, often between allegiance to their local tribe and to belief in the

entire Modern project.

Albini contributed significantly to cultural reform that modernized Italy in stages

before and after World War II. He produced innovative structures that received

widespread recognition, including furniture that is currently being reproduced and

finding a market. By agreement among many of his contemporary and subsequent

critics, Albini’s museum installations altered a persistent and fundamental

expanding cultural practice—that of exhibiting works of art—in ways that not only

changed the Italian museum scene, but also impacted the works of prominent and

well connected American and European designers. He did so without receiving the

scrutiny or credit that was his due, in contrast to some of his contemporaries.

Yet again, evidence of intersections between the works of Albini and Louis Kahn

in museum architecture ignite appreciation for the former’s insights and leadership


regarding prevailing themes of the period. Intersections and similarities in some of

their best-known buildings and projects will be discussed in subsequent chapters

but they also deserve mention when considering the question of influence.

Kahn is widely renowned for his reinterpretation of Classical geometry, which

he masterfully employed to reintroduce qualities of silence and monumentality

into cultural venues including museums, libraries, government centers, and

performance halls. His material compositions and refined craft are second only to

his use of daylight to call out a new monumentality in Modern architecture. For

his Yale Art Gallery addition in New Haven, completed in 1953, he introduced the

tetrahedral floor-ceiling structural system that used a heavy overhead mass based

on triangulated structure to create open, flexible exhibit space. Kahn identified

the influence of Buckminster Fuller, who in turn credited Kahn’s collaborator,

Anne Tyng, for formal development of the pyramidal geometric motif. The Yale

Art Gallery’s novel tectonic ceiling of exposed concrete structure, with integrated

lighting and air handing systems, introduced a new aesthetic for the open plan

galleries of the 4-story museum at Yale. 58

As previously noted, Albini’s Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum employed

cylindrical rooms gathered by an equilateral triangle to form a similarly somber

and a silent series of gallery spaces. This use of Classical geometry and dark stone

was highly original among his works. Kahn would later declare his abandonment

of the open plan in favor of more decisive galleries composed as defined rooms.

The fact that these two museums were published in the same volume of the

international UNESCO journal on contemporary museums may explain Italian critic

Francesco Tentori’s comparison between the expressions of Kahn and Albini in his

1960 Casabella article on Kahn. 59 In it, he described features of the Yale Art Gallery,

in particular its sculptural ceiling and site responsiveness:

This is perhaps the only American modern architecture to appear ancient—

even archaic—and at the same time present, like the very different Treasury

of San Lorenzo Museum in Genoa by Albini (Casabella 213) which nonetheless

constantly comes to mind with this work by Kahn, perhaps because this work by

Albini possesses a rigorous spatial and structural ‘order’ based on the equilateral

triangle and its vertices, especially the conclusion of the space, becoming the

fulcrums in which the three circular rooms of different radii are planned out, with

the effect of spatial penetration, a dynamic equilibrium of voids and materials

rarely achieved in other works. 60

The geometric project of exploiting triangular organizations and closed sets

continued in the works of both architects as we have seen in their next series of

houses for Fruchter (Kahn), Olivetti (Albini), and at Punta Ala (Albini and Helg), as

discussed in Chapter 4. But perhaps the most evident and revealing of their similar

motifs appeared in their differing concepts for circular stairs. Kahn’s concrete

cylinders enveloped monumental ceremonial staircases for each of his two Yale

art galleries to organize the plan while temporarily disorienting the visitor to

beneficial effect. Kahn’s stair towers provide the art observer with a brief pause—a

closed chamber for reflection between exhibit levels. Albini’s stairs float in the void.

6.24 Yale Art Gallery cylindrical stair by Kahn in New Haven, CT, 1953


They are theatrical transparent nodes that create visual linkages between levels

and areas and suspend the functional stair as an elegant artifact revealing its very

choreography. Both Kahn and Albini compressed the activity of vertical circulation

into a discrete container that enhanced consciousness of the event. For Kahn the

solid cylinder is dominant, and solitary movement is hidden to increase the drama

of arrival, while Albini’s stairs were transparent, denying gravity, like his suspended

exhibition installations (“Villa Neuffer”—Figure 3.3, “Marcenaro Apartment”—

Figure 4.9, “Palazzo Rosso”—Figure 6.13).

Perhaps Albini and Kahn can both be identified as situated Modernists who

critically redefined the importance of tradition in contemporary architecture. Their

analogous museum projects provide verification of their intelligent sensitivity and

compositional prowess, creating new works that evolved in accordance with Modern

spectatorship and mass media. Both architects were open to dialectical realities in

the international cultural, political, and social milieu. Each responded eloquently

and creatively to limitations in the Modern architectural canon, the ubiquity of

signs, the facility of standards, and the tendency to rely on mute, simple formalist

principles. Albini and Kahn both explored the sensuality of opposed expressions,

ranging from the levity of transparency to the gravity of mass. Having manipulated

the Modern palette to find its elasticity and expressive potential in materials

and construction technologies, they surpassed the limitations of a style-bound

language. They eschewed Modernism’s “codified stylemes” and experimented with

forms and materials that inspired several original and sophisticated museums. Most

significantly, each architect identified the potential of tradition to transcend the

fragility of time and produced powerful works of architecture that have outlasted

post-Modern criticism to endure as fine Modern artifacts.

Notes

1 Franco Albini, “Le funzioni e l’architettura del museo: alcune esperienze,” “The functions

and architecture of the museum: some experiences,” in a lecture at Politecnico di

Torino opening 1954–55 academic year reprinted in Zero Gravity, Franco Albini.

Costruire le modernità, edited by Fulvio Irace and Federico Bucci (Milan: Mondadori

Electa spa, 2006), pp. 71–3.

2 Manfredo Tafuri, in reference to Albini’s Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum in Genoa

(1952–56), p. 50.

3 Genoa’s Strada Nuova, also known as Via Garibaldi, is the Renaissance and baroque

urban intervention designed by Galeazzo Alessi in the mid-1500s. Stada Nuova has

been declared by a World Heritage Site by UNESCO as “Patrimony of Humanity” in 2006

and was richly described by Charles Dickens in Pictures from Italy.

4 G.E. Kidder Smith published L’Italia Costruisce: sua architettura moderna e sua

eredita’ indigena (Italy Builds: Her Modern Architecture and Her Indigenous Heredity)

with an introduction to Italian architecture tradition by Ernesto N. Rogers. Before

demonstrating examples of varied new responses to ten building types, he discusses

the existing landscape and urban inheritance of persistent formal conditions,

including piazzas, hilltowns, public streets, porticoes and fountains. It was

simultaneously published in English and Italian in the U.S., Great Britain, and Italy

(Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1955), p. 192.

180


5 Argan continues, “First of all, there is in many cases a historical relationship between

the artistic collections and the building accommodating them that should be

respected just as it is necessary to respect what survives of the ancient structure or

the ancient arrangement of an artistic collection. More often an ancient building is

used in order to give the museum suitable premises in the city center or to make use

of a building of historical or monumental interest and rescue it from abandonment

and ruin or the danger, which always appears to loom over monuments in Italy, of

being converted into a prison, courthouse, or barracks.” “La Galleria di Palazzo Bianco

a Genova,” was first published in Metron n. 45 (June 1952), pp. 25–39 and has been

republished in L’Architettura: Cronache e storia v. 51, n. 594 (April 2005), pp. 248–51.

6 Helg, L’Architettura, p. 552.

7 Given the position of the city, relatively little was lost or destroyed due to bombings of

the strategic coastal port city.

8 Marcenaro,“Nell’interesse della didattica è stato abbandonato il concetto di palazzo

per aderire strettamente a quello di museo. In altre parole, le opere d’arte state trattate

non come parti decorative di un dato ambiente ma come un mondo a sé stante,

sufficienti ad assorbire la piena attenzione del visitatore” (Museum v. 7, n. 4 (1954)).

9 Bruno Gabrielli, a former student of Albini’s at Venice and later assessore urbanistica,

urban alderman, for Genoa until 2007, reported this probability in a conversation with

the author that family conflicts of interest would have made it illegal for Giovanni

Romano to continue working with Albini on Genoese civic commissions.

10 Helg, L’Architettura, p. 553.

11 Franca Helg wrote as follows about Albini’s and Marcenaro’s professional relationship:

“Working with Caterina Marcenaro, a woman of exceptional sensitivity, tenacity, and

rigor, was often difficult on account of the severity of the demands she imposed, but

Albini’s working methodology was characterized by a desire to understand to the

greatest degree possible the problems at stake, delving into them thoroughly. He

responded to her insightful criticisms, strengthening his work with new images and

new suggestions.” Franco Albini Architecture and Design 1934–1977 by Stephen Leet

(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1990), p. 16.

12 According to Caterina Marcenaro, “… the bombing of 9 November 1942, which

practically destroyed the building, except for part of its outer walls … the Palazzo

Bianco was, on the morning of 10 November, a melancholy heap of ruins; and

so it remained until 1945, when the Department of Civil Engineering undertook

its reconstruction. … All surviving portions of the structure were retained; the

courtyard was rebuilt, its broken columns reassembled, and even the fragments

of stucco which had adorned the ceilings of the second floor were put back, the

missing pieces were reconstructed. There were never any wall paintings in the

Palazzo Bianco … The reconstruction of the palace was completed in the first

months of 1949, and the problem immediately arose as to what type of collection

should be housed there.” “The Museum Concept and the Arrangement of the Palazzo

Bianco, Genoa,” Museum v. VII, n. 4 (1954), p. 264.

13 Argan, p. 249.

14 Tafuri, p. 49.

15 Marcenaro, Museum, p. 262.

16 The motif of dark floors and white walls was similar to Albini and Romano’s “Sala

dell’Oreficeria antica” at the 1936 Triennale.


17 Frano Albini, comments titled “Le funzioni e l’architettura del museo: alcune

esperienze” were given as at the Turin Polytechnic for the opening of the 1954–55

academic year, printed in Zero Gravity, pp. 71–3.

18 G.C. Argan, p. 251.

19 “New Installation of the Galleria Nazionale della Sicilia, Palermo,” by Giorgio Vigni,

Museum v. XI, n. 3, p. 208.

20 Tafuri, p. 49.

21 A 20-page article by Gio Ponti offered extensive photographic documentation and

plans that particularly emphasized Albini’s Modern intervention of the Palazzo Rosso

along with technical details for elements introduced for presenting specific artifacts in

new ways.

22 Wikipedia, Palazzo Rosso, website for the “Musei di Genova,” Museums of Genoa, www.

museidigenova.it/spip.php?lang=it.

23 Lombard architect Matteo Lagomaggiore designed the unusual baroque palazzo

for Rudolfo and Gio Brignole-Sale. Domus n. 408, p. 39. The steep hillside along

which the Stada Nuova was laid out in the mid-1500s required the palazzo typology,

adopted at its height of development, to adapt to unusual urban conditions. Palazzi

constructed on the ascending side of the street had monumental stairs and raised

courts or were terminated in a grotto, while those palazzi on the downward slope

had gardens extended beyond the street level courtyard. For a discussion of the

palazzo type in Genoa, See Kay Bea Jones, “GENUS and GENIUS: From the General to

the Specific. Architectural Morphology in Genoa, Italy.” JAE, Journal of Architectural

Education v. 43/4 (1990).

24 Bruno Zevi, “Il lavoro di palazzo Brignole-Sale, duratto sette anni, costituisce un

ulteriore passo in avanti. Si distacco dal limite programmatico di Palazzo Bianco, cioé

da una posizione di polemica rottura con la tradizione museografica, perché accetta

una pluralitá di soluzione dettate dalla singolarissima conformazione dell’edificio.”

From “Il museo dove litigarono I fratelli: Palazzo Rosso a Genvoa,” Cronache di

architettura v. III, n. 378, p. 251 (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1971).

25 Franco Albini, Turin Polytechnic lecture, 1954.

26 Essays by Piero Bottardo, current director of the Palazzo Rosso Museum, and Clario di

Fabio, director of Albini’s later San Agostino Museum in Genoa, have written about the

designer’s early decisions and problems in historiographic analyses and responses in

Una protagonista della scena culturale genovese fra 1950–1970: Caterina Marcenaro fra

casa e musei, by Di Fabio, and Palazzo Rosso dai Brignole-Sale a Caterino Marcenaro: luci

ed ombre di un caposaldo della museologia italiana, by Bottardo. Original papers were

provided to author by museum directors.

27 “New Installation of the Galleria Nazionale della Sicilia, Palermo,” in Museum vol. 8

(1958), by Giorgio Vigni features Scarpa’s hinged wall support with the photo caption:

“The Descent from the Cross attributed to Jan Provost can be turned on hinges placed

near the windows so that it can be seen in the best light,” p. 214.

28 Antonio Piva and Vittorio Prina, “Il restauro e’ attuato con liberta’ espressiva. Le vetrate

di cristallo, la grande scala ottogonale di acciaio che collegha tutti i piani, la moquette

rossa che ricopre tutti i pavimenti, testimoniano una liberta’ fuori dagli schemi

dale paure d’infragere le leggi ufficiali che disciplinano gli interventi di restaur di

quell’epoca.” Translation by author. Franco Albini 1905–1977 (Milan: Electa, 1998), p. 35.

182


29 As recently as 2005, the Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum was awarded the Citadel

of Marble Art Culture International Award for Architecture in Stone, citing: “Wellknown

work at the realization time (1952–1956), the crypt of the Treasury of San

Lorenzo Church can be discovered by now at the light of the new sensibility for

the construction and perception aspects of the stone materials that composes

it. This work, one of the most fortunate by Franco Albini, inserts in the formal

register of Modernity the precious and learned contribution of workers expression

of an ancient construction culture not yet disappeared.” http://fair.veronafiere.it/

marmomacc/MarmoArteCultura/template_en.asp?sezione=archivio&pagina=prem

io2005_sanlorenzo.

30 Antonio Piva, collaborator of Albini’s from 1964 until his death, considers the Museum

of the Treasury of San Lorenzo to be pivotal in Albini’s career. Piva wrote: “Albini

invented a space from which it is possible to find principles, rules and ideas that he

developed in successive years and from which he formed a school.” Franco Albini

1905–1977, p. 286. Essays about the Treasury of San Lorenzo by Giulio Carlo Argan

(L’Architettura: cronache e storia, 1956), Mario Labó (Casabella continuità, 1956), Bruno

Zevi (Croaiche di architettura, 1971) and Manfredo Tafuri (History of Italian Architecture

1944–1985, 1989) also identify the underground museum as Albini’s most important

building and a masterpiece in museum design.

31 After her death, Caterina Marcenaro’s papers were destroyed at her request, and I have

found no record of her recommendation to Albini to visit Mycenae. Albini traveled to

the site of the ancient civilization and the Treasury of Atreus with his students from

Venice and Franca Helg. Bruno Gabrielli has discussed Marcenaro’s report to him

during Albini’s visit to the tholos in Mycenae, he sent her a postcard on which was

written: “ho capito, grazie!” (I understand, thanks!) indicating that he had found there

his idea for the Genoese treasures.

32 From web site: http://www.indiana.edu/~classics/aegean/R19.html#Definition_

Mycenaean_Tholos_Tomb. See Treasury of Atreus tomb description and chamber

diameters for round subterranean rooms: Treasury of Atreus = 14.5 meters, Tomb of

Clytemnestra = 13.4 meters and Tomb of the Genii = 8.4 meters.

33 Tafuri, p. 50.

34 While Tafuri’s statement alleging that Albini’s concept was “coupled with the memories

of the treasures of Atreus,” other attributions, such as Federico Bucci’s in Franco Albini

(Milan: Electa, 2009) assert with certainty but without evidence: “in this limited space

under the cathedral of San Lorenzo and based on the Mycenaean tholos tombs,

visitors walk down a corridor whose irregular form is interrupted by three (sic) circular

rooms,” p. 30.

35 Paolo A. Chessa, “Il Museo del Tesoro di San Lorenzo.” Comunità n. 47 (1957), pp. 62–7.

36 Franco Albini, “Le Musee du Tesor de la Cathedrale Saint-Laurent de Genes/The

Museum of the Treasury, San Lorenzo Cathedral, Genoa.” Museum vol. IX (1956), a

quarterly review published by UNESCO, pp. 114–23.

37 “Further, to render this architecture still more characteristic, the special situation of

the Museum, built in the tufaceous subsoil of the courtyard, has been fully exploited:

efforts have been made to stress the resemblance to a crypt or a courtyard by means

of a spiral staircase, which gives visitors the impression that they are descending into a

well …,” Franco Albini, Museum vol. IX (1956), a quarterly review published by UNESCO,

p. 120.

38 Tafuri, p. 50.

39 Since renovation of the Treasury Museum in 1995, the internal lighting has been

removed from the custom vestment cases.


40 Mario Labó, “Il Museo del Tesoro.” Casabella continuità n. 213 (Nov.–Dec. 1956), p. 6.

41 Zevi identified the concept of “negative space” in Albini’s tholos and the interstitial

space around the cells: “Una volta situati i quattro cilindri, la cui compiutezza

stereometrica viene accentuata dai soffitti a travature radiali in vista, l’impegno

progrettuale consisteva nel negare autonomia figurale ai corridoi e i disimpegni.

L’attenzione dei visitatori doveva essere concentrata sulle sale e ancora piu sulle teche

di cristallo … .” in “Quattro tholos moderne per un tesoro antico,” n. 109, pp. 160–61.

Mario Labó responded, “Esso non ci sembra spazialmente negativo come é parso a

Zevi. É complementare ai tholoi, li coordina, li tiene legati coi suoi travetti convergenti

a fasci suoi loro centri: ed offre una prima veduta circolare sui loro interni, attraverso

aperture strette come feritoie. “Il Museo del Tesoro,” p. 6.

42 G.C. Argan, “Il Museo del Tesoro del di S. Lorenzo a Genova,” L’Architetture cronache e

storia n. 14 (1956), p. 557.

43 “a buried treasury.” Architectural Forum v. 6, n. 4 (April 1957), pp. 152–5.

44 Victoria Newhouse quotes Johnson in her discussion of “cabinet of curiosity” museum

types in Towards a New Museum (New York: Monacelli Press, 1998), p. 18.

45 Paul Goldberger’s address to the National Trust for Historic Preservation Board of

Trustees meeting held at the Glass House in New Canaan on May 20, 2006.

46 Tutter references Kurt Forster’s suggestion that Albini’s museum may have influenced

Johnson. “It has now been suggested that the interior of the Painting Gallery may have

drawn on Franco Albini’s Treasury of the Cathedral of Lorenzo, Genoa, Italy (1952–56),

also organized around multiple circular forms (Forster 2009, p. 54). It is unclear if

Johnson was familiar with this work, and/or whether its very name may have spurred

his recollection of the Tomb of Atreus. However, as will become apparent, the motif

of multiple circular forms had been present in Johnson’s designing mind since at

least the mid-1940s.” The author first published Albini’s likely influence on Johnson’s

Painting Gallery in “Seeing through Franco Albini: Domestic Modernity in Rationalist

Italy,” p. 112, Why Does Modernity Refuse to Die? (Montreal: McGill University, 2002).

47 Vincent Scully in an interview with Martin C. Pedersen for Metropolis, “More Reflections

on the Glass House: Vincent Scully shares his memories of Philip Johnson and his

iconic residence.” Posted November 30, 2006.

48 Francesco Dal Co, “The House of Dreams and Memories: Philip Johnson at New

Canaan.” Lotus n. 35 (1982), pp. 114–21.

49 Ibid., p. 119.

50 Manfredo Tafuri, p. 50.

51 “Compared with the quiet murmur of Albini’s apodictic signs, Carlo Scarpa’s museum

projects appear very expensive. Even critics who favored the maestro from Venice

expressed perplexity at the Correr in 1953. … On the one hand, then, there was Albini’s

‘let it be attitude;’ on the other there was Scarpa’s magisterial narration.” Tafuri, p. 51.

52 “Scarpa when organizing the museum pushed to the maximum his experience as

the genius of installation for ancient artifacts by inventing a solution for each project.

Albini, instead, for São Paulo, like Stockholm, pushed to the maximum his experience

by creating an atmosphere of museum space by animating the series of areas while

subdividing and articulating the spaces according to curatorial recommendations. His

wall panels maintain a certain ‘module’ of space and light, not working only on a single

mounting like a jewel in a display case, but an ideal succession of works, a continuity

of development in which each work comes to be found as if spontaneously in its

correct place.” Argan, p. 67.

184


53 “… we can learn from Albini that each of these constructions were made in a certain

way with a certain intention derived from the theme of the project, the way in which

he wants to describe the importance of the theme. The major difference with Carlo

Scarpa and with a part of the Venetian School with which Scarpa belongs has more

to do with resolving the problem than with the end result. … We can perhaps say, at

risk of making an error, that Scarpa’s art could exist without scope, while Albini’s art

always had a scope or vision, according to Banfi, that noble scope of art that is the

conscience of the thing in itself. This for Milanese Rationalists was almost obvious, so

their forms are always simple. They don’t attract attention to avoid taking away from

the reason for which they were created.” Monestiroli in “Un caposcuola dell’architetto

razionale,” I Musei e gli Allestimenti di Franco Albini, pp. 12–13. Author’s translation

from Italian.

54 “L’esperienza del porgere: I musei di Franco Albini e Carlo Scarpa.” Zero Gravity,

pp. 148–63.

55 Scarpa offered the first Italian exhibit of the works by Le Corbusier, Adolf Loos, Joseph

Hoffman, Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Lanzarini and Mulazzani, p. 149.

56 The authors quote Arrigo Rudi’s observation, “Se c’é una differenza tra le realizzazioni

di Scarpa e quelle di Franco Albini é quelle di Albini le puoi guardare con le mani in

tasca; sei sempre affascinato da questo altissimo dominio delle ragione, dall’esprit de

géometrie. In Scarpa, invece, senti qualcosa di piú; devi andare a toccare qualcosa che

diventa tuo.” Lanzarini and Mulazzani, p. 161.

57 Le Corbusier, from “The Lesson of Rome,” in Towards a New Architecture, translated to

English by John Goodman (1927), p. 173.

58 It should be noted here that while Kahn was not concerned about crediting his female

collaborator, perhaps because the relationship was complicated by a secret romance

and a shared child, Albini made extraordinary efforts to ascertain that Franca Helg

and other collaborators were duly noted in publications, as evidence by the letter to

the editor he wrote to his friend, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, when in 1959 she was not

acknowledged in print.

59 Museum, a quarterly review published by UNESCO, was published in French and

English. Vol. 9 from 1956 included “Art Gallery and Design Center, Yale University, New

Haven,” by Vincent Scully, pp. 101–13, and “The Museum of the Treasury, San Lorenzo

Cathedral, Genoa,” by Franco Albini, architect, author of the project, pp. 114–23.

Francesco Tentori published “Ordine e forma nell’opera di Louis Kahn (Order and form

in the work of Louis Kahn),” in Casabella n. 241 (1960), pp. 3–20.

60 Tentori, Casabella n. 241, p. 9.

7

Tradition’s Modern Corollary in Cervinia and Rome

… we can say modern architecture is not defined by the use of materials

or new methods of construction, but that all means of construction

are valid in all periods, providing they are logical and efficient. 1 Franco Albini (1951)

While Albini’s early installations transformed the status quo of the exhibition type

and established a new ideal for Italian galleries, his three Genoese masterpieces

generated attention exclusively for his innovative interiors. his museums occupied

existing structures, and therefore they were less likely to generate new façades

or encounters with the surrounding urban context. his ideas about Modernity

emerged predominantly from the inside out by way of experiments for residential,

commercial and public interior projects, and in the process he introduced a

new spatial language. by focusing inward, Albini introduced performative

infrastructure—additive elements that performed tasks to support exhibited

material or organize space—sometimes after subtracting historic detritus, to

reinvent the Modern room. but these museums had little impact on urban streets

or plazas—places commonly experienced in the public domain. Through a few

small museums he forever transformed the Italian tradition of exhibiting renowned

artifacts of any era, but the history of the Italian façade represented a longer,

tougher, and more resistant legacy.

on closer examination, his novel gallery interiors and his subsequent strategies

for urban façades were guided by similar intentions, as becomes clear in nearly all

of his later urban work. yet the controversy generated by Albini’s juxtapositions

of new infrastructure with ancient artifacts and monuments grew more intense

with his major post-war buildings; four projects in particular found in the Alpine

village of cervinia, nineteenth-century Rome, Parma’s centro storico, and again in

the heart of Renaissance Genoa. each of these four environments provided him

with opportunities to integrate archetypes in ways that established new ideas

of urban Rationalism. each of Studio Albini’s four buildings spanning the 1950s

186


invites examination to better understand his evolving Modern ethos. Aesthetic

principles that resulted from his rigorous method appear in two of these buildings,

which earned him much acclaim, but both the Pirovano Youth Hostel and

La Rinascente Department Store also received resounding criticism, especially on

the international stage.

Albini began each project by analyzing the predominant type characteristic of

each locus—the alpine baita in Cervinia and the palazzo in Rome—to inform a

design strategy defined by radically reinterpreting tradition rather than repeating

the past or assuming a cultural tabula rasa. I will compare these two emblematic

structures in this chapter, while I will investigate his INA Offices in Parma and the

municipal offices in Genoa in the following chapter.

Programmed for contemporary uses, this series of urban infill projects assert bold

expressions worthy of their status as Modern interventions. Without succumbing

to any Modern clichés, as a set they reveal the cumulative results of his studies

of vernacular expression, detail construction, and architectural interpretations of

local environments. The vernacular realm in Italy is called architettura spontanea,

although it appears as anything but spontaneous in Albini’s hands. Rigorous

studies of past forms eventually resulted in his proposed ideas and images for

new structures. Each building led to new massing, solid and void patterns, corner

conditions, entry sequences, and aesthetics that related to a specific site without

relying on patronizing or easy solutions. He made reference to efficiency and

logic in 1951 to describe his Pirovano hostel. While he dismissed the role of actual

materials and construction methods in his comments, they were nonetheless the

language of his poetry, and if he anticipated criticisms that expected Modern

architecture to come in limited colors, shapes, and materials, he addressed it with

deliberation and conviction. He found ways to confound popular expectations of

the Rationalist manifesto while remaining faithful to his “strict adherence to logic

and order,” through which a new spirit would emerge. 2 Albini’s four civic structures

demonstrated methods adapted to acquire objective distance from each subject

while simultaneously working within its respective genius loci, or spirit of that

place. By adhering to experimentation with construction details and spatial logic

he ultimately assembled four new threads well woven into their respective urban

fabrics with buildings that performed to meet Modern needs and that challenged

expectations while inspiring possibilities for new ideas.

During the decade of the 1950s, Albini came to terms with the role that

tradition and regional geography would play in his own work and reconsidered

notions first inspired by Giuseppe Pagano’s photographs, which he and Palanti

republished in 1946. Yet while models of anonymous site-specific architecture

opened him to forms of expression outside of Modern-style dogma, these images

had little bearing on Studio Albini’s design process or post-war buildings. His

investigations took form through examining relationships between new functions

and traditional characteristics, involving both formal and material practices, while

inventive construction methods remained his preferred basis for experimentation.

As these new models of façade skins and massing will show, Albini was a polyglot.

While building and reflecting on the new Cervinia, Parma, and Genoa buildings,

Tradition’s Modern Corollary in Cervinia and Rome 187

he eventually formulated his thoughts for his MSA talk in 1955 that led to debates

among his contemporaries about possible intersections between Modernity and

tradition.

I believe that tradition represents the continuity of civilization in both form and

spirit, a historical continuum and the constant flow of life within the limitations

of human nature, a continuum that can become domesticated but does not

change abruptly. … Tradition does not inhabit the works, objects, or activities

of people just like that. It becomes tradition when people in the present become

aware of it and can recognize it in these works and activities. This happens in

different ways in every age. Bit by bit, each selects its own traditions. 3

Albini’s notion of the vitality of architectural tradition is reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s

idea that tradition “involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past,

but of its presence.” 4 Eliot stressed that European literary culture simultaneously

concerned itself with ancient, medieval, and contemporary literary texts. He

identified the method by which authors drew meaning for new works from Classical

writings, precedents that the greatest among them struggled to grasp through

“great labour.” Albini’s investment in the intensity of the artistic process coupled

with his characteristic lack of personal judgment and his surrender to meanings

beyond the individual artist were exemplified much more by his designs than by his

public declarations. Eliot provided allusions for the mid-century Modern architect

when he wrote that “this historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well

as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together is what makes

a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely

conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.” 5 It was Albini’s desire to be

of his time while also honoring inherent physical qualities from the past that he

conveyed to the MSA students in the pursuit of truly new works of architecture.

Yet how he established formal and physical connections brought international

scrutiny, with much skepticism, and later revealed the profound courage and

ingenuity of these works.

Ten years before the opening of a new Rome department store, Albini produced

the Pirovano Youth Hostel in the Italian alpine resort town of Cervinia for his friend,

ski instructor Giuseppe Pirovano. 6 The youth hostel project followed another

collective housing project for children, designed in collaboration with Luisa

Castiglioni and Giancarlo De Carlo, while the Cervinia project designed with Luigi

Colombini evolved from a prior proposal for a house for Pirovano. 7 The hostel

and the Palazzo Bianco museum were completed the same year but disguise any

indication that they had same author, a fact that Bruno Zevi stressed in his review

of the two buildings in Metron that year. The design concept for the communal

residence situated on a steep mountain slope appeared so stylistically antithetical

to Albini’s prior Rationalist precedents that critical discussions centered around

this small structure flourished for the next decade. Among the more thorough

treatments of the strange building and the uproar it caused has come years after

it has been all but forgotten in a small study by Vittorio Prina (2006), titled Albergo

Rifugio Pirovano a Cervinia. 8

188


7.1 Pirovano

Youth Hostel by

Franco Albini and

Luigi Colombini,

Cervinia, 1949

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

Complete documentation of the youth hostel appeared in the journal Edilizia

Moderna in December 1951, accompanied by a rare theoretical text by Albini. In it

he wrote “the building by Colombini and myself, as a reaction to the current urban

situation, poses the problem of interpretation of the Alpine landscape environment

and the architectural history of the region while adhering to the Modern spirit.” In

the article, he specified in great detail the construction technologies of that region.

Their project was based on reinterpreting both those construction methods

and the essential qualities of the vernacular type. His interest was clearly not in


replicating folkloristic architecture, but in demonstrating that a well informed,

locally integrated Modern architecture depends upon logic and efficiency and is

not a product of any particular material, craft or slavishness to style. Meanwhile,

repetitive and ubiquitous trends in the use of glass, steel and exposed structure

had become de facto for international style architecture.

The youth hostel, as underscored by Albini’s argument, serves as an apt

illustration of situated Modernism. He noted in his article that the most interesting

buildings in the region, both volumetrically and as functioning organisms, were the

storage barns for hay or grain and winter stalls for animals. “These two functions

correspond to two distinct parts of the Rifugio construction, the masonry stalls

below and the wood storage areas above. Each is accessible directly at grade. If the

building is built on a steep slope, the lower structural walls are replaced by pilasters

or square, round, or conical columns.” Albini’s archive included his photographs of

timeless ordinary examples of this rural prototype.

The sloped roof of their wood and stone youth hostel was an interpretation

of the baita, or alpine cottage that had evolved over centuries to serve the local

demands of rugged mountain life. Historically, the foundations were built of local

stone and accommodated animals, such as horses, oxen and sheep, while the

timber attic could be ventilated to dry hay for their winter feed. The construction

method known as “rascard” employed horizontal logs, locally abundant, placed

in compression with dovetail joints sealed with dried moss. Albini and Colombini

reconceived both the vernacular dwelling type and its fabrication methods,

providing shelter for a different population of Modern dwellers in the same

context of extreme climate and topography. Their hybrid composite structure was

composed of a lifted simulacrum of the vernacular cottage placed over an open

plan assemblage of stacked Modern rooms.

Albini’s description also explained the function of a refuge as it was historically

embedded in the type. For centuries past, local residents would find protection at

night in the wooden grain depository above, while animals were sheltered in the

stone basement. Exploiting its double purpose, Albini referred to his project as

Rifugio Pirovano, or refuge. The new hostel was essentially a log cabin with a sloped

roof supported by tapered stone columns containing a 3-story Modern building

below with horizontal ribbon windows that framed broad views of the valley. As

critics acknowledged, this unusual massing left little doubt about Albini’s intellectual

freedom and challenge to expressions of abstract form, since he very obviously

departed from the abstract gridded trope of Rationalist Modernism for this project.

Beginning in 1946, Albini had drawn a small house for Giuseppe Pirovano. It

was not built, but the proposal introduced his first attempt at reusing the typical

alpine chalet as a 2-story dwelling, this time lifted on three massive Doric columns. 9

The project that followed for the hostel was conceived as a ski school for Pirovano,

and later became modest lodgings that could accommodate up to 37 skiers and

12 staff. The massing was staggered in plan in three offset bays that were adapted

to the mountain slope. The stepped form was unified by a trapezoidal platform

terrace and light filigree balustrade separating the upper two floors from the three

levels below. (The original design was intended to have two additional bays that

never materialized.)

7.2 Third- and fourth-floor plans for the Pirovano Youth Hostel, 1949


The Pirovano Youth Hostel design was extrapolated from the vernacular

baita by expanding it in scale, reconceiving the split section, and resolving with

technical sophistication of the retaining wall and hillside drainage to make the

lower three floors habitable. The result was a new Modern hybrid. The lower

three floors were constructed with exposed stone load-bearing walls and as

such are reminiscent of two of Albini’s prior projects, his Triennale installation,

“Room for a Man” (1936), with rough-hewn beola stone backdrop, and his

“Officina Elettrochimiche Trentine”, workers dining hall at Ivrea (1940–43). The

four tapered stone columns exaggerated the expression of a compressed load

and produced forced perspectival distortion when seen from the road below.

Like the baita, each of the two zones could be entered at different ground levels.

The retaining wall against the hillside included a double wall built of concrete

with an air space to protect against moisture and allow for drainage. Shops

occupied the ground level of the hostel, while the second floor accommodated

reception, kitchen, staff and service functions; the dining and recreation

activities were located on the third level. The uppermost public floor was

reached by the sleeping zones from a series of small open stairs that descended

from the wooden chalet above. The top two levels provided frugal bedrooms,

shared bathrooms, and a sleeping loft under a pitched roof. The aesthetic of the

interiors throughout the hostel was rustic, typical of alpine huts. The exposed

construction details included both new and old joinery and log construction,

with fiberglass replacing moss for joint compound.

While the main sleeping level of the upper cottage had vertical shuttered

windows and doors to a terrace, views from each of the lower three levels were

framed with horizontal ribbon windows contrasting the Modern character of

the hybrid structure. Tapered columns directed point loads and transferred

the structure above to stone walls. Interior bearing walls were capped at

the interior datum line determined by the windowsill just below eye level to

visually align for maximum transparency. Throughout the dining area on the

third level, the view was open across the interior space and offered vistas of the

mountain landscape. The transition of weight from wooden beams to columns

was borne on t-shaped wood and stone elements modeled on the “mushroom”

capital typical of vernacular foundations. The ambience of the living and dining

level, with Modern wood furniture, continuous horizontal windows, and open

riser ladder stairs, defined Albini’s Modern alpine room with penetrating light

and long views. The open plan and horizontal void extended the space, while

revised craft of local materials played freely with tradition. His new motif of

continuous clerestory openings would recur in several later buildings. Unlike

most coincident works by Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, or Philip Johnson,

the Pirovano Youth Hostel could not exist in any urban context. It belonged to

the alpine village, which had evolved over centuries, and seemed particularly at

home on the mountainside in Cervinia.

192


7.3 Mushroom

column capitals

and construction

details showing

Modern and

Traditional

techniques in the

Pirovano Hostel

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

Albini’s hostel generated a new line of Modern formal integration for

mountainous contexts that coincided with works by other Rationalists, including

Carlo Mollino and Ignazio Gardella. 10 Italian architecture critics were less

immediately convinced by Albini and Colombini’s Youth Hostel than they had been

by Albini’s museums. Many of those who had responded favorably to his previous

innovative work were perplexed. Eugenio Gentili, who vigilantly protected the

viability of orthodox Rationalism after the war, wrote that it was difficult for him

to believe that the project truly belonged to Albini. 11 Francesco Tentori, who

commented on the Rifugio almost 15 years after it was completed, claimed that the

project raised persistent questions about tradition but the architect did not provide


sufficient theoretical grounding. Tentori addressed debates on the unresolved

topic that had recently occurred at the XIII Milan Triennale (1964), which included

the reconstruction of a baita assembled for a project located in the Trento Region

by a young architect and former student of Albini and Helg. The more recent protovernacular

project by the young architect had attracted criticism from Ernesto

Rogers as an unworthy “subterfuge of the Modern architect.” 12 Tentori defended

the design gesture as having potential meaning under clear circumstances aimed

at cultural, economic, or social benefits, and he cited the Palazzos Bianco and Rosso

Museums as examples of the same, but he did not favor the “subtle mystification” of

Pirovano. 13 Nonetheless, Albini had asserted at Cervinia that Modern architecture is

the result of a rigorous process of research and a scientific response to geography,

climate and culture, not determined by ideology and intractable rules.

The Youth Hostel in Cervinia garnered favorable reviews from George

Kidder-Smith, who drew international attention to historically informed Italian

Modern buildings, and Bruno Zevi, who was teaching with Albini in Venice and

characterized the hybrid building in Metron as a work of organic architecture. 14

Around the same time, Zevi quarreled with the author of a German language

publication that featured contemporary Italian architecture (Neues Bauen in Italien,

1954) for identifying Albini with the Youth Hostel while ignoring his Palazzo Bianco

for risk, in Zevi’s terms, of confusing the essence of the Italian “Modern” architect. 15

7.4 Pirovano

Hostel dining level

showing custom

furnishings, ribbon

windows framing

horizontal views,

and ladder stairs

194


7.5 Pirovano

Youth Hostel

section

Still later, Manfredo Tafuri generalized that aristocrats producing architecture at

the time tended to cultivate a detachment from material form, an attitude that had

been provoked in his view by populist ideologies. For Tafuri, Albini’s Youth Hostel

stood as evidence that southern populism had made its way north as far as Milan,

but he did not offer anything more substantial toward a critical understanding the

unique building. 16

As Zevi noted, it remained useful to recognize that Albini produced this rural

alpine hybrid at the same time that he resolved the Palazzo Bianco interior. The

more recognizably Rationalist vocabulary for the Genoese museum served the

needs of a different client, function, and site, and the solution for a rehabilitated

gallery was quickly recognized as a pinnacle of Modern architecture. Marco

Mulazzani has revisited the effects of Albini’s interpretation of tradition in the

Pirovano project to argue in favor of Modern methods that study a traditional

theme with close scrutiny while maintaining an objective detachment. Pirovano

and Palazzo Bianco share a common interest in revalidating aspects of the existing

ambience, which are distinct for each problem, while producing innovative

rooms and façades for each that establish a noteworthy critique of the status

quo. This pairing reinforced the fact that Albini’s formal language was not bound


by rules of style, International, Rationalist or vernacular, and instead resulted in

unique, unrepeatable, and site-specific works of architecture.

For Augusto Rossari, Pirovano represented as much the imprint on Albini of

Edoardo Persico’s antiformalist rationalism as it did the influences of Pagano. 17

As has been noted, reflections on Italian tradition had been underway for some

time, producing few new models. During the immediate post-war era, when the

youth hostel was critically aligned with organicism, neorealism, the recovery

of an autonomous tradition, and relationships with the landscape, it was also

in keeping with the accelerating Italian reconstruction and recovery, which

called on time tested models to promote familiar construction methods. But the

avant-garde’s suspicion of recurrences from history limited some to understand

Pirovano as an abstract symbol or reactionary attitude rather than as an essential

analysis of tradition, thereby introducing methods by which Modernity could

facilitate a timely human presence in the new architecture.

Office buildings for the cities of Parma and Genoa also were on Albini’s boards

at the same time he designed the Youth Hostel with Colombini, each with similarly

implicated and historically unique sites in the centro storico of their respective

cities. Each project would require completely new urban façades as they

mediated the limitations of tight adjacencies that had to account for different

topographic conditions. Each project invited innovative solutions for Modern

work environments, the bureaucratic office before the invasion of the cubicle.

The Parma INA Offices and Genoa’s New Municipal Offices exteriors required new

volumetric ideas to adapt to their contexts. Albini’s resulting façades did not

disappoint, and again they posed disparate expressions that would not readily

be linked to the same designer. Characterizing again the lack of a legible, distinct

Albini signature style was by now a trademark of his work.

Questions of style aside, the architectural problem of a transformed type

inspired by deep knowledge of its traditional usage and form nonetheless connects

Albini’s buildings in Cervinia and Rome, even though they were conceived almost a

decade apart. The La Rinascente Department Store (1957–61), produced with Helg

and drawn by office intern Renzo Piano, reintroduced site history according to very

different criteria from Pirovano’s partial verisimilitude. The Roman intervention

was more widely regarded, although it, too, proved to be controversial. The new

La Rinascente was widely published internationally, including features in

Architectural Forum in 1959 and Architectural Review in 1962, and it immediately

drew the attention of Italy’s most noteworthy critics. Owing to the technical

adaptation and structural expression of the façade skin, protruding cornices, and

monumental presence, the department store’s exterior supplied the ancient city

with a new and sophisticated composition that echoed Rome’s palazzo legacy.

Albini’s La Rinascente Department Store provides another opportunity to

examine parallels between his work and that of Louis Kahn, whose analogous use

of the structural exoskeleton for the British Art Center in New Haven, Connecticut

(1973–77) also resulted in a Modern interpretation of the palazzo type. Both

architects introduced Modern buildings that revitalized their respective sites. By

reconceiving the familiar façade, Kahn and Albini each intervened with novelties

that nevertheless reinforced functions of streets, plazas, fenestration, and

surrounding pattern of building heights for each context.

196


7.6 Kahn’s

Richards Medical

Center, 1959

Source: Louis I.

Kahn Collection,

The University of

Pennsylvania and

the Pennsylvania

Historical

and Museum

Commission,

photo by Malcolm

Smith



Versatility in employing Modern materials with technology as a façade generator

opens inquiry once again into the joint interests of Kahn and Albini. Several works

by the pair between 1950 and the 1970s invite speculation about their mutual

influences. 18 Kahn had presented his Richards Medical Towers (1957–65) for the

University of Pennsylvania at CIAM in 1959, which he discussed as being modeled

after the towers of San Gimignano. British historian and active CIAM participant

Reyner Banham was critical of the professed novelty of the prominent towers

serving as air chases for exhaust ventilation. He mockingly labeled the labs as “ducthenge.”

Banham contrasted the Richards towers with Albini and Helg’s La Rinascente

Department Store, to suggest a more successful counterexample in which integral

design of mechanical systems generated well conceived thick walls. 19 He described


in detail the architects’ ‘air-trunking and pipe-runs’ that occupied La Rinascente’s precast

corrugated walls system and expressed disappointment that the novelty had

not received the discussion it deserved. Banham was interested in the significant

conceptual attention paid to “a building skin performing environmentally in a

double role: passively as a static barrier to the entry of external climate or the loss

of internal climate, actively as the distributor of conditioned air.” 20 Although today

hermetically acclimated and sealed buildings have grown outdated, the more

important contemporary lesson may lie in the balance achieved by Albini and Helg

in incorporating mechanical realities to inform the architecture in its urban setting.

Their 1960 solution can also be read as a challenge or an alternative to the emerging

high tech aesthetic that attempted to make a language out of exposed structural and

air handling systems.

Banham, Tentori, and De Seta all drew upon relationships between post-war

buildings by Albini and Kahn. De Seta argued for Albini’s international significance

based on the fact that Banham considered La Rinascente to be a model on the

same level as Kahn’s Richards Medical Towers in Philadelphia. 21 Obviously, the more

general and lasting impact of Kahn’s and Albini’s joint endeavors was to open new

avenues to an emerging Modern complexity of historically inspired, technology

conscious, high quality construction.

Albini and Helg’s La Rinascente Department Store provided them with

another chance to revise their strategy for persistent themes of concurrent Italian

Modern architecture—the aim to express the Rationalist spirit while addressing

preexisting contexts, urban artifacts, well studied craft, and Modern functions.

Rogers referred to La Rinascente’s role in the “process of evolution” of a common

problem faced by Modern architects, including himself, noting that Albini and

Helg contributed through this project to the identity of their generation. He

wrote, “The adjective ‘Italian’ serves to qualify this work not as a reduction to

an isolated national language from interests more vast and universal, but for

framing the problem in which the architects of our country have contributed to

criticism with unmistakable results.” 22 Their successes, it became clear, lay in their

willingness to acknowledge the problem’s inherent tension and walk the line

between its confrontation and logical, efficient options.

The department store company La Rinascente, owned by the Broletti family,

was previously recognized by their nineteenth-century monumental urban

palazzo designed by Giulio De Angelis (1886) in the commercial center of Rome. 23

Their new store by Studio Albini fronts onto Piazza Fiume on the ancient Roman

Via Salaria, at a busy node in the capital’s upper class residential expansion

just beyond the Via Veneto. Piazza Fiume faces a rupture in the Aurelian Wall,

a blank brick surface erected in the second century A.D. The piazza is a trafficjammed

metropolitan void and as such constituted Albini and Helg’s most

challenging urban site to date, inviting a response that would, according to

Fabrizio Rossi Prodi, “measure the terms of the confrontation between tradition

and contemporaneity” 24 with regard to formal, historic, and conceptual

considerations.

198


7.7 Piazza

Fiume façade of

La Rinascente

Department Store

by Albini and

Helg, Rome, 1961

This was not Studio Albini’s first major urban façade project, so the unique

character of the Roman edifice, distinct from its predecessors, showed the designers’

serious commitment to site specificity. Their La Rinascente proposals were fed by

a series of considerations inspired by the local scene. However, Cesare De Seta

noted that the new department store was the first time that a Milanese studio was

commissioned to intervene in the historic center of the capital, which brought with

it ample responsibility and scrutiny. According to De Seta, once built, La Rinascente

“immediately became a paradigm of Italian architecture.” 25 The footprint of the

structure located at the busy intersection had been predetermined by the client.

7.8 Cornice and construction details of La Rinascente Department Store

200


7.9 Model of

the first proposal

for La Rinascente

Department

Store showing

roof-top parking

and exterior

circulation route

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

Programmatic demands for maximum commercial space called for a free plan

interior on most floors with exclusively artificial lighting. 26 Shadows cast on the

building’s skin introduced fresh gestures of color, texture, and materiality. The

architects successfully employed Modern signage that balanced expressions

of levity, weight and mass exaggerated in daylight. Integrated structural and

mechanical systems resulted in a new surface, which established a sophisticated

Roman architecture parlante. Paolo Portoghesi credited the architects with producing

“the most refined and stylistically most complex Roman building after the War” that

“fits into its environment with a rare smoothness” and “fits within the cultural search

for references to the Papal walls and to Rome’s baroque atmosphere.” 27

Like the Rifugio in Cervinia, the final built version of La Rinascente was the

second solution to the proposed site and problem. Also like the youth hostel, the

Rome department store married striated construction types, in the latter case

with a concrete foundation supporting a steel frame structure. Several critics

have expressed admiration for the first La Rinascente proposal, which employed a

repeated t-shaped pilaster that provided structural moment connections in the steel

exoskeleton, and even proposed two floors of rooftop parking accessed by a car lift. 28

Among those lauding the first project, Banham drew attention to its high

quality as a machine focused on controlling environmental factors. Cesare De

Seta was first to note the memory of Matté Trucco’s Lingotto Fiat factory that

elevated cars to the rooftop and drew Le Corbusier’s attention in the 1920s. 29

7.10 La Rinascente rear signage along spiral stair on the Via Salaria

202


The preliminary proposal faced onto the Via Salaria and included circulation in

the form of an enclosed diagonal stair that wrapped the corner of the volume

drawing a figure on the original façade. Rogers published the revised project

in Casabella continuità while it was under construction in 1959 along with

the model of the first design presented to the Comune di Roma (Rome public

administration) for approval in 1958. The city building commission requested

modifications in the air conditioning system that led to the revised scheme. 30

The revised La Rinascente design reoriented the store onto Piazza Fiume and

accentuated the external image of a Modern Roman palazzo, a reference to its

typological heritage called upon in nearly every publication about the project.

The proportion of the mass, which stands 24 meters tall and 18 meters wide, is

bifurcated into two 9-meter structural bays. A composition of six blind windows

adjoined the exposed central column and produced a pattern of paired windows

on three levels to center the monumental façade. This big gesture was scaled to

address the public square, Piazza Fiume. La Rinascente’s symmetrical face was

further reinforced by wrapping the integrated steel frame and infill motif around

both corners of the south face, the same motif that extended across the entire Via

Salaria façade. The final end composition conveyed the impression of a palazzo

with harmonious rectangular proportions that belied the actual elongated shape

of the volume as it conformed to the urban block. The shadows cast by recessed

glass doors, windows, and signage on the ground level made the mass appear to

levitate as if suspended above Roman traffic. The delineated composition of the

external frame was capped with a huge perforated steel cornice that has been

compared to the crown of Michelangelo’s Palazzo Farnese. 31 The expressive use of

exposed steel as a structural skeleton dates back to Albini’s collaboration on the

Steel House for the V Milan Triennale in 1933. The scale of the Roman structure

and the sophistication of its details, designed in collaboration with structural

engineer Gino Covre, demonstrated a notable aesthetic advancement in Studio

Albini’s façade strategies. 32

Claimed by some critics as the most notable innovation of the La Rinascente

Department Store was its interpretation of the palazzo that resulted in the form

of accommodations for structural loads, plumbing, heating and cooling conduit,

and electrical service. In other words, architectural expression consisted of

aestheticized technologies that are ordinarily concealed, even denied. This is

perhaps the dominant legacy that Renzo Piano borrowed for the Pompidou Center,

which exploited an aesthetic of exposed infrastructure. La Rinascente’s infill panels

anchored to the steel frame were composed of prefabricated granulated granite

and red marble dust. The polygonal form of vertically aligned panels produced

a textured surface that implied a thick wall, another Roman palazzo trope, and

composed a modulation of shadowed patterns with horizontal steel bands. The

vertical channels within the panels provided for mechanical systems and water

movement, technical features of the well-tempered Modern environment. 33 An inset

white horizontal band and crisp delicate line work cut into the final composition of

the crenellated façade to introduce an elegant interplay of scale, texture, and form.

7.11 La Rinascente final plan

204


7.12 La

Rinascente spiral

stair vertical

perspective

So while Renaissance architectural tradition and the nineteenth century department

store informed the building’s massing, Albini and Helg’s manufactured material,

composed and manipulated to accommodate Modern mechanical systems, and

exposed skeletal structure constituted an evolution in their Modern expression.

Illuminated at night, “La Rinascente” san serif signs were located above the front

cornice and vertically along the Via Salaria at the back of the store. The signage

boldly advertised the expansive commercial venture of the well-established

retail giant and complemented the heavy and light motifs of the architecture.

Positioned on the crest and the edge of the building, the name appeared to float

against the sky. 34 Behind the glass polygon is Albini’s most beautiful spiral stair to

date in the form of a pointed ellipse with lightweight, curvilinear steel balustrade

and red Verona marble treads. The continuous stairway was detached from the

corners of the stair shaft and surrounded by daylight. The tour-de-force of the

floating soaring stair is Albini’s most baroque gesture.

La Rinascente gives the appearance of conceptual simplicity and transparent

construction in the form of a Modern machine for shopping. On closer inspection, one

discovers a deliberate structural redundancy in the four interior concrete filled steel

columns, which the superscaled Piazza Fiume fenestration alludes to but actually

disguises. The exterior skeleton made of C-channels and steel corner capitals, then,

are redundant. For Albini and Helg, expression and construction were inseparable.


7.13 La

Rinascente spiral

stair section

Claudia Conforti has claimed that “the magical equilibrium of technical, functional,

commercial, expressive persuasion, and urban figuration of the Rinascente would

never be equaled by Albini.” 35 The expressive capacity of their exposed steel

structure emphasized gravity’s command. I will reconsider Albini’s evolution of this

expressive thesis in his studio’s subsequent projects for the Sant’Agostino Museum

in Genoa and the Civic Museum of Padua.

Renzo Piano worked as a student intern at Studio Albini at this time and “drew one

by one each of the 50,000 blocks of granite for La Rinascente.” 36 Claudia Conforti has

noted the similarity between the proposed external stair of the proposal and Piano

and Richard Roger’s protruding escalator tube on the façade of the Pompidou Center

in Paris, which opened in 1977. 37

206


7.14 Yale British

Art Center High

Street façade in

New Haven, CT

by Kahn, 1974

As the sophistication of Albini’s novel architecture evolved from the integrated

Modern room to the integrated Modern building, he remained unconvinced

by oversimplified technology-driven abstractions that could be universally

applied to all sites and any building program. The suspended internal exhibition

frameworks that conveyed a sense of levity and luminous transparency in his


pre-war interiors had grown conceptually to define whole structures that had to

make themselves at home in pre-existing urban sites. Not surprisingly, expanding

needs for planning, detail and construction development, and execution

demanded revised methods of practice. These enlarged formal frameworks were

scaled to hold large volumes and massive public audiences rather than books or

artifacts, and required a more substantial expression of tension and compression

designed by way of carefully sized members, articulated joints, and tougher

materials. This more robust expression of mass and volume bore affiliation with

traditional Italian architecture, the same precedent that had influenced the work

of Louis Kahn since his fellowship at the American Academy in 1951 when he

studied ancient and contemporary Roman architecture, including perhaps recent

projects by Albini.

Louis Kahn’s British Art Center (1972–77), completed for Yale University after Kahn’s

death in 1974), compared to Albini and Helg’s La Rinascente Department Store

demonstrates resemblances in the architects’ shared studies of tradition during a

time when their methodologies and formal vocabularies had matured. In contrast to

designers of contemporary international style museums, Kahn and Albini introduced

these more solid enclosures with strategic uses of transparency that specifically met

their respective contexts without formulas, nostalgia, or mimicry. Both introduced

exposed structural exoskeletons as effective and efficient façade devices to scale

their interventions to the urban surroundings within which they aimed to fit.

7.15 Yale British

Art Center spiral

stair by Kahn

208


7.16 Yale British

Art Center spiral

stair cylinder

by Kahn

Using structure to craft a formal language is not on its own novel, and was exploited

frequently in Italy and the U.S. But these two examples reveal a particular attention

to the material expression of the structural frame with respect to its infill, graphic

pattern, detail, and urban situation that revealed a fresh level of architectural

sophistication (for La Rinascente façade, see Figure 7.7).


Both structures are reinterpretations of the palazzo type, a metaphor for

urban monumental architecture. For a department store near the center of Rome,

Albini and Helg employed the palazzo’s grandiosity with a recessed base and

protruding airy cornice, in contrast to the weight of the colorful panels, and with

symmetry to distinguish it among residential masses. Daylight animates their

façade surfaces through the contrasts of dynamic cast shadows. Kahn’s more

sober façade composition in New Haven reverses the materiality by employing

a massive concrete frame apparently acting in compression and adding visually

lighter stainless steel infill panels. He modulates the dimension of the frame by

diminishing the sizes of column members as they rise. Compositional contrasts

of the cold concrete frame and steel panels with warm white oak on the interior

activate material contrasts irrespective of light conditions, while the palazzo

diagram invites natural light into two inner gallery courts. La Rinascente’s

continuous recessed base connects the building on two sides, while the British

Art Center’s recessed entrance occurs at the urban intersection, leaving street

front glazing for commercial activity. Vertical 2 x 3 window panel matrices

butt glass with structure and serve to center each building’s narrower façade.

The uber-window works in both buildings to emphasize the exoskeleton while

scaling the façade to be read as a composite and complete idea not limited to

subdivisions by individual floors.

Both of Kahn’s Yale museums contain circular stairs as the primary means of

public circulation. Like Albini and Helg’s Palazzo Rosso Museum, the stair nodes

are beautiful artifacts that function as primary circulation. The Yale Art Gallery stair

forms three triangular sets of risers in a skylit concrete cylinder, while the British

Art Center stair is quadrilateral and the concrete cylinder that envelops it becomes

an object in the major court gallery. Albini’s stairs were almost always transparent

suspended structures that evoked weightlessness. He turned functional elements

into light, continuous, open spaces, a motif that evolved over the course of his career.

The elliptical spiral stair in La Rinascente occurs on an urban corner in a half

transparent polygon that mediates the oblique angle on the exterior and interior

of the store. The dynamic character of fluid space and movement can be contrasted

to the more static, silent figure of Kahn’s sublime stair chambers.

Kahn’s poetics and Albini’s ‘magical abstraction’ emerged as parallel

mid-century responses to formal and symbolic failures of post-ideological

Modernism. As such they appear as kindred spirits. Both architects originated

progressive Rationalist departures from Classical architecture in the 1930s, and at

mid-career each embraced his own personal aesthetics that drew from tradition

and privileged the Modern room. Their consistent study of architectural types,

contexts, construction technologies, and cultural traditions resulted in highly

varied, subtly monumental buildings that were readily embraced by critics and

the public. Albini and Kahn grew from different cultural phenomena, and their

preferences for opposite material languages differentiate their work. Kahn revived

the aesthetics of mass and compression for a non-transparent architecture that

felt its weight, while Albini’s tensile steel, gridded, and glass language celebrated

levity and suspension. Each produced innovations that fused historic ideas

210


with Modern programs and concepts of the built environment. Both embraced

human nature and provoked traditions of cultural production as reservoirs of

architectural knowledge. They read from related traditions—Kahn from Classical

architecture and Albini from Italian vernacular—finding fertile territory to

establish critical ground as a springboard for new ideas.

Similarities in their solutions to urban problems are increasingly evident. They

employed Modern technologies without losing the importance of the room

or fetishizing high tech expression. They inquired into the meanings of various

traditions by deconstructing them. This is the importance of their parallel practices:

Albini and Kahn both embodied a new direction that was progressively Modern

and harmonious, while also possessing a deep understanding of the architectural

problem, its site, and its traditional forms. For each, the Modern project was formally

complex, site specific, materially honest, tactile and restrained, as they made

architecture from the inside out and responded knowingly and boldly to each

context. Their buildings and investigative methods elicit durable lessons, from hard

won technological precision to the efficacy of well-resolved composition in response

to each architectural problem, construction tectonics, and location. Absorbing and

sifting through so much knowledge is a prerequisite to productive fusion of past

and contemporary ideas and is the greatest challenge to producing a truly new

work of art. Albini more than Kahn demonstrated the tendency to sublimate his ego

to abide by, as T.S. Eliot recalled, the “intensity of the artistic process:”

The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is

modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them

… . The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of

personality. … For it is not the “greatness,” the intensity of the emotions … but

the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the

fusion takes place that counts. 38

Albini especially embodied that artistic process under pressure to sublimate his

personality for a new synthesis. For T.S. Eliot, Modernity born of tradition modified

the ideal order of existing monuments. Albini and Kahn demonstrated an essential

understanding of the place of the past in the present and the present’s potential

to redefine the past, along with the requisite predisposition toward self-sacrifice,

to balance submission and creativity. Evident in both architects’ best works is an

awareness of the difficulties and responsibilities inherent in rebuilding the city. Each

contributed significantly to the production of enduring situated Modern architecture.

Albini was most focused on local contexts, urban history, and popular culture as he

affected those very traditions. Thereafter, Modernism would not be the same.

NOTES

1 From Albini’s descriptions of the Pirovano Youth Hostel in “Albergo per Ragazzi a

Cervinia.” Edilizia Moderna n. 47 (1951), pp. 67–74.

2 From Rationalist’s first manifesto of four installments published in Rassegna in 1926.


3 “Svoltosi a Milan nella sede del Movimento per gli Studi di Architettura—MSA—la sera

del 14 giugno 1955,” included comments by Carlo Aymonino, Franco Berlanda, Franco

Marescotti, Carlo Melograni, Guido Canella, Gillo Dorfles, Marco Zanuso, Giancarlo De

Carlo, Piero Bottoni, Giacomo Scarpini, and Romolo Donatelli. Casabella continuità n.

206 (1955), pp. 45–52. Albini’s comments and the entire debate were subsequently

re-published in Movimento per gli Studi di Architettura 1945–61 by Baffa, Morandi,

Protasoni, and Rossari (Rome: Laterza & Figli, 1995), pp. 497–9.

4 T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and

Criticism (1922). http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html.

5 T.S. Eliot. http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html.

6 Previously called Breuil, Cervinia was renamed by Mussolini. In 1936–37 Adriano

Olivetti sponsored a town plan, which was drafted by Milanese Rationalists and

cohorts of Albini, Ludovico Barbiano di Belgioioso (BBPR) and Piero Bottoni.

7 After working with Albini, Luigi (Gino) Colombini left the practice of architecture

between 1951–52 to direct the technical engineering department at Kartell.

8 Prina, Vittorio, Franco Albini, Albergo Rifugio Pirovano a Cervinia (Firenze: Alinea, 2005).

9 Piva, Antonio, Franco Albini 1905–1977 (Milan: Electa, 1998), pp. 202–3.

10 See Michelangelo Sabatino, Pride in Modesty, pp. 189–92. Sabatino notes similar

subsequent “highly sophisticated dwellings” by architects in the mountainous north

built after the Pirovano Youth Hostel that follow vernacular traditions.

11 E. Gentili, “La sede dell’INA a Parma,” Casabella continuità n. 200 (Feb.–Mar. 1954), p. 25.

12 F. Tentori, “Opere recenti dello studio di Albini-Helg,” Zodiac n. 14 (April 1965), p. 108.

13 F. Tentori, “—oppure si puó esaltare questi concreti contribuiti applicativi, rivendicare

che Albini e Helg sono artisti e uomini liberi, di una societá democratica, che

non hanno nessuno obbligo di elaborazione teorica, che, anzi, queste opere di

adattamento sono del tutto preferibili alla sottile mistificazione di un’opera come il

Rifugio Pirovano a Cervinia.” Zodiac n. 14 (April 1965), p. 108.

14 Bruno Zevi was mesmerized by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and sowed the seeds

of an imported “democratic architecture” through the Associazione per l’Architettura

Organica (Association for Organic Architecture).

15 The book published by Callwey, Munich was written by Paolo Nestler. Zevi’s protest

appears in his Cronache di architettura, second volume (Rome: Editori Laterza, 1971),

n. 16, pp. 139–41.

16 Tafuri, p. 14.

17 A. Rossari, “Un persorso antiformalista tra Modernità e tradizione.” Zero Gravity,

pp. 127–47.

18 Matilde Baffa first posed the question to me noting many similarities between Albini’s

and Kahn’s contemporary projects. Subsequent research has revealed that many

scholars have suggested connections but there has not been thorough or systematic

investigation about relationships between the coincident architects.

19 R. Banham, “Louis Kahn, the buttery-hatch aesthetic.” Architectural Review v. 131

(London, 1962), p. 204.

20 R. Banham, The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1969), p. 246.

212


21 C. De Seta, Franco Albini (Florence: Centro Di, 1979), p. 24.

22 E.N. Rogers, in “Progetto per un grande magazzino a Roma.” Casabella-continuità

n. 257 (1961), p. 2.

23 C. Conforti, Zero Gravity, p. 171. La Rinascente occupied the same structure until 2010,

when Zara, the Spanish populist clothier moved in, and La Rinascente relocated to the

Alberto Sordi Galleria across the street.

24 F. Rossi Prodi, Franco Albini, p. 168.

25 C. De Seta, Franco Albini, Centro Di, p. 24.

26 The new La Rinascente Department Store included three floors of service and

mechanical space below ground, seven floors of commercial space. The top floor,

whose windows are integrated into in the steel cornice accommodated offices and

administration.

27 Paolo Portoghesi in L’Architettura cronache e storia, p. 604.

28 F. Tentori, “Si tratta indubbiamente di un ottimo lavoro, ma non tale da far tacere

del tutto il rammarico per la mancata realizzazione della prima soluzione, quella a

grandi portali metallici sovraposti e incernierati uno sull’altro,” p. 127. M. Tafuri wrote

“Ed a questo punto é doveroso il richiamo al primo progetto redatto da Albini per

la ‘Rinascente’ romana, nel quale il sincretismo volumetrico era condizione di un

consequente sincretismo espressivo, altrettanto polemico, nella sua compattezza,

della lacerazioni improvvise che si evidenziano nel tessuto dell’edificio realizzato,” in

“Albini: riesame di un edificio—La Rinascente di Rome.” Supercifi, pp. 60–63. Rossi Prodi

noted the virtue of rooftop parking possibly inspired by Matté Trucco’s Fiat factory,

Le Corbusier, and contemporary North American examples and the large-scale gesture

capable as providing order in the chaos of the city. Franco Albini, p. 169.

29 C. De Seta, p. 24.

30 E.N. Rogers, in “Progetto per un grande magazzino a Roma,” also identified Albini and

Helg’s technical collaborators, Antonio Tosi for fire resistance, Balbino De Nunzio, for

mechanical systems and structural engineer, Gino Covre, p. 8.

31 Openings at the attic level that appear as regular intervals in the cornice detail allow

for light and views in the administrative level of the department store.

32 See Corve’s defense of the use of steel for the Modern structure in “Il Nuovo Edificio La

Rinscente,” Acciao n. 1 (1963).

33 In “La Rinascente in piazza Fiume a Roma,” by Paolo Portogesi in L’Architettura cronache

e storia, VII, the mechanical system is identified and diagrammed showing circuits of

heated and refrigerated water traveling in vertical conduits. The system was designed

by Uffici Tecnici Aster in Milan, p. 615.

34 The vertical sign has been removed.

35 C. Conforti, Zero Gravity, p. 174.

36 R. Piano, Zero Gravity, translated by author, p. 189. Following a three-year internship at

Studio Albini in Milan, Renzo Piano worked on Philadelphia for Louis Kahn and

Z.S. Makowsky from 1965–70. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renzo_Piano.

37 C. Conforti, Zero Gravity, p. 172.

38 T.S. Eliot, (1888–1965). “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The Sacred Wood: Essays on

Poetry and Criticism (1922).

8

Strange Siblings: Office Buildings in Genoa and Parma

Anyone who wants to know today’s architect must recognize Albini,

his character of clarity and linear thinking, his long lines (like his

own physique) lean, elegant, and subtle, characteristics of rigor

and an absolute coherence, with the capacity for successively

pure architectural innovations and their working elements. 1 Gio Ponti, 1952

Albini would further defy tradition in the designs of elevations for two office

buildings constructed after the youth hostel and Palazzo Bianco Museum. Both

projects begun by Albini around 1950 aroused his interest in key design challenges

mandated by urban façades, a problem that took on new significance as Rationalist

architects revisited growing problems of urban design and planning after the war.

Now, with a new expression of structure in mind, Albini reintroduced the Rationalist

grid in anticipation of the exoskeletal steel of La Rinascente to follow a decade

later. He found in each job the difficult responsibility of infilling a tightly confined

urban void, and he exploited these opportunities with a more formal and rational

approach than he had used for his hybridized vernacular solution at Cervinia. Yet

his dalliance with tradition for these exteriors led to forms that exuded innovation

while also belonging uniquely to their respective contexts. One structure sat

upright, surpassing its neighbors, while the other thrust horizontally out of the

hillside next to a series of apparently detached volumes with cubic propositions

built during periods that ranged from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century.

Memory and tradition, it turns out, form a relationship made up of sincere aims

but some illicit acts. In spite of the best of intentions, rules get broken. As Picasso

is famously to have said: “Tradition is not wearing your grandfather’s hat but

begetting a child.”

Since the activities housed in these offices belonged to a new administration

and changed social order, Albini was free of determinants guided by common

building typology and was able to explore what a façade for offices might express.

8.1 INA Office Building on the Via del Corso in Parma by Albini, 1950–54

Strange Siblings: Office Buildings in Genoa and Parma 215

8.2 Genoa’s

New Municipal

Offices (renamed

Palazzo Albini) by

Albini, 1950–63

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

Together this pair of structures demonstrated the range of Albini’s compositional

vocabulary around the time he began working with Franca Helg. Each project

called attention to his search for carefully situated expressions, regardless of the

culturally constructed nature of each site, while his material compositions reflected

their local regions. Mathematical rigors of gridded planes established Albini’s

expressive structures, but his composite morphology was not a simple infill of

the abstract grid. Each resulting building introduced a radical Modern face on an

historic street in a highly charged context. Meanwhile, differences in massing and

skin between these two buildings—projects designed simultaneously—reveal his

high tolerance for dissonance. They appeared to be only remote relatives within

a Modern family, underscoring Albini’s attentiveness to place over personal style.

Aging infrastructure and the replacement of voids in historic centers were not

new problems for Italian cities, but the advent of changing social and political

values of the cultural cognoscenti required innovations in the forms of contextually

savvy, practical models. Even while the emerging generation of architects

struggled for continuity with pre-war progressivism, mass audiences favored

populist themes that were emerging in the forms of new housing, as revealed by

exhibitions, journals, newpapers, and other media venues. Manifestations of the

evolving expressions of minor, marginal, or local motifs would later be parsed out

by Neorationalist design theories (Argan, Rossi, Colquhoun). 2

Reconstruction inspired by the Fanfani Plan (1949) urged Mediterranean

architects to address persistent demands for housing and urban infill during this

era, and was accompanied by growing tendencies to produce non-ideological

free-form residential complexes. Lacking the immediacy and expansive reach of

216


cinema, architecture arrived late to Neorealism and was often limited to formal

references confined to the building’s immediate location and popularism. Benevolo

described Neorealist trends in architecture as “the rejection of the abstract and

the exotic.” 3 Calling for everyday urbanism, which ran a parallel track with Italian

citizens’ renewed interests in spontaneous architecture, the predominance of

extant types was emerging across the Mediterranean, and the risk of nostalgia

was significant. New housing was being constructed in enormous quantities, with

speculation damaging the countryside, and was the primary program type for

Neorealist experimentation. Some of Albini’s collaborations at this time resulted in

new models for post-war housing neighborhoods in the north, which combined his

knowledge of urban patterns, material craft, and function. Albini’s joint collective

housing designs will be discussed in the next chapter. His cumulative knowledge

of the Modern city and his sensitivity to its inhabitants along with his evolving

interrogation of Italian tradition brought about a significant change in his work

in contrast to his and others’ massive Milanese housing blocks from the 1930s. Yet

it is useful to recognize, as Michelangelo Sabatino has shown by way of surviving

futurist artists into the 1920s, that revival of traditional customs and constructions

presented through Italian vernacular craft and symbols did not end avant-garde

ambitions. Instead, these trends were refocused to breed mutual influences on

their intertwined production. 4

Meanwhile, the stratification of the historic city led to more engaged local

responses to ambientismo, which refers to the pre-existing environment, calling

for restoration of war-damaged conditions. Restoration was in direct conflict with

International Style trends that prefigured progressive Italian Modernism and

preferred a clean slate. The new generation of architects—Rogers, De Carlo, Scarpa,

Gardella, Quaroni, Moretti, and Ridolfi, among others—shared Albini’s ambition

to revise Italian Modern practices and materials, including those that shared his

deep roots in Rationalism. Gregotti called attention specifically to Albini’s INA

Parma building when he credited the group of northern architects responsible for

a “well-characterized body of spontaneous local architecture,” that was “backed by

a tradition of structural sincerity.” 5 As we will later see, we may wonder if Gregotti

had misread the Modern office building in Parma. As was true for the Italian avantgarde,

Albini’s interest in the lessons of Italian traditions and the potential for

urban redevelopment did not cause a wholesale rejection of Rationalist structural

innovation. Expressive uses of materials and a builder’s pragmatic logic remained

his ethos for construction craft. The paradox between the past and a Modern

present was one of the few concurrent dilemma, about which the otherwise

taciturn Albini offered comment. Yet his designs for new office buildings for Genoa

and Parma preceded his renowned declaration to MSA students and colleagues

about tradition’s formative role, and they represented well his argument. 6

Manfredo Tafuri later reflected on the critical post-war years that defined Italian

architecture’s primary contribution to the Modern era, a period that also witnessed

the beginning of the economic miracle, which posed some problems for a Marxist

like Tafuri. BBPR’s urban housing on Via Borgonuovo in Milan, Samonà’s Treviso

project and Michelucci’s “Borsa Merci” market in Pistoia were projects that he

commended, but he offered faint praise in his summarizing assessment:


The secret convention was always a dialectic overcoming of “rationalism;”

without fuss, but with obstinacy, the new quality was pursued in variations

based on an exaltation of materials, on polite and indeterminate forms, on

absorption with craftsmanship that forced all unique works to hide under a cloak

of modesty. 7

Yet in the same commentary, Tafuri credited Albini’s restraint for his remarkable

success in producing the INA Offices in Parma, which he praised as a complete work

with notable integrity and independence. Tafuri found in this stately office building

novel and appropriate relationships with the existing environment. He credited

Albini for producing a building that exemplified the genius of post-war Italian

architecture, which he defined as “vacillation between an exceptional receptivity to

the legacy of the avant-garde and an equally exceptional cautiousness in defining

the limits conceded to a dialog with history.” 8

STRANGE SIBLINGs OR FRATERNAL TWINs?

The Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni (National Insurance Institute) in Parma

(1953) and the New Municipal Offices, recently renamed Palazzo Albini, for the

city of Genoa (1963) show Albini’s changing attitude toward urban environments,

their latitudes, and their histories. Each of the two structures defined a distinct

morphology for a standard building type, mostly bereft of monumental interior

rooms, whose novelty resided in the images they presented to each city.

Conceptualized simultaneously, each office building presented a complex,

assertive, and stylistically independent example of Italian public architecture

that for each structure has since grown into the fabric of its urban site. For both

buildings, Albini stretched the parameters of his façade language while artistically

composing elevations that maximized spectacular views, infiltrated pedestrian

passageways, and addressed a series of pragmatic concerns embodied in the layer

between public and private realms.

Giuseppe Samonà expressed admiration for both INA Parma and the Genoa

municipal offices, calling them serene and simple works of “extraordinary

volumetric coherence.” 9 Taken together, the many differences between these

coincident structures conceal the hand of the designer, as previously noted, a key

fact of interest in recognizing Albini’s site specificity and evolving design method

at this time. None of his post-war buildings look alike nor quite like any of his

tradition-inspired Modern projects, like siblings with distinct physiognomies and

independent personalities masking shared DNA.

INA Parma was indeed a façade building, while Genoa’s Palazzo Albini defied

frontality. Instead, the bent forms of the Genoese building wrapped around

interstitial landscapes and existing structures to dematerialize its imposing mass. It

offered a study in section development by creating terraced blocks in response to

Genoa’s characteristic steep terrain that engaged the hill, while the former stacked

offices in repetitive plans producing a cubic volume that rested lightly on flat ground.

218


8.3 INA Office

Building top level,

typical office, and

ground floor plans

8.4 Palazzo

Albini ground floor

and upper level

structural plans

Palazzo Albini is a 10-story addition to Palazzo Tursi, an existing baroque

monument also on the Strada Nuova, which presented an alternative to the more

familiar public-to-private transitions from street to penthouse level by linking

multiple paths and entries and by providing ample views of nearby roof terraces

en route. In contrast, INA Parma accommodated private dwellings on an attic floor

that was invisible from the street as it rose well above the city’s height datum. The

Genoese building is clad in local marble; INA Parma is composed of brick and glass

panels seen through an exposed concrete frame, a familiar Lombard motif, which

Albini crafted with Modern sensibilities. Both sets of office interiors exemplify

Albini’s precise detailing, custom designed fixtures and furniture throughout, and

clerestory daylighting that penetrates into interior spaces. INA Parma continues

the street edge with a plane formed as a layered rendition of traditional frame

and infill masonry. Genoa’s public town hall addition is perhaps more selfconsciously

Modern, its skin and crenellated surface intertwine within a concrete

exoskeleton. The U-plan of the terraced office bar was deliberately misaligned

from the Palazzo Tursi central axis, the predominant momument to which it is

internally joined. Both structures relied on protruding eaves that served as both

expressive and functional devices. In Genoa, eaves on every level protected interior

spaces from daylight and exaggerated the horizontal linearity of the parallel bars.

8.5 Palazzo Albini (formerly called New Municipal Offices) horizontal cornice

and Modern monumental stairs mediating slope of the Genoa hillside

8.6 INA Office diminishing façade grid details and urban cornice in Parma


Instead, the crowning INA cornice completed the vertical façade as a monumental

gesture masking an additional story of apartments above.

It may appear paradoxical that although each structure’s massing was informed

by its respective site, each stands out in its context. In both cases the resulting forms

simultaneously interpret the rules of their physical sites to selectively defy them.

Both structures display a “momentary reconciliation of tradition and Modernity”

according to Leonardo Benevolo, who identified Albini’s INA Parma Office along

with his San Lorenzo and Palazzo Bianco Museum interiors as outstanding among

a handful of the most noteworthy works or the post-war era. 10 Albini’s own

challenges to Rationalism and International Style Modernism were inspired by

his understanding that “tradition is men living in the present who are aware and

recognize those works and those actions.” 11 In Parma, the medieval Baptistery is

just a few blocks from the INA Offices and visible from its penthouse. Although not

specifically mentioned by Albini, it displays the gridded frame characteristic of a

regional Lombard aesthetic, a relationship frequently called out by critics anxious

to tie Albini to the new appreciation of vernacular architecture. 12

If Albini drew from the Parma Baptistery for his inspiration, as oft claimed by his

interpreters, then results of his successful Modern and traditional integration in

Parma serve to formalize the notion of continuity that he would comment on a few

years later: “Our tradition does not exist outside itself: it exists when we collectively

recognize in certain customs and habits, in certain ways of building, in certain past

and present forms, the elements of our tradition in our present.” 13 Albini made clear

that tradition reveals a people’s collective consciousness, though such permanence

and mindful recognition of it are complex and depend upon shared means of

communication and expression. Acts in the present are required to expose and

vitalize the forms, values, and continuity of that shared culture. Echoed 20 years

later in a three-part feature titled “Realismo e Architettura Povera” (Realism and

Poor Architecture) in Casabella, Ernesto D’Alfonso summed up Albini’s contribution

as: “exposing the whole process of making a building so as to make the reality of

its construction completely intelligible.” 14 D’Alfonso’s reflection reminds us that

collective values knowingly accepted and perpetuated also link great art to popular

opinion and public access, and are neither limited to nor determined by the elite

and powerful. This timely assessment indicated awareness of growing mass culture

and media trends on the cusp of industrial fabrication of Italian product design for

international markets that mostly by-passed Albini.

It is useful to recognize that in the context of debates on Modernity and

tradition, Albini articulated a separation between a building’s functional diagram

and its external expression, a coupling more often tied through identification

with a particular style. His investigations for viable new types of offices, galleries,

museums, a hostel, and a department store led to very different results depending

as much upon location and actual site as each program of requirements and

function. Very often the inside and the outside spoke different languages, as in, for

example, those projects with a heavy baroque façade that concealed a light, airy

interior. Albini left the door open to new formal ideas while making connections

to climate conditions, familiar urban diagrams, and human occupation.

222


8.7 Baptistery

of Parma begun

in 1196 marks the

transition between

Romanesque and

Gothic periods

Albini implicitly argued against the glass monoliths that came to define the

International Style of the 1950s, and he did not romanticize the ideal city of

utopian dreams. He had vetted the Futurist version and would not be persuaded

by similar American or international proposals for applications to Italian

contexts. His office buildings in Genoa and Parma balanced open and closed wall

segments on exterior surfaces and included passive solar filtration and protection

that forged elegant responses to their immediate surroundings. These two

buildings represent some of the best post-war architecture conceived by a first

generation Rationalist who provided a model for encounters with real sites,

geographies, and cultures to enrich history, without compromising architectural

innovation.

Rogers, more vociferous than Albini on the topic of tradition, used his editorship

first of the popular journal, Domus, then of Casabella continuità, to investigate

emerging Italian trends and provoked polemical arguments in the process.


In 1946, when he assumed responsibility for Domus long edited by Gio Ponti, he

wrote about the damaged “house of man” with cracks on all sides as a metaphor

for fragmented values in post-war Italian society. He challenged architects to take

responsibility for providing a new moral strength, reorienting cultural direction,

and reviving urban landscapes. Shortly before Albini’s MSA address, Rogers

argued for a new contextualism in the pages of Casabella continuità:

A building in Milan will be different if it is used for offices rather than a dwelling—

this is natural—but also if it is on one terrain rather than another, next to certain

pre-existing buildings rather than others. The synthetic characterization of

the different technical elements unmistakably expresses an artist’s style, these

elements cannot fail to acknowledge in the very act of creation all those forces

that are at play in the field of their own actions … The context is the place of

these pre-existences and anything that did not feel their influence would be

vague and indeterminate. 15

Rogers ultimately stood for continuity with progressive pre-war Modernity,

but recognized the emergence of a zeitgeist capable of redirecting, without

abandoning or denying, the strong forms of the best Rationalist projects. Similar

to Albini’s post-war works, Rogers, in his efforts with BBPR, modified iconic

abstraction and embraced the material expressions of local historic architecture

to reinvigorate Milan and other city centers. Rogers carried his discussion of

tradition to the final CIAM meeting at Otterlo in 1959 when he presented BBPR’s

attempt to illustrate these ideas in the form of the Torre Velasca office tower

(1957–58) that, as I have discussed, was highly controversial. The neo-gothic high

rise loomed over Milan to prominently mark the skyline and suggested an image

antithetical to elegant New York skyscrapers. Rogers defended their tower’s

stature and dominance over its context for its ability to depict the mood of the

Modern Milanese genius loci. Critics included Reyner Banham and Kenzo Tange,

who saw the tower as a retreat from a progressive, technologically cognizant,

International School of Modernism. 16

Albini did not present his latest built works or projects at the Otterlo CIAM

meeting, although the Youth Hostel and INA Parma were complete by 1959,

and the Genoese, offices and Rome’s La Rinascente were well underway. Each

intervention had been readily renowned by Italian critics as a sophisticated

solution to a challenging contextual problem and well situated in its physical

terrain. We can only imagine the direction the debate might have taken at that

time if Albini’s more covert, yet intelligent, proposals had been reviewed by the

international contingent of progressive architects when Kahn’s Richards Medical

Center was so favorably received. Less than a decade later, when Gregotti traced

New Directions in Italian Architecture, he cited both Kahn’s and Gropius’ return to

history, local traditions, and explicit references as having been influenced by an

“attitude that had its roots in Italian architecture,” citing Albini’s Youth Hostel,

Treasury museum and La Rinascente Department Store as its primary sources.

Gregotti also included an excerpt from Albini’s 1955 MSA address on the topic. 17

224


In Italy, Albini had emerged as the leader of local debates on the relationship

between tradition and post-war Modernity among Italian architects. His 1955

address was attended by a generation of Milanese students that included Aldo

Rossi, Guido Canella, and Fredi Drugman. 18 Giancarlo De Carlo, also in attendance,

prompted the architects and critics to offer their responses to what had become

a heated debate, provoking thoughts from Franco Marescotti, Marco Zanuso,

Carlo Melograni, and, Piero Bottoni, an original member of the Rationalists’

Gruppo 7. In his own response, De Carlo disparaged neoclassicism and called on

young architects to “represent the reality of our times” with “the same tension

and the same energy” as had those of the Bauhaus. He likened Gardella, Albini,

and Ridolfi to Richard Morris, Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto, and Arne Jacobsen to

those Modern pioneers. 19 What Rogers and De Carlo preached, Albini practiced,

and many of his refined buildings have endured the test of time, even while

they have only been recognized fully among Italian scholars and architects for

their essential influences. Together with Helg, his studio produced new urban

symbols that foreshadowed post-Modern architectural criticism concerned

with placelessness and mute, abstract formalism. Their office buildings and

other non-grandiose urban gestures suggested alternative paradigms for bold,

performative Modern architecture without sacrificing Rationalist logic and order

or the new, somewhat tempered, spirit.

Frontality and Façades: Ina Parma

An urban street corner in the historic center of Parma provided the INA

Headquarters with two orientations in the city, one to the west and the other

to the south. The urban organization of the centro storico of Parma reveals the

underlying ancient Roman grid on which the city was founded. Albini produced

for this edifice his first Modern façade on a new structure in an old urban center.

He used the two sides to integrate the insurance offices into the rhythm of

everyday life. His original front included four glazed storefronts along the Via

Cavour, Parma’s main street, to cohere with the street’s commercial function.

Employees entered the office building through the last bay around the corner on

the minor street, Borgo San Biagio. 20 Entry to the offices led past Albini’s customdesigned

post boxes and reception desk directly into the corner spiral stair, which

served as the vertical nexus for the 7-story building. The front façade presented

a tectonic tour-de-force with illusions of suspension in its multilayered surface.

The Rationalist curtain wall elevation was held aloft by a load-bearing column

system with a wider structural module than that which is implied by the elevation’s

concrete frame. The pilasters of the five-bay wide by six-bay tall window modules

gradually diminish in depth with each floor to effectively lighten the perception

of weight and exaggerate the building’s height. The thickness of the façade also

recedes and the surface appears to angle back to accentuate its vertical dimension

as viewed from street level. The motif works to counterbalance the building’s weight

of gravity and draws attention to skillful techniques of craft and construction

(Figure 8.1).

8.8 Diagram of INA Parma front and side façade elevations showing

raised non-load-bearing ornamental pilasters

226


8.9 INA Parma

spiral stair

elevation

Louis Kahn similarly employed shrinking pilasters, resulting in increasing

window widths for the façades of the Philips Exeter Academy Library (1965–72)

in New Hampshire. At Exeter, figure/ground patterns were reversed in the brick

walls from base to top, producing the effect that the cubic palazzo-type library

appears to float upward. At Parma, the gradual diminution of the grid produced

the effect of a more elongated vertical surface, causing the INA Office Building

to appear taller than it is. The structure is actually a floor and a half taller than

the buildings in its immediate context. Kahn’s concrete columns also diminish

in width as they ascend at the 4-story Yale British Art Center (1969–74) whose

exoskeleton frame I have compared to Albini and Helg’s Rinascente store.

8.10 INA Parma spiral stair perspective

228


A pattern of shadows distinguishes the BAC façade with shrinking columns that

pull back from the infill panels, while the taught skin remains flush. A reverse

effect of the skin merging closer to a column surface toward the top can be read

in the protruding INA pilasters.

In Milan, Pier Luigi Nervi designed the structure for Gio Ponti’s Pirelli skyscraper

(1956). Pirelli’s load-bearing lateral walls gradually reduce to columns as the

skyscraper rises to 33 floors. The impact is most evident in the building section. As

the structure lightens, the internal spaces on each floor correspondingly increase.

Two subtle tapering piers, flush with curtain wall glazing, provide minimal evidence

of the changing internal structural bay of Nervi and Ponti’s Milan masterpiece.

Albini led this trend with a motif that responded logically to gravity and modified

Rationalist rigidity by manipulating the perception of natural forces. Many Modern

architects articulated structure to compose new surfaces. Albini’s integral link

between support function and compositional expression was essential and often

more sophisticated than transparent. He did not always, however, expose “true”

structure, one of the ethical arguments of technically generated functionalism, but

instead privileged his compositional objectives.

The resulting INA façade tilted back as it rose higher, allowing a setback at grade

that created a covered sidewalk on the shopping street beneath the office building.

The protruding cornice of the façade folded forward to shelter the street from

sun and rain (Figure 8.6). The vertical system of concrete faux pilasters appeared

to support the cantilever while also penetrating the cornice to conceal a seventh

floor. The hidden attic level accommodated two apartments, each with outdoor

terraces and grand views of historic Parma. The composition of the pilasters and

windows produced patterns of light and dark that animated the building surface.

In contrast to Kahn’s manipulation of mass at Exeter and Yale, Albini’s

composition suggested weightlessness by employing a vertically elongated frame

of detached narrow concrete bands and tri-partite vertical infill. His planar surfaces

can be conceived as thin strata superimposed to form a tartan grid. Each bay was

composed of a narrow brick panel, doubling as a wide column, with two vertical

windows that differed in width on either side of the tapering concrete bands.

The correlation between the repetitive façade grid and office plans was simple

and non-distinct. Most important, the compressed surface network actually hid

the structural bay inside. While the bay module on the front façade is upright,

the first side bay on Borgo San Biagio is composed of solid horizontal masonry

panels more than twice the width of the front bays and proportionally related to

them. The masonry infill of the horizontal side bays protruded slightly and was

visible along with front bays when viewed from the urban corner. The effect was

to visually compress the front and exaggerate its vertical extension. A horizontal

window band proportionate to the front window spandrel wrapped a voided line

around the side elevation to link the two disparate surfaces with tension that is

again best observed from the urban intersection. The horizontal slit penetrates

the interior offices, joining them with daylight but without compromising privacy.

The clerestory window device first appeared at Cervinia, recurred in the offices

of Parma and Genoa, and reappeared on La Rinascente’s attic level in Rome.

8.11 Isolation of the ornamental concrete lattice reveals proportional relationships to the

pattern of windows and vertical brick infill panels behind it to form a tartan plaid

230


8.12 INA Parma

elevation detail:

slippage of front

façade grid joins

windows into

traditionally

proportioned

units and provides

reading of the

façade as a

dynamic surface

Albini’s clerestory motif was well suited for Modern offices, providing good quality

interior task lighting while maintaining privacy.

The window bays on the INA piano nobile level were fully glazed. They were

voided of mullions and screens and appeared different than windows on the

four upper floors, which contained a subdivided brick and glass window bay. The

mullions were pulled toward the corner to define a pattern that continued the

delineation through the façade grid. Expanding on this compositional reading, the

zones that made up the base, middle, and top of the palazzo were lifted above the

street, replacing glazed “storefronts” to the piano nobile level. Beneath it the actual

structural frame was revealed, and a framed transparent box containing shops

appeared to be inserted under its legs. 21 The non-load-bearing concrete pilaster and

beam matrix that made up the layered façade disguised the building’s contents and

structure to instead reflect its context as it overlooked the adjacent rooftops.

A second reading of the façade isolates its layers to allow for slippage of the

window bays relative to the concrete frame. Visual tension results from pairs of

parallel windows asymmetrically split by the concrete pilaster that separates the

void into narrow proportions of different widths. Viewed together, the two adjacent

windows form an opening proportionate to the building façade. By removing the

concrete verticals, a second recessed pattern of wider, classically proportioned

uniform windows can be read between brick masonry bearing piers supporting

the more delicate horizontal beams. When the same window pair is read as a single

form, it displays a bay proportion also similar to that of the concrete frame. With

the shifting masonry filigree, masonry infill panels hold more visual weight and

establish vertical lines of visual force. The solid/void pattern of masonry and glass

results in a mannered array and palimpsest of recognizable façade elements.

The vertical movements of the window blinds add a third legible layer of

transformation. When shades are lifted, the shadowed reveals emphasize the

diminution in depth as the frame ascends. The superimposition of layers produces

the effect of a plaid fabric. Historical readings link the gridded façade of Albini’s

INA Building to Parma’s Roman grid plan with reference to the medieval baptistery

nearby. Deeper investigation exposes layers of integral, self-referential formal

relationships. He finessed optical viewpoints and introduced new tactics using

traditional materials for unexpected surface tension. His Modern vocabulary would


inspire many urban skins in Italy and beyond, including Figini and Pollini’s 1956

Via Circo housing in Milan. Albini’s Modern language grew more dynamic and

complex as subsequent projects would soon show.

The Absent Front: Palazzo Albini and Palazzo Tursi

Palazzo Tursi, the late Renaissance monument by Galeazzo Alessi, who also

planned the superb Strada Nuova (1550), exemplifies the unique Genoese model

of the transformed Renaissance palazzo. 22 During the Mannerist period, a series of

aligned palazzos were built on the edge of the medieval city, abutting the natural

hillside, among them the Palazzos Rosso and Bianco. The courtyard building type

was adopted for stylistic coherence, but was formally adapted to accommodate

the characteristic steep, unbuildable slopes, narrow alleys, and crêuza, Genoa’s

ubiquitous stepped passageways. 23 At Tursi, the well-proportioned palazzo cortile

(courtyard), was raised to the piano nobile level with the insertion of a grand

staircase. The hillside behind the building reaches the Castelletto neighborhood,

affording breathtaking rooftop views of the Mediterranean harbor. The belvedere

of the nineteenth-century civic elevator that still provides public transportation

between the historic center and the upper residential district is a visible icon on

the horizon. Albini’s task was to situate the new city offices and council chambers

between the two areas across a level change of approximately 150 feet. His

intervention accommodated the structure and program by connecting these two

separate neighborhoods with a public promenade through the office floors and

maximizing the commanding views from all windows within the building. While

partial elevations of the new U-shaped edifice were composed to address internal

gardens and processional paths, no single façade was allowed to compete with the

existing sixteenth-century Palazzo Tursi.

The complexity of the Genoese hillside conditions required a very different

response to the problem of inserting a new office building into an historic site.

Giovanni Klaus Koenig compared the administrative offices built by Vignola for

Renaissance Florence, now the Uffizi Gallery, to Albini’s solution for a bureaucratic

office building. Both interventions were subordinate to the contexts of their

respective cities; their central voids becoming composite urban gestures that

formed well composed empty spaces and framed pedestrian promenades. 24 As a

result, neither the Uffizi nor Albini’s Genoese town hall addition presented a singular

façade image, nor did they compete with more monumental adjacent structures.

Albini’s terraced massing was well suited for offices built to expand the town hall

of Genoa. Palazzo Tursi is a fine example of the adaptation to the typical Genoese

Renaissance palazzo adapted from the Florentine ideal to engage the city’s extremely

sloped topography. Albini found the dense landscape to be built to capacity. Visual

and programmatic connections between the new offices and the existing palazzo

had to be devised, while on an urban scale the relationship between the Spinetto

di Castelletto Quarter above and historic Via Garibaldi or Strada Nuova below

provided an opportunity to stitch together the fabric of the two neighborhoods.

232


8.13 Palazzo Tursi

elevated courtyard

is encountered

en route to

Palazzo Albini

municipal office

and city council

chambers, Genoa

The steeply sloped topography into which the offices of Palazzo Albini were

woven called for a logical section development. A 10-story structure would

have otherwise dominated the vista over the medieval center, as other Modern

interventions in the port city had done before and since (notably Marcello

Piacentini’s Martini & Rossi tower at Piazza Dante, Aldo Rossi’s Carlo Felice Theater

at Piazza Ferrari, the SOM office building in the harbor’s Ponente district, Ignazio

Gardella’s new school of architecture in the Sarzano neighborhood have all

impacted Genoa’s skyline, some to great detriment).


Albini’s massing steps dramatically up the hillside. His secondary public entry

and internal circulation sequence are humble gestures that do not compete with

the massive monumental palazzo and front door of city hall. While respecting

the prominent historic façade, Albini’s non-frontal cascade of terraces to the rear

differentiate the existing gardens that flank the palazzo on the level above the

street. The new identity of the addition is experienced through promenades within

and views across his green roof top terraces.

Albini’s fragmentation of the building formed into stratified levels has been

compared to the 1932 urban plan for housing on the Ligurian Levante coast

at Quinto designed by Luigi Carlo Daneri. Yet Albini’s site in the historic center

of the medieval city presented significantly more demanding conditions. 25 In

previous works, Albini frequently used interior stairs as transparent objects that

introduced conditions of vertical movement into his Modern rooms. In his early

Milanese apartments, open risers allowed views to connect within rooms that

held these stairs. In the Villetta Pestarini, the “Living Room for a Villa” Triennale

installation, and Marcenaro’s apartment, the floating stair became one of the

most dynamic elements in his Modern interiors. For the Genoese offices, public

staircases became simpler point loaded elements off double loaded corridors

along the public promenade. Meanwhile, the entire building can be read as a

monumentally scaled version of the open section staircase, exploited at the

monumental dimension of the city. This interpretation of the path for ascension

established a new manifestation of gravity in Albini’s architecture. Through a

physical connection to the ground with grander vertical movement and material

mass, he expressed forces of weight that had not appeared in previous projects.

As the scale of his commissions grew and during the period in which he worked

with Franca Helg, a lyrical expression of gravity would recur as a predominant

theme in their architecture.

8.14 Palazzo

Albini section

diagram

234


8.15 Stairs

from Palazzo

Tursi to Palazzo

Albini—beginning

of pedestrian

promenade

to Castelletto

Panorama

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

The visitors’ path that began at the monumental threshold on the Strada Nuova

required climbing the grand old stair past welcoming stone lions to arrive at the

spectacular palazzo courtyard where only sky is apparent. Upon leaving the Tursi

courtyard through symmetrical stairs on both sides of the cortile, the eastern midlanding

provides an exit from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century. The

axial view upwards into and through the U-shaped terrace framed the elevator

tower, while the visitor is met head on by a blank wall, then redirected along a

simple, elegant, exposed stone stair. Local rose-colored marble from the Ligurian

town of Finale covers the L-shaped retaining wall that contains the public zone.

The smooth stone block base forms a massive plinth. One leg of the U-shaped bar

centers on the palazzo rear façade, and the path to the town hall public areas and

Council Chamber is underground. The Council Chamber becomes an egg-shaped

void inside the hill, surrounded by offices. The submerged volume is revealed

as a convex slate-roofed dome. Albini’s characteristic red upholstered seating


8.16 Palazzo

Albini green roof

terraces with

view over Palazzo

Tursi and the

Strada Nuova

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

throughout the chamber interior makes an intense environment for discussing

public policy and civic legislation. Interior clerestory windows guarantee east and

west light penetration into rooms and corridors, with saw-toothed sidewalls that

provide all offices with views of the port.

The two bars of offices were terraced into tiers with three floors making up

the bottom two tiers and upper levels stepping back independently. Window

patterns respect orientations, with projecting south façades maintaining

continuous horizontal glass. Albini’s deep eaves protect interiors from sun and

rain while reinforcing his continuous horizontal composition. 26 Departing from

the typical Genoese motif, his roof surfaces are neither slate-covered nor steeply

sloped. Instead he invented a hybrid in the form of a wedge-framed garden on

a series of flat roofs. The entire building is covered with terraced contemplative

gardens detailed with tapered stone cornice edges that contain hidden scuppers.

The half meter thick section supports a cropped green carpet with stone paths

and occasionally some rose bushes.

The 10-story structure also required a grand retaining wall to control pressure and

moisture from the north face at the rear of the structure. Albini had constructed a

double wall on the north façade of Villetta Pestarini to address moisture accumulation

and accommodate drainage. His Pirovano Youth Hostel engaged a similarly

dramatic slope, albeit at a smaller scale, and furnished Albini with a precedent for

the twin walled retaining structure. Reinforced concrete columns support the entire

complex, yet the compositional effect of the exoskeleton cut by the horizontal

eaves reduced their legibility in Palazzo Albini compared with other façades.

236


8.17 Palazzo

Albini meeting hall

with “Lampada

Ochetta” custom

lighting and

framed palace

view across the

Strada Nuova

Columns were cast in metallic formwork to produce hard and refined surfaces.

Since the interior was designed for maximum flexibility and modifications,

exterior structure was preferable to support the thin spatial bars that would

allow for an office plan unobstructed by detached columns.

By casting the thin, double-loaded corridor diagram that wrapped to fit

the site, the architects maximized daylight in the workspaces and capitalized

on the unique prospect. Glazing used throughout the interior public zones

filtered daylight into private offices, each with views of the Mediterranean

port. All corridors end in glass to further extend views of the sea. Clerestory

bands coupled with protruding eaves guaranteed an infiltration of a quality of

light rarely experienced in Milan, where most of Albini’s cohorts were building.

And just as Albini had introduced for the Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum and

his other exhibition installations, his custom-designed lighting became an

important feature of the interior architecture of the office building. “Lampada

Ochetta”, the teardrop light fixture designed for both interior and exterior areas,

was manufactured by Arteluce (Milan) in 1962 and sold commercially in their

product line. 27


8.18 Clerestory

lighting glazing

detail typical of

the office floors

throughout the

Palazzo Albini

Genoa ‘s urban challenges and Albini’s sophisticated response for the Municipal

Offices (Palazzo Albini) made this project one of his most important, yet it has been

hardly mentioned by critics at the time or since. Neither Domus nor Casabella,

arguably Italy’s most important critical journals of architecture, published the

project. 28 Its green roofs make the intervention in the heart of Genoa appear quite

contemporary, and the large rooftop area continues to provide welcome greenery

for the urban heat island. The public promenade downhill from Castelletto to the

historic Strada Nuova can be favorably compared with the urban thoroughfares by

James Stirling at his civic museums in Stuttgart, Cologne, and Dusseldorf in the 1980s.

238


8.19 Palazzo

Albini handrail

detail can be

compared to

Milan subway

handrails and

other expressions

of levity, continuity

and the use

of the line

Albini’s pathways and visual clues not only provided public passage to the center of

town, but gave city workers the most stunning views of the port and the medieval

urban fabric. Genoa’s narrowed stepped alley linked upper and lower neighborhoods

throughout the city. Albini would employ the same public promenade motif in his

solution for the Sant’Agostino Museum project, the studio’s next major commission

for Caterina Marcenaro.

Only Tentori, writing in 1964, described and lauded the passageway from

the Castelletto elevator that provided entrance by way of the path to the office

building from the gardens above. This idea was not unique—residential buildings

throughout the city of Genoa are connected with rooftop bridges—however,

Tentori found much to admire in the architects’ interpretation of the urban pattern.

Although he criticized the spatial quality and construction of the buried Council

Chambers, calling it the “least pleasant of the entire complex,” he nonetheless

judged the building as “one of the masterpieces from the studio of Albini

and Helg.” 29


8.20 Palazzo

Albini rooftop as

contemplative

garden

As a common office building, the new Tursi addition derived its presence from

the facts of its absences—lack of a façade, voided formal center, clerestory windows,

and empty rooftop terraces. Unfortunately, the lack of critical review is also a

notable absence. If the suppressed Council Chambers were buried underground

so as to not compete with Palazzo Tursi’s identity, the gesture seems appropriate.

The absence of the dominant mass of a 10-story office tower can best be

appreciated from above. From the panoramic plaza citizens can gaze over

the rooftops of medieval Genoa to the Mediterranean. It is from here that

one discovers a Zen view: a series of giardini pensili (contemplative gardens),

placed for visual but not physical inhabitation over the new offices. From the

Castelletto perspective, the green rooftops in the foreground establish distance

from the slate gray roofs of medieval Genoa and provide an uncanny sense of the

compression of physical space in historical time.

The Palazzo Albini addition to Genoa’s Palazzo Tursi belongs to no family;

it has no obvious ancestors and does not fit completely within the genealogy

of Genoa born of a common morphology. Nor is it visually analogous to

INA Parma or other works by Albini up to that point. Yet this addition navigates the

terrain as if fluent in the local dialect, and produces spatial networks that subtly

integrate with monumental components of the city’s context. Albini deliberately

pursued his design intentions for which there was no existing Modern model.

Because of its indifference to architectural style, the terraced offices anticipated

the non-neutrality of an architectural diagram, suggesting the possibility that the

‘type’ of building has more to do with how it works than how it looks. For Albini,

local tradition bore the germ of a spatial type that was not fixed in history but could

initiate a generative idea.

240


8.21 Green

rooftop of Palazzo

Albini with the

medieval city of

Genoa beyond

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

The offices were completed the year before Argan published his essay “On the

Typology of Architecture,” the first in a series of mid-century typological theories

that emerged as critiques of Modernity’s dominant abstraction from history and

retraction of mute functionalism. Looking back to Quatrémere de Quincy (1825)

and anticipating Rossi’s exemplified fait urbaine (urban artifacts), and Colquhoun’s

epistemology on the topic, Argan sparked productive debates while maintaining

that ‘type’ “contained the possibility of infinite formal variation.” 30 Colquhoun

investigated ideologies of creative operations in “Typology and Design Method,”

which helped to disprove the Modern empiricists and their certainty that formal

choices could be based purely on functional determinants. Colin Rowe established

credible formal allegiances of Modernity to the Classical tradition by demonstrating

diagrammatic resemblances in selected masterpieces by Le Corbusier and Palladio,

while Rossi’s taxonomies from history were aimed at producing new artifacts for

the European city when issues of scale and economics faced unique threats to

their physical contexts. Rossi reintroduced the role of the “collective memory” as

that essence of monuments and public spaces that continually accrue value, while

Rowe defined “memory streets” in his comprehensive urban analysis of persistent

civic form. Tafuri recalled both analogies when he credited Albini for convincingly

connecting Modernity to tradition, and in doing so, striking the ideal chord

between “memory and innovation.”

Albini profoundly understood and stole from the legacy of the avant-garde.

The ground that had been trodden by the Futurists and surrealists, the Bauhaus

and Rationalists all constituted the Modern tradition that he had helped to shape,


then revise. The Modern Movement provided the framework of ideas, values,

and principles for the context in which he taught in Venice, shared with his many

collaborators, and passed on to his students. Modernity had become a tradition

that Albini would cautiously and intelligently comment on as he reintroduced a

dialog with history and expanded the role of Modernism as situated in specific

places and times.

I would offer a final comment about Albini’s office building, which was completed

in 1963, in conjunction with his previously discussed urban interventions in

Cervinia, Parma, and Rome: all four projects introduced responses to the problem

of the façade, but they do not form an obvious set. Among them, the Palazzo

Albini unleashed a new trajectory in Albini’s design method, which developed

in his collaboration with Helg, and that would continue as they attempted more

robust urban projects. In contrast to Albini’s early ephemeral installations, delicate

suspension motifs, glass bookshelves, weightless gallery interiors, floating stairs,

and transparent rooms, the architecture of Studio Albini had begun to put on

weight, and it was all in the form of muscle. After looking deeper into the role of

tradition that shaped Albini’s housing projects and neighborhoods in northern

Italian cities, I will conclude with examinations of Studio Albini’s final two built

museums, located in Genoa and Padua. The Sant’Agostino Museum and the

Eremitani Civic Museum display some themes and motifs similar to one another,

with tectonic innovations that argue for a more profound reconsideration of

Modern construction and its expression, even as each benefits from Albini’s long

experience in revitalizing historic museums.

Notes

1 G. Ponti, “Lezione di un architettura,” Domus (1952), p. 2.

2 See Giulio Carlo Argan, “On the Typology of Architecture” (1962), translated by Joseph

Rykwert, Architectural Design (December 1963), pp. 564–5. Aldo Rossi’s The Architecture

of the City (1966 in Italian, 1981 in English), and Alan Colquhoun’s, “Typology and

Design Method” (1967).

3 L. Benevolo, History of Modern Architecture, volume 2, The Modern Movement

(Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1971), p. 712.

4 M. Sabatino, “Ghosts and Barbarians: The Vernacular in Italian Modern Architecture and

Design.” Journal of Design History, p. 342.

5 Gregotti, V., New Directions in Italian Architecture (1968), p. 54.

6 Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura 1945–61, edited by M. Baffa, C. Morandi,

S. Protasoni, A. Rossari includes Albini’s contribution to the discussion of tradition

held by MSA on June 14, 1955 as “Un dibattito sulla tradizione in architettura” (Rome:

Laterza & figli SpA, 1995).

7 M. Tafuri, History of Italian Architecture 1944–1985, p. 28.

8 Tafuri, p. 28.

9 G. Samonà, “Franco Albini e la cultura architettonica in Italia.” Zodiac n. 3 (1958).

242


10 L. Benevolo, “Because of the characteristic mobility of Italian architecture culture,

the experiments in literal re-utilization of the traditional forms had a short life, and

architectural thought moved on towards other sources of inspiration. But meanwhile

many of the best architects had begun to adopt the attitude typical of tradition, i.e. the

tendency to treat each subject more as an isolated instance than as an opportunity for

the renewal of the town,” pp. 718–20.

11 Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura was established by those architects interested

in the continuation of Rationalism in response to Bruno Zevi’s APAO (L’Associazione per

l’Architettura Organica) founded in Rome. The APAO was dedicated to the propagation

of a new, organic architecture, as inspired by the buildings and writings of Frank Lloyd

Wright, while the MSA continued the pre-war search for Italian Modernism.

12 See in particular Ugolini and Ziliolo, “Franco Albini Uffici INA a Parma,” p. 9.

13 F. Albini, MSA presentation, June 1955. And published in Baffa, M., C. Morandi,

S. Protasoni, A. Rossari, Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura 1945–1961 (Rome:

G. Laterza & Figli Spa, 1995), pp. 497–9. Translated from original Italian by author.

14 D’Alfonso, Ernesto, Casabella n. 352 (1970), p. 47.

15 Ockman, Joan, Architecture Culture 1943–1968 (New York: Rizzoli International, 1993),

pp. 201–2. Essay from Casabella continuità, “Preexisting conditions and Issues of

Contemporary building Practice,” Ernesto Nathan Rogers (Feb.–Mar. 1955), pp. 3–5.

16 After presentations by Rogers, Louis Kahn, and others, concluding remarks were

offered by Alfred Roth, Jacob B. Bakema, Ernesto Rogers, Peter Smithson, and Kenzo

Tange. Tange characterized the presentation by “Rogers and the Italian group”

representing “formalistic realism” as “fatalism.” He charged that “the idea of accepting

reality as the inherited order” places “too much emphasis on style,” and concluded:

“The Utopian view of Team X and the escapist formalism of the Italian group strike

me as being only a partial grasp of reality, and both seem likely to result in widening

the rift between humanity and technology, which is reality itself.” Banham publishes

a scathing critique in the form of a letter to Architectural Review in 1960. The Italian

group also included Giancarlo De Carlo and Ignazio Gardella. New Frontiers in

Architecture CIAM ’59 in Otterlo, by Oscar Newman, and Jacob B. Bakema (New York:

Universe Books), pp. 220–21.

17 Gregotti, V., p. 58. See pp. 58–60.

18 “Un dibattito sulla tradizione in architettura.” Casabella continuità n. 206 (1955), p. 46.

19 “Un dibattito sulla tradizione in architettura,” p. 50.

20 In a renovation of the original INA Parma by Guido Canella, the ground floor has

become a part of the rest of the INA Office Building, so a new main entrance now

fronts Via Cavour.

21 The glass box motif is one that grows out of Albini’s installation work and can be found

elevated to an architectural scale in the Sant’Agostino museum. The reconstructed

courtyard on the museum piano nobile level is crafted to make the new ensemble of

refabricated white marble columns appear like a cloister in a glass case, similar to the

isolation of the detached San Andrea cloister at the Piazza Dante nearby.

22 The Strada Nuovo exemplifies Colin Rowe’s and Fred Koetter’s notion of ‘memorable

streets’ in Collage City (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1970), pp. 150 and 155.


23 For additional discussion of the appropriation and adaptation of the palazzo type,

see: Kay Bea Jones, “Genus and Genius, from the general to the specific: Architectural

morphology in Genoa, Italy.” Journal of Architectural Education vol. 43, n. 4 (1990),

pp. 16–26. Crêuza, in Genoese dialect, refers to the narrow pedestrian passageways

with stairs and ramps on sloped sites, often in the interstitial urban fabric behind

buildings uniquely characteristic to Genoa.

24 R. Viviani and G. Klaus Koenig. By preserving the character of the local landscape

through its interpretation in architectural form, the authors credit the architects with

resolving not only technical problems, but also meeting man’s psychological needs.

“Gli uffici comunali di Genova, di Franco Albini.” Comunità n. 64 (1958).

25 Piva, Antonio, and Vittorio Prina, Franco Albini 1905–1977 (Milan: Electa, 1998). “Nuovi

uffici communale, Genova 1950–1963,” pp. 258–63.

26 E.N. Rogers, “For many years we have had an antipathy for eaves and cornices, and it

appears that only the flat roof could satisfy our designs; the vertical window appeared

to us inadequate to express ourselves.” Ockman, p. 204.

27 See Zero Gravity, pp. 270–71. Founded by aeronautical engineer and Modern lighting

pioneer Gino Sarfatti in Milan, Arteluce gained renown in the 1950s as an innovative

lighting company. Franco Albini and Marco Zanuso were among the leading designers

commissioned by Arteluce. The company gained renown through participation in

Italian and international exhibitions including XI Milan Triennale in 1951 (awarded

Diploma of Honor) and winning the Compasso d’Oro awards in 1954 and 1955. In 1974

the company became a division of the Flos group.

28 It should be noted that L’Architettura cronache e storia, edited by Bruno Zevi, published

“Uffici comunali a Genova,” by F. Calandra in 1956; “L’ossatura del Palazzo degli uffici

comunali a Genova,” in 1958, and “Uffici comunali adiacenti a Palazzo Tursi in Genova,”

in 1966.

29 F. Tentori, “Opere recenti dello studio di Albini-Helg,” Zodiac n. 14 (April 1965),

pp. 119–21.

30 Quatrèmere de Quincy, “The word ‘Type’ presents less the image of a thing to copy or

imitate completely than the idea of an element which ought itself to serve as the rule

for a model,” in “Type,” in Encyclopédie Méthodique, vol. 3 (Paris, 1825). Translated by

Tony Vidler, Oppositions n. 8 (Spring 1977), p. 148.


9

Seeking Order: Urban Plans, Popular Housing and Furniture

We need a tradition. As architects, we are trying to individuate the force of

continuity in our culture in the hope of grafting our own efforts onto it …

Perhaps modern architecture will assume a character distinctly its own if

architects seek a greater typology of certain basic architectonic organisms, for

example, the home and the church. … Within the limits of this typology we

should seek a greater characterization in relation to geographic area and social

environment, and then a recognized qualification of the medium of expression. 1

Franco Albini

9.1 Fabio Filzi

Housing Quarter

on the periphery

of Milan by Albini,

Palanti and

Camus, 1938

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

246


In Luchino Visconti’s Neorealist film, Rocco e suoi Fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers,

1960), Rocco Parondi and his family, suffering from economic hardship and without

a patriarch, are forced to move from southern Italy to Milan to build a future in

the industrialized north. This pattern was familiar to many Italian rural poor, some

forcibly relocated, others with few choices but to follow employment. The real

tragedy facing the fictional family, however, was not economic, but cultural. Rocco

and his four brothers, confronted by unfamiliar social conditions, lost their moral

foundation, which their strong traditional familial allegiances could not restore. In

the film, the Parondis live in the Fabio Filzi Quarter of Modern Milan, designed by

Albini with Renato Camus and Giancarlo Palanti in 1938.

Visconti’s decision to place the transient and impoverished victims, those that

symbolized demoralizing evidence of the “Southern Question,” in dense Modern

housing within the thriving industrial city aptly situated the economic polemic. 2

The scenography of the neighborhood designed by Albini and his cohort

presented a bleak environment depleted of any social activity, especially empty

when seen at night. That the housing compound had been produced by the Fascist

administration before the war was also symbolic. As Neorealist cinema would come

to represent alternative cultural values to which architecture would eventually

respond, this new urban depiction also found uses for Modern architecture to

narrate concurrent class struggle. Rationalist architecture was a foreign aesthetic

for rural Italian peasants and symbolized power abuses to many of the emerging

voices on the political left in post-war Italy. The well-ordered urban field of the

Fabio Filzi district offered an ideal, coherent cinematic canvas for this masterpiece

by one of Italy’s renowned Neorealist directors.

Visconti himself came from an old family of Italian nobility that had risen to

prominence as Milanese industrialists, yet his leftist social principles and bisexuality

contradicted his nostalgia for the traditional family. He portrayed this tragedy of

the Parondi family by way of operatic melodrama inspired by Giuseppe Verdi. 3 For

Visconti, the residential district built by the Fascist housing authority and intended

to accommodate thousands of people in near poverty conditions provided an

effective place to set the scene of despair in which Rocco’s family eroded. Film

scholar Sam Rhodie summed up the socio-political aesthetic issue evident in

Visconti’s work as follows:

Nostalgia for the past destroyed could appear politically radical and socialist

since there was in that nostalgia an admixture of anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist

feelings. It connected to a Marxism and a loyalty to the Italian Communist Party

by filmmakers like Visconti … . when it became a rejection of the modern in all its

manifestations, especially of the avant-garde, of new artistic forms, condemned

not on artistic grounds but for a lack of apparent (or obvious) political value. 4

Political representation has plagued much of post-war Modern scholarship

in Italy by dividing those who insist on the direct connection between symbols

and ideology and those able to strip form from signification to isolate its aesthetic

value from patrons, policies or party affiliation. Albini’s apolitical character poses a

challenge in ascribing left or right associations to his practice or resulting buildings

either before or after the War.

Seeking Order: Urban Plans, Popular Housing and Furniture 247

iPFac and Pre-war HouSing in Milan

Albini’s production of popular housing, designed exclusively in collaboration,

was his most constant and prolific arena of professional activity. As such, even

more than his acclaimed museums, this body of work changed throughout his

career and provided evidence of his evolution as an architect who responded

with ingenuity to Italy’s volatile cultural context. As an attentive student of

historic urban models for residential planning, he initially focused on Modern

Central European models that offered efficient quarters to satisfy the needs of

large populations migrating to industrial cities during the 1920s.

Albini and partners designed 13 projects for residential neighborhoods

between 1932–44, during the same period in which he would become renowned

for his interiors and gallery installations. Although his museum design work

influenced international counterparts, his participation in the evolution of

collective housing typologies and post-war urban redevelopment offer insights

about the place of his work among concurrent trends. He was not alone in being

responsible for producing inhumanly dense dwelling environments during

Fascism. Rationalist rigors apparent in his designs that maximize daylight, views,

ventilation, and ease of circulation within very tight constraints are apparent at

first glance. Deeper inquiry will further reveal Albini’s practice in transformation,

allowing again the recognition that he was not beholden to trends or a style. As

Albini exerted more design autonomy and Italian building authorities changed

objectives and methods, his housing projects provided a revealing cultural

bellwether.

The evolution of Albini’s urban remedies followed his initial commissions

for regime housing and was manifest in the formal derivation apparent in his

collective residential projects for Milan and other cities. His built work matured

in tandem with his developing political savvy and architectural experience.

After a decade of being subject to client demands from an authoritarian milieu,

Albini joined with his Italian CIAM cohort of young designers to insist on better

conditions for all citizens from both rural and urban populations. They increased

their scale of investigation to propose revised formal and social agendas via

collaborative urban plan proposals for a series of studies: Milano Verde, 1938

(Green Milan—Figure 2.12), Quattro città satelliti alla periferia di Milan, 1940

(four satellite cities for Milan’s periphery), and Architetti Riuniti 1944

(Reunited Architects). In doing so, Albini and his colleagues reacted against

Mussolini’s social engineering for their city. They proposed urban interventions

that included more than new housing by incorporating services, transportation,

and green spaces. They conceived of the city as a whole organism. Albini and

partners’ master plans for Genoa and Reggio Emilia that followed also aimed

to support growth but balance density with open green spaces, restrictions

on speculation, integrated formal characteristics unique to local sites, and

preservation of historic centers.

Between the 1930s and 1970s, Albini’s teams designed over 30 large-scale

housing projects for varying associations as the populations of Italian cities swelled.

248


9.2 Albini’s

sketch for

Edoardo Persico’s

apartment, 1935

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

Those neighborhood complexes proposed and built before 1944 showed Albini’s

preliminary search for an ideal Modern type. Milan grew by a quarter of a million

inhabitants during the first decade of his practice, which constituted a pattern of

second wave industrial urbanization that came late compared with other European

centers. 5 Mussolini’s plan for Milan greatly affected massive population migration

within the city, as inner city neighborhoods were razed by his decree and new

accommodations became necessary. Albini’s earliest interventions at a grand scale

helped to contain unplanned urban growth and out-of-control land speculation

during the pre-war phase.

Albini’s housing projects prior to 1942, designed with Camus and Palanti, were

commissioned by the national housing agency, then known as IFACP (Istituto

Fascista Autonomo per la Casa Popolare/the Fascist Public Housing Institute). The

essential problem of accommodating large numbers of dwellers on small parcels of

land, although well suited to Albini’s rigorous design discipline, has been described

as a futile attempt to make poverty tolerable. Given the nature of his 1936 “Room

for a Man” installation (Figures 3.9 and 3.10), one infers that Albini could imagine

himself living in the spare environments he designed. The design team’s earliest

housing proposals obeyed strict rules for net area dimensions and minimal

housing standards that resulted in rigid parallel housing bars organized around


stair towers that prescribed circulation paths with only one means of egress. With

near formulaic consistency, they repeated a pattern of evenly spaced narrow slab

structures that introduced self-referential site plans for neighborhoods largely

without existing infrastructure or social amenities.

However dense and abstract, Albini, Camus, and Palanti’s models were icons

of Rationalist order. Albini was inspired by Walter Gropius’ Siedlung dwellings

in Berlin as well as with similar models of repetitive building components

and existenzminimum, or subsistence dwelling standards, from the German

Functionalist movement. The Italian regime and its architects sought a minimallyacceptable

floor space that could serve to meet the needs of Italy’s working poor.

Alberto Sartoris has attributed Albini’s formal language at this time to his ties

to the Bauhaus laboratory with which he shared functionalist aims and a vision

of compositional simplicity. Establishing the rules for integrated allied practices,

the Bauhaus, in its most creative venues, married city planning with the plastic

arts, a practice Albini also mastered. 6 Gropius’ 4-story Siemensstadt housing

(1929–30) and Otto Haesler’s 3-story low-cost housing in Celle (1928)—two

examples cited by Sartoris—exhibit stylistic resemblances to the isolated slabs

of Albini, Camus, and Palanti’s Fabio Filzi Quarter. It is worth noting that 20 years

before Albini articulated the idea of “grafting our own efforts” to “individuate the

force of continuity,” he was defining his expression of Modernity in the search

for “a greater typology of certain basic organisms,” beginning with Europe’s

most progressive housing types. Yet beyond the appearance of the individual

blocks, Fabio Filzi is an urban aggregation composed of ten 5-story structures

that defined a center and edge with a series of integrated public exterior spaces.

Sartoris, who was a contemporary of Albini, published axonometric drawings

typical of the period showing affinities with the Dutch De Stjil. He praised Albini’s

originality and acknowledged that his activism in the fight against conventional

restrictions of the period eventually opened Modern architecture to “a great deal

of flexibility,” in witnessing the range of typological options and transformations

that Albini pursued throughout his career.

The problem with Fabio Filzi and other pre-war housing complexes was not

just their architectural style. The barren, hard, overscaled and dense environment

was at odds with Mediterranean lifestyles, in which relocated peasants from rural

areas were accustomed to tilling the soil. Filzi was designed to accommodate

2,100 people, meanwhile it lacked adequate social amenities. Albini addressed the

challenges of prescribed sterile dwellings by investing his design talents at human

scale, as can best be seen in his coincident Triennale installations. In the public

exhibition, he showed carefully proportioned interior spaces and furnishings that

endowed even large-scale repetitive structures, with elegant aesthetics at an

intimate dimension. He succeeded at creating an orderly whole that was consistent

with itself and especially suited to contemporary life. Both the 1933 and 1936

Triennale fairs featured Albini’s chic interiors, custom-designed furniture and craft,

all of which emphasized hygiene, simple elegance, and adaptability to the art and

function of Modern life. 7

250


9.3 Recent

photograph of

Fabio Filzi Housing

Quarter by author

IFACP standards for density and quality of life, however, were very low,

with housing units as small as 25 to 45 square meters (less than 500 square

feet), divided into one to three rooms, with each room containing one or two

single beds. Prevailing standards also prescribed sparse hygienic facilities with

bathrooms that included short tubs without showers. 8 Occupation was targeted

at 1.6 inhabitants per room, and these new neighborhoods were filled to capacity.

The result was a series of very dense communities, even more extreme than

northern European models by Ernst May in Frankfurt or De Klerk and J.J.P. Oud

in Amsterdam. Albini and his partners responded in the designs of numerous

projects with apartments organized by common stair towers that minimized the

width of the overall building to maximize daylight and ventilation. The stair core

with branching entrances constituted a familiar circulation diagram for housing

with multiple apartment entrances on each of the 4- to 5-story walk up levels.

Neither elevators nor a second means of egress were included. 9 The widths of

Albini’s narrow housing bars ranged from 8.90 meters (Sauro Quarter, 1941) to

11.00 meters (Mangiagalli Quarter, 1950) with load bearing exterior walls and a

centerline for vertical structure to reduce spans.

Residential complexes designed by Albini, Camus, and Palanti began with the

unrealized 1932 San Siro project in Milan that resulted from a competition. Its site

plan was aligned to the north-south axis and did not respond to the triangular

shape of the urban plot. 10 The trio’s subsequent IFACP housing projects, also in

Milan, included Fabio Filzi (1936–38), D’Annunzio (1939), Ponti (1939) and Sauro

(1941–44).


Urban architecture in Italian cities of the nineteenth century more commonly

included closed superblocks with isolated inner courtyards invisible from the

street, where both the public avenue and the private court were defined by the

building mass. Albini and his partners’ proposals departed from that model by

replacing the courtyard type with a series of parallel linear buildings organized to

maximize benefits from the daily rhythms of the sun and aligned interior rooms

and windows across a narrow building width to guarantee cross-ventilation.

Exterior balconies were common, but these projects offered no access to private

ground. Linear buildings were frequently organized perpendicular to main

vehicular arteries, with their narrow end elevations and in-between spaces

inviting open views into the neighborhood, unlike the contained perspectives

of the superblock models, thus making social activity within visually accessible

from the street. Tree-lined pedestrian areas between residences in the best cases

served as filters and lungs for city dwellers.

The majority of early projects by Albini and his partners were constructed

with exposed concrete frames that reinforced the abstract geometry of

repetitive solids and void spaces between. Structures 5-stories in height were

spaced a distance apart about equal to the width of each residential slab.

Fabio Filzi, begun in 1936 just east of Milan’s center, varied that assemblage

with the removal of one large building from the core and shifting another

to compose one of the most austere Italian examples of new housing. 11

9.4 Albini’s

design proposal

for efficient

dwellings installed

at the VI Milan

Triennale, 1936

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

252


9.5 Unit plans for

Fabio Filzi Housing

by Albini, Palanti

and Camus, 1938

Fabio Filzi’s longer and shorter bars ran parallel to one another on the north/south

axis of the urban grid with which it aligns. Similar to the standard affordable housing

of the period, the 10 independent buildings were structured with reinforced

concrete columns and masonry infill, steel frame windows and green wooden

shutters maximizing repetition for economies of scale. Each of the white stucco

buildings was equivalent to one another in width and plan type, and were massed

in two lengths of either two or five bays, legible by the pattern of stairs. Stair towers

protruded into exterior public spaces with continuous vertical bands of glazing

that allowed daylight into the public stair. Narrow slots of urban space between

housing bars exaggerated the impacts of retracted balconies and extruded stair

towers, while the staggered bar pattern differentiated the tree planted zone.

Giuseppe Pagano featured Fabio Filzi in Casabella shortly after it was

completed in 1939, calling the intervention “an oasis of order,” and describing it

as a harmonious composition with unique discipline compared to Novecentro

models. 12 The neighborhood contained 449 apartments in a variety of studio,

one, and two bedroom flats of 40 to 90 square meters. Modest landscaping with

paved sidewalks, green ground cover and rows of plane trees softened the courts

between buildings for a highly refined, although very dense, urban enclave. The

adjacent public park to the south allowed it to breathe and served as the primary

amenity in the area, while distancing the new neighborhood from surrounding

structures. Fabio Filzi was rehabilitated in the 1990s with a new palette of pastel

colors, minimally altering the original austerity and abstraction that set the scene

for Rocco and his brothers, to upgrade a still viable urban neighborhood.

9.6 Unit plans for housing projects Ciano, Ponti, and Sauro by Albini, Palanti, and Camus

254


9.7 Ettore

Ponte Housing

Quarter, 1939

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

Urbanism and Planning for Milan

According to the regime’s program for urban modification for Milan during the

1930s, the Fascist municipal authority forcibly relocated residents from central city

neighborhoods to new peripheral Modern quarters. The migration of the working

classes into low-cost housing projects was in part aimed at increasing fertility while

decreasing mortality rates. 13 Hygiene and overcrowding were identified as problems

that required massive population shifts and the reconstruction of 80 percent of the

center of Milan. Dense, low-rise housing and markets that previously surrounded

the Duomo were replaced with tall office buildings, grand piazzas, and wide, shoplined

streets. Lucrative real estate speculation and alleviation of traffic congestion

were overt strategies for the breakup of concentrations of anti-Fascist laborers and

their families. 14 The harsh politics of new public housing, or case popolari, in Milan

significantly maligned the progressive aesthetics of its best constructions and

associated urban renewal, particularly in comparison with other CIAM-inspired

Modern dwellings in northern Europe. While zoning and aggressive urbanization

came late to Italy by way of Holland and Germany, decisions were made quickly

during the 1930s, without planning for integrated infrastructure and social needs.

9.8 Fabio Filzi Housing Quarter stairwells pulled into the public domain

256


Circumstances differed in Rome, where the capital witnessed less industrial growth

than northern cities and posed less suspicion of popular dissent. Action was swift in

Milan under a Fascist authority that controlled demolition, construction, migration,

densities, and all media.

The relative speed and disputable values of urban speculation in Milan provoked

Albini and his colleagues to challenge urban planning policies. They opposed the

uncontained growth they were witnessing, and proposed instead concentration

and infill. They witnessed the way that the needs of local citizens deserved greater

consideration than mass migration schemes could address. In 1938, Albini, along

with Palanti, Gardella, Pagano, Minoletti, Romano and Predaval, proposed a

masterplan referred to as Milano Verde (Green Milan), a large-scale urban project

for reuse of the area just east of the Corso Sempione and adjacent to the historic

center. The project was represented by eye level perspectives, god’s eye overviews,

and a scale model showing a familiar gridded plan with linear buildings stacked

with 3-, 6-, or 20-stories. The ensemble characterized the design team’s ambitions

for their new city of 45,000 inhabitants, which they described as “alive, healthy,

triumphant.” 15 The assembly of young Rationalists declared their position by

proposing to integrate the social needs of the whole population, while relocating

new housing near the historic center rather than on the periphery of Milan. They

insisted that the tallest structures be nearest the city center with open landscapes

proportionate to the 20-story slabs. This highest density zone was envisioned to

contain a raised pedestrian street with elevated shops and submerged parking.

Three-story villas proposed as private residences were positioned adjacent to

affordable workers’ housing to establish a mixed income community. All citizens

shared the same public amenities and services that were the essence of the Milano

Verde plan. The proposal called for 37 percent green space among public and

private landscapes, with park areas integrated into residential zones. Five percent

of the zone was programed for collective services that included “schools, theaters,

cinemas, shops, markets, sports facilities, meeting houses, churches, etc.” 16 The

inclusion of social spaces and services at Milano Verde was directly opposed to

Fascist public housing authority policies that provided only minimalist residences.

In 1940, Albini was commissioned by the IFACP administration, along with his

Milanese cohort of Camus, Palanti, Bottoni, Minoletti, A. and G. Mazzochi, Fabbri,

Cerruti, Pucci, and Putelli to provide urban plans for four satellite cities on Milan’s

periphery. Although initiatives to build outside the city were antithetical to the

Milano Verde focus, the team led by Albini employed many of the plan’s principles

for self-reliant communities and integrated variations of housing types. Engineer

Giuseppe Gorla, IFACP vice president, described the request for complete and

autonomous nuclei motivated to provide order, unity, and stylistic coherence. 17

Each proposed new neighborhood maintained some distance from surrounding

traffic arteries by wrapping a green zone around the austere housing blocks to

create a buffer. Units were again organized on a predominately north/south grid to

engage changing diurnal light patterns. Each of the cohesive quarters included a

‘heart’ with public buildings, parks and a civic center. 18 Not one of the four projects

was realized.


After the bombings of the summer of 1944, the values and practices of

these Milanese architects had significantly changed. They began to recognize

that demands for rationally-ordered, densely-occupied rooms produced

“dilettante urbanism by technicians … scenographic in character, but lacking an

understanding of fundamental premises.” 19 Amidst a growing need for adequate

housing, they engaged in resistance to the regime by focusing only on long-term

planning without following through on quick construction projects. The next

collective urban plan, the AR Plan, put forth a new vision for the entirety of Milan.

Participating designers this time included Albini, Gardella, and Palanti from the

Milano Verde group; Bottoni, Cerutti, Pucci, and Putrelli from the four satellite

cities plan; and new members Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressuti and Rogers (BBPR). The

AR Plan was ultimately dedicated to Gianluigi Banfi, who died in the German

prison camp at Mauthausen along with Giuseppe Pagano in 1945.

The 12 points of the AR Plan were featured in the 1946 issue of Costruzioni

Casabella edited by Albini and Palanti, which assured its nationwide dissemination.

Committed to comprehensive radical change, the architects pledged to: 1) Build a

navigable canal from Locarno to Venice; 20 2) Gradually decentralize industries and

relocate them to appropriate zones in the region and country; 3) Create progressive

reformation of a new center; 4) Renovate the Milan fairgrounds and include new

sports facilities; 5) Gradually transform the old center back to a residential zone;

6) Slowly but consistently integrate the whole city; 7) Remove truck and automobile

through-traffic to outside the city center; 8) Provide alternatives to automobile

traffic within the city; 9) Develop a subway network to handle the daily flux

between the city and the zone of influence; 21 10) Create an airport north of the

city; 11) Increase the amount of green space in the city, assuring public access to

it; and 12) Build new, detached residential quarters. 22 These architects were now

positioning themselves to take responsibility for the leadership necessary to carry

out their comprehensive ambitions for Milan during reconstruction. Most parts of

the plan were eventually accomplished over the next 25 years of development,

while traffic circulation has perpetually undergone revision and adequate green

space has remained unattainable. The first line of the Milan Metropolitana (subway)

designed by Albini, Helg and Bob Noorda in the early 1960s was foreshadowed by

Albini’s AR planning initiatives.

Immediately after the war, Albini was commissioned to design a masterplan for

Genoa at Zona degli Angeli (with Bucci, Gardella, Nalli, Palanti, and Tevarotto) in

1946–47, soon followed by a plan for Nervi in 1948, risanamento (improved health

conditions) for Genoa’s historic center in 1948–52, and finally studies for a series

structures for the Societa’ Ansaldo shipbuilders at the port. Albini’s collaborations

with Genoese architects began with urban planning, and led to the gallery and

residential commissions from Marcenaro. which ultimately shaped his legacy.

These joint urban proposals provided Albini with a deep understanding of Genoa’s

local culture, history, and urban morphology, undoubtedly influencing his most

successful museums and subsequent interventions in the port city.

Albini proposed 2-story row house dwelling units in 1942 for IFACP, again in

1944 as workers’ housing for Fam Vanzetti in Bologna, then later in Legnano with

258


Luisa Castiglioni, but his first opportunity to realize the low-density type would

be at Cesate in 1951. He also collaborated with Castiglioni and Giancarlo De Carlo

on the Reggio Emilia urban plan in 1947, demonstrating a fundamental shift in

Albini’s aesthetic values away from abstract minimalism. He began to incorporate

environmental, physical, and cultural continuities of historic regions into Modern

housing proposals. De Seta has described the Reggio Emilia project as “pregnant

with possibilities but poor in results,” yet he valued the evidence it provided of

Albini’s vernacular experiments, with regional evolutions next seen at Cervinia

(Pirovano Youth Hostel) and Parma (INA Office Building). 23 His commitment to

restraint remained constant, but his architectural language grew more complex as

his interpretations of Italian tradition continued to sharpen.

Tradition and Post-war Housing Morphology

Albini’s fresh awareness of housing demands was fostered in part by discussions

with like-minded architects who had a keen eye for changing needs of the whole

city. No longer affiliated with Palanti and Camus, Albini’s post-war collaborations

with others witnessed the impacts, especially on his residential architecture, of

rereading tradition. Francesco Tentori wrote in 1964 that he could not with certainty

discern the benefits of Albini’s steady research in housing typologies and raised

questions about his fidelity to the rigorous creative methodology of his earlier

work. 24 Like the bewilderment of CIAM critics examining Italian efforts to embrace

tradition around the same time, Tentori expressed skepticism about Albini’s

commitment to Rationalist abstract Modernism. Although Albini had abandoned

the purely formalist project seen at Fabio Filzi, his Rationalist discipline had instead

grown more rigorous as he developed compositional criteria and thought critically

about social fabrics and needs beyond mere form. Albini’s maturing work would

increasingly be designed in the company of Franca Helg. Comparative analysis

of sequential projects reveals Albini’s growth in sophistication of organization,

innovation, aesthetics, scale and contextual fit.

INA-Casa, the 14-year government stimulus plan for public housing that resulted

from the Fanfani Plan in 1949, stipulated both practical and ideological guidelines

for an extensive publicly funded building program. 25 Directed by architect

Arnaldo Foschini, with Adalberto Libera in charge of planning, projects involved

culturally and politically diverse teams, and the program aimed at providing

higher quality housing along with jobs that utilized the abilities of an existing

workforce. Popular housing sponsored by INA-Casa significantly influenced

Neorealist trends in construction because, in addition to prescribing local

craft, specific recommendations required village scale neighborhoods with

differentiated units, and livable densities, taking into consideration both qualities

of local landscapes and valued traditions.

Albini’s first INA-Casa project for workers’ housing on the Padana in 1949 introduced

several variations to his familiar narrow, linear building precedent. The new version

of his dwelling type included three floors of identical flats over a covered walkway.


Albini’s spiral stair motif appeared on the building perimeter to link stairwells to

apartment entries across two-meter long bridges. Angled fenestration and glass

doors between exterior walls with outdoor balconies directed non-orthogonal

views that differentiated opposite sides of his housing bars. Interior room layouts

opened the structure between the two exterior walls to maximize cross ventilation

and daylight. The Padana a/D group of units had the first floor cantilever over

utilitarian spaces, and Albini’s signature stair connected the open interior levels.

A similar housing diagram with a liberated circular stair was later realized with Franca

Helg at Colognola (Bergamo) for 3-story apartment blocks in 1954–56 to house

employees of the Società del Gres.

Albini continued to loosen and manipulate his massing strategies by

investigating more animated compositions of stacked unit types as shown by the

1950 INCIS project and the Mangiagalli Quarter designed for IACP on Via Predis

(1950–52) in Milan. 26 The isolated triangular stair towers of the unrealized INCIS

proposal resurfaced to join residential blocks together with bridges, while the

primary room in the unit plan opened space between exterior walls and adjoining

private balconies for cross ventilation. 27 The Mangiagalli project witnessed a shift

in Albini and Gardella’s work toward more plastic formal expression by introducing

angled stucco perimeter walls and sloped roofs with deep overhangs. Tentori

credited Gardella for the window rhythms and refinement of its proportions. 28

9.9 Mangiagalli

Housing in Milan

by Studio Albini

with Ignazio

Gardella, 1952

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

260


9.10 Mangiagalli

Housing unit plans

The protruding cornice and deep reveals formed by detached stair towers

produced complementary shadows. Stair elements were enclosed with a

continuous surface of staggered brick creating a pattern of tall permeable towers.

The resulting play of light and movement of air was reminiscent of vernacular

masonry construction methods for Italian farm buildings such as those featured

by G.E. Kidder Smith in L’Italia Costruisce (Italy Builds). Kidder Smith documented

many tendencies in Modern Italian architecture that were influenced by everyday

practices. 29 Gardella had first introduced the brick screen in his Tuberculosis

Dispensario in Alessandria in 1938. Albini’s contribution to this project included

introducing hybrid unit types and reviving quality craftsmanship. Albini, Helg

and Manfredini would reuse a similar open masonry motif a few years later at the

INA-Casa Quarter in Scandiano.

9.11 Corridor bridges for open circulation at Vialba Housing, Milan

Source: Courtesy of the Fondazione Franco Albini

262


As Albini’s types of 5-story apartment models grew increasingly malleable,

he focused attention on entry sequences that linked the vertical stair to the

individual front door. Open-air access bridges from the building envelope freed

up light wells and ventilation shafts to serve bathrooms and kitchens. Angled

doorways and foyers gave a greater sense of privacy and individuality to each

unit. For worker’s housing for INCIS at Vialba in Milan (1950–53), he pushed the

emerging diagram further to wrap the plan and tie inner surfaces with extended

balcony bridges. The visual tension created by delicate, thin concrete balcony

planes, supported by barely visible cantilevers, and laced with rhythmic black

steel balconies, reaffirmed Albini’s Rationalist sensibilities. His Vialba project is

reminiscent of such earlier housing projects as Terragni’s Casa Rustici (1936). The

public stair at Vialba was concealed by running a linear strip of risers and treads

behind a continuous wall plane to prevent interference with the visual simplicity

of the horizontal paths and lines. The wall also serves to protect the hidden stair

from sun, wind and rain. 30

The Piccapietra housing neighborhood designed by Albini with Helg and

Genoese architect Eugenio Fuselli grew from a sequence of masterplans for the

historic center of Genoa prepared in 1932, 1938, 1948 and finally 1953. The last

of the series, the Piano Particolareggiato (Detailed Plan) was developed by the

municipal technical office, which employed Albini, Fuselli and Pucci as urban

consultants. The Piccapietra multi-use complex, commissioned by INA, included

street level shops set back behind a covered portico that supported two floors

of offices above. The 3-story base navigated the natural incline and defined the

commercial streets. The protruding cornice of the zoccolo (foundation plinth),

outlined the edge of the mass that carried three staggered housing blocks above

the plinth. Upright residential blocks were protected from street noise and

anchored the lower tier, which was planned to facilitate the flow of pedestrians

and cars below.

The Piccapietra housing towers are similar in massing and scale to typical

nineteenth century Genoese urban blocks that ascend the surrounding hills of the

port city, but Albini’s version had been detached from the typical fabric of the city.

Automobile access and exposed parking arrived to the fourth level above the street

where the level of residences began, and constituted one of the design team’s

most complex urban types. Like the Palazzo Albini the exterior of Piccapietra was

uniformly surfaced with pink stone from Finale in Liguria. The roof was surfaced

with traditional gray slate. Windowsills and stairs were white marble. While the

plasticity of the section change for the large urban block was novel, the lack of

formal resolution of Piccapietra resulted in what for Albini was uncharacteristically

clumsy and confused.

Albini and Helg collaborated with Enea Manfredini at Scandiano in 1956–57

for the overall urban design and first group of residential units built in the Reggio

Emilia INA-Casa project. 31 Ernesto Rogers featured the designers’ urban proposal for

2,800 inhabitants in Casabella in 1959 along with two other contemporary projects

by Albini and his collaborators; the Olivetti Villa at Canavese and La Rinascente

Department Store in Rome. Rogers described Albini’s “lyrical capacity” evident

in his “intense participation in the cultural and civil process of Italian history.” 32


Two issues later, the journal published Albini’s reply to his friend, the editor,

admonishing him for not identifying his collaborators at Studio Albini, with

whom he shared responsibility for the work. By not giving due credit, Albini

asserted, Rogers did a disservice to both his partners and himself. 33 Albini’s public

demonstration of respect for his staff and collaborators is without equal among

Modernist masters before or since.

The Scandiano site plan represented several influences of the local Emilia

Romagna region. Three- and 4-story staggered brick segments contained shops

on the ground level that fronted landscaped gardens and piazzas to form the

nucleus of the new neighborhood. The concrete frame structures were surfaced

in native brick, while leaving concrete lintels exposed. Both flush and protruding

balconies were contained with the open brick lattice borrowed from vernacular

masonry found in Italian farm structures. Open masonry proved an ideal device

for ventilation while it exploited the ornamental expression of changing daylight.

Surrounding the 3-story fabric, the master plan included 5-floor towers rotated 45°

that conformed to the surrounding geometry of roads and mediated the massing

of the inner zone from the non-conforming context.

In Reggio Emilia, while collaborating with architects from the region, Albini and

Helg demonstrated a strategy for producing a Modern architecture with “greater

9.12 Piccapietra

commercial

and residential

complex by

Studio Albini and

Eugenio Fuselli,

Genoa, 1955

264


9.13 Piccapietra

covered pedestrian

sidewalk detail

characterization in relation to the geographic area and social environment.” 34

Along with establishing an internal street, the design team’s most complete

urban plan to date defined spaces for a church, a preschool, a market, a

social center, a soccer field, children’s playgrounds, and circulation on foot.

They studied various levels of exterior lighting, parking for bicycles and

motorized scooters, and pedestrian access ramps. The extensive social amenities

exceeded the expectations and requirements of publicly sponsored INA-Casa

neighborhoods.

9.14 INA-Casa Cesate neighborhood outside Milan by Studio Albini, 1951–54

9.15 INA-Casa Cesate neighborhood loggia detail

266


Albini’s sensibilities by now showed evidence of years of research into typological

variations and site-specific material expressions for his community housing projects.

His post-war formal language was derived from extant physical conditions, while

his massing strategies would effectively rationalize, extrapolate, and modernize

the local landscape. His departure from white stucco façades and rectangular

blocks on a strict north-south grid found in his former IFACP housing was abrupt,

but this evolution demonstrates his freedom from ideology and the constraints of

style. He exploited malleable patterns for formal uniformity that gained identity

through his attention to material, craft, and detail. More complex programs

of requirements also invited a more complex morphology. Master plans by

Albini and Helg had matured to include social centers and the integration

of public spaces to satisfy community needs, which will become evident in

subsequent examples.

Albini again worked with his colleagues that devised the AR Milan plan,

Gardella, Albricci, Rogers, Peressutti and Belgiojoso, to design a suburban

residential neighborhood at Cesate, north of Milan (1951–54). Each team of

architects produced a separate section of linear low-rise housing. Most of the

interdependent units were based on casa a schiera or the rowhouse typology.

Albini’s clusters of 2-story dwellings have been lauded by many critics for

achieving urban equilibrium with an ideal scale and density, and a fabric that

facilitated relations between neighbors while providing for access from the new

residential nucleus and the existing town center of Cesate. 35 The planned quarter

included schools, social centers, and a church, with infrastructure and parking

designed to accommodate the automobile. Manfredo Tafuri was critical of what

he interpreted in the project as populist ideologies, which he characterized

as a generic expression of aristocratic detachment in the whole of the Cesate

settlement. 36 Matilde Baffa concurred that experimentation during the 14 years

of INA-Casa housing administration witnessed popular architecture that grew

progressively distant from the needs of users. 37 Yet she credited Albini’s maturing

sensibilities and verification of his hypotheses drawn from past research to

distinguish his contribution at Cesate over those of other designers. Baffa knew

Albini very well, having been chosen by him as his research assistant at IUAV in

Venice. Such intimate knowledge of his practice and his experience in designing

for the housing genre renders Baffa’s assessment worthy of consideration.

With post-Tafurian hindsight, I side with Baffa in recognition of the lessons

apparent in Albini’s housing and urban designs. First, Albini conceived of

housing simultaneously at both urban and interior scales recognizing the

indivisible connection between domestic habitats and the city. Second, he

demonstrated that form alone is not adequate, and without programs that

include schools, transportation, and social and public services, neighborhoods

cannot exist. Yet he also showed that form establishes order, and efficient means

to simple elegance is of equal value regardless of social caste. Finally perhaps

the Albini’s greatest lesson is that by defying stylist trends and learning from his

own experiences to build a responsive practice is preferable to signature images

or elitist dogma.

9.16 INA-Casa Cesate neighborhood unit plans

268


Albini’s contribution at Cesate includes seven segments of eleven

2-story units. They constituted his most plastic and variable housing type

to date, with nested unit plans, individual gardens, outdoor patios between

gardens and dwellings, and front porches. By departing from the common

undifferentiated type of party-wall construction, he invented a new assembly.

His angled unit and 90° firewall separation redirected views into public

to private zones. Units face to the southeast and southwest and therefore

maximize filtered daylight. The asymmetrical U-shaped site plan composed

framed views of housing clusters to the south that were loosely joined on

the north end by an open portico. Albini’s alternating 2- and 3-bedroom

L-shaped units each had a spiral stair in the corner that acted as a hinge. This

increased the perception of interior volume in contrast to straight row houses.

Their Cesate dwellings introduced a versatile, innovative, and permeable

residential model that contrasted with his collaborators more rigid and familiar

types. Albini and Helg were later commissioned to build the scuola materna

(public preschool), and social center for the Cesate community, which were

completed in 1959. 38

Furniture and Industrial Standardization

Great design transcends scale and refers to a method rather than a product or

style of artifact. Albini experimented throughout his long career with industrial

and furniture design, generating lighting, chairs, tables, shelving, and other

functional installations that became part of the architecture of his renowned

interiors in the course of his long career. Others have more thoroughly studied

Albini’s accomplishments in the realm of product design. Brief mention here in

the context of his dwellings is relevant only to situate his interests and ideas

among those of his cohorts and reveal the breadth of his design talents.

As we have seen, the rigors of Albini’s method placed utility, ergonomics and

craft as paramount. In the evolution of an idea, he returned to the essence of the

problem, and his repeated attention to a few themes and forms led to novel and

persistent outcomes. Albini was not unique among architects of the period in

designing for human form at the scale of furniture. Rogers’ oft-quoted adage about

the architects’ capabilities to intelligently address multiple scales characterized

the work of many Italian designers in the post-war period. Yet for Albini, comfort,

practicality, and economics were social commodities, and furniture provided

the most flexible opportunity to perfect a theme through iterations of the

original model. Whether he aimed to conceive of new neighborhoods within

the city or fabricate the perfect chair, necessity and discipline drove him, and his

investigation was exhaustive. And what distinguished Albini’s pragmatic process

from that of many contemporaries was his playful poetics in finding solutions

that transcended mere function, as we have witnessed in his suspension of glass

shelving and radio works (Figures 3.12 and 3.14).


9.17 Bookshelves

with versatile

column unit

in Caterina

Marcenaro’s Genoa

apartment

De Seta called on Albini’s expressions of “unstable equilibrium,” which is

nowhere more evident than in his furniture designs. He became particularly

skilled at exploiting the tectonic capacities of Modern materials in tension,

compression, and especially in suspension. If Albini’s housing collaborations

demonstrated the measure of his leadership and patient persistence for complex

assignments, then furniture perhaps provided a release from the difficulties

of professional responsibilities, yet without sacrificing his rigor. Collaboration

among administrators and professionals in allied disciplines was essential to effect

urban plans, but designing furniture could be a solitary practice. Albini’s creative

270


talents and playful fantasies were unleashed when fabricating utilitarian domestic

artifacts. He spoke through these artifacts.

Albini’s attention to the ideal room inspired well-conceived interior architecture,

while creating individual pieces that were valued beyond the contexts for which

they were produced. To elaborate on the list of his countless works of Modern

furniture, we find glass tables, the “Cicognino” side table, floor lamps, sconces

and pendants, dining chairs, folding chairs, armchairs, recliners, office ensembles,

wall-mounted and freestanding shelving, and more. Many of his domestic pieces

are currently being rediscovered. 39 These products were crafted by Italy’s best

manufacturers. 40 Albini worked closely with fabricators and master craftsmen

throughout design and production. His chairs, tables, and lamps can not be cheaply

mass-produced or readily copied. De Seta noted that Albini was so focused on fine

execution and assembly that his work has resisted the “germ of seriality,” in contrast

to the furniture of Marcel Breuer, “sons of two worlds and two cultures,” and other

comparable Modern designers. 41 Where Breuer cleverly bent steel tube and bound

black leather to invent an easily reproducible prototype, one that can be copied

even by rogue fabricators, Albini’s use of materials such as wicker or hard woods

connected with dovetail joints cannot be replicated for a low cost. Hand sawing,

planing, sanding, finishing, and upholstering call on the arts of the furnituremaking

trades to which Albini was well connected and highly sensitive.

De Seta also compared Albini’s passion for craftsmanship to Carlo Scarpa’s

and noted critical disparities between the two in identifying with one’s place in

history. Albini belonged to the Modern age of industrial production and sought

advanced, streamlined, technical solutions to design problems, while Scarpa

preferred expressions that masked contemporaneity and exploited even more

labor-intensive artisanship. Although Albini produced furniture during the advent

of mass production, mass consumption was not his prime motive. Vico Magistretti

called Albini one of the great figures of Italian Design, who was “born too soon.” 42

Albini belongs with Nizzoli, Zanuso, the Castiglioni brothers, Scarpa and few others,

as one of the inventors of the industrial design profession in Italy that anticipated

industrial scale fabrication. 43 De Seta claimed that Albini maintained an aristocratic

distance from the industry. “His very personal poetics of architecture moves in fact

against the current, and he very often expresses himself in language antagonistic to

the principles that seem to inspire him.” 44 Even more typically, Albini personalized

his concept and its evolution for chairs like “Luisa” and “Fiorenza”, and utilitarian

devices such as bookshelves that were constantly works in progress.

Full analysis of Albini’s industrial design oeuvre is beyond the scope of this

study, but one of his chairs does require our consideration in the context of his

greatest accomplishments. In 1955, Albini was awarded the highest Italian prize

for design, the Compasso d’Oro, for his “Luisa” chair. A red upholstered version of

it resides in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 45 He had begun developing

the prototype in the 1930s and worked steadily until arriving at the final design,

which was produced by Poggi of Pavia. Often contrasted with Gio Ponti’s “Leggera”

chair of the same period, “Luisa” was the lightest structure that could support

the body in comfort. Sleek and elegant, it transcended its apparent simplicity.


Vittorio Gregotti canvassed the fertile period of Italian Design from 1945

to 1971 and from it he concluded, “it was above all Franco Albini’s Luisa chair

that represented the high point in the development of furniture at that time.

Redesigned in numerous versions since the model of iron tubing was first

produced by Knoll, the “Luisa” chair seems to symbolize the patient research

and obstinate quest for perfection characteristic of Albini’s working methods.” 46

Albini’s own antecedents for “Luisa” include chairs he designed for the Villetta

Pestarini in 1938, the Minetti House in 1939, Villa Neuffer in 1940 and the Holtz

Dermatological Institute in 1945. Vittorio Prina has also written about the threads

of continuity in structure and form evident in Albini’s furniture designs. 47 Prina

illustrated the repetitive use of the X-structural diagram and crossing motifs that

underscore the morphology of many of Albini’s signature artifacts.

“Luisa’s” red upholstery was an unmistakable leitmotif of Albini’s aesthetics. Its

very particular cherry-red color recurs in many of his other interiors and artifacts,

including his version of the chaise longue, the “Tre pezzi” chair, “Margherita” and

“Gala” rattan chair cushions, and Council Chambers seating in Genoa, along with

exhibition case lining in the San Lorenzo Treasury museum, accents in the Palazzo

Rosso Gallery and Milan’s first subway. All were characterized by an intense

bright red-orange hue that brought heat to Albini’s Modernism. Renzo Piano’s

auditorium seating in all three performance halls of Rome’s new Auditorium,

Parco della Musica, bears the same richly saturated hue of red, along with many

other Renzo Piano Building Workshop interiors.

This apparently simple chair captures Albini’s stoic genius, patient study,

and pragmatic yet poetic sensibilities that are as typical of his works of

product design as they are of his architecture. From the scale of furniture to

the complexity of the city, evolution is legible in Albini’s measured search for

coherent order manifest in both collaborative and personal design methods.

9.18 “Cicognino”

tables by Albini

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

272


9.19 “Luisa”

chair by Albini

That new order was defined not by rigid authority, style, or inflexible, resolute

rules, but was instead informed by his synthesis of his acquired experience

combined with the specific components unique to each given problem. One might

argue that “Luisa’s” entry into the Museum of Modern Art collection suggests a

“recognized qualification of the medium of expression,” a demonstration in

Albini’s language of Modern culture’s need to redefine tradition. 48

Albini and his partners’ proposals for housing and Albini’s furniture designs

reveal much about transformations in cultural and personal values. The prolific

nature of his design activities and the duration of consistently important works

cannot be overlooked. Albini’s contributions to urban housing coincided with


9.20 Model of

Albini’s “Gala”

chair showing

motion of seat

on rattan frame

the inception of his own practice during Rationalism’s style battles and continued

through the peak of Neorealist influences when new political agendas and goals

for public funding influenced his commissions. Housing more than any other

building category demonstrates the socio-political realities of the period. Albini’s

manipulation of residential types belies the resource limitations he faced and

the cumulative efforts of his research. Albini’s work with Helg and others gained

sophistication as they relinquished formal abstraction in favor of the influences of

local landscapes, community needs, and material traditions. Unwilling to arbitrarily

borrow types, norms, and codes by force of habit, Albini sought to invent better

situated residential complexes that integrated social amenities and local tradition.

A decade prior to the intervention of the policies of the post-war democratic

government, which sought to provide decent dwellings for all citizens, Albini’s

cohort of architects in Milan saw the necessity of confronting the regime to revision

Modern Italy through integral planning at a comprehensive scale. Eventually

his first line of the Milan Metropolitana (subway), a byproduct of that process,

integrated Ariadne’s thread to provide a logical and efficient public pathway

274


shaping a new urban reality—and the result engendered a far more promising

means of Modern migration than was experienced by Rocco and his brothers.

Notes

1 Franco Albini, Casabella continuità n. 205 (1955). “Asilo e Aiola—4 opere,” p. 63.

2 Antonio Gramsci’s 1926 essay “The Southern Question” analyzed the social

stratification of Northern and Southern Italy, in which northern industrialists colonized

the south and led to extreme economic injustices within Italy, identified one of the

contradictions of the post-war ‘economic miracle’ that inspired Neorealist cinema.

3 Sam Rohdie noted the symbolic role of Modernity and its inherent contradictions

in Rocco and His Brothers: “The postwar Italian ‘economic miracle’ altered not only

traditional peasant cultures, but also a traditional elite bourgeois culture, which was

Visconti’s own and whose forms and values structure the film. The film is encased

within a cultural history as much as the Parondi family is enmeshed in a social one.

The forms of the film belong to a bourgeois culture as threatened by Modernity as is

peasant culture which those forms in the film are used to represent,” p. 14.

4 Rocco and His Brothers (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1992), pp. 14–15.

5 Garzena, Biagio, and Giovanni Salvestrini, “Edilizia Populare, composizione urbana e

residenza collettiva,” Franco Albini 1930–1970 (Firenze: Centro Di, 1979), p. 53.

6 A. Sartoris, “But one must also recognize that Franco Albini entered the area of

international architecture with many personal ideas. Even though he bore the

stamp of two strong socio-economic influences (the international German influence

represented by Seimensstadt and the more Mediterranean-Austrian influence of Ernst

Plischke), he nonetheless shaped them with his own clear intuitions that were typically

Italian,” p. 46.

7 For the “casa a struttura d’acciaio,” steel structure house, at the V Triennale in 1933,

Albini and Palanti designed interiors and furnishings in experimental materials,

including linoleum floors, masonite painted walls and ceiling, hollow steel tube

supports for tables and chairs, and rubber curtains. A portion of the VI Triennale in

1936, organized by Pagano, focused on interior design for affordable housing. Albini

and Gardella designed models 1, 2 and 4 offering three prototypes among the ten

affordable dwelling interiors presented. Piva and Prina, pp. 52–3, 84–5.

8 Garzena, and Salvestrini, p. 48.

9 Occasionally outdoor corridors connected units to dual end stairs, as in proposals for

unbuilt projects: San Siro (1932), Unità di abitazione (1945), and Genoa Zona degli

Angeli (1946).

10 Ladislao Kovacs also participated in the competition team. Piva and Prina, p. 49.

11 The required densities for low-income housing provided more severe constraints.

To the credit of the Fabio Filzi prototype, or merely good fortune, the adjacent public

garden has been maintained offering the best very of Albini/Palanti/Camus’ ensemble,

unlike the site conditions surrounding Terragni’s masterpiece which now restrict views

of the façade.

12 G. Pagano, Casabella Costruzioni n. 144 (December 1939), pp. 21–34.


13 David Horn, “At one level this involved dispersing the lower classes, breaking

traditional social and spatial arrangements at the center of the city, and subjecting

recent immigrants and the homeless to ongoing surveillance. Practices of

marginalization and disciplinary regulation that had characterized factory housing

at the end of the nineteenth century were extended to the city as a whole … At

another level, housing was meant to regulate social relations and their multiple

potential dangers … . As a number of demographers and architects observed, the

housing policies of the Milanese civic administration (and the plans of architects for

increasingly ‘functional’ and ‘rational’ apartments) ran counter to the demographic

imperative of the regime.” Social Bodies: Science, Reproduction, and Italian Modernity

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 111–13.

14 Horn, see “The Sterile City: Urbanism, Health, and Fertility,” pp. 107–13.

15 In describing their ambitions, the project authors wrote: “Esso (il progetto ndr) é

anche una presa di posizione di cui ci assumiamo in pieno tutte le responsibilità.

Servirà almeno a dimostrare che esistevano a Milano nell’anno XVII, sette architetti

che sognavano una città nuova, sana, igenica, funzionale, bella. … noi pensiamo che si

possa trasformare una informe zona di Milano in una organica dimostrazione di civiltà”

Casabella Costruzioni n. 132 (December 1938).

16 Piva and Prina, p. 111.

17 Published by G. Pagano in 1942, Casabella Costruzioni n. 176. Piva and Prina, p. 150.

18 Detailed comparisons between the Milano Verde and the four satellite cities proposals

have been published by Biagio Ganzena and Giovanni Salvestrini in Franco Albini

1930–1970.

19 Garzena and Salvestrini, “É simtomatico che in piena guerra, nonostante che la

dramaticità del problema della casa vada aumentando con la distruzioni, si affermi,

con il piano AR, il modo di affrontare il problema … emerge la lucida consapevolezza

dei limiti delle soluzioni contingenti’ e ‘dell’incapacità dei tecnici di affrontare i

problemi partendo da premesse fondamentali,’ del ‘dilettantismo urbanistico a

carattere scenografico.” The authors quote from Albini and Palanti’s text in Costruzioni

Casabella n. 194 (April 1946).

20 Milan had built a system of communication canals, or navigli, around the city prior

to the development of railroad networks in the nineteenth century for intra-city

transport.

21 Albini and Helg, with Antonio Piva and Bob Noorda, would begin the design for

Linea 1, the first line of the Milan Metropolitana (subway), in 1962 and continue with

Linea 2 in 1964. Piva and Prina, pp. 380–83.

22 “Il Piano A.R.,” Costruzioni Casabella n. 194 (April 1946), edited by Franco Albini,

Giancarlo Palanti, Anna Castelli-Ferrieri, pp. 2–20.

23 De Seta, Cesare, “Il piano di Reggio Emilia é un frutto acerbo di una cultura urbanistica

gravida di promesse e povera di risultati. Ma il piano serve a capire attraverso quali

vie e riflessioni Albini giunga al suo rapporto con la città antica. E’ questa dunque, una

chiave essenziale per capire la ragione prima da tante sue opere: a partire dall’albergo-

Rifugio di Cervinia fino all’edificio dell’INA di Parma,” p. 22.

24 Tentori recognized the “architect’s lyrical capacity,” along with Samonà, in select

cultural projects, but challenged the consistency of Albini’s contributions when

examining his built and unbuilt projects, particularly in the domain of housing, during

the prior decade that constituted his collaboration with Helg, pp. 94–101.

276


25 As previously discussed, employment minister Fanfani’s new national housing agency,

INA-Casa, the Istituto Nazionale di Assicurazioni provided affordable housing during

post-war reconstruction across Italy with noteworthy projects in Rome and southern

Italy. From 1949–63 over 685,000 rooms were built employing about one-third of

Italy’s licensed architects and engineers. Among the urban requirements, density was

limited to 500 inhabitants per hectare, day and night zones within a dwelling were

separated, and ample storage was required.

26 INCIS and IACP were public housing authorities that were developed after the war to

replace IFACP and provide affordable dwellings for all populations in Italy.

27 The proposed isolated triangular stair towers preceded those of Louis Kahn’s Yale Art

Gallery by one year.

28 Tentori cited Gardella’s house at Parco di Milano as characteristic and similar to

Mangiagalli, p. 99.

29 Examples of open masonry walls used in farm structures, especially in Emilia, were

featured for function and aesthetic. See “Climate Adaptation with the Vented Wall,”

G.E Kidder Smith, L’Italia Costruisce/Italy Builds (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1955),

pp. 36–9.

30 The hostile Milanese climate was not conducive to exterior circulation, and the

walkways and stairs have since been enclosed.

31 Piva and Prina, p. 334.

32 Rogers, Ernesto, “Tre opere recenti di Franco Albini,” “1. Franco Albini, Franca Helg, Enea

Manfredini, Quartiere INA-Casa a Reggio-Emilia, Via Scandiano.” Casabella continuità n.

223 (January 1959), pp. 183–91.

33 Albini, F. Casabella continuità n. 225 (March 1959). Letters to the editor.

34 In Casabella continuità, Albini discussed four residential projects in Reggio Emilia that

he admired designed by the local architect, Enea Manfredini. In the article, Albini

summarized his own intentions for typological morphology and continuity of Modern

ideas after more than 20 years of research in the design collective dwellings.

35 Casabella continuità n. 216 (1957), p. 20, cited by Piva and Prina, p. 274.

36 M. Tafuri, “In the development of Cesate, begun in 1950, Albini, Albricci, BPR, and

Gardella manipulate with passive linguistic neatness a dialect that had paradoxically

become Esperanto,” p. 32.

37 M. Baffa, “La casa e la città razionalista,” p. 40. Baffa was Albini’s research and teaching

assistant at UIAV during the 1950s.

38 See A. Piva, p. 332 and M. Giambruno, pp. 38–42. The Cesate elementary school was

designed by BBPR and Garella designed the church, both in 1960.

39 See Silvana Annicchiarico “Leggerezza, esattezza, molteplicitá. Franco Albini e il

design” in Zero Gravity, pp. 114–25 and Giampiero Bosoni and Federico Bucci, Il Design

e gli Interni di Franco Albini (Milan: Electa, 2009).

40 Poggi, Artflex, Bonacina, Cassina, Sirrah, Arteluce among others developed productive

on-going relationships with Studio Albini.

41 De Seta, p. 15.

42 Vico Magistretti in conversation with author at the opening of the exhibition of

his work at Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, February 2003. Magistretti responded to his

perception of the furniture of Franco Albini by implying that Albini never made the

leap from hand-made, custom fabricated to mass-produced industry.


43 Manolo De Giorgi, “Oggetti in prospettiva archeologica,” pp. 45–63. Un museo del

design industriale in Italia, Abitare (Milan, 1995).

44 De Seta, “La sua personalissima poetica dell’architettura di fatto va contro corrente

e molto spesso si esprime con un linguaggio antagonistico ai principi a cui

apparentemente si ispira,” p. 16.

45 MoMA lists the “Luisa” chair as a gift to the museum from the manufacturer, Poggi,

Italy, with details as follows: Date: 1951; Medium: Wood and fabric; Dimensions:

30 5/16 × 22 1/16 × 22 7/16” (77 × 56 × 57 cm); MoMA Number: 195.1998. http://www.

moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=2484.

46 Vittorio Gregotti, “Italian Design: 1945–1971,” Italy: The New Domestic Landscape,

Achievements and Problems in Italian Design (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1972),

edited by Emilio Ambasz, p. 326.

47 Prina’s caption for “Luisa” informs readers about its construction: “It is completely

collapsible; dowels unite the backrest and the cross members, whereas the uprights

and the arms have a special joint. The backrest is anchored to the frame in two places,

allowing it to move. Originally, the frame was of teak, walnut, mahogany, with ash

used rather infrequently; currently only walnut and rose-wood are available. The

seat and backrest are in 6 millimeter birch plywood.” in “Franco Albini Arredi Mobili,

1938–1959.” Domus n. 729 (July–Aug. 1991), pp. [i–x].

48 Referring to Albini’s statement in Casabella continuità n. 205 (1955), cited in the

chapter opening.


10

Modernity’s Weight:

Suspending Optimism in Two Final Museums

It is our opinion that every époque must express itself in its most characteristic

language in expressive and technological terms that best adapts to

contemporary instances, is respectful and reinterprets when and where

possible the significance, form, and proportions of the pre-existing context. 1

Franca Helg

Perhaps the most challenging projects facing Albini and Helg came late in their

career when Italian attitudes toward historic monuments began to change. Their

studio was asked to intervene simultaneously on two war-scarred cathedral and

convent complexes in northern cities. buildings that previously held civic and

religious collections were left with disintegrating walls that did not get repaired

for decades. The new project for Padua’s Eremitani cathedral cluster had been

halted by conflicts erupting from a thwarted national design competition. genoa’s

Sant’Agostino cathedral and convent had been revitalized in the 1930s to display

local art and architectural fragments—sacred artifacts—of a distant past. Just

after opening as the Sant’Agostino Museum, the structures were bombed and

desecrated yet again in a seemingly endless cycle of creation and destruction,

requiring another vision for revival.

both projects demanded the special sensibilities of architects with intimate

knowledge of historic exhibition design and comparable experience with public

administrations, astute curators, and shifting cultural attitudes. yet they needed

the will and objectivity to deal with specific precious collections on disputed

ground. Studio Albini had a track record of notable accomplishments that included

responding to both conservative and progressive critics of their work. Albini

had demonstrated a discerning eye and non-nostalgic stance toward venerated

historical contexts, structures, and their collections. decades of design debates and

experience had taught him that producing truly innovative architecture was not as

easy as erasing storied ground or producing idiosyncratic images in lustrous materials.

10.1 Façade of the Sant’Agostino Museum on Piazza Sarzano in Genoa

10.2 Model of the Sant’Agostino Museum by Knowlton School of Architecture

students for “Museums and Installations of Franco Albini” Exhibition, 2006

Modernity’s Weight: Suspending Optimism in Two Final Museums 281

These final two museums required even more patience and perseverance, and the

Studio eventually produced bold statements designed to express the significance

of the weight of late-Modern problems in flux.

The design challenge was by now familiar to Albini and Helg. Shortly after

their research on Sant’Agostino began in the 1960s, they were awarded a second

major commission for a similar site in Padua. The pair was well aware of their

responsibilities stretching beyond the local physical site and client. Albini had by

this time been recognized internationally for installation designs that modernized

the experience of viewing old art with new interpretations in renovated

structures to revalue both. His record showed profound respect for the possibility

of each revitalized ruin, requiring notable vision and transformation, as well as

the will and ability to reenergize the urban zone where these structures resided.

During his long and prolific career, Albini’s expressive motifs had shifted from

ephemeral transcendent lightness—free of context—to embrace the challenges

of a demanding Italian tradition. In the process, his work and ideas had changed.

Aware of evolving local sensibilities, he called on natural ways that tradition,

measured by endurance, could inform the zeitgeist. He persisted in making work

appear new, always viewing the past through a Modern lens. Few of his museum

designs were without controversy, nonetheless; Caterina Marcenaro hired him

yet again in 1962 for his fourth and largest public commission with her—the

Museum of Sant’Agostino in Genoa.

Before the end of the decade, Studio Albini would begin renovation of another

twin cloistered ancient cathedral, which, due to Allied bombing, had lost its roof,

and precious paintings by Mantegna had nearly perished. The Civic Museum of

the Eremitani in Padua provided Studio Albini another major historic complex

to resuscitate using his tools of transparency, steel frames and display cases to

integrate old and new with an unyieldingly rigorous method. These two late

projects in Albini’s career with Helg and Piva reveal important transitions in his

expressive use of structure, masterfully fabricated, that demonstrate a change in

ethos while marking the end of a chapter in Italian Modernity.

Both projects occupied the Studio during design and construction phases

that spanned two decades along with other large-scale urban projects and

product designs. 2 Two emergent characteristics deserve mention in these

two final museum designs: the coherence and sophistication of the designers’

formal language, and the synergy of heavy steel linking these two projects with

coincidental diagrammatic similarities. Both projects consisted of decimated

historic structures, each requiring a partial renovation of remaining vestiges,

while each also demanded surgical interventions for differing collections of

ancient artifacts. Franco Albini would die before either museum was completed,

but he was responsible for both design partis, including overall concepts, plans,

urban façades, and material expressions. Just as Albini had built a school around

his methods, he had established a studio of talented designers with whom he

worked in sync. Franca Helg would lead the Studio to complete the Sant’Agostino

commission after his death. 3 Studio Albini had also grown to include two

young interns—Antonio Piva in 1962 and Marco Albini, Franco’s son, in 1965.

282


When the Sant’Agostino galleries opened in1979, Helg published a lengthy

tribute to Albini’s career, and the studio continued working on the complex,

adding a repertory theater in the adjacent basilica. The theater opened in 1991,

two years after Helg’s death, and contains a dedication to her from the citizens

of Genoa. 4

These two final cultural projects will reveal a radical departure from Albini’s

earliest form of levity using planes of glass in suspension to expose a new sensibility

in his mature works. Ever since Albini left the tutelage of Gio Ponti to open his

own studio, his language of architecture had traversed a course from interiors

to façades to collaborative urban planning. He had formed new typologies for

Modern functions in urban and rural settings, exploited underground locations

without daylight, and mastered effects of changing daylight, as he progressed

from historic renovations to entirely new Modern structures. His mastery could

best be seen at the intersections of those often conflicting junctures.

Summarizing his career to date, Albini had endured the war, Fascism, and

heavy personal loss of close colleagues, and his work had been progressively

exposed to public scrutiny. He had accepted a professorship in Venice where he

taught interior and furniture design and won the prestigious Compasso d’Oro

award. In the process, many of his accomplishments had been published in

Italy and drew attention from abroad. Albini had participated in planning CIAM

congresses and eventually in critiquing its unwavering position held by a few

voices. When CIAM was disbanded, not insignificantly prompted by pressures

from the Italian contingent, Albini was among those who would not accept the

proliferation of inhumane housing models and challenged the international

mandate that denied local cultures and histories on aesthetic grounds. As the

scale of his projects grew at home, he received commissions in Stockholm, São

Paulo, and Havana. The two final museums I will examine in this chapter will

provide insights into the continuity and changes evident in his mature aesthetics

that evolved over a prolific career—a career that paralleled, and indeed modeled,

notable Modern trends in Italy for over 40 years.

Albini’s methods remained consistent in their rigor, as he maintained

adherence to Rationalist principles, yet his work was anything but static.

A sensibility that expressed gravity, sobriety, and tension is evident in these

final projects, and they thus proved revelatory about the new social orders that

conditioned Albini’s generation. Comparisons between his museums in Padua

and Genoa will also uncover new Italian tendencies as they expose an increasing

cultural will to breathe new life into old places. The unmistakable gravitas of

Albini’s late work invites reflections about specific contrasts with the lightness of

his early installations, perhaps signaling an inevitable critique of Modern utopian

practices, even as the Italian cultural authorities revert to a less progressive

mindset.


10.3 Plan of the

Sant’Agostino

complex with

Cathedral

(Repertory

Theater), Museum

by Studio Albini,

and public

promenade

through the

historic triangular

cloister

SANT’AGOsTINO As URBAN NARRATIVE

We have observed in the case of Palazzo Albini that Albini created an internal

network by threading pedestrian passageways through the new 10-story structure,

making a public connection linking old and new neighborhoods of the city.

A collaborator of Albini, Ignazio Gardella, was later responsible for two other historic

urban district plans in Genoa, the San Silvestro and San Donato Quarters (1969–

75), near Sant’Agostino, and within Genoa’s medieval walls. 5 Gardella employed the

same strategy of threading two walking-scale paths to integrate his design of the

new School of Architecture building, completed in 1992. By doing so, he extended

the network of pedestrian promenades that began with the diagram of the new

Sant’Agostino Museum (1963–79). 6

Sant’Agostino was an update of Studio Albini’s urban revitalization theme,

employing a superimposition of Modern space woven into multilayered and

contaminated historic surroundings. The scope of the new scenario was more

complex than those of past commissions due to the project’s larger scale and

programming demands and especially with the requirement to design a new

public face on an old piazza. The project was part renovation, part restoration,

and part pure fabrication. The architects re-employed their steel structural

exoskeleton from La Rinascente along the entire surface of the complex, as if to

reveal bone when the skin was pulled away. The urban diagram of the museum,

10.4 Urban network facing the Sant’Agostino Cathedral


located on the Sarzano Hill in the oldest part of Genoa, demanded a new section

strategy, which was devised to root the building into the city’s fabric while

interpreting characteristics of that fabric to present the old monument, well

situated, as a fresh cultural event.

Sant’Agostino Museum proved the importance of Albini’s egalitarian attitude

toward displaying all kinds of artifacts with objectivity and intelligence. Genoa had

razed many medieval structures during its long history. Sant’Agostino’s destiny was

to collect other ancient building fragments. The old convent itself had a long and

ignoble legacy, as I will describe, and the great range of archeological artifacts in

the municipal collection gave Albini and his team of designers the inspiration for an

especially ambitious intervention to continue Genoa’s alleys within. This became its

story—the narrative of the city was contained in the extenuating passage through

time that juxtaposed past and present, housing timeless ancient fragments with

selected artworks in a Modern museum. The historical story of Sant’Agostino was

multi-dimensional, perpetual, continuous and new.

Studio Albini compiled photographic and historical documentation of the

ruined Sarzano site depicting the devastation that had occurred between 1942–44. 7

Wartime destruction was nothing short of tragic, but dismemberment of the

convent had begun centuries before. The Romanesque-Gothic triangular courtyard

with its brick and mosaic bell tower dated from 1282. During the sixteenth century,

the piazza adjacent to the convent was excavated to bury a cistern, at which

time structural damage to the foundation occurred and required stabilization.

10.5

Axonomentric of

the Sant’Agostino

complex

286


10.6 Thirteenthcentury

triangular

cloister at

Sant’Agostino

Opening the narrow roadway called the Stradone Sant’Agostino in 1687 facilitated

passage uphill to the Sarzano neighborhood, known to be the site of Genoa’s first

Etruscan settlement in the ninth century B.C.E. However, when Via San Lorenzo

from the port to the Duomo was widened in the nineteenth century, Sarzano was

detached from the rest of the historic center. 8 Fire damaged the nuns’ dormitories

surrounding the cloisters in the seventeenth century. Napoleonic law had

suppressed the convent and closed the church in 1798, when the sanctuary was


transformed into a warehouse. At that time, dwellings overlooking the square

courtyard and on upper levels over the triangular cloister were used as living

quarters for Napoleon’s troops, who made stables for their horses below.

The entire complex was again reoccupied to become an archeological museum

as early as 1859. Alfredo d’Andrade, protégé of Viollet-le-Duc, was commissioned

to restore the triangular cloister and sanctuary, and although his restoration was

never carried out, the site was well documented in the nineteenth century by

photographer Ottavio Germano. 9 During the intervening years, the convent had

been used as a woodshop, gateman’s residence, offices, playroom, and warehouses

until it was re-appropriated by the municipality in 1918. Orlando Grosso, Marcenaro’s

predecessor as head of the local cultural arts ministry, began restoration in 1926,

inspired by d’Andrade’s proto-historical project, to adapt the complex to house

the city’s collection of artifacts salvaged from the ruins of the historical building.

Grosso’s museum opened in 1939, but it was closed the following year with the

outbreak of war.

Studio Albini’s careful, scientific evaluation of the convent’s historic strata raised

a central question: How would the designers reconsider the large cloister that lent

spatial organization to the convent for centuries and but had been obliterated?

Should the reconstructed museum reinterpret the ancient space for the benefits

of memory and daylight? And if so, should the void be produced in a Modern

language of construction, or reproduced as a replica to quote history? The adjacent

striped triangular cloister remained intact after bombing, and its restoration was

certain. The project for the civic museum was intended to revive the short-lived

secular program on a once sacred site. The relationship between historic and

contemporary ideas for the monument had many clues to draw from, but little

trace of the original forms or material texture. The project would require resolution

at several scales—both that of the city, the building within the neighborhood, and

interiors that could accommodate monumental and architectural scale artifacts.

The solution would be found in the museum’s design in section. Studio Albini

would establish a circulation path that continued the city pedestrian network

throughout the museum, which was cast in Modern tectonics with the filtration of

ample daylight.

The Sarzano neighborhood of the city’s ancient center had remained a densely

inhabited and dark quarter of workers’ housing. It was isolated and in disrepair

with an equal measure of immigrant squatters and Genoese citizens. 10 Two urban

ideas successfully executed in the Sant’Agostino Museum contributed to the local

neighborhood by enhancing the continuity of roads and piazzas already in place. The

massive composite edifice had one long façade that fronted on the Piazza Sarzano,

and Albini’s Modern renovation reinforced a compositional strategy of abstract

uniformity that required its entire 100-meter length. The understated gesture

effectively unified the piazza while downplaying the monument’s grandeur. The

only void in the long urban wall led to the south loggia of the triangular courtyard.

The museum bent slightly at this juncture as ancient foundations caused a shift in

the internal geometry. A passageway through the small cloister linked passersby

to the basilica façade (now the repertory theater) positioned above the Piazza di

Negri off the Stradone Sant’Agostino.

288


10.7 Public

stair of Ignazio

Gardella’s

Genoa School of

Architecture (1992)

off the Stradone

Sant’Agostino

The museum as civic space became a popular model for post-Modern

urbanism as best seen in James Stirling’s interventions at Stuttgart, Dusseldorf,

and Cologne. Decades before, Studio Albini’s footpath through Sant’Agostino

provided a mid-block shortcut that joined together major piazzas and facilitated

the flow through the area of medieval Genoa. The thirteenth-century triangular

cloister and campanile were carefully restored. 11 Albini and partners chose

to resurrect the square seventeenth-century cloister that had been totally

obliterated—a bold response given the prevailing perception at that moment

prohibiting historic reconstructions born of desire for total design freedom.


10.8 Exoskeleton

exposed steel

structure of the

Sant’Agostino

Museum façade

The reconstructed central void became the centerpiece for the revitalized

museum and served to organize all three levels of galleries and offices. The

pre-existing stone wall that had survived bombing became the structural

foundation for a new steel frame architecture to house the galleries above and

storage below, while an undulating horizontal joint between old and new was

marked with a band of white marble and a tonal change in the rose stucco façade.

Studio Albini’s quiet and abstract piazza façade subverted many of the rules of

European urban architecture. No attempt was made to mark a center, establish

hierarchy, or celebrate entry with a grand threshold. The architects avoided devices

that relied on balance, harmony, symmetry, grandeur, or transparency, and in

290


doing so minimized the overall impact while maximizing the role of the singular

break in the long wall. They cut an unembellished void, the lone deep shadow as

opening, to invite a path across the site. Signage identified the museum whose

entrance was discovered to the left after passing through the opening. This differed

from the non-façade at the new Tursi offices, yet it constituted another Modern

departure from the status quo, responding with bold reverence to its site. Given

the surrounding chaos of buildings, establishing a quiet new order with minimal

gestures sufficed to communicate the museum’s presence, not unlike Kahn’s Yale

Art Gallery entry sequence on Chapel and York Streets in New Haven. Distinctly,

Albini’s internal rooms referred back to the city, the source of its collection, while

Kahn’s galleries focused exclusively inward.

In addition to re-establishing the rapport between the historic monument

and its neighborhood, the Sant’Agostino Museum joined a traditional courtyard

plan with a novel section diagram to integrate the new building concept into old

Genoa. Generous use of steel and glass for the galleries presented the collection

of archeological fragments and sculpture in open space with ample daylight. The

Sant’Agostino collection comprised artifacts from the twelfth to the nineteenth

centuries, including stone thresholds, lapidaries, architectural ornament from

churches and dwellings, altarpieces, burial sculptures, figurative icons, and tomb

artifacts. In particular, the demolition of two medieval convent complexes after

their abandonment in 1798, San Francesco al Castelletto and San Domenico,

furnished many of the museum’s holdings of architectural relics and interior

frescoes. Some items required large volumes of space and long vistas and could

withstand daylight. Grand open volumes wrapped the square cortile and allowed

for vast interiors that conformed to the architectural scale of many of the artifacts.

Deep steel beams were used to provide open span galleries without the obstruction

of columns. The sophistication of the studio’s installation motifs appeared in the

delicate suspension armature and other Modern accouterments. Bold black and

white interiors resulted from the exposed steel ceiling and overhead structure,

a continuous ramp stair with Carrara marble treads, and installation details such

as twisted suspension straps for stone reliefs, a motif first explored in previous

interiors, including the Formiggini tower renovation.

The tour-de-force of the design concept for a Modern Sant’Agostino resided

in Albini’s varied use of steel and glass, a wholly new and provocative section

motif that demonstrated three different ideas of Modern transparency. On the

uppermost gallery level above the courtyard portico, a continuous strip window

surrounded the cortile. The horizontal void was complete and included no corner

columns. Instead, deep overhead steel beams by-passed transparent glass elbow

joints spanning 30 meters wall to column. The absence of the corner column drew

attention to the defiance of gravity, a new idiom of suspension and gravitas for

Albini. 12 Provoking visual suspense, both metaphysical and actual, this weighty

tectonic device nevertheless made the gallery’s third level appear as the lightest

and most buoyant of the three, and perhaps any of his previous interiors.

Albini chose to reconstruct the destroyed cloister portico a level below and

encased the historical replica in a glass display box. Therefore, the second gallery


level surrounded a light court held in abeyance to frame that which was the

inaccessible outdoor space. The rebuilt cloister in a glass case resembled other

museum artifacts. The faithful reconstruction of the colonnade tied the story of

the museum to the history of Genoa, yet established the most curious element for

this Modern building. Since the architects were obliged to rebuild the cloister, they

chose to produce an authentic copy, without irony, using white marble columns

with entasis, pedestal blocks, simple Doric capitals, and arches spanning along

the loggia. On the lowest gallery floor directly accessible on the entry level, Albini

inserted an inverted glass box in the center of the cloister to bring light to the

primary gallery. 13 Daylight also penetrated through light wells into the storage

area still another level below. Again, the craft of glass walls without corner columns

exploited the abstract nature of the exercise. The sunken void turned the Modern

glass box inside out to complete the triptych achieved by stacking three distinct

conditions of Modern transparent architecture.

The centerpiece of the scheme was the reconceived cloister displayed in a

grand glass enclosure. Re-fabricating this ‘Classical’ feature was out of sync with

Modern expectations and may have inspired the generative idea for the new

museum. The harmonious green center provided a conceptual core for the gallery

in plan and section, which like the Palazzo Albini roof gardens could not be entered.

By positioning it between two familiar Modern tropes, a glass box pressed into the

ground and a transcendent glass band overhead, the new cloister rendered history

as cyclical rather than progressive or linear. Devoid of post-Modern wit, the quiet

proportions of the outdoor rectangular volume provided an idealized space for

reflection. With reparations, Genoa could reclaim her hybrid Modern monument and

put it to new uses to serve the historical arts and repertory culture while re-knitting a

difficult piece of the urban fabric.

10.9 Studio

Albini’s

Sant’Agostino

Museum section

292


10.10 View into

new cloister and

sunken glass

light well of the

Sant’Agostino

Museum

Helg wrote about the Studio’s objectives for the Sant’Agostino project in

Casabella, addressing controversies over the re-use of architectural monuments

and their sites: “It is not sufficient to replace the physical and formal integrity of

monumental complexes without demanding of the entire complex, and that part

of the historic city on which its importance depends, participation in the vital

dynamic of the entire city.” 14 She identified their Sant’Agostino as a paradigmatic

illustration of means to revitalize old structures and assess the architectural

conditions of difficult sites within Italian cities. Her summation identified four

salient points that could be observed at Sant’Agostino, the studio’s largest

museum to date: a) Within the definition of antique, or simply old, urban fabrics,

it is necessary to objectively value architectural quality and utilize structures

to meet contemporary needs toward keeping the historic center alive. b)

Historic centers and their civic and architectural structures must be studied in

tandem to find concrete reasons for reciprocally beneficial re-use. c) Strategies

to save ruins must be consistent not only with the monument, but also with

actual productive possibilities, economic realities, and an expressive language.

d) Finally, museum function is not confined to the actual institution or traditional

conceptions of museums. Progressive alternatives can invest cities and places

with museographical value, emphasizing tradition and culture. 15


The problem Helg described was at the time commonplace for cultural entities 10.11

in other Italian cities. Her recommendations reflected the cumulative result of Sant’Agostino

Albini’s management of conflicts between tradition, Modernity, and contemporary

Museum ground

floor entry level

social needs, which drove his work throughout his career. Helg’s testimony

gallery plan

acknowledged Albini’s aims to express the present without ironic presumptions as

his way of speaking a Modern language while embracing the past. Since Albini was

not given to pontificating about his work, Helg provided valuable insight into the

Studio’s pragmatic, mature intentions, and significant poetic contribution to late

Modern Italian architecture.

Sant’Agostino’s nearly blank façade on the piazza offered a neutral backdrop for

social and commercial activities in Piazza Sarzano as it masked the activity within

the museum. The rose and pink stucco wall, with white marble coursing and the

exposed black steel skeletal frame, effectively blended with the polychromy of

old Genoa and revealed a few signs of the organization of volumes within. Where

new construction encountered medieval remnants of the triangular cloister, two

vertical windows were divided behind the stringcourse. They appeared as punched

windows in a thick wall and signaled a distinction from other new fenestrations.

Narrow windows bracketed the exposed structure, while the wider glass panes on

the piano nobile and upper level galleries aligned with the ‘loggias’ or corridors

surrounding the cloister inside the museum. The recessed steel I-sections and

exposed joints suggested an eviscerated frame holding historical elements of

architecture within the body of the building. Steel I-beams ran the entire length

of the museum cornice to lift the new slate roof and allow continuous clerestory

lighting into upper floor galleries. Albini’s tri-partite Modern wall was noteworthy

for its simplicity on the undisciplined piazza. 16

294


10.12 Interior

first floor

Sant’Agostino

gallery

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

The urban promenade that set up the entry to Sant’Agostino was carried

directly into the museum. Studio Albini capitalized on the opportunity presented

by the ruined convent to create a journey through time. Juxtapositions of glass

architecture stacked vertically were connected in section by the marble ramp

that continued the urban street inside. With this Modern interpretation of a

common crêuza, or stepped Genoese alley, the gradual path linked the interior

to the exterior from which it could be viewed in perspective at the covered

the entry. Superb detailing rendered the glass surfaces flush without apparent

breaks, witness to Albini’s technically faultless vocabulary.

The gallery sequence invites visitors to circle around the cloister viewing

aligned exhibits before ascending to the uppermost level. Here the continuous


10.13 Window

façade detail for

large exterior

openings aligned

with the interior

loggias at

Sant’Agostino

glass edge surrounds the cloister with swiveling operable panels and smooth

silicon joints that leave no visible demarcation. The roof structure is supported by

the 1.4-meter deep steel I-beam spanning 30 meters that allowed the structure

above the cortile to appear without supports. The composite effect of the

detached roof structure isolates the Modern gallery from the courtyard below.

A planar band of structural steel over continuous glazing distinguished the steel

roof from the figural cloister and its submerged void. Exhibit vitrines position

other objects inside them on display in glass containers similar to the Modern

cloister. The architects were playful even when somber, as they toyed with the

idea of history and the impossible prospect of time in a box. The contained void

was redefined as an artifact in the form of a timeless contemplative garden.

10.14 Typical Genoese pedestrian scaled alley or crêuza


10.15

Sant’Agostino’s

interior rampstair

circulation

inspired by the

alleys of Genoa

Source: © John M.

Hall Photographs

Overgrown with vines and foliage, the softened edges of the submerged glass

box provide a filter for daylight. It is apparent in the ensemble that Studio

Albini’s alternate uses of glass could define distinct figural spaces to suggest

phenomenal transparency through either emphasis on or denial of its materiality.

By manipulating the perceptions of viewers, the sensibility of weightlessness was

effected by contrasting expressions of heavy and light elements.

Meanwhile, Albini’s essential focus on interiority remained influential as he

explored new and sequential forms of the room as architecture’s unit element.

From his use of suspended glass in early installations to characterize the

Rationalist ethos of levity, freedom, logic and order, his late work at Sant’Agostino

embodies a more integral, permanent yet heavier version of Modern space.

298


10.16

Sant’Agostino’s

upper floor

gallery with

missing cloister

corner column

Not quite oppressive, the support of stone artifacts by steel rods or I-beam bases

perhaps conditions the viewer to see a more nuanced or darker past. Orthodoxy

gets suspended in favor of a specific formal vocabulary unique to place and subject.

Albini represented Italy’s long trajectory in which tradition is not progressive or

systematically cumulative, but complex, integrated, rooted, and in need of constant

renewal and reinterpretation.

New Museums in Old Walls: Albini, Rogers, Scarpa

Albini was a leader in the field that distinguished Italian post-war museum design

in the international milieu. By the time his studio began its fourth commission

in Genoa, the boom in tourism and its economic impacts coincided with the

need to repair and dust off ancient artifacts. Similar interventions across Italy

built on the same momentum, including Carlo Scarpa’s renovation of the Correr

Museum in Venice (1952–53, 1957–60) the Uffizi in Florence, (1953–60), his

Abatellis Museum in Palermo (1953–54), and his Verona Castelvecchio Museum

(1957–75), and BBPR’s Sforza Castle Museum reorganization in Milan (1954–56,

1963, Figure 6.19). Neorealist Italy had grown into a culture open to change,

favoring authenticity over artifice, popular personalities over imported icons,

common folk over ne’er do wells, with the will to move on without abandoning

its past. Sant’Agostino shared in common with other rehabilitation projects the


10.17

Sant’Agostino’s

first floor gallery

with Modern

colonnade echoing

the historic cloister

contained in a

display case

need to reintegrate major old monuments into their respective urban cores while

redefining the vague line between renovation and restoration. Together, these

museums would reinforce didactic lessons of Modernity and tradition in Italy

even as they would draw criticism from both conservative critics who favored

authenticity and ardent Modernists.

Scarpa’s Castelvecchio is seductive enough to transport visitors in time (Figure

6.18). He enhanced the visual pleasures found in experiencing period artworks in

an old castle, yet his intuitive sensibilities are inimitable. Castello Sforzesco in Milan

was an extensive operation in threading Modern interior elements through massive

300


10.18

Sant’Agostino’s

lower lever

sunken glass

court acting as a

source of daylight

volumes for historical collections while erasing prior domestic and nostalgic interiors.

Samonà credited Belgiojoso, Peressutti, and Rogers for completing the arduous

work required to create “a new ambience that reflected the experience of a new and

immature civilization,” in part due to the sheer scale and complexity of the original

castle. 17 Both BBPR and Scarpa castle rehabs found a good deal of inspiration in the

old stones to produce a variable Modern aesthetic. They employed compositional

devices of abstraction with sensitivity to light, new and old materials, color, history,

and the contents themselves, strategically choreographed artworks from each

collection.


The Italian museum trends of the 1950s can well be contrasted with Frank

Lloyd Wright’s New York City Guggenheim, which entered the world stage at the

same time (1952–59). Guggenheim’s more aggressive response to its Upper East

Side context was designed exclusively for Modern art. A string of subsequent

global Guggenheims and other galleries has witnessed a flamboyant trend in

new museum design whose architecture has been criticized for overshadowing

their featured artworks while eschewing qualities of the culture or context in

which they are situated. Rebuttals to this avant-garde museum architecture

have emerged in the forms of revitalized factories cum galleries, including MASS

MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts and Dia-Beacon on the Hudson River in

New York. International trends abound that have sought novel ways and unique

structures to exhibit Modern and Contemporary art. These post-Modern icons

have fueled valuable design discourse and debate spanning decades about

the ideal contemporary museum. But the lack of necessary specificity to design

for actual collections in the first case, and the lack of design rigor and defining

architectural principles in the second case, makes their disparities with regard to

the Italian museum design movement too large to be comparable. Meanwhile,

these Italian experiments in tandem with the post-war economic miracle provide

valuable lessons for timeless installation design. Their architecture still appears

vital, effective and contemporary.

A distinction also needs to be recognized in cultural trends within the local

domains. Why were Italians willing to perform such bold, surgical interventions

on these historic structures right after the War? While that creative period proved

10.19 Modern

walls inserted

into medieval

halls of Verona’s

Castelvecchio

for new museum

by Scarpa

302


to be all too short-lived, it had an international following and significant impact.

Perhaps the fact that war had carved deep wounds made them anxious to rapidly

heal. Yet we can acknowledge that the most significant works by several renowned

Italian architects impacted the field altogether—professional and public opinion

alike—and the voices of major critics who accepted these radical modes of

design to serve as a reminder of the remarkable vision and everyday function

they satisfied. This ethos of influence is distinct from the signature architect in

celebrity culture who is venerated as an independent genius, but from whom

the replication of principles is futile. Albini emerged over his long career as a

distinct source of valuable lessons and inspiration due to his formidable design

rigor, iterative method, and consistent precision.

The cumulative effects of incremental changes throughout progressive

Italian museums reframed expectations and attitudes. Albini’s creative ingenuity

was unquestionably bolstered through his relationship with Marcenaro, one

of the most progressive museum directors of the time. In mutual admiration,

Helg reported, Albini followed with great interest the design work of his peers,

identifying in particular Scarpa’s “exceptional intuition,” Rogers “stimulating force,”

and BBPR’s “professional wealth.” 18 It is inexplicable after the success of the three

post-war decades that Italian authorities have suspended their will to revitalize

historic structures in keeping with this legacy. Today, some historical re-evaluation

and restorations are reinforcing the fruits of this productive period. One can only

hope that revitalization efforts will culminate in more such projects, reviving to the

grinta, courageous actions and bold responses, displayed by talented designers

and visionaries driven by more than their own egos at this most productive time in

recent Italian culture.

However similar interventions by Albini, Scarpa and Rogers may appear

on the surface, their timely Modern derivatives for timeless locations affected

notably different outcomes from one another. Although Albini and Rogers

shared a profound interest in the reintegration of Italian building traditions,

their museum projects provided evidence of some differences in their attitudes.

BBPR’s Sforzesco intervention placed Modern furniture and inventive details

in dialogue with the existing stone volumes found in the ancient fortress that

remained generally dark and old. Their new pathway snaked through the castle

in section, connecting inside and outside spaces of the labyrinthine chambers,

but the character of rooms remained relatively unchanged. Modern stairways

and handrails were exquisitely carved into the existing stone. Manfredo Tafuri

interpreted their work as a criticism of contemporary historicized demands for

restored monuments. He described the Sforzesco galleries as “rich in glosses

and commentary between the lines—for texts that took the ancient objects as

pretexts.” 19 While BBPR’s integration of past and present languages within the

castle is more prosaic than Studio Albini’s and Scarpa’s museums, the spirit and

challenges of the times situate their work as part of this legacy.

Rogers’ dalliance with tradition and expressive formal vocabularies was

visibly less passionate and personal than that of Scarpa, who may still be best

recognized beyond Italy for his museum designs from among his peers. 20


In Alan Colquhoun’s survey, Modern Architecture, Scarpa’s work represented the

genre in which “Modernist abstraction forms the context for displays of humanist

art.” 21 His Castelvecchio Museum, commissioned by museum director Licisco

Magagnato, developed in three phases, beginning in 1956 and completed in 1973

(although the museum was opened to the public before conclusion of the final

stage). His application of reflective incausto (Venetian stucco) wall surfaces with

Mark Rothko-inspired colors, brass inlay in travertine floors, pivoting hardware and

window screens were labor intensive and expensive. He produced a whole that

was much more than a mere summation of parts, and each detail was designed like

jewelry. His designs required exclusive and exhaustive participation by Venetian

craftsmen. Less invested in the comprehensive diagram for total architecture than

his Rationalist cohorts, the detail became for Scarpa the very idea of his buildings.

Marco Frascari called Scarpa “Magister Ludi,” describing his buildings as texts

“wherein the details are the minimal unit of signification.” 22 Scarpa was not bound

by chronological time and was therefore free to operate within the “many kinds

of time in the collective memory.” 23 Alexandra Lange recently observed in “Carlo

Scarpa, Quilter” that his Querini Stampalia in the heart of Venice finessed a way

to feature that “one century’s luxury supports another without overwhelming it.” 24

Scarpa has been appreciated by protégés and connoisseurs alike, but few who

have described his body of work have been able to effectively extract its essence

or extrapolate from it to produce similarly poetic works. His sensibilities defy

imitation. His work can readily be interpreted and absorbed, but not replicated.

These Milanese and Venetian architects shared affinities and the know-how to

produce superbly crafted building. Vittorio Gregotti named Franco Albini, Carlo

Scarpa, and Mario Ridolfi in his observation that “in the Fifties and Sixties the

detail had some great and very diverse protagonists in Italy.” 25 Gregotti pointed

to displays of material provided by the laws of construction and formation of

the architectural object to constitute his support. From among this group, Albini

remained committed to the complex whole and conceptual rigor derived from

the nodal room. With Scarpa’s rich palette, the lines between past and present

were often blurred. Essentially, Scarpa rewrote history. He often alluded to the

Veneto, as when describing his work on Castelvecchio, “I wanted to preserve the

originality, the character of every room … . You can see how the building retains

its identity in time. It’s a basic principle.” 26 Some Italian scholars have observed that

Scarpa’s sequence of singular episodes falls short of proposing a total idea. 27 Yet

his transcendent and highly personal interventions infiltrate the room’s historic

character to become his own.

Albini deliberately resisted erasing temporal boundaries and redrawing or

overshadowing the past. With characteristic restraint and a legacy of ephemeral

installations, Albini’s lucid interiors led to a language that could, in fact, be learned.

His methods and principles translated historical envelopes and formal problems

into a local idiom. His lessons were followed by a school of Modern protégés who

are his direct descendants, like Renzo Piano, Marco Albini, Antonio Piva, Matilde

Baffa, Lina Bo Bardi, and others, to later generations taught by them along with

Albini’s own work, including Stephen Leet, Lewis Tsurmaki Lewis, and scores of

younger Italian designers.

304


Tafuri called Albini’s interventions “a quiet murmur.” He married existing

forms with new typologies, and produced a controlled confrontation with the

surrounding environs to more readily understand relations to the past. As the

Studio’s work progressed, their uses of expressive details and structures accrued

authority and resilience. Albini’s demand for extreme rigor and refinement

resulted in buildings that achieved a coherent whole. His early propensity for

levity and continued use of suspension to defy gravity produced an architecture

informed by conscious themes that penetrated deeply into historic sites, without

relying on idiosyncrasy, detail, or surface alone.

One Final Story: The Eremitani Civic Museum of Padua

Studio Albini’s last museum was for the civic collection of Padua in the Eremitani

cloisters of the thirteenth-century church. 28 It would prove to be only partially

completed by his studio, this time leaving Albini’s entire pinacoteca proposal

unrealized. The original double-cloistered convent of the Eremitani had been

severely damaged by Allied bombing. In 1965, after more than two decades

since its destruction, the complex was selected to house the entire civic art and

archeological collection belonging to the city of Padua, thus launching a national

competition for the reuse of the monumental complex. 29 The jury, comprised of

Ludovico Quaroni, Rita Levi-Montalcini, and Leonardo Ricci, along with the mayor

of Padua, awarded the proposal by Modernist Maurizio Sacripanti for a large steel

and glass structure animated by floating bridges in a singular exhibition space.

Sacripanti stated, “we conceived of the objects exhibited as nuclei suspended in

the void, multiplied in three dimensions.” 30 Described as a “radical and disquieting

idea for a museum,” it was apparently seen as too great a risk to the historic Padua

context. The proposal was subsequently denied approval by the local Consiglio

Superiore delle Antichitá e Belle Arti (Council on Art and Antiquities). When the

council “suddenly discovered respect for the past,” Albini, who had been advising

on the project since 1965, was awarded the commission. 31 The project and its

site were heavily scrutinized by public and political sectors that were invested

in the outcome of the new museum. The original Eremitani complex occupies a

site adjacent to the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, with the Scrovegni Chapel

containing prized frescoes by Giotto. The Ovetari Chapel of the cathedral had

contained paintings by Mantegna that were nearly destroyed in the bombing of

March 1944 and have since been removed. 32 Only fragments of Albini’s complete

proposal were ultimately realized. The final museum intervention coincided

during the 1970s with Italy’s unfortunate period of confusion and false starts

regarding existing monuments. Authorities have since largely reverted to more

cautious, hands-off inclinations for any interventions facing long, bureaucratic

delays and potential public opposition.

Much like the convent of Sant’Agostino, the Eremitani complex had been severely

compromised prior to its new intervention with total destruction of the minor

cloister nearer to the basilica and slight damage to the corresponding larger cortile. 33


The church suffered significantly, a grave fate for the city of Padua and Italy’s

cultural patrimony. The convent had been a celebrated center of study during

the Middle Ages, with a famous library and school of Gothic painters, including

Giotto, who had labored over frescoes that adorned the cathedral. The medieval

dwellings on Via Porciglia adjacent to the cloister complex, dating mostly from

the 1300s, had been spared damage and were conceived to become part of the

new project. The Scrovegni Chapel, the convent, and the church façade all faced

onto the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheater, which formed an oval green

space with the Scrovegni on its perimeter. Just before Studio Albini received

the commission, parts of the adjacent convent were removed to reveal more

of the amphitheater, including a structure by Camillo Boito, launching debates

concerning the intervention on historic sites. 34

Studio Albini’s assignment was to design a new museum for the civic

collection on what remained of Padua’s convent foundations and archeological

site. The design problem, similar to Sant’Agostino, required determining the

value of individual portions of the landscape and structures in various states of

destruction. But in contrast, the Padua civic collection to be housed in the new

facilities was culturally expansive, including paleolithic, Egyptian, and ancient

Roman artifacts, ceramics, bronzes, furniture, and minor paintings, some of

which would be exhibited while much required archival storage. Helg later wrote

about the flexibility of spaces necessary to address the hierarchy and changeable

exhibition intentions of the curators.

10.20 Glass

display cases in

the Eremitani

Museum in Padua

by Studio Albini

306


10.21 Site plan

for the Eremitani

Complex of Padua

showing the

former Roman

amphitheater, the

Scrovegni Chapel,

the Cathedral,

minor and major

cloisters, and

the unbuilt New

Pinacoteca by

Studio Albini

Studio Albini proposed revisions for the entire area situated between Via

Porciglia and the Arena park to accompany their revitalization of the basilica and

cloisters of the Eremitani. Their proposal included a 2-story appendage aimed

to replace the demolished portion as a new museum entrance with galleries

and offices reorganized around both cloisters on two levels. The major cloister,

already in the process of restoration when Studio Albini began the project,

called for little change, while the minor cloister, more severely damaged, was

completely reconceived. Finally, Studio Albini proposed a voluminous new series

of galleries for the New Pinacoteca to infill the north side of the site. It formed a

2-story sequence of stacked linear volumes with strips of reflected daylight that

would connect to the major courtyard and connect the public sequence of the

whole museum. The New Pinacoteca promised to revitalize the experience of the

collection as its most Modern symbol and spaces, while the remaining medieval

houses would accommodate administration, art restoration laboratories, and

storage. Neither the new entry addition nor the New Pinacoteca and renovation

of adjacent dwellings were realized.

It is predominantly Albini’s intervention in the minor cloister that offers a

reiteration of his ‘dreamlike suggestiveness’ and spatial transparency. The minor

cloister on the north side of the Eremitani basilica was beyond reconstruction,


so he rebuilt the covered walkway using deep long-span structure of weathering

steel I-beams to return the Eremitani cloister volume, and similar to his third floor

gallery at Sant’Agostino, surrounded the cloister without corner columns. Instead

of replacing the traditional loggia, the massive beam without supports provoked

a more startling awareness of pure space. In contrast to Sant’ Agostino’s upper

gallery, glass did not obstruct the experience.

The minor cloister remained an outdoor space that offered a contemplative

place of tranquility. Studio Albini inserted small, paired columns to support

the center of that long span I-beam at its mid-point on each of the four equal

sides. Specially crafted steel joinery for the center columns produced Modern

ornament from the process of assembly. Columns met the ground without bases

as if penetrating deep into the earth. The rhythm of the H-columns on the upper

level reinterpreted the pattern of the large cloister. 35

The large cloister was already under restoration by the Soprintendenza ai

Monumenti di Venezia, and was completed using more conservative methods.

Helg explained that technological elements of traditional character limited the

use of steel and glass to the formation of a stair and the closure to the loggia

at the first floor. 36 The restored cloister remained an exterior ambulatory on the

ground level. Gallery circulation continued inside through a sequence of interior

rooms. An Albini-esque octagonal stair provided access to the second level,

where galleries over the loggias followed an enclosed circulation spine.

10.22 Missing

corner column

of the Eremitani

Museum minor

cloister as

designed by Albini

10.23 Centered columns of the Eremitani Museum minor cloister


10.24 Section

diagrams

comparing Studio

Albini’s New

Pinacoteca and

Kahn’s Kimbell

Art Museum

Helg discussed the studio’s Modern construction technologies that contrasted

with traditional craft at the Museo Civico: “Steel by its nature and its assembly is

among the materials most congenial to architectural thought. Besides the speed

of construction, possibilities for the best light, fewer obstructions, and greater

flexibility, we were directed to this choice by the quality of the profile graphic and

metal details that have their own expression.” 37

Helg focused primarily on pragmatic concerns of craft and construction. Piva

addressed the Studio’s urban strategy for the project, including cultural possibilities

offered by the city, and weight of the responsibility for what remained unrealized. 38

A thoughtful sensibility emerged from these Studio Albini architects, who knew

their materials technically and aesthetically and who took seriously conflicting

realities of context, historic integrity, lighting and other programmatic functions,

while continuing Albini’s poetic practice of a nuanced Modernity.

Albini’s New Pinacoteca, had it been built, would have constituted a freestanding

structure and provided evidence for his most advanced gallery type. The proposal

had been fully designed, including details and construction documents. Like La

Rinascente and Sant’Agostino façades, the proposed galleries would have exposed

its steel frame structure with masonry infill panels to form and intriguing profile.

Gallery plans consisted of five parallel bars of interwoven exhibition space with

storage inserted between the long skylit bars. In section, the volumes were

staggered to form a double height assemblage of vaulted daylit galleries and

joined by signature octagonal stairs.

310


10.25 Exterior

façade of Kahn’s

Kimbell Art

Museum, Fort

Worth, Texas

Source: Marshall

Meyers Collection,

The Architectural

Archives,

University of

Pennsylvania



The uncanny similarity of Albini’s unrealized Pinacoteca to Kahn’s Kimbell Art

Museum in Fort Worth, Texas deserves speculation, as we recall that both Albini

and Kahn were responsible for reconfirming the essential role of the Modern room

in the context of the international style. Inside Kahn’s quiet, almost Classical Kimbell

Art Gallery, which followed his Yale Art Gallery by more than 15 years, one finds a

uniquely serene place for exhibitions that is distinct from those he had previously

designed. 39 Unmistakable among the qualities that have earned the concrete and

travertine structure such acclaim is the elegant 22-foot wide cycloid vault, repeated

to cover six 150-foot long bays to display its collections of small canvasses. The

resulting repetitive room type manages to accommodate virtually all the museum’s

need. The flattened arch section is monumental in shape and character, but

moderate in scale. Kahn’s vault has been celebrated for its controlled infiltration

of daylight, with reflectors and artificial lighting designed in collaboration with

Richard Kelly. Kahn’s Kimbell Museum is as a superb place to view art.

A very similar network of elongated rooms also met the program needs for the

Padua Pinacoteca, a picture gallery. Under a section whose shape was reportedly

derived from Padua’s public town hall, the same vault-capped diagram of aligned

parallel halls was proposed for the Eremitani addition. Where Albini called for

an exoskeleton of steel, Kimbell’s load-bearing shell vaults were cast-in-place

reinforced concrete. Both models introduced filtered and reflected daylight along

the entire length of the center of the spine. Two types of rooms existed in Kahn’s

interior: one was approximately 18-foot tall under the vault, while the parallel area

formed between vaults was 10-foot in height. Yet Kahn’s usual interdependent




‘served’ and ‘servant’ spaces did not follow from an obvious collocation of the

adjacent taller and lower forms. Instead, a network of utility zones that supported

exhibition functions, including an auditorium, library, bookstore, stairs, courtyards,

restrooms, were woven throughout the field of vaults allowing for flexible uses

from his well-articulated Modern assemblage.

Albini’s pointed vault implied something more Medieval than Classical in

character compared with the Kimbell section outline. Another inspiration for

Studio Albini’s project can be found in the original Eremitani competition entry

by Sacripanti. 40 In diagrams sketched by Franco Purini, who was a young intern

in Sacripanti’s Roman office, the repetitive bays staggered in section are already

visible. Albini had served on the competition jury, so had played a role in selecting

the winning proposal. 41 If Albini began with Sacripanti’s diagram, he evidently

made significant changes as he developed the volumes into his own interior

architecture. As we have understood, the Modern open plan and abstract space

was antithetical to Albini’s method that began with the well- ordered room. But

ghosts of Kahn’s Kimbell are already evident in Sacripanti’s section design, as

recalled by Purini.

The length of Studio Albini’s elongated gallery is about four times its width,

therefore again proportionate to Kahn’s extruded plan type. Daylight was admitted

along the central ridge of both vaults, then reflected light was directed upwards

and downward to highlight the volume of the room. Suspended reflectors similarly

held interior lighting fixtures, while the suspended triangular section in Albini’s

proposal also housed mechanical systems that ran the length of the vaults.

10.26 Interior

of Kahn’s Kimbell

Art Museum

gallery vaults

Source: Marshall

Meyers Collection,

The Architectural

Archives,

University of

Pennsylvania

312


10.27 Maurizio

Sacripanti’s

proposed project

of the open

glass section for

New Pinacoteca

as recalled by

Franco Purini

Renowned lighting designer Richard Kelly worked with Kahn to develop the

Kimbell’s custom artificial lighting and reflector device. Kahn’s mechanical

systems were recessed in the ceiling section of the bays between the galleries,

and his inverted curved reflectors were located near the surface of the vault

where Texas sunlight is the most intense. The New Pinacoteca’s elevation profile

presented a significantly different compositional hierarchy than that of the

flattened Kimbell vault. While the New Pinacoteca was shaped to infill its historic

site aiming to integrate extant monuments, Kahn’s expression of monumentality

began by challenging expectations of a grand façade and normative symmetrical

entrance. 42

Scale comparison of the two schemes shows the Kimbell vaulted unit to be

about four-fifths the size of the section of Albini’s Pinacoteca proposal. While

the Kimbell was specifically scaled to enhance viewing of small, traditionally

framed paintings, the Pinacoteca was planned for a variable collection and

range of scale of artifacts more comparable with those galleries of the Louvre,

the Vatican, or the Uffizi. Kahn’s and Albini’s linear vaulted galleries belong

to a tradition—the typology of long processional halls for art—conceived

during the Enlightenment. Yet neo-Classical external expressions were usually

wedded to Classical motifs and endowed with weighty decorum. Both Kahn and

Albini instead devised elegant continuous spaces with exposed structure and

without enfilade portals. Proportional comparisons of the two vault sections

underscores their similarities. Kahn’s rounded version prevailed to produce

an enduring statement of Modern monumentality, classically refined, simple,

serene, rendered in travertine, concrete and sunlight. The ultimate expression

of the Eremitani Pinacoteca cannot be known, yet the massive steel suspended

in the void of the minor cloister provokes a longing for the potential of Albini’s

incomplete Modern project.

10.28 Superimposed section diagrams to scale of

Albini’s New Pinacoteca over Kahn’s Kimbell vaults

Source: Courtesy of the Fondazione Franco Albini

314


Kahn’s poetics and Albini’s ‘magical abstraction’ emerged as similar responses

to the larger questions of a post-ideological Modernism. Both architects elected

as mid-career themes variants of expressions worn thin by some mediocre

interpretations of the International style. They put forth Modern rooms as

new emblematic architecture and did not suspend their search for potentially

bold expressions. They emerged from different cultural phenomena, and their

preferences for exposed structural systems using distinct material palettes

differentiated their bodies of work. Kahn reformulated the expression of mass

and compression in masonry, while Albini’s tensile steel and glass celebrated

levity and gravity through differing means of suspension, often confronting new

ideas with old artifacts within existing historic environments.

Over his long career, Albini explored a range of expression with Modern

materials and technology while addressing some of his era’s most difficult

challenges. Both architects understood the fundamental spirit of late Modernism

without succumbing to redundant ideologies or banalities of speculation or massmarketing.

Instead, they both provided alternatives to abstract Modern aesthetics,

banal formalism and anti-urban self-reflective objects by designing innovative

monumental and symbolic structures with material integrity and gravitas. Further,

both architects embraced human nature and its cultural production through deep

knowledge of history and the city, while using a discerning eye to produce radical

new architecture. They considered tradition—revisited, carefully researched, and

critically assessed—to provide formal foundations for architectural innovation.

Therein they discovered fertile territory for new ideas. Myriad publications of their

work and critical admiration for each expressed by architecture authorities of their

day all but assured their joint familiarity. It would not be surprising to learn that

Albini and Kahn had engaged in direct conversations, and it seems inevitable that

they shared mutual admiration.

Did Franco Albini and Louis Kahn discuss their work together? Did they study

each other’s buildings or acknowledge similarities in their respective ideas?

Marco Albini, Franco’s son, who continues the work of Studio Albini, now with his

own son and daughter, assured me that his father spoke English. Conversations

between the architects at CIAM congresses would have been possible. They

definitely met together with a group of other renowned international figures in

October 1964 at Cape Cod , when Jackie and Bobby Kennedy hosted a meeting of

consultants to advise on the selection of the architect to design the J.F. Kennedy

library. Albini was chosen to represent Italy; Kahn represented the University of

Pennsylvania. A subcommittee was reported to have unanimously agreed on the

selection of I.M. Pei to design the library, which ultimately was Mrs. Kennedy’s

choice for the project. 43 An even more important outcome of the New England

encounter may have been the dialog that occurred among those architects

gathered at that important moment in architectural history.

Both Albini and Kahn employed Modern building technologies without

fetishizing their high tech capabilities, and they participated fully in an international

architectural milieu whose intermingling cultures were yearning for change.


10.29 Boston

Globe, April

19, 1964.

Internationally

renowned

architects

gathered by

Jackie and Bobby

Kennedy to

consult on the

design of the JFK

Presidential library

Source:

Photograph by

Frank Falacci

This is the importance of their parallel practices: Albini and Kahn both expressed a

promising new direction for Modernism that has been called Situated Modernism.

Their idea of Modernity was formally complex, site specific, materially honest, tactile

and restrained, not bound to style, yet rigorously principled, as they conceived

of architecture from the inside out. Albini’s commitment to Modernity was many

times affirmed, even as he changed the meaning of Modernity. His work, produced

both alone and in collaboration, was characterized by continuity, precision, rigor,

endless drawing and revision, with an unending commitment to craft. He emerged

from and gave credence to a culture rich in the Modern tradition to which his

buildings contributed—and continue to inform—immeasurably.

Conclusion

Franco Albini died on 1 November 1977 with both the Sant’Agostino Museum and

the Padua Civic Museum still under construction. Studio Albini remained active

beyond his disappearance with Franca Helg at the helm. Shortly after the death

of her longtime professional partner, she recorded from her viewpoint Albini’s

contributions in a 1979 article, “Testamonianza su Franco Albini” (Testimony to

Franco Albini) in the journal Architettura, providing insights into the nature of their

collaborations and the depth of their shared ideas.

Albini’s architectural career was characterized by continuous momentum, even

during volatile periods of political and economic turmoil, and involved countless

collaborators. Yet the clarity of his vision evident in his enduring body of work,

ranging in scale from his furniture designs to urban plans and all scales between

them resulted from his pragmatic and rigorous attitude and his consistent, coherent

rational process. In Albini’s terms, a good project needed only one idea, but that

idea had to be based on the simple essence inherent in the problem itself. It must

result in an exceptionally well-crafted execution. His most lyrical spaces, like the

circular cells of the Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum, the Pirovano dining room, the

transparent spiral stairs of Palazzo Rosso and La Rinascente, interactive furniture

and art installations of his own and Caterina Marcenaro’s apartment, and the Padua

Civic Museum’s minor cloister resulted from his repetition of an essential concept.

316


10.30 Handrail

of the Milan

Metropolitana

(subway) by

Franco Albini,

Franca Helg and

Bob Noorda, 1962

Source: Courtesy

of the Fondazione

Franco Albini

Yet his works defy categorization by architectural style, and his concepts and

constructions grew over a 47-year career that transcended the seduction of image.

Albini’s poetics emerged from his uncanny ability to read into each project’s needs,

edit and synthesize, and envision potentials beyond the limits of the problem. Both

his great and minor works affirm the Modern room as architecture’s unit element.

His shy, taciturn demeanor, critical stance, and tough resistance to the status quo

made him an enigma in an era of media-driven, visually saturated globalized

trends that often lacked imagination. One need only return to Albini’s restrained

words, his prolific output of lasting and ephemeral constructions, essential ideas,

and “technically faultless vocabulary,” to resituate his contributions as among the

best of the International Modern milieu.

Notes

1 Franca Helg wrote about the studio’s ethics for intervening modernizing historic sites:

“E’ nostra opinione che ogni epoca si debba esprimere con il proprio linguaggio nel

modo piú caratterizzato e nei termini espressivi e tecnologici che meglio si adeguano

alle istanze contemporanee ed al contempo sia rispettosa e reinterpreti, quando e

dove puó, significato, forme, proporzioni delle preesistenze del contesto.” Casabella n.

429 or 443, p. 28.

2 Other large projects built by the Studio during this phase include the Luigi Zoja Baths

at Salsomaggiore (1964–70), SNAM offices in San Donato Milanese (1969–74), Palazzo

Pisaroni restoration in Piacenza (1969–75), and the Madre di Dio zone of office and

residences in the Piazza Dante and Sarzano neighborhoods in Genoa (1972–79). Their

differences in program and architectural character in contrast to the museums and


other selected works make these projects less useful in providing alternatives to hightech

late Modernism, and therefore will be left for future investigation. The proposal

for the new museum for Alexandria Egypt (1964–72 designed with Helg, M. Shawky

and S. Zeitoun), had it been realized, would have provided an important comparative

study to comprehend the roles of site, culture, and climate for the Studio’s museum

methodology. See Franco Albini, 1905–1977, by Piva and Prina (Electa: Milan, 1998).

3 This investigation of Sant’Agostino by Studio Albini is concerned primarily with

phenomenal and conceptual architecture produced while Franco Albini was alive.

For subsequent architectural work by Helg, Piva and Marco Albini, see Stephen Leet’s

Le Forme Della Ragione: Marco Albini, Franca Helg, Antonio Piva, architetture e design

1980–1995 (Milan: Marsilio, 1995). Significant parts of the Eremitani complex were

completed by the municipal cultural offices of the city of Padua.

4 Vittorio Prina, Sant’Agostino a Genova (Genova: SAGEP Editrice, 1992), p. 99.

5 Gardella’s Piano Particolareggiato for San Silvestro and San Donato was developed

after Studio Albini began studying the urban history and situation for the badly

damaged convent. Subsequently, Gardella designed the new Facoltá di Architettura

(University of Genoa School of Architecture) on an adjacent site. Both the museum and

university facilities were characterized by threaded public promenades through the

extant buildings that diminished boundaries between public zones and maximized

the flow of interior and exterior volumes to reinforce the public nature of their

activities.

6 See F. Rossi Prodi, p. 192; A. Piva and V. Prina, p. 391; and A. Rossari, pp. 58–9 in I musei e

gli Allestimenti di Franco Albini.

7 Prina, pp. 81–3.

8 Bruno Gabrielli, “Il Museo di Sant’Agostino a Genova.” Casabella n. 443 (April 1979), p. 25.

9 Prina, p. 82.

10 Following Albini’s white box gallery in Palazzo Bianco, Palazzo Rosso, Treasury of San

Lorenzo, later projects, such as BPR’s Castello Sforza Museum in Milan, and Scarpa’s

intervention at Castelvecchio in Verona, reinforced Albini’s Modern approach to

complex existing urban sites. Each intervention withstood criticism and controversy,

and each has endured to demonstrate synthetic integrated design as a unique Italian

contribution to the genre of the post-war museums.

11 The ex-consecrated Gothic basilica with a baroque interior remained untouched

during the first phase of the project, except for rehabilitation of the characteristic

Genoese striped façade.

12 Helg “Il museo di Sant’Agostino nel centro storico di Genova.” Casabella n. 443 (April

1979), p. 28.

13 In the original project by Studio Albini, Helg had gallery space flowing around the

exterior glass room. In its current usage, the lower gallery is used for storage and

offices removing the area from the gallery sequence. The section diagram also shows

light allowed to penetrate through the garden floor into basement storage.

14 Helg, “Non é sufficiente restituire integritá fisica e formale al complesso monumentale,

ma occorre che tale complesso, e quella parete di città che gli gravita attorno, entri

nella dinamica vitale della città intera.” Casabella n. 443, p. 31.

15 Translation from original Italian by author. Helg, pp. 31–2.

16 The subway station now fronting Albini’s façade in Piazza Sarzano has considerably

increased movement through the square and exposed to the museum to greater

visibility. The all glass subway station was designed by Renzo Piano.

318


17 G. Samonà, “Un contributo alla museografia.” Casabella continuità n. 211 (1956),

pp. 51–62.

18 Helg, Franca, “Testimoniana su Franco Albini.” Architettura (October 1979), p. 554.

Further, Marco Albini, in comments for the inauguration of the exhibition, “I Musei e

gli Allestimenti di Franco Albini,” reported that his father recommended Scarpa for the

design of the Monument to the Fallen in Brescia.

19 Manfredo Tafuri, “Carlo Scarpa and Italian Architecture” in Carlo Scarpa: The Complete

Works (Milan: Electa, 1984), p. 79.

20 Numerous career parallels between Franco Albini and Carlo Scarpa exceed the bounds

of this study. They were born and died within a year of one another. Both taught at

the IUAV School of Architecture in Venice, and both had significant protégés, although

neither was particularly comfortable as a public figure. While Scarpa has been

depicted as an isolated individualist, Albini worked collaboratively, albeit in his modest

and taciturn way. They each specialized in exhibition installations, an ephemeral

architecture useful for the investigation of ideas. Scarpa’s Canova museum at Possagno

(1955–57) and the Querini Stampalia in Venice (1961–63) can both be studied for

connections to Albini’s oeuvre. Notably, while Albini was central to Italian issues of

Modern architecture, tradition, and urbanism that were debated from the 1940s to

1960s, Scarpa was silent.

21 A. Colquhoun, depicting Scarpa’s Gipsoteca Canoviana in Possagno (1956–57), his

caption reads, “Scarpa’s museums are among the most interesting examples of Italian

post-war museum design, in which Modernist abstraction forms the context for

displays in humanist art.” Modern Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),

p. 183.

22 M. Fascari, “The Tell-The-Tale Detail,” reprinted in Theorizing a New Agenda for

Architecture, 1965–1995, edited by K. Nebbitt (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,

1996), p. 508.

23 Tafuri, p. 79.

24 Places, online journal, http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/carlo-scarpaquilter/33698/,

4-17-12.

25 V. Gregotti, “The Exercise the Detailing,” reprinted in Theorizing a New Agenda for

Architecture, 1965–1995, edited by K. Nebbitt (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,

1996), p. 496.

26 George Ranalli, Scarpa Architect: Intervening with History (Montreal: Canadian Centre

for Architecture, 1999), p. 67.

27 Muratore, Capuano, Garofalo, Pellegrini, “La questione dei centri storici,” “E’ il caso

di Franco Albini a Palazzo Bianco, A Palazzo Rosso e nel convento di S. Agostino a

Genova, oppure nel piú tardo Museo Civico degli Eremitani a Padova. L’incontro tra

esistente e nuovo e’ risolto con estremo rigore e raffinatezza, creando un equilibrio

dove, da un lato, si sente la mano dell’Albini designer nell’ allestimento museografico,

dall’altro, lo ‘stile’ neutrale dell’arredo non disturba le opere esposte e la natura

dell’architettura esistente … . Non altrettanto neutrali sono gli allestimenti di Scarpa

a Castelvecchio a Verona e alla Fondazione Querini Stampalia a Venezia. Le originali

soluzioni propongono una ‘correzione’ dell’esistente che testimonia la personale

percezione di Scarpa del passato, e lo stratificarsi del presente sull’esistente. Il dialogo

fra nuovo e vecchio e’ molto stretto … . In modo altrettanto non-neutrale é stato

progettato di BBPR l’allestimento del Castello Sforzesco a Milano … .” (Bologna:

Zanichelli, 1988), pp. 59–60.


28 Other major projects for museums by Studio Albini included Palazzo dell’Arte in Genoa

(1956–59) and the new museum for Alexandria, Egypt (1964–72). Neither was realized.

See Piva, Franco Albini, 1905–1977, pp. 338–9 and pp. 404–5.

29 Gay, Fabrizio, “Il Museo Civico di Padova nel complesso degli Eremitani,” Ricerche,

http://www.academia.edu/2318906/Il_Museo_Civico_di_Padova_nel_complesso_

degli_Eremitani.

30 Ibid., p. 64.

31 Paolo Ceccarelli, “Riflessioni sul centro storico di Padova e su un museo bloccato.”

Casabella n. 443 (1979), p. 33.

32 Only two large Mantegna frescoes from the Ovetari Chapel could be salvaged, and

both have been moved off site following patient reconstruction of the remaining

fragments. A. Prosdocini, “La stoia del Museo Civico: una vicenda che continua.”

Casabella n. 443 (1979), p. 34.

33 For an extended history of the museum evolution and transformation of the

surrounding urban zone in Padua, see P. Ceccarelli, pp. 31–3, and Alessandro

Prosdocimi, “La storia del Museo Civico: una vicenda che continua.” Casabella n. 443

(1979), p. 34. See also “Il Museo Civico di Padova nel complesso degli Eremitani,” by

Fabrizio Gay.

34 Casabella in 1979 recorded the polemics involved in the problematic competition and

complex political interventions that characterized the project. See articles by Ceccarelli

and Prosdocimi.

35 Piva, p. 424.

36 Franca Helg, “Il nuovo Museo Civico in Padova.” Casabella n. 429 (October 1977), p. 36.

37 Helg, p. 36.

38 A. Piva, “Intervento in un complesso monumentale degradato.” Casabella n. 443 (1979),

p. 35.

39 For more discussion of Kahn’s Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas, see Michael

Benedikt, Deconstructing the Kimbell (New York: SITES/Lumen Books, 1991), Brownlee,

“Light: the Giver of All Presences,” Chapter 6, pp. 126–43, of Louis I. Kahn in the Realm

of Architecture, and Michael Brawne, Kimbell Art Museum, Louis I. Kahn, Architecture in

Detail series (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1992).

40 Franco Purini, who worked on drawings for the competition entry by Maurizio

Sacripanti. He recalled that Albini served on the competition jury and was awarded

the commission after controversy arose over Sacripanti’s winning scheme.

41 Letter from Franco Purini to the author September 27, 2005.

42 Kahn’s landscape design at the Fort Worth site was the work of his third paramour,

Harriet Pattiman. She can be seen discussing her role in Kahn’s studio and that project

in the Oscar-nominated film produced by her son Nathaniel Kahn, My Architect, 2003.

43 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Presidential_Library_and_Museum.

Others at the Boston October meeting included: Pietro Belluschi (M.I.T. dean), I.M.

Pei, Mies van der Rohe, Hugh Stubbins, Paul Thiry, Benjamin C. Thompson, John C.

Warnecke, Alvar Alto (Finland), Lucio Costa (Brazil), Sven Markelius (Sweden), Sir Basil

Spence (England) and Kenzo Tange (Japan). See Boston Globe, Monday, October 19,

1964.


Appendix 1: Albini on Tradition

Translated by Kay Bea Jones

Franco Albini presented as a lecture to the MSA (Il Movimento di Studi per Architettura—

Movement for the Study of Architecture) in Milan on 14 June 1955.

his remarks were first published as “Un dibattito sulla tradizione in architettura”

(A Debate on Tradition in Architecture), containing comments by 11 architects,

students, and art critics. 1

It is difficult to separate a discussion of life-style traditions from a discussion of

architectural traditions. For this reason it is not a bad idea to discuss the two issues

together. For me, tradition means a sense of cultural continuity between past and

present. In human events there are no breaks or leaps forward. even revolutions

are more the emergence into collective consciousness of problems that have

developed over time and brought to maturity by major figures.

I believe that tradition represents the continuity of civilization in both form and

spirit, a historical continuum and the constant flow of life within the limitations

of human nature, a continuum that can become domesticated (“acclimatized”)

but does not change abruptly. The history of mankind is not the history of nature

in which everything that can happen happens. It is brought about through the

repeated conscious acts of human beings who forever alter the course of its flow.

The continuum of events is not in itself tradition. It becomes tradition when it enters

human consciousness. Tradition does not inhabit the works, objects, or activities of

men just like that. It becomes tradition when people in the present become aware

of it and can recognize it in these works and activities. This happens in different

ways in every age. bit by bit, each selects its own traditions.

our tradition has no existence beyond us. It exists in certain customs and habits,

in certain ways of building, in certain forms from both the past and the present, and

in other elements that we collectively recognize to be those of our contemporary

tradition and our present. In this way tradition enters our collective conscience and

takes on the force of a law, and therefore becomes a shared law of values knowingly

322


accepted and consciously followed. Respecting tradition means accepting control

by the collectivity, by public opinion, and control by the populace.

The discipline of tradition is a barrier against capricious license, the provisional

nature of fashion, and the harmful errors of mediocrity (the only useful errors are

those committed by the talented, those of complex character). When we say that

major figures express tradition, we mean that, individually or in groups, they have

a major influence on history, and day-by-day they express the vital forces that

ensure that progress continues. But key figures or groups are not the only ones

who constitute tradition today. Alongside its central thrust, this tradition includes

certain marginal groups who exist alongside the swift-flowing current and are

useful to society in that they ensure that ruptures and sharp breaks with the past

do not occur.

Tradition at the margins of the current serves to stabilize overly vigorous forces

of transformation. It allows society to adapt to new forces and vice versa, and

constantly encourages the establishment of a dynamic equilibrium—in production,

for example, of the worker with respect to industry. I believe that architecture

at the present time is moving toward reality, abandoning idealistic positions,

theories, principles, and diagrams in favor of the present as it really is. The present

era is made up of numerous actual and past components that should be brought

to consciousness. While the components from the present have been generally

absorbed and show only a limited amount of variation between geographic and

cultural environments, what remains from the past supplies many profound and

important variants. Thus, the task of clarifying through study has been bequeathed

to us by our predecessors.

NOTES

1 “Svoltosi Che cosa????? a Milan nella sede del Movimento per gli Studi di Architettura—

MSA—la sera del 14 giugno 1955,” included comments by Carlo Aymonino, Franco

Berlanda, Franco Marescotti, Carlo Melograni, Guido Canella, Gillo Dorfles, Marco

Zanuso, Giancarlo De Carlo, Piero Bottoni, Giacomo Scarpini, and Romolo Donatelli.

Casabella continuità n. 206 (1955), pp. 45–52. Albini’s comments and the entire debate

were subsequently re-published in Movimento per gli Studi di Architettura 1945–1961 by

Baffa, Morandi, Protasoni, and Rossari (Rome: Laterza, 1995), pp. 497–9.

Appendix 2: Renzo Piano’s “Pezzo per Pezzo:”

Recollections of a Studio Albini Intern

Renzo Piano’s comments, titled “Pezzo per Pezzo” (Piece by Piece), in the Zero Gravity

catalog (2006) for the exhibition of Franco Albini’s complete works provides his

succinct reflections about his mentor’s influence. Piano also designed the Triennale

exhibition installation of Albini’s oeuvre.

Franco Albini practiced architecture during a most fertile period of Italian Modern

design and was uniquely prolific, producing both permanent and ephemeral

works that significantly marked the culture of his era. Following his teaching

career in Venice, Turin and Milan, a palpable School of Albini can be identified. He

impacted a generation of practitioners across northern Italy, Renzo Piano among

them, whose works continue Albini’s rigorous search for a well-crafted Modernism

with formal and structural integrity, aiming in the cases of historic buildings, cities

and exhibitions to revitalize aging artifacts. His method served him for any scale of

intervention in which a Modern intervention embraced a historic site or subject.

Among his followers, Matilde Baffa, Corrado Levy, Aurelio Cortesi, Bruno Gabrielli,

Antonio Piva, and Augusto Rossari have enjoyed productive careers in design

practices and in the academy.

Yet none of Albini’s protegés has succeeded on the international stage like Renzo

Piano, whose design with Richard Rogers for the Paris Pompidou Center Museum

launched an international career. In fact, Piano became renowned for museum

and gallery designs from Paris to Houston well before he received commissions in

his hometown of Genoa. The Renzo Piano Building Workshop is today’s standardbearer

for high quality museum design with moderation of natural light and an

unapologetic Modern vocabulary of simple craft, skylit spaces regardless of project

size. Piano continues Albini’s theme of suspension in Modern architecture.

For the celebration of the centennial of Franco Albini’s birth, a retrospective

exhibition of Studio Albini’s complete work, titled Zero Gravity, was installed at the

Triennale building in Milan in 2006. Piano, who designed the exhibit installation,

apprenticed for three years with Studio Albini during the early 1960s. Piano

324


commented in the exhibition catalog about the lessons he learned from this taciturn

master. In his remarks, titled “Piece by Piece,” he described the slow, methodical,

systematic design rigors he was exposed to during his internship with Albini:

I met Franco Albini in September of 1960 in his studio on via XX Settembre in

Milan. I was a young student with two years experience at the University of

Florence, from which I had just transferred to the Polytechnic [of Milan].

His secretary had kindly asked me to return three or four times, and I finally met

Albini. I explained that I left Florence because it was a city that was too perfect

and I wanted to work in his studio, and in Milan, a city obviously less perfect.

And that is what happened.

Piano implies that he had chosen the office of Albini for his internship, yet he

offers more insight about what he was leaving behind than what he was driven

toward. Like most students at that age, the lack of direction or clear objective

was less important than forward momentum. And Piano emphasized his own

ingenuousness and naiveté as a young designer, revealing some inevitable

uncertainty and challenges born of the trials familiar to all former apprentices.

In truth, more than work, I scratched at the drawings on my board and made

things up all day long.

Albini made me assemble and disassemble a television set by Brionvega several

times. I drew one by one each of the 50,000 blocks of granite for the Rinascente

[department store] of Rome and I learned everything one can learn at that age

about patience and precision. Working nearby, I took from him that which I

probably already had inside: his silence, his stubbornness about craftsmanship,

and his desire to try and try again.

Through Piano’s recollections, we witness firsthand Albini’s methods of

continuity, critical reflection, and perseverance. Like Albini, Piano has not been

vociferous in the past about his practice or influences, so his humility in his

description of his debt to Albini offers new insights and an appreciation for the

unassuming master. The same iterative method that Piano learned from Albini

can perhaps illuminate Piano’s motifs in his filtered skylit galleries, exhibition

infrastructures that appear to float, pragmatic functionalism, well crafted façades

and sophisticated daylit interiors.

Piano bears witness to not only the process of design, but also to his master’s

personality: Albini was silent, rigorous, disciplined, self-critical, and he expected

the same of his employees.

These are the facts that I remember. I’ve spent my whole life since unconsciously

ruminating over it without realizing it.

Eventually I realized that with Franco Albini I had for the first time approached

an architecture made of pieces and fragments that fly without ever touching

the ground. For this reason Albini’s stairs don’t touch the pavement, for this

reason his cables draw the space overhead, and this is why everything in his work

remains more or less in stable equilibrium.

Appendix 2 325

In early 2014, Piano installed a retrospective of the work of RPBW (Renzo Piano

Building Workshop) in the Palazzo della Ragione di Padua, a monument less known

but similar to Palladio’s Basilica in nearby Vicenza. Piano also titled the installation

of his studio’s work “Piece by Piece,” an obvious tribute to his mentor. The historic

structure in Padua was featured by Aldo Rossi in The Architecture of the City to

characterize his idea of the consummate fait urbain (urban artifact), the physical

receptacle of collective memory. Piano’s reflective text explaining the installation of

his work was published in the local daily, Il Mattino di Padova, 1 “For us this expression

is something we call ‘the poetry of lightness’ … the poetic idea of an absence of

gravity; the construction itself; and the ideal, the concept of art as a powerful tool

of collective consciousness.” Piano has articulated a familiar sensibility and has

all but identified the lessons he took from his formative years with Studio Albini:

“The idea of an absence of gravity—that which characterises our work, the motif of

the Renzo Piano Building Workshop.”

In the 2006 Zero Gravity catalog, Piano shared other cultural references for his

sensibilities from music, art and literature that he associates with his aesthetics of

lightness:

Elsewhere I have found another way to see these same things: in the music of

Luciano Berio “Points on the curve to find,” in the paintings of Bob Rauschenburg,

and in the literature of Italo Calvino, (his young Barone Rampante, The Baron in

the Trees, who lives his entire existence without ever touching the ground).

Suspension cables, Albini’s lines that measure space, his mysterious geometry, his

attraction to the joint, it’s articulation, all those points in which lines and planes

meet, are the code for his poetic acts.

This is the most precious experience that Franco Albini left to me. 2

Notes

1 http://mattinopadova.gelocal.it/foto-e-video/2014/03/15/fotogalleria/a-palazzo-dellaragione-la-mostra-renzo-piano-building-workshop-piece-by-piece-1.8855465.

2 Zero Gravity: Franco Albini, Costruire le Modernità (Milano: Triennale Electa, Mondadori

2006), p. 189. Translation from the original Italian to English is by the author.


Index

numbers in bold refer to illustrations.

Abatellis Museum, palermo, 153, 298

abstract expressions, architects criticized

for using, 79

abstraction, 7, 41, 87, 108–9, 152, 172,

206, 252, 300

dominant, 240

formal, 129, 273

geographic, 7

magical, 166, 209, 314

Modernist forms, 303

modified iconic, 223

spatial, 172

“Aeronautics exhibition” 1934, 36, 60

affordable housing, 44, 129, 252

Agamemnon, 171

Agro pontino, 42

Albergo Rifugio Pirovano a Cervinia, 187

Albini, Carla (Franco Albini’s sister), 35, 58

Albini, Franco, 1, 11, 32, 35–6, 53, 59, 64,

65, 67, 68, 75, 78, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92,

95, 96, 97, 99, 113, 114, 121, 122,

124, 129, 146, 155, 158, 160, 168,

188, 192, 198, 200, 214, 215, 245,

252, 253, 272, 280, 309, 316

airport project tower, 55

apolitical character, 246

architecture of, 53, 77, 86, 174, 233

archives, 189

Baldini & Castoldi bookstore, Milan,

78, 79

Canavese project, 111

career, 79, 281–2

challenges urban planning policies, 256

cited as one of the few architects who

inspired admiration among his peers

and students, 128

collaborations with other Milanese

Rationalists, 9, 150, 202, 216, 257

commentary on the polemics of

Modern dwellings, 64

and commission by Marcenaro to

design the installation of the works

of Alessandro Magnasco, 104

commissioned by lina Bo Bardi to

design an exhibit in São paulo, 41

commitment to a design practice of

discipline, conceptual restraint, and

experimentation continued through

most of his career, 73

commitment to Modern fabrication

methods and efforts to recover

artisan practices of vernacular

architecture, 59

control of changing daylight, 144

conviction that tradition can best

be understood in relation to the

creative necessity, 8

cylindrical rooms to allow for visitors’

circulation of the pieces while they

occupy the center of each room,

172

death of, 101, 149

design methods, 241

design proposals for efficient

dwellings, 43, 154, 251

develops a twin walled retaining

structure method, 235

emergence from designer to architect,

51–80

establishes his independent design

practice in 1930 after his internship

with Gio ponti, 53

328 Suspending Modernity: The Architecture of Franco Albini

experience of Futurism, 22

Fabio Filzi Housing, Milan, 28, 54

family apartment, Milan, 88, 90

formal innovations of, 21, 115

formed Studio Albini with new

partners, 3

and Franca Helg, 92, 112–13, 136, 155,

157–8, 160, 177, 193, 197–8, 204,

209, 238, 262, 266, 268, 279, 281

Genoese museums, 147

and Giancarlo Palanti, 108, 132, 257

and Giovanni Romano, 62, 148

——

Antique Goldworks, 68

——

exhibition hall, 67

——

installation for the Sala dell’antica

oreficeria, 61

hired to teach in Venice, 10

Holtz Dermatological Institute, 75

housing projects, 241, 248

identified in his role as designer of the

Youth Hostel, 193

and the impressive Marcenaro

apartment designed by, 105

INA Building, 230

interest in progressive tendencies

developing beyond the Alps, 55

lauded for producing an economical

and efficient Taylorized dwelling, 98,

138, 144

and Louis Kahn, 179, 197, 209–10, 310,

314–15

and Marcenaro’s apartment, 105

mathematical rigors of gridded planes

established the expressive structures

of, 215

meets Rogers, Gardella, Magistretti and

De Carlo at Otterlo, Holland, 124

movable bookshelf and vitrine model,

77

museums, 86, 172, 174, 192

Palazzo dell’Acqua e delle Luce, 30

and the Piazza Fiume, 197

portrait of, 14

and Rationalist sensibilities, 262

recommended to Marcenaro for the

Genoa museum restoration, 148

remains apolitical through his career, 90

renovation of the Palazzo Bianco

Museum applauded by Luigi Moretti,

10

and Rinascente Department Store, 8,

226

and Sala dell’Aerodinamica displayed at

the Aeronautics Exhibition1934, 60

strikes a balance between utility and

poetry, 9, 115, 217, 240

Studio Albini, 11

teaching with Bruno Zevi in Venice,

193

“technically faultless vocabulary”

recognized by Manfredo Tafuri, 10

tied by critics to the new appreciation

of vernacular architecture, 221

“Transparent Radio”, 67

Treasury Museum, 165, 168, 172, 223

and “Veliero” bookshelves, 69

“Zanini Fur Showroom”, 74

Albricci, 135–6, 266

Alessi, Galeazzo, 231

Alighieri, Dante, 37

alpine villages, 185

American Academy of Rome, 109, 124

American Modern architecture, 177

Antonelli, Antonio, 20

apartments, 12, 29, 65, 68, 71–2, 87,

89–91, 95–6, 103–6, 136, 149, 221,

228, 250, 252

for Caterina Marcenaro, Palazzo Rosso,

Genoa, 91, 97, 104–7, 149, 179, 233,

287

early Milanese, 233

Edoardo Persico, 248

Novocomum Apartments, Como, 26,

36

Pieti, 95

private, 103–4

rented by Caterina Marcenaro, 13, 104

triad of 6-story, 32

Vanizetti, 135

AR Plan Milan, 34, 44, 129, 266

arches, 291

archetypes, 8, 115, 185

architects, 7–8, 10, 13–14, 22, 32–6,

40–41, 44, 51, 108–9, 111, 128, 134,

156–7, 171, 173–4, 176–7, 223–2, 314

Angiolo Mazzoni, 22, 39

Antonio Sant’Elia, 20–22, 25

Arnaldo Foschini, 258

avant-garde, 17

building within a historically informed

vocabulary similar to that of the

Lombard Novecento, 32

Carlo Scarpa, 3, 71, 108, 127, 132, 134,

147, 151–2, 154, 157, 159, 172–4,

216, 270, 298, 301–3

contemporary, 108, 129

Edoardo Persico, 2, 4–5, 9, 35–8, 51, 53,

59–61, 74–6, 80, 92, 95, 139, 195, 248

index

329

Ernesto Rogers, 108, 124, 127–8, 134,

176, 193, 197, 202, 216, 222–4, 257,

262–3, 266, 268, 298, 300, 302

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, 20–22, 32

Giuseppe De Finetti, 32

Giuseppe Terragni, 9, 23, 25–6, 33,

36–7, 44, 262

Gustavo Giovannoni, 33

interviewing of, 10

like-minded, 258

Mario Chiattone, 22

northern, 31, 42, 216

Renzo Piano, 3, 10, 202, 205, 271, 303,

323–5

talented, 30, 53, 105, 315

Virgilio Marchi, 22

young, 41, 59, 93, 193, 224

Architectural Design, 19

architectural expressions, 43–4, 76, 202

architectural historians, 126–7

architectural history, 1, 188, 314

architectural idealists, 126

architectural interpretations, 21, 186

architectural Neorealism, 40, 135

Architectural Review, 19, 80, 195

architecture, 2, 5–6, 12–13, 17, 19–22,

32–3, 40–41, 44, 87, 123, 126–7, 129,

134, 137, 171–2, 270–71, 321–2,

324–5

advanced urban, 25

ambiguous (poised between tradition

and innovation), 132

atemporal, 174

Classical, 209–10

contemporary Roman, 207

decorative mural, 32

domestic, 93

established functionalist, 19

expressive, 174

international style, 189

Modern transparent, 291

neo-Classical, 176

Neorealist, 6, 135

non-transparent, 209

post-war, 222

progressive environmental urban, 4

radical, 171

replicating folkloristic, 189

residential, 258

scholars, 10, 172

spontaneous local, 216

students, 280

traditional, 132

vernacular, 7, 59, 108, 221

Architetti Riuniti, see AR Plan, Milan

Architettura d’Oggi, 33

Architettura Rurale Italiana, 39, 132

architettura spontanea, 186

Argan, G.C., 91, 129, 134, 147, 150, 152,

167, 174, 215, 240

Arteluce (Milan manufacturer), 236

articles, 9, 53

Testamonianza su Franco Albini, 315

artifacts, 1, 5, 61–2, 68, 87, 103, 107,

143, 147, 150–51, 164–5, 172, 268,

270–71, 285, 287, 290, 295

antique, 109, 147, 185, 281, 298

archeological, 285

contemporary, 103

domestic, 270

exhibited, 5

gem-studded, 61

historic, 103

Modern, 179

sacred, 172, 279

solid, 13

suspended, 53

urban, 197, 240, 325

Art Museum, 72

Art Nouveau, 19–20

artworks, 5, 9, 12, 66, 70–72, 103–4, 145,

147, 150–51, 154, 167

baroque, 151

choreographed, 300

complex, 174

selected, 73, 285

Ascheri, Pietro, 24

Asilo Infantile, 36

Astengo, Giovanni, 127, 129

Atreus, Treasury of, 162–4, 171

Austria, 29, 34–5

avant-garde, 1, 3, 6, 17, 20–23, 37, 44, 86,

122–4, 126–7, 138, 195, 216–17, 240,

246, 301

buildings, 37

Modern Movement, 123

museum architecture, 301

Aymonino, Carlo, 135, 137

Baldessari, Luciano, 33

Baldini & Castoldi bookstore, Milan, 78,

79

Banham, R., 196–7, 200

Baptistery of Parma, 222

Barbiano di Belgioioso, see BBPR

Barcelona, 29

Bardi, Pietro Maria, 41, 72


Bari, 55–6

basement, main floor, and upper level

floor plans for Villetta Pestarini, 100

bathrooms, 100, 113, 191, 250, 262

Bauhaus Modernists, 110

bays, 100, 189, 224, 228, 252, 312

stairwell, 98

window, 230

BBPR, 71, 79, 127, 134–6, 147, 173, 216,

223, 257, 302

and Scarpa castle rehabs, 300

Sforza Castle Museum reorganization,

298

Sforzesco intervention, 302

studio, 9

Benevolo, Leonardo, 44, 129, 216, 221

Berio, Luciano, 325

Bernardini, D., 24

blocks, 25, 29, 72, 166, 205, 216–17, 221,

249, 256, 259, 262, 266, 291, 324

3-story apartment, 259

austere housing, 256

massive Milanese housing, 216

residential, 25, 259, 262

staggered housing, 262

Bo Bardi, Lina, 41, 72–3, 134

bombings, 257, 287, 304

Bonichi, Gino (known as Scipione), 5, 21,

70

bookshelves, 8, 69–70, 76, 79, 86, 103,

269–70

cantilevered, 66

freestanding, 66

glass, 2, 241

tensile, 68

with versatile column unit, 269

Borgo San Biagio, Parma, 224, 228

Boston Globe, 315

Boswell, Jessie, 35

Bottoni, Piero, 38, 40, 94, 123, 224, 256–7

Brera Museum, Milan, 5, 6, 12, 70–72, 104,

143–4

Breuer, Marcel, 270

bridges, 259, 262

British Art Center, New Haven, 195, 209

Brown, Denise Scott, 121

Bucci, Federico, 60, 257

buildings, 12–13, 22–3, 41, 43, 104,

109–11, 128–9, 156, 166–7, 176–7,

186–9, 209–10, 215–17, 221–3, 231,

238–9, 303–4, 314–15

7-story, 224

ancient, 147

anthropomorphic, 132

apartment, 23, 25

experimental, 23

historical, 287

hybrid, 193

independent, 252

institutional, 132

kaleidoscopic, 21

linear, 251, 256

medieval, 39

new, 25, 35, 42, 65, 165

old, 98, 157

public, 13, 256

refined, 224

residential, 238

sealed, 197

technologies of, 172, 314

burial sculptures, 290

Calvino, Italo, 138

Cambiaso, Luca, 149

Camus, Renato, 28, 29, 53, 54, 137, 246,

248–50, 253

careers, 1–2, 36, 53, 72–3, 90, 108–9, 115,

148, 173, 209, 247, 249, 279, 282,

293

active, 9

architectural, 315

early, 35

Franco Albini, 79, 281–2

international, 323

Casa Elettrica, 38–40, 94–5

Casa Girasole, 132

Casa Girasole, cortile of the, 133

Casabella, 9, 19, 35, 61, 67, 68, 98, 108,

134–5, 177, 221, 237, 252, 262, 292

Casabella continuità, 7, 202, 222–3

Casabella Costruzioni, 29

Casciato, Maristella, xix, xxi, 15, 93, 117,

118, 135, 141, 142

Castelletto hillside, Genoa, 4

Castelli-Ferrieri, Anna, 35

Castello Sforzesco Museum, 173

Castelvecchio Museum, 303

Castiglioni, Luisa, 77, 187, 258

Castiglioni, Ubaldo, 33

Cathedral of San Lorenzo, 104, 163–4, 166

Cerruti, Marisa, 256

Cervinia Project, 131, 185–9, 191, 193,

195, 197, 200, 205, 207, 209, 213,

228, 241, 258

chairs, 2, 5, 70, 88, 134, 268, 270–71, 273

dining room, 8, 270

“Fiorenza”, 103

folding, 270

index

331

furnished folding pearwood frame, 152

“Gala”, 271, 273

“Luisa”, 5, 70, 270, 272

swinging, 66

chalices, 164–5, 167

Chiattone, Mario, 22

Christian Democratic government, 44,

127

churches, 22, 104, 162, 164, 245, 256, 264,

266, 286, 290, 305

CIAM, 3, 19, 34–5, 38, 43–4, 79–80, 115,

121–4, 127, 129, 131, 135, 137, 139,

196, 282

attendees from India, South America,

North America, North Africa, and

Japan, 123

cohort of young designers, 247

congresses, 44, 111, 123, 223, 282, 314

core values, 121

critics of, 258

delegates, 137

formulas for housing, 123

history of, 115

important role of, 44

inspired Modern dwellings, 254

members, 3, 123–4

protagonists, 108

and Reyner Banham, 196

secretary general, 124

clerestory daylighting, 218

cloisters, 286, 291, 293–5, 305–7

Eremitani, 304, 307

figural, 295

historic, 299

large, 287, 306–7

minor, 306–8, 315

new, 291–2, 295

rebuilding of, 291, 307

reconceived, 291

Sant’Agostino, 14, 264, 303, 305, 308–10

small, 287

square seventeenth century, 288

collaborations, 2, 5, 32, 34, 42, 45, 59, 93,

106, 110, 113, 156, 187, 202, 241,

247, 310, 315

Albini’s housing, 269

Albini’s post-war, 258

first, 152

interior design, 36

residential, 136

collections, 70, 73, 79–80, 89, 103–5, 145,

148, 151, 154, 162, 164, 166, 279,

281, 290, 300–301, 306, 310

abstract expressionist, 171

archeological, 304

baroque, 104

civic, 287, 304–5

historical, 103, 300

of paintings, 157, 169

prestigious, 73, 149

private art, 104, 143, 149

public, 105

religious, 279

collective housing, 43, 134

programs, 91

projects, 187

urban plan, 257

College of Architects and Engineers,

Milan, 32

Colombini, Luigi, 10, 131, 187–9, 192, 195

Colquhoun, A., 215, 240

column loggia voids, 158

columns, 8, 70, 100, 102, 191, 202, 228,

236, 290, 307

angled, 68

centered, 308

concrete, 226, 252

conical, 189

detached, 236

diagonal ash wood, 68

Doric, 189, 291

interior concrete filled steel, 204

lightweight serial, 70

modular, 9

paired, 307

tapered stone, 189, 191

tapered wood, 70

commissions, 20, 34, 39, 42, 53, 66, 72,

87, 109, 112, 130, 138, 143, 145, 273,

282, 298, 304–5

city building, 202

domestic, 45, 85

initial, 247

largest public, 281

major, 19, 79, 238, 281

myriad of, 86

private, 5, 36, 115

public, 5, 80, 85

small, 76

Como, 2, 23, 25, 36–7

Comunità, 19

concrete columns, 226, 252

Conforti, Claudia, 205

Congres Internationaux d’Architecture

Moderne, see CIAM

Congress, 123–4

construction, 17, 25, 41, 93, 134, 171, 185,

202, 204, 216, 221, 224, 256, 258,

303, 309, 315–16, 325


costs, 32

ecclesiastical, 163

existing thick-walled monumental, 59

full-scale, 53

interior, 59, 174

massive, 25

material, 139

methods, 3, 41–2, 44, 186, 188–9

——

familiar, 195

——

inventive, 186

——

updating, 80

——

vernacular masonry, 260

open spatial, 103

party-wall, 268

positioned, 169

primitive, 22

scaffolding, 23, 55

spatial, 58

steel, 97

techniques, 43

——

innovative, 2

——

tested new, 87

technologies, 163, 179, 188, 209, 309

transparent, 204

vernacular, 22

“Contacts between Ancient and Modern

Architecture” (photographic studies),

39

convents, 279, 285–7, 304–5

corner columns, 290–91, 307

eliminated, 3

missing cloister, 298

Correr Museum, Venice, 79, 298

Cortesi, Aurelio, 323

cortile of the Casa Girasole, 133

Costruzione Razionale della Casa, 93

Costruzioni Casabella, 35

craftsmanship, 8, 134, 217, 260, 270, 324

creative integration of tradition, 147

Cret, Paul, 110

crêuza, xiv, 231, 243, 294, 296

crypts, 162, 166

culture, 2, 72, 98, 106, 111, 124, 129, 148,

193, 222, 245, 270, 292, 298, 301,

315, 323

architectural, 126

Modern, 7, 66, 172, 272

of Modernism in Northern Italy, 2

Dal Co, Francesco, 171

D’Alfonso, Ernesto, 221

d’Andrade, Alfredo, 287

de Brabante, Margherita, 152–3

De Carlo, Giancarlo, 122

De Chirico paintings, 25

De Finetti, Giuseppe, 32

de Melo, Francisco de Assis

Chateaubriand Bandeira, 72

De Seta, Cesare, 10, 76, 112, 128–9, 134,

138, 197–8, 200, 258, 269–70

A Decade of New Architecture, 123

del Debbio, Enrico, 27

democratic housing councils, 76

density, 32, 135, 165, 250, 256, 266

balance of, 247

highest zones, 256

livable, 258

low-rise, high, 136

design

activities, 272

ateliers, 34

autonomy, 247

competitions, 39, 67, 130, 279

comprehensive, 151

concepts, 187, 290

discipline, 248

discourse, 301

dismountable, 76

economy, 4

energy, 13, 135

final, 270

first, 202

gallery, 323

graphic, 35

hardware, 68

historic exhibition, 279

industrial, 5, 7, 18, 129, 134

industry, 128–9

innovations, 91

integral, 196

intentions, 62, 239

interior, 6, 111, 127, 149, 166, 174

international, 134

language, 1, 79, 171

methodology, 2

methods, 126, 176, 217, 271

museum’s, 287

original, 13, 105, 189

practices, 53, 73, 323

prescribed modernized residential, 61

problems, 2, 92, 270, 305

processes, 85, 137, 324

radial, 166

revised La Rinascente, 202

designers, 9–10, 14, 25, 32, 34–5, 111,

113, 129, 135–6, 138, 195, 198, 257,

262, 266, 281, 285, 287

of allied practices, 14

index

333

of contemporary international style

museums, 207

introspective, 2

like-minded, 110

Modern, 270

product, 2

recognized selected, 67

talented, 171, 281, 302

design of elevations, 213

design of gallery spaces, 4

design of Palazzo Bianco, 154

design rigor, 3, 13, 73, 301

formidable, 302

systematic, 324

design teams, 157, 248, 262, 264

di Milano, Triennale, 40, 62, 63, 64, 65

di Toledo, Eleonora, 154

diagonal stairs, 101, 202

diagrams, 14, 100, 113, 115, 283, 311, 322

architectural, 239

circulation, 250

curvilinear, 55

double-loaded corridor, 236

functional, 221

urban, 221, 283

vault-capped, 310

dining, 66, 94, 100, 191

dining rooms, 94, 103, 129, 315

dining tables, 95

discipline, 73, 107

design practice of, 73

exercise of, 148, 268

of tradition, 322

dogma, 5, 13, 52, 79–80, 90, 129, 167,

176, 186, 266

correlated design, 5

Modernist, 80

Modern-style, 186

domestic rooms, 87–8

Domus, 9, 19, 38–9, 53, 67, 72, 92–3, 105,

127, 134, 154, 156, 222–3, 237

Doric columns, 189, 291

drained marshes, 25

duomo, San Lorenzo,163, 165–6, 254, 286

church of Genoa, 162

and the context of the, 163

and the lack of buildable territory near

the, 163

low-rise housing and markets that

surrounded the, 254

and the ninth-century gold Zaccaria

cross, 166

proximity to the, 165

and the widening of Via San Lorenzo

from the port to the, 286

dwellings, 10, 12–13, 39, 61, 85, 92, 94–6,

99–100, 102, 104, 106, 112, 115, 135,

148, 268, 287, 290

aristocratic, 32

efficient Taylorized, 98

medieval, 305

minimalist, 86

Modern Italian, 41, 64, 94

noble, 143

prescribed sterile, 249

private, 105

single level, 38

small, 100

stacked, 154

superimposed, 158

transparent, 168

upper level, 154

Eastern Europe, 9, 17, 29, 92, 111

Edoardo Chiossone Oriental Museum, 149

Edoardo Persico’s apartment, 248

elements, 5, 8, 12–13, 55, 65–6, 88, 90, 94,

96, 101, 103, 105, 114, 221, 223, 233,

297, 299

custom designed, 134

historical, 293

minimal abstract architectural, 131

space-defining, 88, 94

Eliot, T.S., 8, 108, 132, 187, 210

entry to the Treasury of Atreus, Mycenae,

164

environments, 71, 79, 134, 145, 151, 185–6,

195, 200, 210, 217, 247–8, 314, 322

contrasting Modern, 79

dense dwelling, 247

existing historic, 314

ephemeral constructions, 316

ephemeral installations, 2, 5, 41, 241, 303

ephemeral rooms, 2

Eremitani Civic Museum, Padua, 205, 241,

279, 281, 304, 305, 306, 307, 308,

309, 311, 312, 313, 315, 317–19

Eremitani Complex of Padua, site plan, 306

Esposizione Universale di Roma, see EUR

essays, 128, 163, 240

On the Typology of Architecture, 240

Reconstructing History, 128

Ethiopia, 136

ethos, 7, 9, 123–4, 137, 167, 216, 281, 302

collective Italian cultural, 22

emergent, 53

Futurist, 21

Modern design, 163

Modern Italian, 8, 139, 186

Rationalist, 297


Ettore Ponte Housing Quarter, 254

EUR, 30–31, 37, 42–3, 53, 131

abandoned by 1941, 43

competition entries

——

Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana, 30

——

Palazzo dell’Acqua e della Luce, 30

construction planning begins in 1937,

30

displays the enthusiasm of dueling

conservative and progressive

elements characteristic of the Fascist

era, 31

Europe, 3, 18–19, 29, 33, 123, 249

Europe, Eastern, 9, 17, 29, 92, 111

European architects, 108, 122

European designers, 176

European literary culture, 187

European models, 247, 250

European Modernists, 32, 72

European Recovery Program (also called

The Marshall Plan), 134

evolution, 12, 17, 39, 41, 95, 108, 132, 139,

176, 204, 247, 266, 268, 270–71

of Albini, 205

cultural, 131

process of, 197

regional, 258

sequential, 8

exhibitions, 1, 13, 19–20, 25, 34–5, 59–62,

70, 95, 143, 152, 215, 280, 310, 323

of Albini’s complete work titled Zero

Gravity, 323

first Roman of Rationalist architecture,

41

The Fourth International Exposition of

Decorative Arts 1930, Monza, 38

infrastructures, 4, 324

installations, 3, 134, 179, 236

Milan’s design, 41

Modern art, 171

Museum of Modern Art, 171, 272

sponsored, 19

temporary, 62

exoskeleton exposed steel structure of

the Sant’Agostino Museum, 283, 289

for the British Art Center, 195, 207, 209,

226

Kimbell Art Museum, 310

La Rinascente, 200, 209, 226, 283

Palazzo Albini, Genoa, 218, 235

structures, infill, 3

Expressionism, 70

exterior spaces, 66, 249

exterior walls, 250, 259

Fabio Filzi Housing, Milan, 28, 29, 53–54,

245, 246, 249–252, 255, 258

façades, 25, 32, 55, 194–5, 205, 209, 213,

224, 226, 228, 230, 235, 239, 241,

280, 282

crafted, 324

historic, 233

projecting south, 235

Fanfani Plan, 134, 215, 258

Fascism, 5, 8, 17, 22, 25, 29, 42, 44, 70, 90,

135, 247, 282

Fascist architecture, 43

Fascist housing administration, 137, 246

Fascist housing program, 6

Fascist Public Housing Institute, 28, 248

Fascist Union of Architects, 41

Fascists, 41–3, 121, 254, 256

Felice, Carlo A., 60

Figini, Luigi, 33, 40, 68, 231

films, 18, 21, 126

Metropolis, 21

Rocco e i suoi fratelli, 29, 246, 252, 274

filtered skylit galleries, 324

Fiorentino, Mario, 31, 130, 137

First World War, 19–20

Fontana, Lucio, 30, 35, 131

Foschini, Arnaldo, 258

Fosse Ardeantine, 31, 130, 131

The Fourth International Exposition of

Decorative Arts 1930, Monza, 38

Frascari, Marco, 303

frescoed loggia, 158, 160

Fuselli, Eugenio, 262–3

Futurism, 20–23, 86, 139

Futurists, 21, 126, 222, 240

Gabrielli, Bruno, xxi, 180, 182, 317, 323

“Gala” chair, 271, 273

Galante, Nicola, 35

galleries, filtered skylit, 324

Gardella, Ignazio, 30, 34, 71, 108, 124–5,

127, 131, 134–6, 147, 149, 174, 192,

216, 256–7, 259–60, 266, 283, 288

and Franco Albini, 259

likened to Franco Albini, 224

Genoa, 4, 5–6, 103–4, 106, 144–6, 148–9,

162–4, 166, 185–6, 215–18, 221–3,

231–3, 237–41, 257, 262–3, 282–3,

285–6, 291, 297–8

alleys of, 285

buildings of, 186, 217–18

Castelletto hillside of, 4

Fascist political scene, 148

hillside of, 217, 219

index

335

medieval, 106, 152, 158, 239, 288, 290,

293

medieval walls of, 283

museums, 5, 59, 79–80, 194

and Padua, 126, 241

and the Palazzo Albini, 215, 217, 236,

239

and the Palazzo Bianco, 5, 193

and Parma, 216

and the Piazza Dante, 149

Sant’Agostino cathedral, 279

and the Strada Nuova, 143

Genoa School of Architecture building,

125, 288

Genoese pedestrian scaled alley or

crêuza, 296

Gentili, Eugenio, 192

Ghirardo, Diane, xxi, 31, 47, 116

Giedion, Sigfried, 91, 110, 123–4

Giovannoni, Gustavo, 33

glass display cases in the Eremitani

Museum (Padua), 305

Glass House, 72, 94, 171

Goldberger, Paul, 171

Gray, Eileen, 124

Greppi, Giovanni, 32

Griffini, Enrico, 14, 93–4, 128–9, 131, 134,

216, 223, 271, 303

Grimaldi, Luca, 149

Gropius, Walter, 12–13, 19, 38–9, 122,

124, 127–8, 223–4, 249

Grosso, Orlando, 148, 287

Gruppo 7, 9, 33–5, 38, 44, 57, 93–4, 123

Guggenheim, New York City, 301

Habitat, 72–3

Haesler, Otto, 29, 111, 249

Hall of Antique Goldworks, 61, 62

Hall of Gold Medals, 60, 61

Hall, John M. Photographs, xxii, 144, 145,

146, 155, 156, 160, 161, 165, 215,

234, 235, 240, 294, 297

Harvard, 111, 127

H-columns, 307

Helg, Franca, 35, 59, 148, 157, 159, 195–7,

204, 207, 257, 260, 262, 273, 281–2,

292–3, 302, 305, 307, 309

death of, 282

demonstrates with Albini a strategy

for producing a Modern architecture

with “greater characterization in

relation to the geographic area and

social environment”, 263


reflects on the conflicts between

tradition, Modernity, and

contemporary social needs, 293

testimony of Albini lends insight into

his character and their working

rapport, 10, 293

History of Architecture, 129

Holtz Dermatological Institute, 75, 76, 271

housing projects, Ciano, Ponti, and Sauro,

253

see Cesate, INA-Casa

see Fabio Filzi, Cesate, INA-Casa

see Mangiagalli

see Scandiano

Via Circo housing, 231

IFACP housing projects, 28–9, 53, 248,

250, 256–7, 266

Il Mattino di Padova, 325

Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura, see

MSA

Il problema sociale economico e costruttivo

dell’abitazione, 128

INA, 55–6, 230, 262

complemented Albini’s fair pavilion

projects, 53

Exhibition Pavilions, 12, 29

Office Buildings, 5, 55, 97, 186, 195,

214, 216–17, 218, 220, 221, 223–7,

230, 239, 258

Offices, 221

Parma

——

diagram of, 225

——

elevation detail, 230

——

spiral stair elevation, 226

——

spiral stair perspective, 227

Pavilion, 57–8

——

Bari, 52, 53

——

Milan, 57, 58

INA-Casa, 258

the 14-year government stimulus plan

for public housing, 258

Cesate Housing, 136

Cesate neighborhood, 265

Cesate neighborhood unit plans, 267

housing administration, 266

project for workers’ housing on the

Padana 1949, 258

innovation, 5, 19, 33, 41, 85, 108, 121, 132,

152, 169, 176, 202, 258

architectural, 23, 127, 213, 222, 314

favored, 111

first Modern, 44

formal, 21


spatial, 32

structural, 216

tectonic, 241

Istituto Universitario di Architettura di

Venezia, see IUAV

Italian Aeronautic Exhibition, 60

Italian architecture, 19, 43, 107, 128, 193,

198, 217, 223

conservative Modern, 25

critics, 192

defined, 216

late Modern, 293

Modern, 14, 44, 260

new Modern, 59

practices of, 107

rural, 132

traditional, 207

Italian Neorealism, see Neorealism

Italian Rationalism, 2, 25, 36

Italian Rationalists, 1, 19, 44, 123, 169; see

also Rationalists

IUAV, 126–7, 266

Jacobsen, Arne, 224

JFK Presidential library design, 315

Johnson, Philip, 4, 19, 39, 86, 134, 168–72,

191

journals, 19, 237

Architectural Design, 19

Architectural Forum, 19, 168, 195

Architectural Review, 19, 80, 195

Casabella, 9, 19, 35, 61, 67, 68, 98, 108,

134–5, 177, 221, 237, 252, 262, 292

Casabella continuità, 7, 202, 222–3

Casabella Costruzioni, 29

Comunità, 19

Domus, 9, 19, 38–9, 53, 67, 72, 92–3,

105, 127, 134, 154, 156, 222–3, 237

Edilizia Moderna, 188

Habitat, 72–3

L’Architecture d’aujord’hui, 19

L’Architettura, 19

Metron, 10, 127, 150, 187, 193

Quadrante, 19, 127

Rassegna, 19

Rassegna italiana, 33

Stile, 19

T-Square Club Journal of Philadelphia,

110

Werk, 19

Zodiac, 115

Kahn, Louis, 12, 108–13, 124, 172–3,

177–9, 196, 197, 206–10, 223, 226,

310–12, 314

British Art Center, xii, 195, 206–9, 208,

226

CIAM and Kahn, 19, 108, 111, 115, 119,

120, 124, 127, 139, 196, 223, 242, 314

collaborations with Anne Tyng and

Harriet Pattison, 111

commitment to open planning, 110

death of, 207

expression of monumentality, 312

and Fisher House, 111

and Franco Albini, 110–11, 115, 177,

179, 195–6, 207, 312

Fruchter house plan, 113

galleries focused exclusively inward,

290

historian David Brownlee, 110

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 310

manipulation of mass at Exeter and

Yale, 228

Richards Medical Center, 196–7, 223

stair towers, 177, 209

unbuilt Fruchter house plan 1951–54,

112

vault celebrated for its controlled

infiltration of daylight, 310

Kelly, Richard, 310, 312

Kennedy, Bobby, 314–15

Kennedy, Jackie, 10, 16, 314–15

Kidder-Smith, George, 144, 179, 193, 260,

276

Kimbell Art Museum, 309, 310, 311, 312

La Rinascente Department Store, 198,

199, 200, 201, 203, 204, 205, 223

Labó, Mario, 149, 167

Lancia, Emilio, 32, 53, 93, 134

Lang, Fritz (German filmmaker), 21

Lange, Alexandra, 303

language, 41, 51, 132, 186, 197, 221, 282,

303

abstract, 19

accessible, 4

aesthetic, 45

antagonistic, 270

architectural, 115, 258

of architecture, 282

expressive, 292

geometrical, 25

interior, 12

inventive, 59

isolated national, 197

new spatial, 147, 185

reformed, 109

style-bound, 179

unedited, 135

index

337

L’Architecture d’aujord’hui, 19

L’Architettura, 19

Leet, Stephen, 57, 61, 64

Levi, Carlo, 35

Levi-Montalcini, Gino, 35

Levi-Montalcini, Rita, 304

Libera, Adalberto, 30, 33, 37, 38, 41–2,

108, 136, 258

Lingeri, Pietro, 37

living room for a villa, 65

loggia, frescoed, 158, 160

loggias, 157–8, 291, 293, 307

interior, 295

traditional, 307

Louis I. Kahn, see Kahn, Louis

Louis I. Kahn Collection, 108, 112, 196,

310, 311

see Marshall Meyers Collection

“Luisa” chair, 272

Magagnato, Licisco, 303

Magistretti, Vico, 9, 124, 134, 270

Magnasco, Alessandro, 104

Manfredini, Enea, 260, 262

Mangiagalli Housing, unit plans, 259, 260

Manuale dell’architetto, 128, 134

Marcenaro, Caterina, 10, 12–13, 72,

90–91, 103–4, 147–53, 156, 162–4,

238, 257, 269, 281, 302, 315

apartment before 2007 restoration,

106

apartment entry stair, 97

apartment following restoration, 107

apartment in Palazzo Rosso, Genoa, 91,

97, 104–7, 149, 179, 233, 287

death of, 105

galleries of, 106

suspended fireplace hood and stone

hearth in Genoese apartment, 105

Marchi, Virgilio, 22

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, 20–22, 32

Marshall Meyers Collection, University of

Pennsylvania, 310, 311

The Marshall Plan, 134

Mazzoni, Angiolo, 22, 39

Melograni, Carlo, 224

Mesunco, Francesco, 35

Metron, 10, 127, 150, 187, 193

Metropolis, 21

Metropolitana (subway), 3, 7, 134, 238,

257, 273, 316

Meyer, Hannes, 124

MIAR, 34

Michelucci, Giovanni, 39, 108, 128–9, 134,

147, 216

Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 12–13, 29,

38–9, 53, 85–7, 124, 169, 191

Milan, 5–7, 19–20, 23–5, 28–9, 31–2, 34–8,

43–4, 53–9, 70–72, 74–6, 123–4,

126–7, 135–8, 245–8, 250–51, 254,

256–7, 323–4

apartments, 35

Brera Museum, 5, 143

Parco Sempione, 60

reinvigorating of, 223

skyline, 124

storefronts, 74

Vittorio Emanuele Galleria, 78

Milan Airport, competition entry, 53–4

Milan fairgrounds, 257

Milan Galleria installation, 74

Milan INA Fair Pavilion, 54

Milan Metropolitana (subway), see

Metropolitana

Milan Polytechnic Exhibition, 174; see also

Zero Gravity

Milan Triennale, 2, 9, 12, 35, 39, 53, 58, 66,

123, 174, 193, 202, 251

Milan Verde focus, 256

Milanese galleries, 41

Milanese industrialists, 246

Milanese middle class, 32

Milanese Novecento elite, 37

Milanese Rationalists, 9, 22

Milanese skyscrapers, 124

Milanese Studio BBPR, 123

Milano Verde (Green Milan) urban design

proposal, 34, 43, 42–4, 247, 256–7

Minetti House, 271

Minoletti, Giulio, 131, 256

mobile piston stand for Pisano’s

Margherita di Brabante, 153

model of the first proposal for La

Rinascente Department Store, 200

models, 34, 92, 94, 111, 134, 153, 186,

197, 200, 202, 215, 222, 251, 271,

273, 280, 310

academic, 135

existing Modern, 239

historic urban, 247

installed, 94

international, 136

Modern compositional, 29

outdoor, 78

permeable residential, 268

superblock, 251

unique Genoese, 231

urban low-cost housing, 29

vitrine, 77


Modern architecture, 21–2, 34, 37, 39,

57, 79, 107, 109–10, 121–2, 124, 128,

130, 171, 177, 185, 193–4, 224, 245–6

concurrent Italian, 163, 197

criticisms of, 186

early Italian, 23

integrated, 189

late, 115

opened to “a great deal of flexibility” 249

radical, 22

rational, 108

retreat from, 80

tradition-informed, 137

transformation of, 109

Modern language, of construction, 287

Modern Movement, 35, 91, 121, 123, 135,

241

argues for the need to think beyond

the building to a grander scale of

intervention, 129

avant-garde, 123

and comparisons with the projects

built for the Fascist housing

administration during the 1930s, 137

continuity of, 121–39

and Ernesto Nathan Rogers emerged

as a leader of architectural

innovation in the 1950s and 1960s,

127

and the evolution of Albini’s work, 139

and the planning of new

neighborhoods, 135

Modernists, renowned Milanese, 92

Molinari, Luca, 79

Monestiroli, Antonio, 174

Moretti, Luigi, 10, 133, 150, 216

Morris, Richard, 224

Movimento Italiano per l’Architettura

Razionale, see MIAR

Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura, see

MSA

MSA, 7, 34, 44, 107, 109, 121, 126–7, 132,

137, 187, 216, 223, 321

Mucchi, Jenny, 66

Mulazzani, Marco, 174, 194

Museum of Art of São Paolo, 72

Museum of Modern Art exhibitions, 171,

272

Museum of Modern Art in New York, 270

Museum of Roman Civilization, 24

Museum of Sant’Agostino, Genoa, 104,

117, 118, 125, 149, 152, 181, 205,

238, 241, 242, 279–300, 280, 283,

286, 289, 291–5, 297–300

Museum of the Treasury of San Lorenzo,

xvii, 104, 140, 140, 162, 164, 165,

167–9, 177, 182, 184, 236, 271

museums, 1–3, 71–3, 104, 143, 145,

147–9, 151–3, 157, 162–5, 167–9,

171, 173, 177, 179, 280–83, 287–8,

290–94, 303–4

archeological, 287

civic, 149, 237, 281, 287

civic collection of Padua, see Eremitani

Civic Museum

contemporary, 177

domestic, 143, 148

historic, 241

international style, 207

see Palazzo Bianco

see Palazzo Rosso

post-war, 85

public, 154, 156

restored, 8, 144, 289

traditional conceptions of, 292

Mussolini, 17, 22, 25, 30–31, 37, 41–2, 44,

72, 247–8

Muzio, Giovanni, 25, 32, 41, 60

Mycenae, 162–4

Napoleanic Galleries, Milan, 70

neighborhoods, 137, 231, 241, 246, 249,

251–2, 266, 287, 290

with densities lower than the cities

they abutted, 135

with green space, transportation, and

infrastructure, 7

new, 135, 250, 252, 256, 263, 268, 283

post-war housing, 216

with single-family houses, 98

Neorealism, 44, 121, 123, 126–7, 129, 131,

135, 137–9, 195, 216

architectural, 40, 135

cultural shift to, 115

influences, 273

in Italian films, 6, 135

in Italy, 298

in post-war Italy, 121–39

trands in construction, 258

Neutra, Richard, 86, 127

New Canaan Glass House, 86, 168, 170

new construction, 6, 44, 143, 293

new exhibition typologies, 147

new Genoa school of architecture

building, 125, 288

New Municipal Offices Genoa, 195, 215,

217, 219; see also Palazzo Albini

New Pinacoteca, Eremitani Civic Museum

of Padua, 306, 309, 312, 313

index

339

newspapers, 72

Boston Globe, 315

Il Mattino di Padova, 325

Nizzoli, Marcello, 35–6, 59–60, 61, 74, 270

Noorda, Bob, 7, 129, 134, 257

Novecento architects, 25, 31, 34

Novecento architecture, 23–5, 31–3

Novecento style, 32, 54

Novecentro models, 252

Novocomum Apartments, Como, 26, 36

octagonal stairs, 158, 307, 309

office buildings, 2, 4, 134, 195, 213, 215,

217, 221–4, 228, 231, 233, 235–9, 241

bureaucratic, 231

common, 239

in Genoa and Parma, 213–41

government, 25

Modern, 216

new, 216, 231

urban, 115

office floors, 231, 237, 262

office interiors, 218

offices, 42, 53, 104, 130, 213, 218, 221,

223–4, 228, 231–2, 234–5, 240, 262,

287, 289, 306, 324

administrative, 231

bureaucratic, 195

civic planning, 148

insurance, 224

interior, 228

Modern, 230

municipal, 148, 186, 217, 232, 237, 262

of Palazzo Albini, 232

of Parma, 228

stacked, 217

terraced, 239

Officine Elettrochimiche Trentine, 129,

191

Olivetti, Roberto, 111, 112, 119, 141

Olivetti, showrooms, 129

Olivetti, sponsorship of Modern

buildings, 129

Olivetti Store, Paris, 18, 70

On the Typology of Architecture, 240

ONC, 42

open plan, 12, 72, 85–6, 98, 102–3, 110,

127, 177, 191

assemblage, 189

galleries, 177

Modern, 311

open stairways, 39, 86, 96, 147, 191

Opera Nazionale Combattenti, see ONC

Otterlo, 122, 124, 223

Otterlo CIAM meetings, 223

outdoor dwelling areas, 98

outdoor space, 291, 307

Padua, 126, 138, 205, 241, 281–2, 304–5,

310, 325

civic collection of, 304

convent foundations in, 305

Eremitani Civic Museum, 279, 281,

304–6

and Genoa, 126, 241, 282

Pinacoteca, 55, 310

Padua Civic Museum, see Eremitani Civic

Museum, Padua

Pagano, Giuseppe, 5, 9, 22, 29–31, 34–5,

37, 39, 41, 53, 58–61, 64, 95, 98, 108,

127–8, 132, 252, 256–7

paintings, 20, 70–72, 88, 103, 105, 147,

149, 151–2, 157–8, 172, 304, 325

easel, 152

époque, 143

framed, 312

freestanding, 147

historic, 8, 144

old, 71

precious, 281

seventeenth-century, 73

Palanti, Giancarlo, 29, 35, 53, 54, 246

Palanti, Giuseppe, 30, 111, 132, 250, 253,

256–7

and Albert Camus, 28, 54, 245, 252, 258

builds for the Fascist housing

administration during the 1930s, 137

commissioned by the Istituto Fascista

Autonomo per la Casa Popolare, 248

Fabio Filzi Housing, 28, 249

models considered as icons of the

Rationalist order, 249

republishes Giuseppe Pagano’s

photographs, 186

Palazzo Abatellis Gallery, Palermo, 147,

151, 154, 159, 174

Palazzo Abatellis Museum, Palermo, 157

Palazzo Albini, 4, 215, 217, 218, 219,

231–2, 235–6, 237, 238–9, 241, 262,

283, 291

green roof terraces with view over

Palazzo Tursi and the Strada Nuova,

235

green rooftop of, 240

handrail detail, 238

meeting hall with “Lampada Ochetta”

custom lighting and framed palace

view across the Strada Nuova, 236


rooftop as a contemplative garden,

239

Palazzo Bianco, 5, 9, 16, 72, 79, 104, 120,

140 143–4, 145–6, 149, 150, 151,

152–3, 154 174, 180–81, 187, 193–4,

213, 231, 221

collections, 152

original designed and built by Luca

Grimaldi, 149

renovated cortile of the, 145

renovated gallery of the, 146

Palazzo Bianco Museum, 10, 73, 79, 128,

143, 147, 213, 221

Palazzo Brignole Sale (known as Palazzo

Rosso), 154

Palazzo dei Congressi at EUR’, 42, 37

Palazzo dell’Acqua e delle Luce, 30

Palazzo Rosso, 104, 149, 157, 231

cortile, 155

frescoed loggia enclosed in glass, 160

original handle mounts at, 158

painting gallery, 156

spiral stair, 161

Palazzo Rosso façade, Strada Nuova,

Genoa, 144

Palazzo Rosso Gallery, 55, 97, 156, 271

Palazzo Rosso Museum, 13, 73, 104, 149,

154–61, 172, 179, 193, 315

Palazzo Tursi, 218, 231, 232, 235, 239

elevated courtyard is encountered en

route to Palazzo Albini municipal

office and city council chambers,

Genoa, 232

Palazzo Tursi, Palazzo Albini section

diagram, 233

palazzos, 30, 37, 104, 149, 151, 186, 202,

230, 233–5, 239–40, 325

aligned and built on the edge of the

medieval city, 231

baroque, 157

concept of, 148

courtyards, 234

existing, 231

massive monumental, 233

Modern Roman, 202

original Brignole Sale, 158

original seventeenth-century, 154

transformed Renaissance, 231

urban, 86, 197

well-proportioned, 231

Palermo, 79, 127, 132, 147, 154

Parco Sempione, Milan, 60

Paris Fair 1925, 33

Paris Pompidou Center Museum, 323

Parma, 103, 185–6, 195, 214–17, 220–24,

226, 228, 231, 233, 235, 237, 239,

241, 258

Baptistery, 221–2

historic, 228

INA Office Building, 5, 55, 97, 186, 195,

214, 216–18, 221, 223–7, 230, 239,

258

Roman grid plan, 230

Parondi, Rocco, 246

Partito Nazionale Fascista, see PNF

Pascoletti, Cesare, 24

Pattison, Harriet, 111

Paulucci, Enrico, 35, 68

penthouses, 218, 221

new, 104

reconstructed, 104, 149

Peressutti, Enrico, 123, 127, 266, 300

Persico, Edoardo, 2, 4–5, 9, 35–8, 51, 53,

59–60, 61, 74–6, 80, 92, 95, 139, 195,

248

Perugini, Giuseppe, 31, 130

Philip Johnson’s Underground Painting

Gallery, 168, 170

photographs, 12, 14, 25, 39, 55, 108, 172,

189, 250, 315

black and white, 55

of Italian architecture, 22

Pagano’s, 40

period, 13

Piacentini, Marcello, 30, 33, 41–2

Piano, Renzo, 3, 10, 202, 205, 271, 303,

323–5

piano nobile levels, 149, 154, 230–31,

293

Piazza Dante, 149, 232

Piazza Fiume, 197–8, 202

Piazza Fiume façade, La Rinascente

Department Store, 198, 223

Piazza Fontana, Milan, 78

Piccapietra commercial and residential

complex, 262, 263

Piccapietra covered pedestrian sidewalk

detail, 264

Piccinato, Luigi, 30

Pieti Apartment, 95

pilasters (columns), 100–101, 189, 224,

228, 230

Pirovano, Giuseppe, 7, 187, 189, 193, 195

Pirovano project, 194

Pirovano Youth Hostel, 3, 5, 8, 124, 131,

186–7, 188, 189–91, 192, 193, 194,

195, 200, 213, 223, 235

and La Rinascente Department Store,

186

index

341

third and fourth floor plans for the, 190

Pisano, Giovanni, 72, 152

Piva, Antonio, 159, 162, 281, 303, 309, 323

plan of Philip Johnson’s underground

Painting Gallery, New Canaan estate,

170

plan for “Room for a Man” installation, 63

plan and section diagrams of the Treasury

of Atreus at Mycenae, 163

plan of the underground Treasury of San

Lorenzo, 169

planes, 55, 57, 67, 101, 218, 325

abstract, 56

blue fixed, 101

continuous wall, 262

implied horizontal, 76

massive thick, 131

thin concrete balcony, 262

translucent, 36, 55

transparent, 60

vertical, 55

planning, 30, 33, 111, 167, 207, 213, 254,

258

of congress events, 111

for EUR, 30

initiatives, 257

integral, 129, 273

interventions, 2

long-term, 257

married city with the plastic arts, 249

master, 7

open, 110

residential, 247

plans, 21, 28, 30, 32, 38, 42–4, 63, 66,

109–11, 113, 115, 163, 168–70,

256–7, 260, 262, 281, 283

abstract, 167

comprehensive, 34

final, 203

gallery, 309

geometric, 114

non-rectangular, 132

office, 228, 236

repetitive, 217

structural, 218

Plischke, Ernst, 29, 56, 274

PNF, 43–4, 128

poetry, 9, 20, 64, 66, 69, 80, 172, 186, 325

Poggi (manufacturer), 76, 134, 270, 276,

277

policies, 17, 246, 256, 273

communist, 17

public housing authority, 256

urban planning, 256

Pollini, Gino, 33, 38, 40, 68, 123, 231

poly-functional design agendas, 124

Polytechnic School of Architecture Milan,

3, 33, 53–4, 95, 126–7, 138, 324

Pompidou Center, Paris, 202, 205

Ponti, Gio, 10, 32, 41, 53, 65, 72, 86, 92–4,

98, 105, 132, 134, 173, 213, 223, 228,

250, 253

popular housing, 3, 94, 247, 249, 251,

257–9, 263, 269, 271, 273

and furniture, 245

government-sponsored, 110

portrait of Franco Albini, 1, 11, 14

post boxes, custom-designed, 224

post offices, 22, 25, 42, 128

Post-Modernism, 126

post-war, 126, 136, 217, 223, 246–7, 266,

301

buildings, 185–6, 197, 217

cities, 44

construction, 44

housing, 135

housing morphology, 258–68

Italy, 121–39, 147, 246

Modernism, 127–9

Modernity among Italian architects,

224

museum designs and projects, 42, 174

Pound, Ezra, 8, 108

Prampolini, Enrico, 21

pre-war housing in Milan, 2, 5, 247–54

Prina, Vittorio, 55, 187, 271

problems, 37–8, 51–2, 57, 70, 76, 174,

176, 194, 197, 200, 213, 216, 248–9,

254, 268, 272, 315–16, 321

allegorical, 163

archetypal, 3

architectural, 143, 195, 210

contextual, 223

formal, 8, 303

multiple, 70

national, 95

new, 34, 73, 215

pragmatic, 13, 88

rhetorical, 41

solving of, 128, 157

spatial, 51

technical, 34

urban, 210

utilitarian, 98

product design, 137, 268, 271, 281

projects, 53–4, 79–80, 113, 128–30,

135–7, 162–3, 172–4, 176–7, 185–6,

188–9, 192–3, 195, 215–16, 256, 279,

281–3, 304, 314–16


apartment, 104

benchmarked, 128

commercial, 73

comprehensive, 157

contemporary, 262

early, 5, 23, 122, 251

exemplary, 13

final, 282

formalist, 258

geometric, 177

grand, 42

major, 28

new, 279, 305

original, 103, 157

proto-historical, 287

proto-vernacular, 193

published, 7

rehabilitation, 298

revised, 202

small-scale, 51, 85

public housing, 28, 258

competitions, 94

dense, 93

elements of, 94

new, 254

projects, 76

publications, 1, 19, 22, 34–5, 43–4, 109,

123, 172, 314

Albergo Rifugio Pirovano a Cervinia,

187

Architettura d Oggi, 33

Architettura Rurale Italiana, 39, 132

Casabella, 127, 221

Costruzione Razionale della Casa, 93

Costruzioni Casabella, 35

A Decade of New Architecture, 123

History of Architecture, 129

Manuale dell’architetto, 128, 134

Neues Bauen in Italien, 193

New Directions in Italian Architecture,

14, 223

Rationalist Manifesto, 33–4, 92–3, 186

Un dibattito sulla tradizione in

architettura, 321

Vers un Architecture, 33

Zero Gravity, 174, 323, 325

Pucci, Antonio, 256–7, 262

Punta Ala, 111, 113–15, 177

Purini, Franco, 311–12

Quadrante, 19, 127

Rassegna italiana, 33

Rationalism, 23, 35, 38–9, 41, 44, 72, 115,

195, 216

initiated, 33

and international style, 221

interpretations of, 35

Italian, 2, 25, 36

northern origins of, 41

orthodox, 192

pre-war, 127

protagonists, 5

radical, 59

Swedish, 9

urban, 185

Rationalist Manifesto, 33–4, 92–3, 186

Rationalists, 12, 29, 33–5, 41, 76, 79, 87,

92–3, 107, 138–9, 192, 195, 216, 240

Albini and his fellow, 7, 37, 86, 127, 174

architects, 25, 31

architecture, 39–41, 246

committed and leading architectural

idealists, 126

designers, 23

first generation, 222

and the Gruppo 7 group, 224

house, 85–116

Milanese, 9, 22

Modernism, 189

Modernity, 3

and Novecento designers, 42

projects, 3, 108, 223

renowned, 138

Roman, 41

sensibilities of, 262

young, 39, 53, 256

Rauschenburg, Bob, 325

Realismo e Architettura Povera, 221

Reconstructing History, 128

reconstruction, 5–7, 17–18, 44, 124, 127,

149, 193, 215, 254, 257, 291, 306

accelerating Italian, 195

early post-war, 8

patient, 150

redesign of Palazzo Rosso, 159

Reggio Emilia, 6, 258, 263

INA-Casa project, 262

and masterplans by Albini for the city,

247

urban plan, 258

regimes, 19, 22–3, 25, 28–9, 33, 35–8,

41–4, 52, 55, 72, 76, 80, 91, 93, 247,

249, 254, 257

failed Fascist, 38

housing programs, 91, 247

modernization campaign, 42

program for urban modification for

Milan during the 1930s, 254

style of, 43

index

343

region, 25, 41, 188–9, 257–8, 263

relics, 164, 166, 171, 290

Renaissance Genoa, see Genoa

renovated cortile of the Palazzo Bianco

on the Strada Nuova, Genoa, 145

renovated gallery of the Palazzo Bianco,

146

renovation, 5, 72, 104–5, 150, 157, 281,

283, 299, 306

historic gallery, 147, 282

launched Albini’s Palazzo Bianco, 9

projects, 143

Renzo Piano Building Workshop, 323, 325

residential commissions, 80, 88, 257

residential projects, 7, 87, 247

residential stair at Torre Formiggioni, 92

Ricci, Leonardo, 132, 304

Richards Medical Center, 124, 196

Richards Tower Building, 109

Ridolfi, Mario, 42, 108, 130, 135–6, 216,

224, 303

Rietveld’s Schroeder House, 34

Rifugio, 189, 192, 200

Rocco e i suoi fratelli, 29, 246, 252, 274

Rogers, Ernesto, 108, 124, 127–8, 134,

176, 193, 197, 202, 216, 222–4, 257,

262–3, 266, 268, 298, 300, 302

Rogers, Richard, 205, 323

Roman amphitheater, 304, 306

Roman architects, 130–31

Roman artifacts, 305

Roman construction, 108

Roman housing types, 132

Roman Modernity, 42

Roman Rationalists, 41

Romanesque architecture, 168

Romano, Giovanni, 30, 34, 54, 60, 62, 148,

256

Rome, 8, 19–20, 30–33, 35, 37, 41–3,

127–30, 132–3, 136, 138, 186–7, 189,

191, 193, 195, 197–8, 205, 209

beltway, 137

campus, 35

catacombs, 31

Foro Olimpico, 27

and New York, 38

nineteenth-century, 185

Olympics, 42

La Rinascente Department Store, 5

Tiburtino Quarter, 135

“Room for a Man” by Albini, Triennale di

Milano, 64

rooms, 12, 55, 60, 62, 64–7, 70–71, 86–90,

94, 96, 98, 102–3, 110, 151, 172, 233,

250, 302–3, 310–11

circular, 168, 171, 177

cylindrical, 167

daylit, 8

densely-occupied, 257

discrete, 86, 113

elemental, 113

elongated, 310

enfilade, 96, 149

exterior, 100

figural, 167

internal, 290

middle, 113

nodal, 303

ordered, 311

original, 151

paired, 113

powder, 100

primary, 89, 259

proportioned, 86

scaled, 73

small, 95, 110

transparent, 241

Rossellini, Roberto, 135

Rossi, Aldo, 137, 215, 240, 325

row houses, 135, 268

Rowe, Colin, 240

Rudolph, Paul, 174

ruins, 287, 292, 304–5

ancient Roman, 130

revitalized, 281

Russian Constructivism, 17, 19, 23, 36,

54–5

Sabaudia, 42

sacred robes in display cases, 168

Sacripanti, Maurizio, 304, 311–12

Sala dell’Aerodinamica, 60

Sala dell’antica oreficeria, 60–61

Sambonet, Roberto, 14

Samonà, Giuseppe, 10, 51, 57, 61, 111,

126–7, 129, 174, 217, 300

San Domenico, 290

San Francesco, 290

San Gimignano, 196

San Lorenzo Museum, 5, 10, 104, 113,

115, 128, 131, 149, 162–5, 167–9,

177, 221, 236, 286, 315

San Silvestro, 283

San Siro housing project, 53, 94, 250


Sant’Agostino, 281, 283, 285, 288–94,

295, 297–300, 304–5, 307

complex, axonomentric of the, 285

first floor gallery with Modern

colonnade, 299

interior ramp-stair circulation, 297

lower lever sunken glass court, 300

thirteenth-century triangular cloister

at, 286

upper floor gallery with missing

cloister corner column, 298

Sant’Agostino Cathedral, 279, 284

Sant’Agostino Gallery, 282, 294

Sant’Agostino Museum, 104, 125, 149,

152, 205, 238, 241, 279, 280, 281,

283, 285, 287, 290, 291, 315

exoskeleton exposed steel structure of

the, 289

ground floor entry level gallery plan,

293

and view into new cloister and sunken

glass light well of the, 292

Sant’Elia, Antonio, 20–22, 25

São Paulo, 41, 72–3, 138, 282

Sartoris, Alberto, 17, 19, 29, 33, 56–7, 111,

249

Sarzano neighborhood, 125, 232, 286–7

satellite cities, 257

Savioli, Leonardo, 132

Scandiano site plan, 263

Scarpa, Carlo, 3, 71, 108, 127, 132, 134,

147, 151–2, 154, 157, 159, 172–4,

216, 270, 298, 301–3

Castelvecchio renovation, Verona, 175


hinged painting mounts at the Palazzo

Abatellis in Palermoscarpa, 159

museums, 302

Palazzo Abatellis, 79

“rewrote history”, 303

Schindler, Rudolf, 86

School of Albini, 323

school, architecture, 10, 111, 126–7

School of Architecture, Milan Polytechnic,

54

schools, 41, 53, 70, 72, 121, 126–7, 129,

134–5, 138, 162, 172–3, 256, 266,

281, 303, 305

progressive design, 126

Scipione, 5, 70

& Black and White exhibit, Brera

Museum, Milan, 6

installation, 143

Scrovegni Chapel, 304, 305–6

Scully, Vincent, 171

sculptures, 20, 88, 123, 290

Scuola Estiva (Summer School), Venice

1956, 121

Securit (glass manufacturer), 67

selected artworks, 73, 285

Sforzesco galleries, 302

site plan for Villetta Pestarini, Milan, 99

sites, 70, 76, 98, 132, 135, 147, 149, 194,

200, 206, 210, 215, 221, 286–7, 290,

292, 304, 306

archaeological, 305

bombed convent, 149

corner, 98

empty, 98

historic urban, 33

independent, 71

local, 247, 281

pre-existing urban, 207

ruined Sarzano, 285

wooded, 112

sketches for the Milano Verde urban

design proposal, 43

SOM office building, 232

spaces, 12–13, 51, 66, 71–2, 86–7, 96,

98, 100, 109–10, 112, 115, 131, 134,

151–2, 166–9, 174, 177, 305–7

abstract, 66, 311

amorphous, 114

artificial, 71

atmospheric, 87

civic, 288

closed, 164

commercial, 200

defined, 264

dining, 38

discrete elemental, 86

distinct figural, 71, 297

domestic, 5, 39, 86

double height, 88

geometric, 151

hexagonal, 114

industrial, 132

internal, 228

interwoven exhibition, 309

living, 100

minimally-acceptable floor, 249

Modern, 12, 115, 283, 297

negative interstitial, 172

neutral, 110, 151

prismatic, 152

public, 30, 59, 109, 126, 240, 252, 266

index

345

skylit, 323

storage, 106

subdividing of, 55

transparent, 97

utilitarian, 259

vertical, 154

spanning arches, 291

spiral stairs, 55, 73, 201, 204, 268

4-story, 157

elliptical, 209

red, 73

transparent, 55, 315

with vertical axis, 96

Stadio dei Marmi, Rome’s Foro Olimpico

(formerly Foro Mussolini), 27

stair towers, 249, 252

common, 250

detached, 260

extruded, 252

isolated triangular, 259

public, 29

staircases, 88, 96–7, 102

enveloped monumental ceremonial,

177

public, 233

stairs, 2, 56, 78–9, 88, 96, 100–101, 161,

178, 204, 207, 233–4, 252, 262, 288,

307, 311

circular, 177, 209

continuous ramp, 290

exposed stone, 234

external, 205

first suspended, 97

floating, 204, 233, 241

fluid, 98

large octagonal steel, 159

liberated circular, 259

lightweight, 100

open tread loft, 105

from Palazzo Tursi to Palazzo Albini—

beginning of pedestrian promenade

to Castelletto Panorama, 234

ship’s ladder, 90

spiral service, 100

suspended open tread, 66

symmetrical, 234

vertical, 262

for the Villa Neuffer, Lago Maggiore, 56

Stazione Termini, Rome (train station),

130

Steel House, 94, 202

Steel House for the V Triennale, Milan, 94

Stile, 19

stone, 101–2, 164, 166, 172

stone artifacts, 298

Strada Nuova, 104, 143–5, 148, 154, 218,

231, 234–7

Stradone Sant’Agostino, 286–8

Strozzi, Bernardo, 154

Studio Albini, 10–11, 13, 185–6, 197–8,

241, 263, 265, 281, 283, 285, 287–9,

302, 304–7, 309, 311, 314–15, 323,

325

assignment to design a new museum,

305

with Franca Helg and Franco Albini, 11

had a track record of notable

accomplishments, 279

Helg’s reflection on her career in, 148

partners of, 159

Renzo Piano worked as a student

intern at, 205

studios, 10, 34, 85, 100–101, 111, 132,

137, 205, 224, 238, 252, 279, 281–2,

291–3, 298, 304, 309, 324

artist’s, 95

professional, 111

support structures, for paintings using

architectural fragments, 152

suspended fireplace hood and stone

hearth in Marcenaro’s Genoese

apartment, 105

Switzerland, 122

symbols, 23, 25, 31, 37, 76, 130, 216, 246

new architectural, 138

production of historicized, 3

Tafuri, Manfredo, 40, 69, 87–8, 129, 131–2,

134–5, 150, 153, 163, 166, 174, 194,

216–17, 240, 304

Tange, Kenzo, 223

Taut, Bruno, 124

technological Modernism, 132

Tentori, Francesco, 96, 115, 192–3, 197,

238, 258–9

Terragni, Giuseppe, 9, 23, 25, 26, 33, 36,

37, 44, 262

Testamonianza su Franco Albini, 315

tholos rooms, 163, 166

Torre Formiggioni, residential stair at, 92

Torre Velasca office tower, 132, 223

towers, 90, 196, 223

8-story apartment, 135

10-story office, 239

included 5-floor, 263


town halls, 231, 234

of Cervinia, 187

of Genoa, 231

tradition, 1–2, 6–8, 34, 107–9, 121, 131–2,

179, 185–7, 191–2, 194–5, 209–10,

213, 216, 221–4, 240–41, 292–3,

298–9, 321–2

architectural, 126, 187, 204, 321

autonomous, 195

Classical, 109, 240

complex, 52

contemporary, 321

creative integration of, 147

cultural, 108, 209

folk, 40

life-style, 321

local, 79, 112, 223, 239, 273

Modern, 240, 315

redefining, 272

reinterpreting, 186

rereading, 258

of Roman pretension of adorned

surfaces, 42

of structural sincerity, 216

vernacular building, 128

transparency, 2, 4, 9, 12, 39, 42, 66, 87–8,

102, 138, 179, 207, 281, 289

internalized, 88–9, 167

relational, 88, 98, 104, 152

weightless, 43

“Transparent Radio”, 67

Treasury of Atreus at Mycenae, 163, 164

Treasury Museum, 165, 168, 172, 223

Treasury of San Lorenzo, 162, 164, 165,

167, 168

Genoese silver craft installation, 167

plan of the underground, 169

Treasury of San Lorenzo Gallery, 165

Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum, 104,

149, 162, 177, 236

triangular cloisters, 283, 287, 293

Triennale building, Milan, 323

Triennale Exhibition, 53

Triennale Gallery, 41, 62–5, 72, 94–5

and the 1936 and 1940 shows, 62

and the domestic stage sets for the,

76

exhibition installation of Albini’s

oeuvre, 323

experimental rather than

demonstrative shows at the, 41

gives northern architects the

opportunity to explore new

materials and construction methods,

42

Triennale installations, 66, 89, 98, 110,

191, 233, 249

Turin, 20, 24, 35, 127, 323

Albino teaches briefly in, 111

Group of 6, embraces Rationalist

principles, 35

hosts events that signal a culture

prepared for imminent change, 20

initially Italy’s most advanced city for

cultural criticism and emerging

Modern ambitions, 20

and the Mole Antonelliana, 20

Tutter, Adele, 169

Tyng, Anne, 109–11, 113, 177

typology, 9, 52, 112, 143, 245, 249, 312

common building, 213

row house, 266

Uffizi galleries, 147

Un dibattito sulla tradizione in architettura,

321

unit plans, 252–3, 259, 268

units, 12, 256, 259, 262, 268

2-story row house dwelling, 257

basic architectural, 110

urban interventions, 34, 79, 124, 247

assertive, 13

discussed, 241

new, 42

urban planning, 7, 32, 110, 123, 257,

282

urban plans, 3, 53, 87, 233, 245, 247, 249,

251, 256–9, 263, 269, 271, 273, 315

urban projects, 93, 136

large-scale, 256, 281

robust, 241

urban scale buildings, 85

urbanism, 123, 126, 129, 134, 254

Varese, 90, 92

“Veliero” bookshelves, 12, 68, 70, 76, 103

Venice, 3, 10, 44, 59, 111, 121, 126–7, 132,

138, 174, 193, 241, 257, 266, 282,

303, 323

Venice Accademia, 79

Venice Biennale project, 174

ventilation, 247, 250, 259, 263

Venturi, Robert, 132

Verdi, Giuseppe, 246

vernacular building traditions, 128

vernacular dwellings, 189

vernacular expression, studies of, 186

vernacular traditions, 103

index

347

Verona, 132, 175

Verona Castelvecchio Museum, 298, 301

Vers un Architecture, 33

Via del Corso, 214

Via Porciglia, 305–6

Via Salaria, 197, 201–2, 204

Vialba Housing, Milan, 261, 262

Vietti, Luigi, 30

VI Milan Triennale, 61, 67, 251

VII Milan Triennale, 62, 66

Villa Allemandi, 111–12, 113, 114–15

and Fruchter House, 111

interior loft and stair detail of, 114

plan at Punta Ala, 113

a simplification of the unrealized

Olivetti proposal, 113

Villetta Pestarini, 12–13, 39, 89, 98–102,

233, 235, 271

basement main floor, and upper level

floor plans for, 100

diagrams showing Rationalist formal

patterns, 101

fireplace with glass shelves and stone

firebox and paving, 102

staircase, 89

Visconti, Louis, 29, 246

Vittorio Emanuele Galleria, 78

volumes, 35, 56, 96, 111, 115, 131,

150–51, 166, 177, 202, 207, 293, 300,

309, 311

bold, 109

closed, 168

cubic, 217

defined, 110

detached, 213

dominant, 114

existing stone, 302

independent, 115

interior, 57, 152, 268

interstitial, 115

open, 290

outdoor rectangular, 291

refined, 55

strong structural, 109

submerged, 234

undulating, 130

of vertiginous space, 56

Vth Milan Triennale, 94

walls, 64, 71, 77, 79, 86, 96, 98, 100, 103,

151–2, 154, 157, 166, 171, 191, 262

interior, 147, 149, 151

retaining, 191, 234–5

weightlessness, 2, 42, 297

evoked, 209

exploiting, 88

suggested, 228

Weissenhof Siedlung, Stuttgart, 29

Werk, 19

windows, 24–5, 88, 103, 149, 151, 202,

228–31, 251

clerestory, 239

continuous strip, 290

interior clerestory, 235

paired, 202

parallel, 230

portable, 71

punched, 293

repetitive arched, 24, 101

steel frame, 252

vertical, 191, 228, 293

World War I, 17, 33, 60

World War II, 2–3, 20, 87, 123, 176

Yale Art Gallery, 12, 111, 177, 178, 209, 310

Yale British Art Center, High Street façade

(New Haven), 206

Yale British Art Center spiral stair cylinder,

207, 208

Youth Hostel, 3, 5, 8, 124, 131, 186–91,

192, 193–5, 200, 213, 223, 235; see

also Pirovano Youth Hostel

“Zanini Fur Showroom”, 74, 75, 123

Zanuso, Marco, 134, 224, 270

Zero Gravity, 174, 323, 325

Zevi, Bruno, 10, 44, 72, 127, 156, 174, 187,

193–4

Zodiac, 115

Zoja, Luigi, 97

zones, 64–5, 94, 100, 137, 151, 191, 230,

256–7

historic urban, 3

planted, 252

residential, 256–7

suspending-modernity-the-architecture-of-franco-albini_compress

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?