Ernesto Nathan Rogers: The Modern Architect as Public Intellectual 9781350117419, 9781350210837, 9781350117440, 9781350117426

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Series Preface
Foreword Kenneth Frampton
Note on Translation
Ernesto Nathan Rogers’ Biography
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1 Criticality
2 Social Engagement
3 Teamwork
4 Cross-Disciplinarity
5 Internationalism
6 Masters
7 History
8 Civic Commitment and the Public Intellectual
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

ERNESTO NATHAN ­R OGERS

BLOOMSBURY STUDIES IN MODERN ARCHITECTURE Series Editors: Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye The Modern Movement was a broad and multifaceted phenomenon which revolutionized the field of architecture. During the twentieth century, modern architects across political, cultural, and geographic divides radically changed the everyday lives of millions of people. However, our knowledge of the Modern Movement remains largely limited to the names of a few famed designers. Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture sheds light on those modern architects who have languished in the shadows of their canonical peers. Placing particular emphasis on the way in which these architects defined the relationship between architecture and modernity in their respective political, cultural, and geographic contexts, this series seeks to construct a more nuanced and fine-grained understanding of the Modern Movement, and the global networks that underwrote it.

Previous titles in the series: Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, by Hilde Heynen Kay Fisker, by Martin Søberg Forthcoming titles in the series: Karl Langer, edited by Deborah van der Plaat and John MacArthur Ludwig Hilberseimer, by Scott Colman

ERNESTO NATHAN ROGERS The Modern Architect as Public Intellectual

Maurizio Sabini

BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2021 Paperback edition first published in Great Britain, 2022 Copyright © Maurizio Sabini, 2022 Maurizio Sabini has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. xv–xvi constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Eleanor Rose Cover image: BBPR, Torre Velasca in Milan, Italy (1958), © frankix / iStock / Getty Images Plus All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Sabini, Maurizio, author. Title: Ernesto Nathan Rogers: the modern architect as public intellectual / Maurizio Sabini. Description: London; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. | Series: Bloomsbury studies in modern architecture | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2020038494 | ISBN 9781350117419 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350210837 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350117433 (ePub) | ISBN 9781350117426 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350117440 Subjects: LCSH: Rogers, Ernesto N. | Architecture–Italy–History–20th century. | Modern movement (Architecture)–Italy. Classification: LCC NA2599.8.R64 S23 2021 | DDC 720.945/0904–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038494 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-1741-9 PB: 978-1-3502-1083-7 ePDF: 978-1-3501-1742-6 eBook: 978-1-3501-1743-3 Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

To Meg, Cherie, and Robby and to the memory of my parents Roberto and Iolanda

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations  viii Acknowledgments  xv Series Preface  xvii Foreword  Kenneth Frampton xx Note on Translation  xxii Ernesto Nathan Rogers’ Biography  xxiii List of Abbreviations  xxvi

Introduction

1

1 2 3 4

Criticality  7 Social Engagement  31 Teamwork  51 Cross-Disciplinarity  69

5 6 7 8

Internationalism  89 Masters  111 History  127 Civic Commitment and the Public Intellectual  155

Notes 171 Bibliography  207 Index  213

ILLUSTRATIONS

0.1 BBPR at the office, circa 1934. From left to right: Enrico Peressutti, Lodovico Belgiojoso, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Gian Luigi Banfi. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  5 1.1 BBPR, Piano per la Valle d’Aosta (1934–36), urban design plan for the city of Aosta by Banfi, Peressutti, and Rogers. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  9 1.2  BBPR, Palazzo del Littorio, via dei Fori Imperiali, Rome (1934), competition entry, view of the model from the northern side toward via dei Fori Imperiali. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  12 1.3  BBPR, Colonia Elioterapica, Legnano, Milan (1937–38). Partially demolished and severely altered in 1956. From a historic postcard, courtesy of © Dario Rondanini, Legnano  13 1.4 BBPR, Colonia Elioterapica. Partial view of the Colonia, with a cohort of children practicing fascist era exercises. From a historic postcard, courtesy of © Dario Rondanini, Legnano  13 1.5 BBPR, post office at the EUR, Rome (1938–40). Perspective view. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  14 1.6 BBPR, post office at the EUR. View of the main (eastern) front facing viale Beethoven, looking north. Photo 2020, courtesy of © Diana Carta  15 1.7 BBPR, post office at the EUR. View of the main (eastern) front facing viale Beethoven, looking south. Maintenance works on the rear building. Photo 2020, courtesy of © Diana Carta  15 1.8 BBPR, post office at the EUR. View of the rear (western) front, facing piazza Francesco Vivona. The net is there for maintenance works. Photo 2018, © Author  16 1.9 BBPR, “Monumento in ricordo dei Caduti nei campi di concentramento in Germania,” Cimitero Monumentale, Milan (1946). Photo 2018, © Author  20 1.10 BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum, Milan (1946–56). View of the main entrance with the reconstruction of the urban gateway Pusterla dei Fabbri. Photo 2018, © Author  22 1.11 BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum. View of one of the halls, with the artwork supports designed by BBPR. Photo 2018, © Author  23

1.12 BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum. Sala delle Asse. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1956. Courtesy of © Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milan – as a deposit from Fondazione BEIC  24 1.13  BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum. Sala degli Scarlioni, still under renovation works. Foreground: sixteenth century Lombard sculptures; background: masonry spatial divider in pietra serena for Michelangelo’s Pietà. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1956. Courtesy of © Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milan—as a deposit from Fondazione BEIC  25 1.14 BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum. Sala degli Scarlioni, Michelangelo’s Pietà. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1956. Courtesy of © Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milan—as a deposit from Fondazione BEIC  26 1.15  Sforza Castle Museum, Ospedale degli Spagnoli. Michelangelo’s Pietà in the exhibition space recently designed by Michele De Lucchi (2015). Photo 2018, © Author  27 2.1  BBPR, housing complex “Le Grazie,” Legnano, Milan (1938–42). View of the eastern front, looking south, on via Madonna delle Grazie. Photo 2019, © Author  34 2.2  BBPR, housing at the INA-Casa Neighborhood at Cesate, Milan (1949–51). Neighborhood planning with Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, and Gianni Albricci. View of one of the townhouse rows by BBPR. Photo 2019, © Author  38 2.3 ENR (second from left), at a panel in Trieste, It. (early 1950s), during one of the preliminary public meetings about the planning of Borgo San Sergio. From: Notiziario – Ente Porto Industriale di Trieste (1955)  40 2.4 ENR, with the Municipal Office of Trieste, Borgo San Sergio planning (1954–55). View of one of the early site models. From: Notiziario – Ente Porto Industriale di Trieste 10 (June 1955)  40 2.5 ENR, with the Municipal Office of Trieste, Borgo San Sergio. View of the main piazza (March 1955)—in spite of Rogers’ original signature— along with those of other municipal officers involved—the drawing, also according to Luciano Semerani—conversation with the author, June 5, 2019—may not be attributable to Rogers, although done under his direction and signed to indicate design authorship. From: Notiziario – Ente Porto Industriale di Trieste 10 (June 1955)  41 2.6 ENR, with the Municipal Office of Trieste, Borgo San Sergio. View of one of the clusters with townhouses and multi-family buildings (April 1955). For the authorship of this drawing, the same notation as for Fig. 2.5. applies. From: Notiziario – Ente Porto Industriale di Trieste 10 (June 1955)  41 2.7  BBPR, civic center, Borgo San Sergio (1958). Photo 2019, © Author  43 2.8 BBPR, Church of San Sergio Martire, Borgo San Sergio (1958). Photo 2019, © Author  43 2.9 BBPR, housing, Borgo San Sergio. View of one of the multi-family residential blocks on via Sergio Forti. Photo 2019, © Author  44

ILLUSTRATIONS

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2.10 BBPR, housing, Borgo San Sergio. View of one of the townhouse districts in the southern area of the neighborhood on via Eugenio Curiel—in the background, on the hill, the towers of the Ospedale di Cattinara, by Luciano Semerani and Gigetta Tamaro, 1965–83. Photo 2019, © Author  44 2.11 BBPR, neighborhood at Gratosoglio, Milan (1962–67). View along via dei Missaglia, looking north. On the left a school building—Scuola Santa Rosa, a pre-existing building—on the right, the light rail line to/ from Milan. Photo 2019, © Author  45 2.12 BBPR, Gratosoglio. Community center with soccer field and Church of Santa Maria Madre della Chiesa. Photo 2019, © Author  46 2.13  BBPR, Gratosoglio. View of one of the towers. Photo 2019, © Author  48 2.14 BBPR, Gratosoglio. Aerial view.  Photo 2017, © Stefano Topuntoli  – Milan  49 3.1 Lodovico Belgiojoso, with Alberico Belgiojoso Sr., Feltrinelli House, via Daniele Manin, Milan (1934–35). View along viale Città di Fiume. Photo 2018, © Author  55 3.2 BBPR, Canada Pavilion, Venice Biennale (1954–58). Photo 2018, © Author  57 3.3 BBPR, Canada Pavilion. View of the interior with an exhibition about the history of the pavilion and its restoration project by Alberico Belgiojoso Jr. (2014–18). Photo 2018, © Author  57 3.4 BBPR, Rocco Scotellaro Tomb, Tricarico, Matera, It. (1954–57). Photo late 1950s, with Mrs. Scotellaro, Rocco’s mother; in the background the Basento Valley. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  59 3.5 BBPR, Rocco Scotellaro Tomb. Photo 2016, courtesy of © Raffaella Neri  60 3.6 ENR, with Vittorio Gregotti and Giotto Stoppino, Architettura, misura dell’uomo, exhibition design and curation for the IX Milan Triennale (1951). Panels showing images from: on the ground, the Città Ideale (by Francesco di Giorgio Martini or Piero della Francesca); up high, an Egyptian pylon, and ergonomic studies for the Artek collection by Alvar Aalto. Courtesy of © Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections  64 3.7  ENR, with Gregotti and Stoppino, Architettura, misura dell’uomo. Panels showing images from: midway, interior view of the dome of Santa Maria del Calcinaio, near Cortona, Italy, by Francesco di Giorgio Martini; up high, the Châtelard Aqueduct by Robert Maillart. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  65 3.8  UNESCO Headquarters project, Paris (1951–59). Meeting of the Committee of Five (CF) with the appointed designers (AD). From left to right: Eero Saarinen (external advisor), Pierluigi Nervi (AD), ENR (CF), Walter Gropius (CF), Bernard Henri Zehrfuss (standing, AD), Le Corbusier (CF), Marcel Breuer (standing, AD), Sven Markelius (CF); Lucio Costa (CF) is missing. Photo, 1952. Courtesy of © Canadian Centre for Architecture  66 x

ILLUSTRATIONS

4.1 BBPR, Rollier House, Milan (1951). © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  75 4.2 BBPR, Arflex, Elettra Chair (1954). © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  76 4.3 BBPR, Olivetti Synthesis, office furniture Spazio Series (1960–61). Courtesy of © Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Ivrea (Italy)  77 4.4 BBPR, Olivetti Synthesis, office furniture Arco Series (1960–62). Photo by Aldo Ballo. Courtesy of © Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Ivrea (Italy)  78 4.5 BBPR, Olivetti Synthesis, office furniture Spazio Series, detail of the desk leg foot. Courtesy of © Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Ivrea (Italy)  79 4.6  BBPR, USA Pavilion, IX Milan Triennale, Parco Sempione (1951). Demolished. Plan. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  80 4.7  BBPR, USA Pavilion, IX Milan Triennale. Interior view. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  81 4.8  BBPR, USA Pavilion, IX Milan Triennale. In the background, the Sforza Castle with the Filarete Tower—reconstructed in 1905 by Luca Beltrami following the 1452 original design and structure by Antonio di Pietro Averlino, better known as “Il Filarete.” © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  82 4.9  BBPR, Labirinto dei Ragazzi, X Milan Triennale, Parco Sempione (1954). Demolished. Saul Steinberg’s murals on the inner walls and an Alexander Calder’s “mobile” sculpture at the center. Courtesy of © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York  83 4.10 BBPR, Labirinto dei Ragazzi, X Milan Triennale. Saul Steinberg, detail from Types of Architecture, one of the four drawings for The Children’s Labyrinth. The Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York. Courtesy of © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York  84 4.11 BBPR, Labirinto dei Ragazzi, X Milan Triennale. Team photo: (from left to right) Lodovico Belgiojoso, Saul Steinberg, Enrico Peressutti, Ernesto Nathan Rogers. Courtesy of © Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections  85 5.1 ENR (left) and Alfred Roth (right) during the symposium “De Divina Proportione” (September 27–29, 1951) at the IX Milan Triennale (1951). Courtesy of © Triennale Milano, Archivio Fotografico  92 5.2. CIAM 6, Bridgwater, UK (1947), group photo taken at the Bristol Airplane Factory. ENR is in the top row, third from the left. Other recognizable participants are in the top row, left to right: Alfred Roth, eighth from the right; in the second row from top: Jaap Bakema, third from the right; in the third row from the top: Maxwell Fry (MARS Group) seventh from the right; in the front row, from the left: Le Corbusier (first), José Luis Sert (ninth), then next to him to the right Sigfried Giedion, Jane Drew (MARS Group), Cornelis van Eesteren, ILLUSTRATIONS

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Minette da Silva, Walter Gropius, and Helena Syrkus, as well as Grete Schütte-Lihotzky (second from the right). (Papers of the Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne, CIAM, 1928–1970 Gifts of Josep Lluis Sert, 1981 and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, 1982. Folder D004. Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design.) Courtesy of ©The Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design  94 5.3 BBPR, Olivetti Showroom, 584 Fifth Avenue, New York (1952–54). Demolished. Interior view with the bas-relief sculpture by Costantino Nivola. Photo 1950s, courtesy of © Ezra Stoller / Esto  98 5.4 BBPR, Olivetti Showroom. Interior view with the paternoster in the foreground. Photo 1950s, courtesy of © Ezra Stoller / Esto  99 5.5 BBPR, Olivetti Showroom. View along Fifth Avenue. Photo 1950s, courtesy of © Ezra Stoller / Esto  100 5.6 BBPR, Olivetti Showroom. View of the entry portico. Photo 1950s, courtesy of © Ezra Stoller / Esto  101 5.7  BBPR, Hispano-Olivetti Headquarters, Ronda de la Universitat, Barcelona (1959–65). Photo 2018, courtesy of © Nelson Zavaleta  103 5.8  BBPR, Hispano-Olivetti Headquarters. View toward Plaça de la Universitat. Photo 2018, courtesy of © Nelson Zavaleta  104 5.9  BBPR, Hispano-Olivetti Headquarters. Historic view of the interior lobby with display of Olivetti products. Photo 1960s by Francesc Català-Roca. Courtesy © Photographic Archive F. Català-Roca. Arxiu Històric del Collegi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya  105 5.10 BBPR, New India Centre (New India Assurance Company), Mumbai (1968–73). Photo 2004, through the courtesy and property of © Dinodia Photos / Alamy Stock Photo  106 5.11 BBPR, New India Centre. View of the residential tower. Photo 2018, © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  107 6.1 ENR (second from left) leads a group of visitors at the IX Milan Triennale (1951). To his right: Walter Gropius. Photographer: Publifoto. Courtesy of © Triennale Milano, Archivio Fotografico  119 7.1  BBPR, Velasca Tower, Milan (1950–58). Aerial view, with the Ca’ Granda (“large house,” Ospedale Maggiore – main hospital), by Pietro Averlino, a.k.a. Filarete (built in 1456–99, with later modifications until a partial reconstruction after WWII bombings). Since 1958, the complex has been the seat of the Università degli Studi di Milano. Photo 1998, © Stefano Topuntoli – Milan  133 7.2 BBPR, Velasca Tower. Structural plan of the reinforcement tying steel cables at the 19th floor. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  134 7.3 BBPR, Velasca Tower. Plan of typical live-work floor (11th–17th floor). © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  134 7.4 BBPR, Velasca Tower. Plan of typical residential floor (19th–26th floor) © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso  135 7.5  BBPR, Velasca Tower. View of the wider side. Photo 2018, © Author  135 xii

ILLUSTRATIONS

7.6 BBPR, Velasca Tower. View of the narrower side. Photo 2018, © Author  136 7.7 BBPR, Velasca Tower. View of piazza Velasca, with the protruding entry pavilion, looking toward via Larga—the steel-frame visible above the pavilion is a temporary scaffolding for maintenance works of the façade. Photo 2018, © Author  137 7.8 BBPR, Velasca Tower. View from piazza Giuseppe Missori, looking eastward toward corso di Porta Romana. Photo 2018, © Author  138 7.9 BBPR, Velasca Tower. View from corso di Porta Romana. Photo 2018, © Author  139 7.10 BBPR, Velasca Tower. View from largo Francesco Richini (Università Statale), looking westward. Photo 2018, © Author  140 7.11 BBPR, Velasca Tower. View from the roof of the Duomo. Photo 2018, © Author  141 7.12 BBPR, mixed-use development, corso Francia, Turin, It. (1956–59). View along corso Francia. Photo 2018, © Author  146 7.13 BBPR, mixed-use development, Turin. View from piazza Statuto and across corso d’Inghilterra. Photo 2018, © Author  147 7.14 BBPR, mixed-use development, Turin. Detailed view at the corner of corso Francia. Photo 2018, © Author  147 7.15 BBPR, mixed-use development, Turin. View of the portico. Photo 2018, © Author  148 7.16  View of via Giuseppe Verdi, Milan (circa 1905). The neo-classical building that BBPR renovated is at the turn of the street. Historic postcard  149 7.17 View of via Giuseppe Verdi, Milan (circa late 1930s). The neo-classical building that BBPR renovated after the intervention by Pier Giulio Magistretti (1930–35). Historic postcard  149 7.18 BBPR, renovation and vertical addition for the Banca Privata Italiana, via Giuseppe Verdi, Milan (1966). Looking north toward via Brera. Photo 2018, © Author  150 7.19  BBPR, office building in piazza Meda, Milan (1968–69). In the foreground, Ruota Solare or Grande Disco, bronze sculpture by Arnaldo Pomodoro (1980); in the background: Church of San Fedele (1559–69) by Pellegrino Tibaldi. Photo 2018, © Author  151 7.20 BBPR, office building in piazza Meda, Milan. View of the portico, looking south along via Ulrico Hoepli. Photo 2018, © Author  152 8.1 ENR, Rogers family’s tomb—ENR, together with his father Romeo and mother Ida—Cimitero Sant’ Anna, Trieste, It. (late 1950s). Photo 2019, © Author  159 8.2  ENR, Rogers family’s tomb, Trieste. Photo 2014, courtesy of © Schirra/Giraldi  161 8.3  ENR, Rogers family’s tomb, Trieste. Photo 2014, courtesy of © Schirra/Giraldi  161 8.4  Stazione Rogers cultural center, Riva Grumula, Trieste, It. (2008). Restoration and renovation by Luciano Semerani, Giovanni Semerani ILLUSTRATIONS

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and Gigetta Tamaro of a gas and automotive service station for Aquila by the BBPR (1953). Photo 2019, © Author  162 8.5 Stazione Rogers. Aerial view. Photo 2020, courtesy of © Schirra/ Giraldi  163 8.6  Stazione Rogers. Interior view of a cultural event. Photo 2016, courtesy of © Gianni Peteani  163 8.7 Stazione Rogers. Interior view of a cultural event in the series “Rogers Now,” a program to promote “contemporary expressivity of young creatives.” Photo 2017, courtesy of © Gianni Peteani  164

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ILLUSTRATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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his book would have not been possible without the encouragement, support and help of the following individuals to whom go my sincerest thanks: Ernesto Nathan Rogers’ former collaborators Prof. Luciano Semerani and Prof. Vittorio Gregotti (in memoriam); Prof. Kenneth Frampton and Prof. Eric Mumford; Ricciarda Belgiojoso and Prof. Alberico Belgiojoso Jr. of Studio Belgiojoso, Milan; Anna Steiner, Milan; colleagues: Federico Bucci, Stamatina Kousidi, Raffaella Neri, Sara Protasoni (Politecnico di Milano), Gino Malacarne (Università di Bologna – Cesena Campus), Paola Di Biagi, Giovanni Fraziano, and Alessandra Marin (Università degli Studi di Trieste), Lina Malfona (Università degli Studi di Pisa), and Andreea Mihalache (Clemson University). Although not directly involved in my research, I would like to acknowledge, for their outstanding scholarship on Rogers, colleagues Luca Molinari (Università della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”), and, especially, Serena Maffioletti (IUAV, Venice, Italy), whose works provided me with a trove of resources and documents to rely on and without which this study would just not have been possible. Special thanks for their support to Dean Robert Weddle, Hammons School of Architecture (HSA), and Provost Beth Harville of Drury University, as well as to all the HSA faculty for having shared the burden of a colleague on sabbatical leave in the fall of 2018. My most heartfelt thanks to the many librarians who helped me in this effort: Director William Garvin, Katherine Bohnenkamper, Barbi Dickensheet, Holli Henslee, Jacqueline Tygart, and, especially, Phyllis Holzenberg, for her extraordinary help with the inter-library loan (Olin Library, Drury University); Chris Brady, Alison Carrick, Jason Miller, Kate Goldkamp, and Ian Lanius at the Olin Library, and Jennifer Akins at the Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library (Washington University in St. Louis); Ines Zalduendo (Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design); Rita Lucia Ferraro, Antonella Mariani, Nadia Paolucci (Università di Bologna – Cesena Campus); Carmela Cirulli, Lucilla Lalumera, Daniela Piscitelli, Sonia Pasqualin (Biblioteca Campus Leonardo, Politecnico di Milano). Special thanks to arch. Gloria Alberti (Cesena, It.) for her help in library research. For image research, my thanks go to arch. Diana Carta (Rome); author and photographer Gianni Peteani (Trieste); visual artist Fabrizio Giraldi and arch.

Manuela Schirra (Trieste); Laura Gatti, Nadia Piccirillo, Giuseppina Simmi (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Musei del Castello Sforzesco, Milan), and Dr. Silvia Paoli (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Area Soprintendenza Castello, Milan); Dr. Elena Ottina (Servizio Raccolte Artistiche, Ufficio Iconografico, Biblioteca Castello Sforzesco, Milan); Bruno Daita and Dr. Giovanna Mori (Unità Civica Raccolta delle Stampe Bertarelli, Area Soprintendenza Castello Sforzesco, Milan); Elvia Redaelli (Triennale Milano); arch. Patrizia Dellavedova and arch. Maurizio Tomio (Comune di Legnano, Milan) and arch. Paola Ferri (Comune di Magenta, Milan); Luisa Alberton (Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Ivrea, It.); Francesca Maria Cadin (Teche, RAI, Rome); Caroline Dagbert (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal); Caroline L. Hirsch (Esto, New York); Sheila Schwartz (The Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York); and Andreu Carrascal Simon (Historic Archives, Collegi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya, Barcelona). Special thanks to Nelson Zavaleta (architecture student at the time of the research and now a graduate of Drury University) for the photography of the Hispano-Olivetti building in Barcelona. Of course, my gratitude goes also to all those who made this publication possible at Bloomsbury Publishing, namely James Thompson, Senior Commissioning Editor for Architecture, for having believed in the project, Production Manager Ken  Bruce, and editorial staff Alexander Highfield and Sophie Tann for their invaluable support, as well as Project Manager Sarah McNamee at Integra Software Services, proof-reader Maria Whelan for her thorough editing, and independent copy editor Lesley Wyldbore for her thoughtful and masterly polishing of the original manuscript. Special thanks to the Series Editors, colleagues Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye (ETH-Zurich), for their encouragement and precious suggestions. Finally, I would like to thank my dear family—supporting a dad and a husband too often absorbed in research and writing—our children Cherie and Robby, and, especially, my wife Meg, whose encouragement, support, and patience have been critical for the completion of this project and a true sign of love. Thank you.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

SERIES PREFACE

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he Modern Movement was a broad and multifaceted phenomenon that revolutionized the field of architecture. Throughout the twentieth century, and across political, cultural, and climatological divides, modern architecture radically changed the everyday lives of millions of people. Yet, to this day, our knowledge of this sweeping and omnipresent occurrence remains largely limited to the names of a few famed designers. In spite of growing research into the Modern Movement and its various actors, most published works focus on a select list of grandmasters. This narrow view restrains our understanding of what the Modern Movement in architecture was as it limits our insight into the breadth and complexity of the networks that underwrote it and undercuts the possibility of a more holistic and fine-grained understanding of its impact on architectural culture and the built environment. The “Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture” series seeks to address this dearth. It sheds light on those who played pivotal roles in propelling the Modern Movement in architecture but who have, nonetheless, languished in the shadows of their better-known (and extensively published) canonical peers. Examining the works and ideas of this “shadow canon,” this book series does not aspire to canonize those to whom it offers a platform, but rather to construct a more detailed understanding of the different actors that propelled the Modern Movement across the globe, as well as the relationships that existed between these different actors, and the ways in which they contributed to the proliferation/ recalibration/ acculturation/ transculturation of modern architecture. Ernesto Nathan Rogers was a towering figure in post-Second World War Italian architecture. With his collaborative firm, BBPR (Banfi Belgiojoso Peressutti Rogers), he designed some of the most influential architectural projects of his time, including the Torre Velasca and the Museum of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, and through his editorship of Domus and, especially, Casabella, he gathered and mentored a group of young Italian architects who would go on to carve out illustrious careers for themselves, such as Carlo Aymonino, Giancarlo De Carlo, Vittorio Gregotti, and Aldo Rossi. Rogers was also a prominent figure internationally. From the mid-1930s, he became actively involved in the CIAM. For instance, from 1948 he served as a

member of the Council and Vice-President of the CIAM permanent committee for the reform of architectural education, and co-authored, together with José Luís Sert and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, the proceedings of the eighth CIAM conference in Hoddesdon, UK (1951), The Heart of the City: Towards the Humanization of Urban Life (1952). Yet in spite of his prominence both locally (in Italy) and internationally, and regardless of his contribution to both the production of architecture and the shaping of its discourse, today Rogers is less well known (and certainly less well studied) than many of his contemporaries. While some incisive and critical appreciations, written in Italian, have appeared in the past, little has been published about him in recent years, and scholarship in English is scarce. As a result, beyond Italy Rogers’ contribution to post-war architectural culture is often poorly understood. This oversight has to do in part with the uneasy position that Rogers assumed in said post-war architectural culture. Rogers recognized the value of history to the post-war debate on modern architecture early on, which earned him the scorn from some of his contemporaries. In a 1959 issue of the Architectural Review, for instance, Reyner Banham chastised Rogers’ support—through his editorship of Casabella—for what he (Banham) called “Neo-Liberty or the Italian retreat from Modern Architecture.”1 Rogers’ support for “Neo-Liberty” has led some scholars to qualify him as a proto post–modernist. However, in this book Maurizio Sabini challenges this assumption. Unpacking Rogers’ particular conception of history and memory in architecture, Sabini argues that Rogers’ stance toward modern architecture should be understood as an expression of critical regionalism rather than as a form of proto post–modernism. Sabini also posits that notwithstanding the typological and compositional innovation displayed by BBPR’s work, Rogers’ most important contribution to post-war architectural culture lay in defining a role for the architect as a public intellectual. Sabini explains that Rogers saw the architect not just as a building technician but as a critical thinker; someone with the capacity to formulate cultural and social critiques. Indeed, starting from a reappraisal of the critical idealism of the early modernists, Rogers maintained that architecture should contribute to the pressing social problems of the post-war world, as well as to a critical position toward history and memory, and to an on-going reflection on the role of architecture within the “project of modernity.” Especially in his writings, Rogers illustrated what such a position as public intellectual could entail, from his early contributions as publicist (with Quadrante and Domus) to his more mature years as editor of Casabella. Emphasizing Rogers’ vision for the role of the architect as a public intellectual and detailing his commitment to pursue a renewed path of professional and cultural research within modern architecture, this book invites the reader to engage with some of the most challenging questions faced by architecture today. For instance, how we might construct critical architectural knowledge for culture and society, or how we might cultivate an interest in architecture’s social impact, xviii

SERIES PREFACE

or how we might better benefit from the collective nature of the design process and the richness of cross-disciplinary collaborations. As such, Ernesto Nathan Rogers: The Modern Architect as Public Intellectual not only offers a first critical account in English of Rogers’ life and legacy, but it also encourages architects to reassess the tools that they have at their disposal and the roles that they might assume within the profession. Tom Avermaete and Janina Gosseye Series Editors

SERIES PREFACE

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Foreword

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orn in Trieste in 1909 on the linguistic and culture frontier between Italian and Germanic spheres of influence, Ernesto Nathan Rogers was a European intellectual who was passionate about architecture and was caught up as a young architect with the modernizing project of Mussolini’s Italy, forming the partnership of BBPR with his university colleagues: Gianluigi Banfi, Lodovico Belgiojoso, and Enrico Peressutti. Of Anglo-Jewish origin, the fascist racial purity laws of 1939 had a traumatic impact on Rogers at the beginning of his career; a personal crisis which came to a head in 1943 with the entry of German troops into Italy. At this juncture he fled to Switzerland where he became involved with the local modernist movement centered around Sigfried Giedion. Returning to Milan and the partnership after the Second World War, Rogers had his initial experience serving as the editor for Gio Ponti’s magazine Domus during the late 1940s. Thereafter he became a primary figure in the postwar Italian architectural debate particularly during the decade when he served as the distinguished editor of the magazine Casabella between December 1953 and January 1965. Rogers added the significant adjective continuità to the magazine’s pre-war title and with this nuanced concept he sought to reconcile the avant-garde legacy of the Modern Movement with the proto-Modern European architectural tradition of such figures as Adolf Loos, August Perret, Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Hans Poelzig, Raimondo D’Aronco, Camillo Boito, Giuseppe Sommaruga, and Henry Van de Velde. He was also at pains to represent the cultural continuity of the Modern Project as represented by the works of such leading figures of his own generation and somewhat younger, including Franco Albini, Carlo Scarpa, Oswald Mathias Ungers and the architects of the industrial utopian “community” of Ivrea, founded by enlightened entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti: namely, Marco Nizzoli and the prewar partnership of Figini and Pollini. Rogers was somewhat influenced by the idea of continuity across history as evidenced in writings of such figures as Henri Bergson, Henri Focillon and, at one remove, the American architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, whose concept of the “New Tradition” had already come to the fore in 1929 with his doctoral thesis, entitled “Romanticism and Reintegration.” As a consequence of his insistence on the continuity of modernity, dating back to the turn of the century, Rogers became an aficionado of the so-called Italian Neo-Liberty style which

brought him into open conflict with the technocratic British historian Reyner Banham, who regarded Neo-Liberty as a regressive manifestation. In responding to Banham’s attack, Roger characterized the British critic as a “custodian of refrigerators” in the debate that unfolded through the pages of The Architectural Review and Casabella, culminating at the CIAM Otterlo conference of 1959. The lasting significance of Ernesto Rogers today, after the first two decades of the twenty-first century, continues to find an echo in this implicit standoff between the Anglo-Italian hi-tech architecture of Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and Norman Foster, and the more traditional tectonic values that may be found today in the work of such figures as Álvaro Siza, Rafael Moneo, Carme Pinós, Enric Miralles, and Ricardo Legorreta. Influenced it would seem by the profile of the historic fortified towers of Milan, Rogers’ enigmatic Torre Velasca was the most significant work of his postwar career as a practicing architect with the BBPR partnership. The most enduring legacy of Rogers’ cultural approach to architecture was surely the way in which he used his editorship of Casabella-Continuità to grow the critical intellectuals of the next generation: that is to say the rising architects Vittorio Gregotti, Guido Canella, Giorgio Grassi, and Aldo Rossi, all of whom, as members of the Centro Studi organized by Rogers as a regular seminar to cultivate their talent, contributed seminal essays to the magazine during Rogers’ tenure as editor. Throughout his life Ernesto Rogers strove to lay the groundwork for a more accessible, less reductive modernity, without relinquishing the progressive thrust of the liberative modern project or departing from the inherent technical rigor of architectonic form. It is precisely this complex aspiration that guarantees the continued relevance of his work in the twenty-first century. Kenneth Frampton

FOREWORD

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NOTE ON TRANSLATION

F

ragments of Rogers’ texts have had over the years various translations in English by different translators. Therefore, not only can we not rely on a comprehensive body of translated texts, but we are also missing a consistency of approach and method. As most texts did not have already an English translation, I proceeded with translating every passage by Rogers, except in two cases: the catalog of the exhibition held at the Italian Cultural Institute in 1988 (catalog and exhibition curated by Serena Maffioletti), and the Joan Ockman book (1993), with translations by Rebecca Williamson, and in the few cases in which I used the original translation or text, I have so stated. The general approach has been to stay as close as possible to the original text, with less preoccupation with an elegant narration, than with staying faithful to Rogers’ message and language. I have also translated passages in Spanish and French. A few previous translations or original texts have been used: for ease of reading, I preferred to indicate so in these few cases, rather than repeating with much more frequency when the translation was mine. I decided to use a gender-neutral form also in translations, as a matter of respect to today’s different culture and given the fact that past authors (including Rogers), even when using the male form, really meant a general reference to humanity. I preferred to use the form “she/he,” rather than the currently more popular “they,” because, while perhaps less elegant, it seems to me more semantically correct. My approach to translation, especially with Rogers’ writings, has been one of a reasonably faithful adherence to the original text, perhaps at the cost of a less refined flow, in order to keep the intended meaning intact as much as possible— given also Rogers’ particular attention to vocabulary and etymology. One significant exception has been the translation of pre-esistenze ambientali—a key concept in Rogers’ theory. The expression has been translated in the past with “preexisting conditions,” “environmental pre-existences”—the most literal version—or left in Italian. I preferred “pre-existent environments” to maintain the concept of “environment” —central to Rogers’ theory—while avoiding the less elegant term of “pre-existences.”

Ernesto Nathan Rogers’ Biography

R

ogers was born in Trieste—now Italy, but then still part of the AustroHungarian Empire—on March 16, 1909, as a British citizen into a Jewish family, with an Italian mother, Ida Manni, and a British father, Romeo, employed with the Assicurazioni Generali. In 1914, the family left Trieste for Zurich where Ernesto attended elementary schools and learned German. In 1919, due to Romeo’s job, the family returned to Italy and settled in Rome, and in 1921, Ernesto moved on his own to Milan to attend the Liceo Classico “Giuseppe Parini,” where he met Gian Luigi Banfi (1910–45) and Lodovico Belgiojoso (1909–2004). From 1927 till 1932, Rogers attended the architecture school at the Politecnico, where, together with Banfi and Belgiojoso, he befriended Enrico Peressutti (1908– 76). Just before graduation, in 1932, they met Giuseppe Pagano, then already editorin-chief of Casabella, who noted the group’s talent and promise, thus starting an influential mentorship. Soon after graduation, the four young architects founded the BBPR partnership, with an initial office within Banfi’s family apartment in Milan. After a few years they moved to another location and from 1939 to via dei Chiostri 2, within the historic complex of San Simpliciano’s cloisters, which remained BBPR’s office for their entire career. In 1933, Rogers relinquished his British citizenship to become an Italian citizen, thus having to serve in the Italian army, first in Pavia (November 1933–July 1934), then in Rome, until January 1935. While in Rome, Rogers took the state professional exam. In 1933, all BBPR partners started to collaborate with the magazine Quadrante (1933–36). Around 1935 they joined the CIAM and in 1936 participated in the VI Milan Triennale and published Stile, their first important research and cultural manifesto—still imbued with fascist ideology. In the same year, with the commission for the Valle d’Aosta Master Plan, they started a long collaboration and friendship with enlightened entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti. The following years (1936–40), besides sanctioning their entry into the international circle of the CIAM at the 1936 fifth congress in Paris, saw the definitive affirmation of the BBPR among the leading figures of Italian modern architecture with the Colonia Elioterapica in Legnano (Milan) and the post office at the EUR satellite town in Rome. In the fall of 1938, however, the fascist regime

promulgated the Racial Laws, forcing Rogers to leave the partnership and begin a period of anonymity and eventually exile. Between 1938 and 1943 Rogers traveled extensively, returning often to his native Trieste. In 1939 he was a guest of Madame de Mandrot (CIAM patroness) at her castle in La Sarraz, where he met Max Bill and Alfred Roth, who became influential friends over the following years. In 1942, eventually realizing their misguided juvenile infatuation with the fascist regime, the BBPR joined the opposition clandestine movement of the Partito d’Azione. In 1943, after Italy’s armistice with the Allies and the German forces, then hostile, starting to rule Italy, Rogers was convinced by his friends to escape to Switzerland where he spent two years in exile. In 1944 he started to teach at the university campus in Vevey, near Lausanne, and in 1945 he taught also at the Haute École d’Architecture in Geneva, while carrying on political activity remotely for the Partito d’Azione. At the end of the Second World War, in May 1945, Rogers returned to Milan. During the war, Rogers—whose mother had also died in those years—lost his father at Auschwitz, as well as his friend and partner Banfi and his mentor Pagano at Mauthausen. The postwar period was for Rogers and the BBPR an intense phase of resuming professional work and public engagement activities. Between 1945 and 1946, they contributed, along with other Milanese professionals, to the visionary and groundbreaking new master plan for Milan, “Piano AR.” In 1945 he was among the founding members of the Movimento Studi per l’Architettura, initially based in the BBPR office. From 1947 to 1959, with his partners, he directed the book series Architetti del Movimento Moderno for the publisher Il Balcone. Between 1946 and 1947, Rogers took on the editorship of Domus and became more involved in the CIAM and its leading group of the CIRPAC. After the Domus experience, Rogers traveled between 1948 and 1949 across the Americas, especially in South America. While in New York, he discussed the organization of CIAM 7 in Bergamo (Italy) with José Luis Sert, where Rogers played a leadership role. In 1949, he contributed to the first CIAM Summer School in London, where he also held a lecture series at the Architectural Association. In 1951, at CIAM 8 in Hoddesdon (UK), Rogers continued to play a leading role, attested also by the co-editorship of the proceedings (The Heart of the City, 1952), with José Luis Sert and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt. In the same year, he participated, with the BBPR, in the IX Milan Triennale. From 1952 to 1958, Rogers was a member of the “Committee of Five,” with Lucio Costa, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Sven Markelius, as consultants for the design of the new UNESCO headquarters in Paris. From 1952 to 1956, he co-directed the CIAM Summer School in Venice (Italy). Since 1952, he began teaching at the Politecnico in Milan, though obtaining tenure only in 1964. In 1953, after declining the offer of succeeding Gropius to lead the architecture program at Harvard—eventually forwarded to Sert, who accepted it—Rogers started another editorship adventure with Casabella, which he directed until January 1965. In 1954, he was visiting professor at Harvard. In the same year, the BBPR participated xxiv

ERNESTO NATHAN ROGERS’ BIOGRAPHY

in the X Milan Triennale with the pavilion “Labirinto dei Ragazzi,” in collaboration with artists Alexander Calder and Saul Steinberg. From the early 1950s, the BBPR’s professional activity grew significantly with important commissions, including the landmark projects for the Civic Museums at the Sforza Castle—completed in 1956—and the Velasca Tower—completed in 1958—both in Milan, as well as the mixed-use complex on Corso Francia in Turin—completed in 1959. In 1956 Rogers was awarded an Honorary Fellowship by the American Institute of Architects and, to mark the occasion, he toured the USA to lecture at several universities, and had the opportunity to meet with Frank Lloyd Wright. In the same year he participated in CIAM 10 in Dubrovnik, and was appointed member of the reorganizing committee of the CIAM. In 1957, the neighborhood development of Borgo San Sergio in Trieste—on which he had been working since 1954—broke ground. Rogers’ seminal book, Esperienza dell’architettura—developed since 1950—was published in 1958 and in the same year the BBPR realized the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 1959, the CIAM held their final congress in Otterlo (The Netherlands), where Rogers and the BBPR were harshly criticized for the Velasca Tower. In the same year, Rogers held the Chair of Italian Culture at the University of California Berkeley. During the late 1950s and early 1960s he was also offered teaching posts—although unable to accept the invitations—at MIT, Harvard, Yale, and the Hochschule für Gestaltung at Ulm (Germany), co-founded by Max Bill. Rogers lectured extensively in Italy and abroad: in the USA and China in 1956—including at the International Design Conference in Aspen, USA, in 1957 and a lecture on Corbu at Columbia University in 1961—in Scandinavia in 1959, and Spain in 1963, when he was also inducted as Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 1964, Rogers was asked to deliver a keynote speech, entitled “Elogio dell’architettura” (In praise of architecture), on the occasion of the conferring of the degree honoris causa to Alvar Aalto, Louis Kahn, and Kenzo Tange by the Politecnico in Milan. Also at the Politecnico, in 1966, he was asked to commemorate Le Corbusier, on his passing the year before, during a public ceremony organized by the same academic institution. In 1968, a curated selection of his editorials for Casabella-Continuità and a few other writings were published as Editoriali di architettura. In 1964, he started to show signs of a grave illness, which progressively impacted his ability to speak—his assistants read his last lectures at the Politecnico for him. Rogers died at Gardone, on the Lake Garda, on November 7, 1969, and was buried in his native Trieste. The BBPR continued as a practice after Rogers’ passing. Enrico Peressutti died in 1976 and the last surviving partner, Lodovico Belgiojoso—whose son Alberico Jr. had joined the BBPR as partner in 1973— kept the firm running until 1998. Lodovico died in 2004, while Alberico Jr. has continued the practice as Studio Belgiojoso.

ERNESTO NATHAN ROGERS’ BIOGRAPHY

xxv

ABBREVIATIONS

APAO

Associazione per l’Architettura Organica (Association for Organic Architecture)

BBPR

Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti, and Rogers

BEIC

[Fondazione] Biblioteca Europea di Informazione e Cultura

CBD

Central Business District

CEP

Comitato di coordinamento per l’Edilizia Popolare (Coordinating Committee for Affordable Housing)

CGE

Compagnia Generale di Elettricità

CIAM

Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (International Congresses of Modern Architecture)

CIRPAC

Comité international pour la résolution des problèmes de l’architecture contemporaine (International Committee for the Resolution of Problems in Contemporary Architecture)

Corbu*

Le Corbusier

ENR

Ernesto Nathan Rogers

EUR

Esposizione Universale Roma (Rome World Expo)

EZIT

Ente Zona Industriale di Trieste (Industrial Zone Agency of Trieste)

FAR

Floor Area Ratio

INA

Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni (National Institute of Insurance)

IUAV

Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (School of Architecture, Venice, It.)

MARS

Modern Architectural Research [Group]

MIAR

Movimento Italiano per l’Architettura Razionale (Italian Movement for Rational Architecture)

MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MSA

Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura (Movement for Architectural Studies)

Piano AR

Piano Architetti Riuniti (United Architects Plan)

PIM

Piano Intercomunale Milanese (Milanese Inter-Municipal Plan)

UIA Union Internationale des Architèctes (International Union of Architects) UNESCO

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

* Corbu was a nickname given to Le Corbusier by his fellow artists in Paris and has been widely used. Le Corbusier was a pseudonym in its own right that he had given himself in 1920 for his real name Charles Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, deriving it from his great-grandfather Le Corbezier (or Lecorbesier). The nickname Corbu had a reference to Le Corbusier’s appearance: typically dressing in a close-fitting black suit, wearing a black bowler hat and exactly circular glasses, all of which reminded his friends of the image of a raven, corbeau in French.  ABBREVIATIONS

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xxviii

INTRODUCTION

This book is about a way of being an architect, the way that Ernesto Nathan Rogers (1909–69) exemplified throughout his life and career. A way that was highly characterized by a clear commitment to advance the Modern Project in architecture and to operate as a public intellectual. In other words, the focus is more on the mentality and the themes that Rogers developed as a modern architect, striving to serve society as a public intellectual, rather than his architectural theories or body of works, which, in fact, were developed in collaboration with his partners at the BBPR firm in Milan: Gian Luigi Banfi (1910–45), Lodovico Belgiojoso (1909– 2004) and Enrico Peressutti (1908–76). Rogers’ theories and works are of course also included as necessary elements and materials to support and verify the arguments of the study, but they are not the primary focus. In fact, only a selection of BBPR’s works are presented and discussed when they are germane to the themes under consideration. This is also consistent with Rogers’ vision, as he inaugurated his life-long writing career with an article on the education of the architect1 and prefaced his most important book, Esperienza dell’architettura (1958),2 a curated collection of previously published or prepared writings, with a reflection on the craft of the architect, concluding his writing career with a brief article on “a few principles for the architect.”3 In that, Rogers was well in the footsteps of his most admired architect–intellectual in history, Leon Battista Alberti, who made sure at the onset of his treatise to first define the profile of the architect—quoted by Rogers on numerous occasions— before delving into “all things building.”4 At the same time, in his introduction to Esperienza, Rogers stated: “I am not a philosopher, nor a man of letters, but an architect who reads literature (and poetry), who writes, but essentially designs and verifies himself on the construction site.”5 As Bruno Zevi posited in reviewing Esperienza soon after its release, “We need to go back to Leon Battista Alberti or Baudelaire to find such a synthesis of artist and critic … Rogers’ value (…) can be fully grasped only before his works of art and BBPR’s buildings. Everything else is ‘additional qualities,’ humanly highly sensitive and cultured, of the personality of a true architect.”6

This particular way of being an architect goes well beyond that “Italian style” of being an architect, with which Peter Smithson tried to diminish, with a not so hidden condescension, “Uncle Ernesto’s”—as he called him—contribution, along with those of some of his younger collaborators, such as Giancarlo De Carlo and Vittorio Gregotti.7 Indeed, Rogers’ influence was exerted primarily by how he modeled his professional life. As recognized by another collaborator, Luciano Semerani: “Rogers has been a Master to us for his way of being an architect.”8

Rationale What have been the motivations behind this study? Why another book on Rogers after the many publications already produced on him and on his BBPR partnership? A few reasons are behind this effort. First of all, there was need of a study intended for an international audience. While there is copious literature in Italian, there are very few international publications accessible beyond academic circles—and this is in spite of Rogers’ international stature. Together with his BBPR partners, he was a member of the CIAM from the mid-1930s—just a few years after graduation—member of the Council from 1947; member of the Comité des Cinq, a team of consultants for the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, which included Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius (1952–58); lectured extensively across the world and taught at several international universities—being also offered in 1952 to succeed Gropius at the helm of the Harvard Graduate School of Design;9 was made Honorary Fellow of the AIA in 1956 and of the RIBA in 1963; was close friends with the greatest figures of modern architecture, including Wright, Corbu, Mies, Aalto and, especially, Gropius; BBPR was involved with projects around the world, from New York to Barcelona. Even Reyner Banham, who engaged with Rogers in a heated debate in the late 1950s, called Rogers a “hero figure of European architecture of the late Forties and early Fifties.”10 Second, there was a need for a comprehensive study on Rogers for his “model” of the modern architect. After the 1973 exhaustive monograph by Bonfanti and Porta,11 which was in fact on BBPR as a firm, subsequent publications and studies— for the most part compiled in multi-author anthologies or magazines’ special issues—have mainly tackled particular aspects of Rogers’ career.12 It seemed to me that there was need for a study on Rogers as architect–intellectual in his entire complexity. As noted by Gregotti: “he was the figure that, more than any other, underscored the importance, for the artistic practice of architecture, of placing the responsibility of the intellectual next to, and as a foundation of, the practice of the professional and of the artist.”13 Finally, another motivation came from two other convictions of mine, which may be regarded as hypotheses or assumptions for the thesis of the study. On one hand, the conviction that, with Jürgen Habermas,14 modernity is an unfinished 2

ERNESTO NATHAN ROGERS

project and, consequently, that modern architecture is still in “evolution”—to use a term dear to Rogers—thus requiring an ongoing revision of the model of the modern architect. On the other hand, the conviction that the model of the architect–intellectual is still relevant, today more than ever, as also articulated by Marco Biraghi in a recent study.15

Aims In order to demonstrate the above argument, this study aims at showing the following aspects of Rogers’ works. First and foremost, the universal value of Rogers’ legacy. Obviously, his work— especially his artistic work as partner of the BBPR—was highly influenced by the specific social and cultural conditions in which he operated, mostly in Italy from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, but the international impact of his activities warrant an evaluation within an international perspective. Also his activities on the side of the profession—still part of his overall persona as an architect—were quite strongly related to the Italian cultural milieu, but all his engagements cannot be seen as limited to that supposed “Italian style” of being an architect referred to by Peter Smithson—“the office, the magazines, teaching abroad, summer schools.”16 This study tries to demonstrate how those activities were functional to the idea of the modern architect–intellectual—besides, didn’t Corbu call himself an “homme de lettres”?17 In addition, this study wants to challenge the notion of Rogers as the precursor of Post-Modernism. Simply because Rogers tried to evolve modern architecture from its initial—though necessary—historical complex and—also necessary— contextual indifference, there is no ground to label him as a precursor of the superficial historicist revival of Post-Modernism. Simply because some of his young collaborators would eventually pursue research that may be seen as part of the postmodernist phase of modern architecture, it is senseless to hold Rogers accountable for such developments. Or simply because of his innate openmindedness and empathetic  disposition to encourage younger generations— as well as contemporary colleagues, for that matter—in their  uncertain and experimental explorations, inevitably yielding questionable results. Yet Rogers did publish those Neo-Liberty works in Casabella-Continuità without stating clearly his cultural distance, thus conveying the impression of an implicit endorsement of them—as he duly recognized as one of his editorial shortcomings. Instead, as Alexander Tzonis, for example, has stated, “Rogers formulated the concept of Critical Regionalism, the new positioning of architecture and urbanism that responds to the concerning technological, social, cultural and economical reality of globalization at the closing of the twentieth century.”18 Indeed, Critical Regionalism arrived at its current formulation sparked by Kenneth Frampton’s reflections, but it cannot be denied that Rogers’ thought had in it the seeds of such an approach. The book also tries to demonstrate this. INTRODUCTION

3

Rogers’ works and thought cannot be reduced to simplistic terms. One has to understand their complexity and this is another aim of the book. Complexity is likely to bring along ambiguities and, sometimes, contradictions—balanced though by frequent moments of lightning and dazzling intuition. In reflecting on Rogers’ legacy, Francesco Tentori has rightly remembered a few verses by Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”19 So true of Rogers as well. Some contradictions, aporias, questionable goals—such as the early enthusiasm for “corporativist urbanism” or wanting to define a certain “Italianness” for Italian architecture, both being legacies of a juvenile and wrong infatuation with fascism—do not affect the overall superb quality of Rogers’ intellectual contribution. A contribution where the BBPR works remain the core, but one that cannot be fully appreciated without Rogers’ writing. And it is not a simple writing, it is not a structured discourse in the form of a treatise—which he had in mind to develop but never got around to—or a major piece of written theory, such as, for example, The Architecture of the City (1966) by his mentee Aldo Rossi. Rogers’ thought, at its best in the intensity and the critical urgency of a short, focused writing, or speech, was not made for a structured book. In fact, he never authored a good one, his best publication (Esperienza) being a curated collection of past essays. The only book that he really composed, Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico (1961)20 was less than satisfactory—hurriedly put together for an academic contest—and Rogers himself pulled it from the market soon after its release. Rogers had the humility, but also the strength and the discipline, to be his own first critic. A distinct attitude of critical thinking that he also maintained in other spheres of his activities, such as when he edited magazines—for example, when he pulled the plug, finally unconvinced, on a monographic issue of Casabella-Continuità on “tradition,” on which his collaborators had been working for a while21—or at the office during the design process. Belgiojoso recalled that, during their discussions, Rogers was always pushing for improvements: “We should never be content to have reached a goal: you settle too soon with your solutions.”22 And when they used to complain about Rogers’ critique of a design that they worked hard to develop the previous day and on which all of them had agreed, he used to rebut: “Yesterday was yesterday … do you like it today?” And they had to continue to improve the design for a more perfect solution.23 Again Belgiojoso: “ ‘Being honest with oneself ’ was the first point of his credo, and it was, at the same time, a moral principle.”24

Rogers / BBPR These recollections by Belgiojoso tie with an overarching problem of this study: how is it possible to single out Rogers’ contribution from the collaborative career of the BBPR? The book includes a whole chapter devoted to Rogers’ experience of “teamwork,” which for him was one of the fundamental guiding principles of the modern architect. However, the chapter discusses how that experience unfolded, 4

ERNESTO NATHAN ROGERS

FIGURE 0.1 BBPR at the office, circa 1934. From left to right: Enrico Peressutti, Lodovico Belgiojoso, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Gian Luigi Banfi. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

which projects could be looked at as exemplary to understand such an approach, and various forms of collaboration in which Rogers engaged—beyond BBPR— in order to demonstrate how teamwork was not only a new and a better way to practice architecture, but, more broadly, a mindset that sustains the experience of the modern architect in the world, as an intellectual and a citizen. Here the question is how is it possible to isolate Rogers as a subject of a critical and historical analysis from the web of ideas, experiences, and works that he himself wove throughout his career in his interactions with his closest collaborators at the firm? It is not easy, but this study is primarily focused on what Rogers meant for a “modern architect” and the model that he exemplified, rather than reassessing the works of the BBPR. Even though being probably more present in the daily routine of the office than Rogers, the other BBPR partners also engaged themselves in a variety of endeavors, such as writing, public speaking, teaching, consulting, and participating in other professional teams or associations. Yet, there is little doubt that Rogers exemplified this model more than the other partners, hence the significance of studying and discussing his particular experience. At the same time, BBPR have been always very clear that the professional work that came out of their firm was the indivisible product of their common intellectual efforts, and that it was pointless to try to distinguish the respective contributions of the partners. Hence, the architectural works and projects discussed in this book are always discussed—and duly credited—as BBPR’s works. INTRODUCTION

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Discussing Rogers “and” BBPR, as was done for this book, required a particular—dual—analytical method that, even though it often required shifting perspectives and contexts, in the end, mirrored Rogers’ mentality and his acting in accordance with the complex nature of modern culture.

Approach How did this study try to accomplish what has been just described? A first step has been to identify those themes in Rogers’ artistic and intellectual experience that are fundamental components for the profile of the architect as exemplified by Rogers. The discussion of each theme is articulated through writings and works, consistent with Rogers’ firm belief that an architect’s value is “verified on the construction site.” Obviously, all themes wove through Rogers’ and other BBPR partners’ careers. Therefore, each chapter follows a chronological order of its own, not dissimilar— though a bit accentuated—to the format of Esperienza, where Rogers divided his collected writings into three parts, according to various themes and categories,25 each following its own chronological order. The other component of the approach was to consider Rogers’ entire career, including its early part—basically, pre-Second World War—which was treated with equal focus and rigor. As aptly questioned by Francesco Bucci, “in order to grasp the true value of Rogers’ thought, would it not be better to revisit all the phases that he lived in, without limiting ourselves to the brief post-war season for which we are used to remembering him?”26 I believe the wholeness that Rogers was advocating for, regarding the experience of the architectural phenomenon, should also be followed in considering and critically evaluating the arc of any artist’s creative trajectory. Finally, the weaving of the discourse with both theoretical reflections and works of architecture seemed another necessary angle of the approach to analyze Rogers’ legacy, as one of the two components would not have offered sufficient material for a full comprehension of his oeuvre. Consistent with this and with Rogers’ approach when he was studying and discussing figures of the less or more recent past—as a critic engagé and not as an historian27—my perspective has been that of an architect who reflects, rather than an historian. I am aware of the limitations of such a hybrid method, which of course does not pretend to substitute the necessary in-depth analysis of the historian. On the contrary, I hope that this book will be a stimulus for more studies into Rogers’ oeuvre, also of historical nature. Yet, I am also confident in the benefits of the approach of this book as a way to foster a cultural dialog with the history of our field and to keep questioning our identity as modern architects in the pursuit of the evolving and unfinished project of modernity.

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1  CRITICALITY

For Rogers, one of the most important aspects of being a modern architect was to exercise a critical understanding of, and a creative response to, reality and the challenges of artistic practice. The architect, according to Rogers, cannot be satisfied with just developing a good project, as professionally sound as it may be: there is a moral obligation to put her/his skills, creativity, and intelligence to good use for the advancement of the art, the meaningful shaping of the environment and the betterment of society. The seeds for his notion of criticality were already planted in the young Rogers during his formative years at the Politecnico in Milan through the teachings of one of his professors, Ambrogio Annoni, not on modern architecture per se—which at that time was still struggling to make its way through the school’s conservative environment—but on preservation. While Rogers and his fellow classmates Banfi, Belgiojoso, and Peressutti did not learn much—with few exceptions—from Politecnico’s conservative, historicist faculty, essentially going through a selfdirected education, sensitive to what was happening in Northern Europe in the 1920s, the teachings of Annoni had a lasting impact. What characterized Annoni’s theory about preservation was the so-called “case-by-case” approach, whereby the architect has to exercise her/his best judgment, through rational method and artistic sensitivity, while tackling the problem at hand without preconceived ideas or ideological strategies about what and how to preserve. This was in stark contrast with the leading preservationist of the time, Rome-based Gustavo Giovannoni, who preached an ideologically rigid approach to the preservation of historic structures and urban organisms, in addition to an ideological opposition to modern architecture.1 For a case-by-case approach, which Rogers and his professional partners at BBPR followed later in their career when they were given commissions involving historic fabrics—but also more in general for any project— the exercise of critical judgment was crucial. However, it had to be supported by a rigorous method of analysis, alternative options evaluations, and a creative process: a method similar to the one that was at the foundation of the Modern Project in architecture, as symbolized by Corbu’s famous dictum “Architecture is a well-posed problem.” Architecture became a problem that could be rationally

defined without preconceptions, critically evaluated through a rational method and creatively resolved as a critique to consolidated stereotypes.2 Rogers’ process of self-education included an intense study of the most advanced research going on at that time in France, Germany, Austria, and Russia, and among the many lessons that he learned from the pioneers of modern architecture was the critical mentality that would serve him and his partners well in their later career. As Rogers later observed, while interrogating himself about the common denominator of Corbu’s manifold research, geared at envisioning— beyond stylistic formulas—whole new dimensions and manifestations of modern living as critiques of consolidated cultural patterns, Le Corbusier’s first act is a complete rejection of consolidated models, not only in terms of forms, but especially in terms of the contents that determine those forms. More than an inventor of original forms, he is an inventor of “worlds”: the world of those who dwell, the world of those who co-habit within the city, the world of those who work in the countryside, the world of those who retreat to pray in a church or in a convent. The world, finally, of those who need care in a hospital.3 Beyond important figures within the field of architecture, recent—such as Loos, Van de Velde, Gropius, and Le Corbusier—and more distant—such as Leon Battista Alberti—Rogers also found inspiration to form his own critical sensibility in other protagonists of Italian culture and society, such as philosopher Enzo Paci and industrialist Adriano Olivetti.4 We shall discuss the relationship between Rogers and the former in a later chapter, but here we should dwell on the relationship with the latter, because it also relates to the BBPR’s first important “critical” work.

The Valle d’Aosta Master Plan Enlightened capitalist, man of great culture, combining innovative business vision with a genuine humanitarian spirit, Adriano Olivetti belonged to the second generation of a legendary Italian industrial dynasty, initiated by Adriano’s father, Camillo. Rogers, twenty-five, and Adriano Olivetti, thirty-three, met in Trieste— Rogers’ hometown where he continued to return frequently—in 1934 to discuss a possible commission for the young firm of BBPR—just graduated in 1932—and other Milanese professionals: a regional master plan for Italy’s north-westernmost region of Valle d’Aosta. Olivetti’s factory—at the time producing typewriters, based on Camillo’s notable 1930 M40 model—was located in Ivrea, a small town northeast of Turin, just at the foot of the Alps, and along the river Dora Baltea that runs from the Valle d’Aosta to the south of the Po Valley. Olivetti understood that Ivrea’s potential for growth was also related to the growth of its hinterland, consisting

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mainly of the Valle d’Aosta, hence his interest in launching a comprehensive regional plan for the economic and social development of that region. Far and logistically secluded from the more developed areas of industrial Northern Italy—notably the industrial triangle of Turin–Milan–Genoa—the mountainous territory of the Valle d’Aosta was suffering from poverty, lack of economic development, and weak infrastructure. Nevertheless, the valley boasted spectacular natural environments—e.g., the Mont Blanc and the Cervino/ Matterhorn mountainous groups—that needed only to be exploited for tourism. Olivetti had the vision to unlock the valley’s untapped potential. However, he did not see just an opportunity for economic growth, as he also cultivated a genuine humanitarian concern for people’s living standards. Certainly influenced by his father Camillo’s inclination toward a moderate form of “socialism”—in addition to his own vague initial fascination with fascist “corporativism”5—Adriano had a

FIGURE 1.1  BBPR, Piano per la Valle d’Aosta (1934–36), urban design plan for the city of Aosta by Banfi, Peressutti, and Rogers. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

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vision for community development and a humane approach to industrial growth that benefited from architecture and urbanism. As Rogers recalled many years later in his passionate commemoration of his dear friend Adriano,6 the Valle d’Aosta Master Plan, beyond its own value as a regional plan, was the embodiment of Olivetti’s philosophy: politics, social reform, economy, and urbanism converging together toward an idea of civic growth. In his foreword to the master plan document Il piano della Valle d’Aosta, Olivetti outlined his clear vision: “The plan wanted to show how, going beyond traditional and limited models, a modern state could change a region where there is a need of renewal and environmental recovery, to bring it back to its entire social and human dignity.”7 Completed in 1936—when it was exhibited at the IV Milan Triennale—and officially and fully presented in 1937 in Rome, the plan, whose team included, as architects/planners, BBPR and already experienced and recognized professionals such as Piero Bottoni, Luigi Figini, and Gino Pollini, consisted of a massive set of 450 boards (150 x 50 cm) and five models. In its introductory part, the plan offered an analysis of natural assets, geography, history, demographic trends, economy, social characters, infrastructure, and tourism. The master plan also included more detailed plans for the Italian area of Mont Blanc—by Figini and Pollini—the Breuil Valley—by Belgiojoso and Bottoni—the city of Aosta and the tourist center at Pila—both by Banfi, Peressutti, and Rogers—and a new residential neighborhood in Ivrea—by Figini and Pollini. For each of these detailed plans, the urbanistic and architectural vision rested on a thorough analysis of geography, agricultural activities, land-ownership, existing housing conditions, demographics, and economic strengths and weaknesses. One of the team members, Piero Bottoni, proudly considered the plan “the most comprehensive regional plan developed so far in Italy and probably in the world.”8 As exemplified in the vision for Aosta by Banfi, Peressutti, and Rogers, the proposal advanced a critique of current conditions and development models, to suggest a new modern environment in a harmonic dialog with nature. The refined and balanced fabric of abstracted, modern volumes was tempered by a clear, though veiled and subtle, historical reference to Aosta’s Roman history, with the new stadium situated the way a Roman amphitheater would have been located in a typical Roman new town. The 3D urban design interpretation of a 2D larger planning strategy, aligned with the most advanced experimentations by Corbu and other Northern European architects and planners, was also a critique of traditional disciplinary tools and modes of operation.

Rationalism of the 1930s The critical approach that BBPR manifested in the Valle d’Aosta large-scale planning work was also taken for their initial architectural design challenges. BBPR fully engaged in the fervor of urban renewal and new construction pursued 10

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by the fascist regime, taking a political alignment with the Fascist National Party that Rogers and all the others, in hindsight, deeply regretted. Rogers did not shrink to comment on various occasions about the mistake they made, along with many other artists and architects—namely, the most distinguished of all, Giuseppe Terragni—who had embraced the fascist ideology. Rogers recalled that “through egocentrism, we posited absurd syllogisms, such as the one that went: Fascism is a revolution, our art is revolutionary, therefore Fascism will have to adopt our art.”9 In fairness, the fascist regime maintained a rather ambiguous position toward cultural and artistic movements, mostly encouraging rhetoric and monumental revivals—and increasingly so through the years—but also supporting modern experimentations, such as in the fortunate case of the competition for the new railway station in Florence (1932), won by Giovanni Michelucci’s team. As Palmiro Togliatti, who eventually became the post-Second World War leader of the Italian Communist Party, already noted in 1935: What do we find in the Fascist ideology? Everything. It is an eclectic ideology … an exasperated nationalist ideology … [but also] fragments of social-democratic models … organized [controlled] capitalism … and from communism: planning, etc. The Fascist ideology contains a series of heterogeneous elements. We need to keep this in mind, because it allows us to understand what this ideology is functional for.10 This contextual extenuation notwithstanding, the painful mistake remains, especially when compared with the few artists and intellectuals, such as Edoardo Persico, who saw the real nature of the regime from its early years and instead maintained a firm and ethical stance of opposition. In spite of their political blindness toward the fascist regime, BBPR continued to cultivate a working method that led them to grow a body of work that Bonfanti and Porta did not hesitate to call “critical architecture.”11 Already in the mid-1930s, they took part in several national design competitions, the first important being the one in 1934 for the Palazzo del Littorio in Rome, the new headquarters of the Fascist National Party on via dei Fori Imperiali, in the midst of the archeological district of the Roman Fora. More than 100 teams participated, seventy-two were selected for a public exhibition, and twelve for a second phase of the contest. BBPR, with Figini and Pollini, and engineer Arturo Danusso—who several years later would consult with BBPR for their landmark work, the Velasca Tower in Milan—developed a project with a clearly modern vocabulary, in critical rejection of any rhetoric monumentalism or historicism that the regime was ambiguously supporting along with, though more mildly, modern architecture. The competition sparked a great deal of debate, with important figures of the regime dispensing their views, such as Ugo Ojetti—an influential fascist intellectual and art historian—who harshly criticized the projects by Terragni’s team, which was still admitted to the second phase, and by BBPR—for “its buildings completely CRITICALITY

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Figure 1.2  BBPR, Palazzo del Littorio, via dei Fori Imperiali, Rome (1934), competition entry, view of the model from the northern side toward via dei Fori Imperiali. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

wrapped in glass.” While conceding that these “constructions had a universal character, but in the facile sense of ‘international’,” Ojetti sternly denied, in typical fascist rhetoric, “that they could represent the continuity of the tradition of Rome.”12 Yet BBPR critically stuck to their beliefs, earning even the praise of a highly reputable critic such as Persico, who singled out BBPR’s project among his six best—even though it showed, in his view, some “hesitation between the style of Gropius and the one by Le Corbusier.”13 The project’s formal solution of two separate, but obviously connected, volumes, for clarity of program organization and functionality, as well as for massing articulation—though in formal friction with a triangular site, partially resolved with the brilliant idea of a triangular podium—resulted in a successful parti (“concept plan,” from the Beaux-Arts tradition) that BBPR employed again in the following years in other projects. A few years later BBPR won a competition for a colonia elioterapica—a sun therapy summer retreat for the youth—in Legnano (1937–38), a small but important industrial town northeast of Milan. Located in the midst of a beautiful park on a small hill on the outskirts of the small town, here the parti that in Rome suffered the constraints of site and ideological program, found its way to a clearer, more balanced, better integrated, and more mature composition. In fact, one of the volumes is morphed into a U scheme and is further buffered on its main front by another separate but less deep volume: the solarium. This narrow bar was basically a “loggia for sun therapy,” but well kept in its typological and 12

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formal integrity to define the main front with an unquestionably consistent modern vocabulary. Yet the critical mind of BBPR included a significant human touch with sweeping curtains that added a beautiful sensual character to the stark logic of the rationalist structural frame of the loggia. The general language of the

FIGURE 1.3  BBPR, Colonia Elioterapica, Legnano, Milan (1937–38). Partially demolished and severely altered in 1956. From a historic postcard, courtesy of © Dario Rondanini, Legnano.

FIGURE 1.4  BBPR, Colonia Elioterapica. Partial view of the Colonia, with a cohort of children practicing fascist era exercises. From a historic postcard, courtesy of © Dario Rondanini, Legnano. CRITICALITY

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Colonia is assertively modern, but also careful in not giving in to any monumental temptation that the program of a public building might have offered. The tone is understated, in truly modern spirit, critically tuned in with the rural character of the context. Gregotti has rightly observed that “there is no doubt that works like the Colonia Elioterapica in Legnano [along with a few other Italian architectures of the time] can be considered, at the end of the 1930s, a manifesto for such a critical attitude.”14 The Colonia greatly contributed to boost BBPR’s reputation not only nationally but also internationally, as it was the only example of Italian modern architecture to be included by Alfred Roth in his seminal book The New Architecture (1940).15 The other important architectural project of these years was again in Rome, for a post office for the new satellite town of EUR, envisioned by Mussolini for the World Expo of 1942—which of course never took place. Earlier on, in 1937, BBPR participated in the competition for the main building within the EUR master plan, the Palazzo per la Mostra della Civilta’ Italiana. That competition was eventually won by Ernesto Bruno La Padula’s team with a design in monumental Neo-Novecento style that found the favor of the regime and was realized in the northwestern quadrant of the new district. However, Marcello Piacentini, “orchestrator-in-chief ” on behalf of the fascist regime of the whole EUR program—as well as of many other initiatives and competitions for governmental and public buildings—recognizing BBPR’s project value and the artistic and professional caliber already reached by the Milanese firm—as well as probably for good PR, given the growing reputation and cultural influence of Rogers and his partners—wanted to offer them a compensatory commission with the EUR new post office (1938–40). Here the modern vocabulary and poetics of the firm reached complete maturation. BBPR continued to develop a parti already experimented on in previous projects by organizing the program into two parallel volumes. Here though they

FIGURE 1.5 BBPR, post office at the EUR, Rome (1938–40). Perspective view. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso. 14

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FIGURE 1.6  BBPR, post office at the EUR. View of the main (eastern) front facing viale Beethoven, looking north. Photo 2020, courtesy of © Diana Carta.

FIGURE 1.7  BBPR, post office at the EUR. View of the main (eastern) front facing viale Beethoven, looking south. Maintenance works on the rear building. Photo 2020, courtesy of © Diana Carta.

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FIGURE 1.8  BBPR, post office at the EUR. View of the rear (western) front, facing piazza Francesco Vivona. The net is there for maintenance works. Photo 2018, © Author.

did not have the constraints of the triangular site of the Palazzo del Littorio nor the unchangeable natural environment of a protected public park such as in Legnano, rather the challenge of an “imaginary” urban context to be. In fact, with the Palazzo delle Poste, in a pretty undeveloped site at the time of its design and construction, BBPR had the opportunity to guide the future urban growth of the neighborhood through its geometry, form, and scale. Perfectly aligned with the north–south axis of viale Beethoven, the front “bar”—for more public functions— more solid in its language, and lower in scale—but still just monumental enough to signal, through its entry pronao, the civic role of the building—defines the urban scale and character of its front plaza by stepping back from the street front. The bar at the rear—for offices and internal services—acquires a bigger scale, especially on the western side, in full display, facing a small piazza at a lower level, by asserting the public character of the building and, at the same time, defining a background stage through the humble, low-key, non-hierarchical, and consistent repetition of the spatial grid’s modules. The 3D grid, elevated by Terragni as a distinctive poetic element of Italian Rationalism, acquired here a more urban and humble character. The proportions are rectangular, thus more “urbane,” not abstractly “squarish”—and horizontally stretched—as in Como, and the grid is plainly and unrhetorically displayed throughout the façade with formal coherence. In addition, for this project Belgiojoso acknowledged a convergence of linguistic research with

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Terragni.16 Granted, the post office was less ideologically charged than the Casa del Fascio—Piacentini awarded the post office commission to BBPR because it was “more functional,”17 thus more appropriate, in his view, for a “functionalist” team like BBPR—yet Rogers18 and his partners carried it out with clarity, poetic ambition, and critical sensibility, as well as the vision for how the city would have eventually grown around it. This is also a peculiarity of other projects by BBPR that will be discussed later. With the projects in Legnano and Rome, BBPR asserted their critical distance from any rhetoric monumentalism or superficial historicism, into which so many colleagues were giving in, be it for poetic choice or, more often, for opportunism in order to ingratiate themselves with the fascist regime. It was a critique that at the same time denounced an unethical renunciation of standing for the right of artists and architects to search for beauty and truth beyond political convenience and wanted to demonstrate the possibilities of a new approach based on critical thought and creativity.

Formative Years as Critic and Editor Through these early projects we can already see the firm realizing an idea of modern architecture as critical thinking: a design approach infused by criticality that did not appease itself in a normative formal vocabulary but rested solidly on a method. As Rogers observed later in 1958, in his preface to Esperienza, “[it is] a method freely accepted, with which we try to enhance poetically the logical structures suggested by the specific data of each event: it is the composition of ever new relationships, it is the striving to grasp the essential nature of the architectural reality that realizes those various relationships.”19 We can already appreciate Rogers’ effort to outline a theoretical position that wanted at the same time to avoid any pretense of a general theory. As aptly observed in 1970 by a young— but not surprisingly already an acute critic—Ignasi de Solá Morales, remembering Rogers one year after his death: “There are no general solutions or theories. Only the experience of the problems of a particular place or environment allows to evaluate solutions that do not pretend to overcome the specific level in which they are generated and produced.”20 Criticality was applied to virtually every aspect of Rogers’ manifold intellectual experience. Certainly, an important aspect was his engagement with architectural magazines. In reviewing and discussing works of art and architecture, in reflecting on the design process for the works of his firm, and later on, more often, in dwelling on more theoretical issues, Rogers pursued a kind of writing that somehow evolved into its own genre, at the intersection of art criticism, architectural theory, and philosophical disquisition—ingrained in his mentality was the mode of dialectic argumentation. Such a hybrid genre was also supported by Rogers’ broad literary knowledge, writing skills, and poetic sensibility, which perhaps made him CRITICALITY

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pay a price in terms of theoretical consistency and structure, but allowed him to continuously explore and critically evaluate and discuss themes and problems with new perspectives and lucid and sparkling intuitions. Rogers started early on, when he was still a student, as a contributor to the art magazine Le arti plastiche (1930–32). Through about thirty articles on “modern architectural organisms”—the house, the garden, interiors, hotels—new materials—glass, linoleum—and a regular column on Milanese exhibitions, the young Rogers was already honing his critical skills. Particularly interesting was a discussion of the work—naval interiors—of his private art teacher Anselmo Bucci—Rogers was famously not well versed in the art of drawing—where, by reading in-depth into the artistic intentions of Bucci’s apparent historicism, he already tried to define one of his topical critical themes: “modernity is in the substance not in appearances.”21 It would be, though, the experience at Quadrante that offered Rogers the first important laboratory for criticism. Launched in May 1933 by writer Massimo Bontempelli and “cultural agitator” and fervent fascist of the first hour Pier Maria Bardi, Quadrante attracted Rogers and his partners, together with other protagonists of Italian Rationalism, such as the members of the Gruppo 7 (such as Giuseppe Terragni, Luigi Figini, and Gino Pollini) Piero Bottoni and Enrico A. Griffini, as well as abstract painters of the Gruppo di Como (Giuseppe Ghiringhelli and Mario Radice).22 It is worth noting that, of the eleven architects who signed the inaugural manifesto of the magazine, four were BBPR partners and the editorial office was in fact within BBPR’s first studio office in the Banfi family’s apartment in Milan—as Julia Banfi, who later collaborated with Rogers at Domus and Casabella, aptly observed “[it was] while doing Quadrante that Rogers learnt how to make a magazine.”23 Fueled by Bardi’s political passion, the cultural thrust of the Quadrante group grew with a powerful sense of purpose. Such a sense of urgency found an appropriate channel of expression, beyond the traditional one of buildings, also through exhibitions and installations, much quicker and less expensive to be realized, which were also offered as research and polemical opportunities on numerous occasions during the 1930s. As David Rifkind noted, “the architects of the Quadrante circle, like many of their contemporaries, saw their temporary works as ‘constructed arguments’ leading toward permanent contributions to the built environment, yet these impermanent projects retain enduring importance as polemical ‘texts’ in a broad cultural debate.”24 After many years and the sad realization of the fascist illusion, Rogers continued to advocate for such a mission in the postwar decades through the more intellectually mature and politically savvy cultural activities as editor of Domus and Casabella. In particular, in his 1946 editorial for Domus 216, “Elogio della Tendenza” (In Praise of the Trend) Rogers tried to explain the cultural strategy of the magazine and the movement it stood for. In fact, tendenza is the Italian word for “trend,” but with a particular direction and philosophy, like a “movement.” It is a term that Rogers particularly liked, as it implied a critical stance, it suggested a 18

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direction or a strategy but, at the same time, it was looser and more open than an actual movement with a manifesto. It was more a cultural and artistic sensibility, necessary for the ongoing quest for a renewed modern project, in tune with the changing times and the evolving needs of society. In explaining Domus’ editorial policy for selecting works for publication, Rogers observed: we often host [the works of] young designers whose immaturity, and even mediocrity, we certainly acknowledge as long as they stand on that side of the barricade where they judge that criticism (and therefore also action) is right, and we insist in overlooking more mature products, and in themselves, even more perfect, of those who, in our view, operate in a dying or already dead world.25

The Monumento ai Caduti and the Sforza Castle Museum Examples of how criticality was the guiding compass in navigating the uncertain territories outside stylistic and ideological dogmas, are two mature works by BBPR of highly different scale, but both charged with symbolic and cultural meanings: the Monumento in ricordo dei Caduti nei campi di concentramento in Germania (Memorial for the fallen in Germany’s Nazi camps) and the Museum at the Castello Sforzesco, both in Milan. Envisioned, designed, and built in a week, the Monumento (1946) is a rather small memorial, located right after the entrance of the main cemetery in Milan. This cemetery is better known as Cimitero Monumentale (Monumental Cemetery), due to the rhetoric and elaborated ornamentation of its architectural elements and tombs. BBPR Monumento, on the contrary, mostly designed by Enrico Peressutti,26 is the antithesis of monumentality. It is a very thin 3D grid, defining an overall cubic volume, with secondary geometrical subdivisions shaping crosses based on the Golden Section’s proportions. The 3D grid, realized in simple iron tubes painted white, rests on a cross-like base in stone, topped by Carrara marble tiles. At the center of the cube is an urn with soil from Nazi camps, as infill in some of the areas defined by the iron tubes are marble tiles with inscriptions quoting Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.”27 The main gesture of the 3D grid is also a symbolic, but humble, expression of a desire to reconnect with pre-war architecture, when, for Edoardo Persico and others—including, for certain, BBPR partner Banfi—it was widely used as a symbol of modern rationalism.28 The monument was featured on the 1946 first issue of Costruzioni-Casabella after the interruption of the war—which happened when Giuseppe Pagano, then director, was arrested in 1943. Aptly, it appeared as the first featured work of architecture, next to the opening editorial by Franco Albini and Giancarlo Palanti, who pledged to continue the advocacy for a “new architecture,” where Pagano had CRITICALITY

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FIGURE 1.9  BBPR, “Monumento in ricordo dei Caduti nei campi di concentramento in Germania,” Cimitero Monumentale, Milan (1946). Photo 2018, © Author.

left, to “pay personally”—a famous expression by Pagano—for remaining loyal to his artistic, moral, and political principles—after an 180º re-positioning against the fascist regime. The monument is presented with a brief but moving note, titled “Dedica” [Dedication], by Peressutti, to those dear friends and colleagues that had died in Nazi camps: “[They] are still among us with the best part of humanity: that one that knows to be alive beyond death. These crosses, composed within the Golden Section, are dedicated to you, dear friends, Giangio [Gian Luigi] Banfi, Giuseppe Pagano, Filippo Beltrami, Raffaello Giolli, Giorgio Labò, to all the fallen of Germany’s camps.”29 In Peressutti’s heartfelt closing one feels the uplifting—though painful— sense of memory and hope: “among us with the best part of humanity.” Thus, the monument wants to convey, through its rational geometry and shape, clarity, essentiality, governing proportions of the highest esthetic order, and human scale, a message of hope, to overcome the horror of inhuman—beyond-human-reason— evil. Here the 3D grid, previously used by BBPR, for example, with a more tectonic accent (a la Terragni) as the competition entry for the Monumento alla Vittoria in piazza Fiume in Milan (1937), acquired more abstract formal power and a multilayered symbolic meaning. Rogers often reminded colleagues, students, and various audiences of the etymology of the term “monument”: from Latin moneo [to admonish] and memini [to remember]. We find here a poetic realization of that concept: the message of hope over evil, reason over chaos, humility over rhetoric, 20

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calmness, serenity, and brotherhood over uncontrolled, wicked and egomaniac impulses, and the memory of a new architecture—as interpreter of a new world.30 Consistent with their critical approach, which addressed the questions posed by any given commission without preconceptions, BBPR tackled the project for the restoration of the Sforza Castle and the renovation of its spaces for a new civic museum (1946–56) with a particular perspective. As explained at the outset of their presentation of the project in Casabella-Continuità in 1956—given the writing style, most probably written by Rogers himself—BBPR critically recognized the specific character of the new museum at the Castello: the castle’s crucial urban location, at the heart of the city, next to Milan’s major public park— Parco Sempione—thus at the center of the city’s public life: it is an environment of broad popular resonance, which we had to keep in mind while trying to identify the style [meaning, the character] of our exhibition design... [The new museum is envisioned] as a whole, capable of representing a popular educational function, easily accessible to the intelligence of vast audiences, to their emotional spontaneity, to their need for spectacular, fantastic and grandiose expressions.31 The development of the project is utterly consistent with this preliminary, but overarching, critical realization. This consistency, between the conceptual framework of the project—where Rogers obviously always played a major role, fully shared also with the museum’s curator Costantino Baroni—and the design development, was precisely what some of the critics of this work overlooked or wanted to ignore. Given this intention to weave through the halls of the castle a popular narration, the design could not take a very silent, minimal stance, rather it had to emphasize the displayed stories that the objects brought with themselves, while facilitating a maximum Einfühlung (empathy) for the visitor. As rightly put by Marco Frascari: “Rogers’ theme of museum was not conceived as rigorous taxonomy of historical artifacts, but rather as a Wunderkammer, a machine for associating and generating critical images.”32 Apart from a few pieces of distinctive artistic quality—namely Michelangelo’s Pietà Rondanini—the collection, as admitted by Baroni himself, had more value as a whole, rather than in its particular objects—from archeological remnants to a full-scale reconstructed medieval gateway, from handicrafts to historical musical instruments, from textiles to furniture, from armors to decorative artworks, sculptures, and paintings. It is more about a condensed narration and presentation of Milan’s collective memory. Thus, the initial concept was critically correct, and the design interpreted it accordingly. As explained in Casabella-Continuità: We did not want to impose any a priori forms to specific parts or to the whole, because we wanted to derive forms from the accurate study of everything … [such as] for example the new window frame, designed after a thorough research, CRITICALITY

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which, while responding to modern criteria of functionality, harmonically fits itself with the ancient, formal order of the monument … or the many wrought iron or wooden supports, which were designed with a consistent criterion, but each adapted to the practical and esthetic needs of every object. You will notice the scale and thickness of the metal supports, unusual for a contemporary vocabulary, but aligning with the massive architecture of the environments … [these and other design solutions] had the intent to achieve an attractive stimulation for the sensibility of the visitors.33 It is indeed a stimulating museum experience, but quite appropriately so for a set of exhibitions that wanted to narrate the story and the material culture of the city in its most symbolic civic monument. Such an educational approach to the museum experience was also related to theories about museums as platforms for experiential learning by American philosopher John Dewey, whose pragmatic and experiential philosophy had a great influence on Rogers. This emphatic character of the Museo del Castello starts right with the first hall and the dramatic display of the medieval Pusterla dei Fabbri, a minor urban gateway reconstructed within the castle’s interior. Then it continues through several  other halls—including the Sala delle Asse, with Leonardo’s unique decorations—but the climax of the whole arrangement was the Sala

FIGURE 1.10  BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum, Milan (1946–56). View of the main entrance with the reconstruction of the urban gateway Pusterla dei Fabbri. Photo 2018, © Author.

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degli Scarlioni, with the Pietà Rondanini, Michelangelo’s last sculpture, which he worked on for more than a decade at the end of his life and left unfinished.34 Arriving in Milan after the Second World War also thanks to public fundraising, this masterpiece was not yet part of the history of the city of Milan, like so many other artifacts displayed in the castle, but it soon became one of the key elements of Milan’s collective pride. At the time of its arrival, the design and the works at the castle were still underway and BBPR had to adjust their scheme to accommodate the new, quite important, programmatic requirement. In fact, it was the museum director, Costantino Baroni, who immediately envisioned the necessity of a clear separation between Michelangelo’s masterpiece and the other minor sculptures of Lombard art hosted in the same hall: “The Pietà Rondanini requires to be presented within an architectural space expressly made and such to generate an almost religious contemplation around the great masterpiece.”35 Consistent with their intention to dramatize the experience of the visitors, BBPR decided to lower by 1.8 m [5 ft. 11 in.] the floor of the Sala degli Scarlioni in the area where the Pietà was going to be located—a pretty invasive intervention on the structure of the ancient castle, but critically necessary, in their view, and consistent with their “case-by-case” approach to historic preservation. They also decided to shield the statue behind a monumental niche in pietra serena—a typical dark gray stone of Florence, the place of Michelangelo’s upbringing—counterbalanced on the other side

FIGURE 1.11  BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum. View of one of the halls, with the artwork supports designed by BBPR. Photo 2018, © Author. CRITICALITY

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FIGURE 1.12  BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum. Sala delle Asse. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1956. Courtesy of © Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milan – as a deposit from Fondazione BEIC.

by a lower niche in olive wood, to define the experiential space for the visitors, gathered in silent contemplation of the masterpiece. The absolute rarefaction of the atmosphere was countered by the potent materiality of the masonry screen. The visitor, after a significant descent through a large stairway, amidst minor Renaissance sculptures, was exposed to the mystery of Michelangelo’s creation, washed laterally by daylight coming from a large Gothic window. This installation was indeed a strike of architectural genius. Unfortunately, this arrangement is gone.36 The new location of the statue in the ex-Ospedale degli Spagnoli (former Spanish Hospital), within the large entry courtyard of the castle, has none of the qualities of BBPR’s original design. Of course, it has a code compliant accessibility and it allows a larger number of visitors. However, the spatiality of the new hall—long and relatively narrow—the distracting—and too colorful—decorations of the vaults, the full display of the statue from the entrance, without any environmental surprise, and the excessive natural light, are no match for BBPR’s ingenious arrangement, which called for a unique, esthetic, and emotional experience. Indeed, the Pietà original arrangement, and the whole BBPR project, were already criticized at the time of the museum’s inauguration in 1956. Antonio 24

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FIGURE 1.13  BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum. Sala degli Scarlioni, still under renovation works. Foreground: sixteenth century Lombard sculptures; background: masonry spatial divider in pietra serena for Michelangelo’s Pietà. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1956. Courtesy of © Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milan—as a deposit from Fondazione BEIC.

Cederna, who spent his life fighting battles for the preservation of Italy’s historic monuments and urban centers, penned a scathing attack against the whole Sforza Castle Museum project on Il Mondo, where BBPR’s intervention for the Pietà took center stage: “The sin of the Milanese architects … is to have violently hit the ancient artifact with their ‘contemporary’ taste … an excessive effort to ‘make a museum modern’.”37 Others, like architect and critic Roberto Pane, criticized BBPR for a sort of “intellectual snobbery,” while others, like critic George E. Kidder Smith, if aptly observing that “some objects [from the collections] are less beautiful than their display systems,” called the museum “the best large scale antiquity exposition in the world.”38 Of course, here and there, on certain solutions, BBPR overdid it. As Lodovico Belgiojoso came to admit after many years—but while still subscribing to the overall design approach, and particularly to the intervention for the Pietà, “one of the best solutions of our museum design”—“probably, [the BBPR] could be criticized in some lack of measure in assessing the impact of the intervention.”39 In order to fully appreciate the intervention by BBPR for the Sforza Castle Museum, it is necessary to keep in mind their critical intention toward a stereotypical notion CRITICALITY

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FIGURE 1.14  BBPR, Sforza Castle Museum. Sala degli Scarlioni, Michelangelo’s Pietà. Photo by Paolo Monti, 1956. Courtesy of © Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milan—as a deposit from Fondazione BEIC.

of museum as neutral support for its art and historic collections and toward a supposedly required restraint on the part of the architect to engage in architectural narrative. As Semerani has poetically observed, “the grand gateways, the pavement of the Medieval city in the Sala degli Scarlioni, the wooden finish in the Sala delle Assi, intervene as dispersed mechanisms of a machine, evoked in its absence, the ‘city of Milan.’ It is the city of Milan the true dweller of the Castle, convened and gathered in front of the Pietà Rondanini.”40 26

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FIGURE 1.15  Sforza Castle Museum, Ospedale degli Spagnoli. Michelangelo’s Pietà in the exhibition space recently designed by Michele De Lucchi (2015). Photo 2018, © Author.

Criticality of the Modern Architect What these two mature works, the Monumento ai Caduti and the Sforza Castle Museum, show is the power of BBPR’s and Rogers’ notion of criticality. Their discomfort with any stylistic or ideological set of dogmas was channeled in an effort, through the rigor of a method, to marry critical inquiry and creative imagination, in an ongoing and recursive artistic process. Rogers’ orthodoxy in

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heterodoxy, being faithful to a constant questioning of consolidated principles and paradigms, in order to achieve ever superior levels of synthesis between utility and beauty—Rogers’ famous “magic formula” of architecture—more on that in the final chapter—was not a betrayal of the Modern Project, but rather its ultimate validation. Certainly, Rogers criticized the lack of human dimension within modern architecture—probably picking up Alvar Aalto’s critique of the 1930s—since the early years of his Swiss exile, from September 1943 to May 1945—which was a period of reflection and theoretical reassessment through ongoing conversations with Alfred Roth, Max Bill, and Sigfried Giedion.41 Rogers undeniably grew ever more aware of the need for modern architecture to continue to renew itself: “The CIAM is no longer in opposition [to an enemy] … the great danger for architecture is Modernist conformity … We must give the public real examples according to a pragmatic methodology.”42 Certainly, Rogers conducted a lifelong battle against any type of formalism, especially modern formalism, as it represented, in his view, the truest betrayal of the Modern Project. In fact, the inaugural editorial of his newly conceived Casabella—to which he attached the sub-title Continuità, to mark the ideal continuity with the founding spirit of the Modern Movement—was supposed to be titled “Formalism.”43 For sure, through the editorship of CasabellaContinuità, especially in the mid- to late-1950s, in clear philosophical contrast with Walter Gropius—who remained one of his most admired “masters”—Rogers encouraged one of the most powerful critiques of the early vision of the Modern Movement, with his reappraisal of the value of history and his call for a careful consideration of pre-existent environments. Yet, as Gregotti pointed out, Rogers’ critique was a positive critical action “within” the Modern Movement. By asserting his embracing of Gropius’ method— here in full accordance with the Lieber Meister—of un-ideological inquiry into the questions and conditions from which to creatively evolve the synthesis between utility and beauty, Rogers showed the true meaning of the Modern Project. And such meaning did include criticality. Again, with Gregotti: Rogers thought that it was necessary to take position, to risk always an opinion that from architecture would project onto the surrounding world like an action of transformation, by means of instruments of the culture built on the tradition of modernity, to proceed from having to be intellectuals and part of the culture, and from a trust in their capability and transformative criticism that we are far from possessing today.44 Criticality as an integral component of modernity is also the manifestation of a quest for a more liberated and emancipated human condition. With modernity comes a promise of freedom. It presupposes a process of emancipation, which implies free choice, which is possible through critical judgment. Eugenia Lopez Reus observed how, for Rogers, the role of the architect is crucial for the “synthesis 28

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of the Modern Project,” as a mediation between the historical material extracted from reality and the creation itself.45 In his 1984 seminal essay “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,” K. Michael Hays discussed, through the works of Mies, how criticality is an opportunity for the architect to meaningfully contribute to a cultural discourse.46 What Rogers demonstrated through his works as an architect-intellectual was how criticality is more than an opportunity, but a moral call, integral to the truest mission of the profession in its modern meaning. “The judging that you will make for any beautiful thing, will not be born out of an opinion, but out of a discourse and a reason that you will have inside of you, together with your soul.”47 Thus reads a passage by Leon Battista Alberti, handwritten by Rogers himself in one of his notebooks, as if to engrave in his mind this thought—born at the origins of modernity—as a constant inspiration.

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2  SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

One of Rogers’ most recurring critiques was regarding architects’ lack of social engagement. If criticality requires one to take a position, to make choices, to express—creatively—judgment on issues, then it has to involve the public sphere. In fact, this was essential, for Rogers, for the mission of the modern architect: “architecture is among the arts that with the most explicit social character.”1 In spite of having been often—though unfairly—accused of “intellectual snobbery”— perhaps also because of his profound cultural knowledge and his associations with high society or elite cultural circles, within Italy and abroad—Rogers was deeply concerned about societal challenges and actually considered them the most important realm in which the modern architect could meet her/his moral obligations. An example of this genuine concern is when Rogers, amidst the controversy that ensued over Frank Lloyd Wright’s project for the Masieri Memorial in Venice (1954), attacked what he called the “intellectualism of the academics,” turning their heads from pressing social problems: These professors, too often dismissing, or unaware of, or not sufficiently passionate about—like we are—the essential problems of architecture at the national level—in Italy, for example: the Fanfani Plan, the Aldisio Plan, the Tupini Act, and the forthcoming Romita Act, which will make better or worse the existence of vast communities and the profound individuality of many citizens—are now agitating themselves for the little house by Wright “in volta de canal.”2 Rogers’ profound concern for real social issues, and for political and economic factors, events, and decisions—like acts of parliament—affecting the built environment, and therefore the lives of people, to which the architect can so much contribute with her/his knowledge and creativity, was quite evident. In his lectures at the Politecnico in Milan, Rogers used to talk also about “the economic factor in architecture,”3 reminding his students that “economy” comes from the Greek­

oikos-nomos: the law of the house, “which is the echo or, if you will, the ideal goal of our studies.”4 Rogers then concluded by recommending the students to always frame “the economic judgment,” within a vision of perfecting the sociopolitical dimension of architecture.

The Pavia Master Plan and the Quartiere Le Grazie Soon after graduation, BBPR were challenged with an urban master plan where they saw the opportunity to combine—though not yet in a clear way—their modern  ideals, their first explorations into urbanism, and the social ideology of fascism, which revolved around the notion of “corporativism.” Within the ambiguous,  populist, and all-embracing fascist ideology—as Togliatti pointed out5—corporativism was a vague vision of social reform around a sense of collectivism—from the collectives, guilds or corporazioni, of the various professions and trades that overlapped with some of Modernism’s characters and ideology. The principle that each individual could not simply pursue her/his own good regardless of the public good, rather within the guiding action of the corporazioni, which were in turn guided by the State—or the Duce, the supreme leader—was used by fascism as one of the tools intended to modernize Italian economy, society, and governmental structure. This strange connection between fascism and socialism6 or a progressive ideology of social reform was another factor that lured so many artists, architects, and intellectuals toward the fascist regime. The whole philosophical approach of the BBPR’s Pavia Master Plan—whose motto was In Unum Omnes, all in one—resonated with this notion of collectivism over individualism, of controlled growth versus chaotic development, of the priority of the public good over the narrow perspective of individual interests. The plan was drafted by BBPR in 1932–33—thus soon after graduation—with architect Maurizio Mazzocchi and engineers Ernesto Aleati and Gaetano Ciocca, for a competition sponsored by the Comune di Pavia in 1932. The team’s proposal did not win, but it was exhibited and publicly discussed at the Galleria del Milione in Milan, an increasingly important hub for cultural and artistic debate in those years, run by the brothers Ghiringhelli, close friends and supporters of the magazine Quadrante and its circle.7 In fact, Quadrante featured an extensive documentation of the Pavia plan, as well as critical reflections by BBPR’s partners Banfi, Belgiojoso, and Peressutti on “corporativist urbanism”—for the record, and in spite of his writing proclivity, Rogers showed less enthusiasm than his partners in this effort.8 From the pages of Quadrante, the Pavia plan emerged as an effort to test the new urbanistic principles by Le Corbusier—the CIAM 4 that approved the “Athens Charter” took place in 1933, with ample coverage on Quadrante—on a concrete, historically laden urban organism by a team mostly composed of young architects 32

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and planners—except for the two engineers—still growing in their skills and cultural maturity.9 The emphasis on hygiene and zoning strategies showed a clear debt by the young urbanists toward Corbu and the Athens Charter, whose social concerns clearly resonated as a framework for the Pavia plan. As stated in some of the Charter’s principles, from the “Generalities” to the “Main Points of Doctrine”: (2) Juxtaposed with economic, social, and political values are values of a physiological and psychological origin … Life flourishes only to the extent of accord between the two contradictory principles that govern the human personality: the individual and the collective … (87) For the architect occupied with the task of urbanism, the measuring rod will be the human scale … (91) The course of events will be profoundly influenced by political, social, and economic factors … [and, as a final point] (95) Private interest will be subordinated to the collective interest.10 However, Pavia is not Paris and BBPR’s plan was no Plan Voisin. In spite of their alignment with Corbu’s theories, the BBPR team tried to strike a compromise between urban conservation concerns and growth strategies in a Modernist sense. A board—signed “BBPR” and published in Quadrante as one of the “polemic boards”—clearly indicated such intention by showing, comparatively, the team’s Rationalist—Corbusian—approach, labeled by Quadrante “urbanistic theory appropriate for the times, with collective and hierarchical character,” and diagrams of uncontrolled, historic, Medieval urbanism, becoming, in BBPR’s words, “esthetic theory of romantic urbanism” and labeled by Quadrante as “urbanistic disorder prevailing in times of individualism and liberalism.”11 Of a different ambition, but with a higher level of artistic clarity, is BBPR’s first housing project for the Quartiere Le Grazie in Legnano (1938–42),12 where they had just designed and built the Colonia discussed in the previous chapter. With Le Grazie, BBPR launched a career-long line of research, experimentation, and engagement with issues of social housing that went beyond the simple professional commissions to express a genuine interest in studying and addressing the pressing problems in the construction of a modern city. The client was SARISA (Società Anonima Risanamento Immobiliare Sant’Ambrogio), an extension of the Società del Gas, whose establishments were in close proximity to the site.13 The urbanistic parti is a Rationalist and straightforward U scheme—but adapted to the urban form—well scaled and, in spite of the very high density of the intervention—around 300 inhabitants over just one acre14— nicely fitting into the surrounding context, as well as echoing, through the open courtyard, the dominant type of Lombard countryside farmhouses. As noted by Paola Ferri: The relationship with the context is also meaningful: the quartiere Le Grazie situates itself within the most historic built fabric of Legnano … and here, SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

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FIGURE 2.1  BBPR, housing complex “Le Grazie,” Legnano, Milan (1938–42). View of the eastern front, looking south, on via Madonna delle Grazie. Photo 2019, © Author.

within a largely natural environment, the project responds to the traditional rural courtyard with a grand modern courtyard, a rigorous scheme that shapes a common space inside the block and linear exterior façades that continue the alignment of the existing street front.15 The urbanistic intelligence was also accentuated by the slight stepping back of the northern slab, while keeping the eastern and western slabs protruding, thus forming 34

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a well scaled micro-urban space that served as public “atrium” for the semi-public interior courtyard and the retailers on the ground floor. The interior distribution of the units followed a quite interesting scheme, based on a single-loaded corridor, but broken into short segments bent at 90º to break the monotony of an otherwise long route, each segment serving groups of six dwellings—in existenzminimum (subsistence dwelling) mode: from 23 m2 to 61 m2. The corridors faced the interior courtyard—but with views, at times, toward the opposite front over the streets— thus seeping urbanity into the semi-public heart of the dense complex. A separate volume for common services—such as a laundry—closed the open southern side. Besides interesting detailing aimed at articulating and humanizing the starkness of the plainly modern vocabulary—such as, in the verandahs, the use of primary colors of their interior and the rounding of the corners of their openings— what is striking in this project, especially after more than seventy years since its construction, is its capacity to articulate and guide the surrounding urban growth. It still stands out, just a bit without ending up being out of scale, and yet it fits seamlessly into what later developed around it.

The House of Man These initial planning and design challenges helped Rogers start to form a position around the broader issues of social engagement, but an important influence on his cultural maturation came also through his friendship with Adriano Olivetti. In a passionate editorial that Rogers wrote in 1962 to commemorate Olivetti, who had recently passed away: Urbanism and architecture are, for Adriano, at the same time means and ends of social living: they are the necessary conditions required to practically organize our co-habitation, as well as the artistic representation of its cultural and moral qualities. Urbanism, form and contents of the community are realized according to a political will that determines the choice of means and ends in space and time.16 Rogers then quoted a passage from Olivetti, where the industrialist called on the architects to develop a relationship between themselves and “their” community, such that this relationship would become their moral conscience, in order to participate in the birth of a new community “lit by the spiritual flame of those who will have nurtured it through their human substance.”17 Soon after the Second World War, in 1949, Olivetti founded the movement “Comunità,” which sought to offer a cultural platform on a broad political terrain beyond ideological schematisms, though still inspired by a progressive/liberal agenda, for entrepreneurs, intellectuals, politicians, and community leaders, with the goal to influence in a certain direction the socioeconomic reconstruction of postwar Italy.18 The centrality of design, architecture, and urbanism for Olivetti’s SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

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vision was clear. As influenced as he was by Olivetti, whom he admired as an “integral man”—where economics and humanism were integrated—Rogers echoed the industrialist’s vision when he wrote an editorial for Casabella-Continuità, in 1961, just prior to the obituary, titled “Non si può fare a meno dell’architetura [We cannot do without architecture]”: “we have to collaborate so that culture will not be exclusively for our elite but will become a common good: architecture, in its existential fatality has been, is, and will be, but it will have to increasingly address everyone’s practical needs, so everyone can use it and enjoy it also as art.”19 It is with the patrimony of experiences and beliefs matured also through the intense friendship and collaboration with Olivetti and the need to restore that sense of humanity lost during the horrors of the Second World War, that Rogers embarked with commitment and enthusiasm on the task of the editorship of Domus in 1946. The sub-title alone—“la casa dell’uomo” (the house of man)—that he appended to the historic title of the magazine was not only a necessary evolution— to a broader social audience—for a magazine that had established itself just as an “arbiter of taste for the elite” in architecture, interiors, and design—though with savvy professionalism under Gio Ponti’s previous editorship (1928–41), followed by a transitional period with various editors, including Giuseppe Pagano. But it was also an acute intuition about the message that was needed at that time. Rogers’ opening editorial was one of his written masterpieces, certainly his first: On every side the house of man is cracked—if it were a boat we would say it leaks. On every side the voices of the wind enter and the laments of women and children go out. We should hurry to it with some bricks, or beams, or panes of glass, and instead here we are with a magazine. We give no bread to the hungry, no raft to the shipwrecked, only words. If the sense of solidarity has not deserted us and we are still conscious of our acts, this offering of ours of words, as much as it may seem inopportune, must also have in its intentions a concrete meaning that justifies its existence.20 Rogers went on to discuss the dilemma faced by the artist between the pursuit of beauty and societal needs and challenges. Then he turned his attention to the very root of the term domus, by observing how, while it originated from the Greek domos with its ancestral meaning of enclosure, shelter, it then later evolved to signify “the masters’ houses in town.”21 In contrast, the English “home” and German Heim, with their derived adjectives of “homely” and heimlich, bring along a deeper sense of human habitation in a more anthropological and philosophical sense. In conclusion, Rogers outlined the purpose of his Domus with an unmistakable intention to make his magazine an instrument—“words too are building materials”—for the cultural and esthetic growth of everyone: There are many useless things that appeal to bourgeois vanities, but also many marvelous ones, which most people cannot yet enjoy. A magazine can be an 36

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instrument, a filter for establishing the criterion of choice. From what we have said, one can infer what our aims are, as well as the hopes that we place in objectives unattainable by our forces alone. It is a matter of forming a style, a technique, a morality as terms of a single function. It is a matter of building a society. There is no time to waste in illustrating trifles. Let us help each other to find the harmony between human measure and divine proportion.22 In spite of the beauty of his prose and the lofty goals of his program, as aptly noted by Joan Ockman,23 Rogers was not able to transform Domus beyond its historic identity: he did change the magazine, but its audience remained substantially the same, thus probably unsatisfied with the new approach. After less than two years, his appointment was terminated and the editorship returned to Ponti. Yet, the Domus experience was a watershed moment in Rogers’ career and cultural growth in a variety of ways—as will be discussed in the following chapters. Not only did it provide him a laboratory where he could test—also with failures— ideas that would later evolve into the building blocks of his more successful and influential editorship at Casabella but it also helped him to hone his intuition, and define his repositioning within the Modern Project, about the social mission of the architect: “it is a matter of building a society.”24

The Neighborhood INA-Casa at Cesate and Borgo San Sergio in Trieste As Rogers was evolving his positioning on social engagement, two important social housing projects materialized for the BBPR in the late 1940s and mid-50s: the Quartiere INA-Casa at Cesate, in the northwestern hinterland of Milan (1949– 51), and the Borgo San Sergio in Trieste (1954–61). The Cesate project was part of the INA-Casa program, a public housing initiative launched by the Italian government after the Second World War to both address the shortage of affordable housing for the growing urban population and support the economy with public works.25 The master plan was awarded to BBPR, together with Milanese architects Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, and Gianni Albricci. Subsequently each firm/architect developed the master plan at the building scale on specific residential clusters or buildings. The initial plan called for 6,100 inhabitants over 33 ha (184 in/ha), but the scope was reduced later on during construction, to 3,444 inhabitants over 20.5  ha (168 in/ha), which although still a significant urban neighborhood was a reduction much regretted by the planning team for the challenges that this posed to reach an appropriate urban balance.26 The units consisted of around 500 two-story townhouses and ninety-six dwellings in one four-story double-loaded corridor building—by another architect, not from the planning team,  Enrico Castiglioni. Public amenities included a church—designed by Gardella—an SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

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elementary school—designed by BBPR—retail, offices, and a movie theater. The neighborhood is adjacent to the regional railway line from/to Milan—15 km and 30 minutes away—close to the Cesate station—the neighborhood was in fact meant to serve mostly the commuter population. Thus, a functional relationship with the infrastructure, underscored by a winding main street innervating the whole neighborhood, guided the planning concept, complemented by the “heart” of public amenities and clusters of residential blocks. Additionally, the design intention was to create “much variety with a limited number of dwelling types … while maintaining the essential unity of the residential nuclei.”27 The result as a whole, with a language that tried to reinterpret elements of traditional Lombard rural architecture, may appear “too artificially vernacular,” according to some critics,28 bordering the “strapaese effect,”29 but one needs to distinguish. The language used by BBPR did indulge in the revisitation of traditional elements, perhaps a little more than necessary, but without going as far as Gardella. However, the micro-urban environment seemed the most successful aspect of BBPR’s interventions, as the public and semi-public spaces were carefully scaled and detailed at a higher level than in the projects by other designers. In the shaping of buildings and public spaces, BBPR’s striving for what Rogers called “the ideal of a humane architecture,” is clear.30 Overall, the housing complex at Cesate, one of the first where we see the experimentation of the idea of the “organic neighborhood”—meaning a

FIGURE 2.2 BBPR, housing at the INA-Casa Neighborhood at Cesate, Milan (1949–51). Neighborhood planning with Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, and Gianni Albricci. View of one of the townhouse rows by BBPR. Photo 2019, © Author. 38

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neighborhood as a self-sufficient organism, while also organically related to the rest of the city—that preoccupied postwar architecture in Italy as well as the rest of Europe, was an important laboratory to test how modern architecture could evolve and strengthen its socially conscious early agenda. As a young Solà-Morales put it: “Cesate is a more knowledgeable and refined version of the Roman neighborhoods of the INA-Casa [of the 1940s and early 1950s such as the Quartiere Tiburtino in Rome].”31 A few years later, another opportunity arose for Rogers and BBPR—although to a lesser extent as the firm was involved only in the later phase of the project—to further test their ideas on social housing and the “organic neighborhood”: Borgo San Sergio in Trieste (1954–61). Trieste was always a special city for Rogers, in spite of the fact that he left when he was only five and never returned to live there permanently. However, he liked to visit, even when his closest family had moved to other cities, and he did so quite regularly. In 1932 he delivered his first major public speech, “Intorno all’architettura razionale” (On rational architecture), at the local Rotary Club.32 Interestingly enough and in a strange case of unconscious foresight, Rogers’ opening line was: “All arts have a social task, but Architecture has, beyond any other, the characteristic of being a collective manifestation.”33 After the Second World War, due to Trieste’s highly strategic role as a major port on the Adriatic Sea—thus quite attractive for Commander Tito’s Yugoslavia— the Allies had kept control of the city and its immediate surroundings as a sort of “protectorate” until negotiations in London continued into the early 1950s. But by 1953/early 1954, the climate started to change and prospects of a second and final reunification with Italy—after the first which happened after the First World War—became increasingly real. In this climate of hope, anticipation, and visioning for the future of the city, talks about a new “satellite town”—as ambiguously it was referred to at that time in the public debate—to support the newly established industrial area and industrial port, south of the city, started to gain momentum. The large valley of Zaule was identified for the new town and planning started early in 1954, well before the formal declaration of the re-annexation of Trieste to Italy happened on October 26, 1954. By July of that same year, Rogers, in collaboration with Trieste’s municipal office, had already drafted a preliminary planning scheme for the new large neighborhood.34 The planning charge called for an urban nucleus of 10,000 inhabitants over 100 ha., thus a considerable new “urban part.” Public amenities and services were also included, such as a church, schools, retailers, market, civic center, and others. The realization of such a large development required the coordinated efforts of various organizations and agencies and, in fact, Borgo San Sergio was one of the first pilot projects of the CEP program—just launched in January 1954—a follow-up public plan on the INA-Casa program, for a renewed effort at providing affordable housing within new “coordinated neighborhoods.”35 The CEP program envisioned a number of neighborhoods and satellite towns in pilot cities across Italy,36 with the main goal of experimenting a more integrated strategy for urban growth—in terms of development agents, public services, SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

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FIGURE 2.3  ENR (second from left), at a panel in Trieste, It. (early 1950s), during one of the preliminary public meetings about the planning of Borgo San Sergio. From: Notiziario – Ente Porto Industriale di Trieste (1955).

FIGURE 2.4 ENR, with the Municipal Office of Trieste, Borgo San Sergio planning (1954–55). View of one of the early site models. From: Notiziario – Ente Porto Industriale di Trieste 10 (June 1955).

infrastructure, and the whole urbanistic structure—than what had been achieved before with the “organic neighborhoods.” As Paola Di Biagi put it, “if for the first implementation phase of the INA-Casa plan the keyword was ‘organicism,’ … [for the] new experience now underway [it] is ‘coordination’.”37 The report submitted with the final draft of the plan in April 1955 explained clearly the planning criteria followed by the team, including a thorough site analysis: topography, prevailing winds—particularly critical in Trieste due to the proximity of the industrial zone—preservation of potential agricultural cultivation, in addition to demographics, economy, etc. On the section about the 40

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FIGURE 2.5  ENR, with the Municipal Office of Trieste, Borgo San Sergio. View of the main piazza (March 1955)—in spite of Rogers’ original signature—along with those of other municipal officers involved—the drawing, also according to Luciano Semerani— conversation with the author, June 5, 2019—may not be attributable to Rogers, although done under his direction and signed to indicate design authorship. From: Notiziario – Ente Porto Industriale di Trieste 10 (June 1955).

FIGURE 2.6  ENR, with the Municipal Office of Trieste, Borgo San Sergio. View of one of the clusters with townhouses and multi-family buildings (April 1955). For the authorship of this drawing, the same notation as for Fig. 2.5 applies. From: Notiziario – Ente Porto Industriale di Trieste 10 (June 1955). SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

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civic centers—a main center, at the core of the neighborhood, and two secondary ones at the periphery, meant to foster relationships and integration between the new neighborhood and surrounding urban areas—Rogers’ influence is clear when it stated that “the center of the Borgo has been designed by keeping in mind the traditions of Italian cities and the experiences of modern European urbanism.”38 The report also included an interesting appendix signed by Rogers alone— though he noted “of the firm BBPR”—to discuss the criteria “to implement, at the architectural scale, the urbanistic outline.”39 It is worth dwelling on this a little in detail: “the essential inspiration for this complex is grounded on the present interpretation of Italian tradition that has always given—and it must continue to give—to the heart of cities, so that the social, ethical, cultural, and spiritual contents of the community may have their actual manifestation in the esthetic and practical terms of the buildings that represent them.”40 Then Rogers explained how this “heart”—the main community center—was articulated through three public spaces, actually piazze (squares), whose surrounding buildings form three “architectonicurbanistic nuclei,” with different characters: the church square, the theater/café/retail square, the civic administration/market/fire-station square. Then he talked about the design of the church itself, located on a prominent higher site—as an element of reference for the entire community—and developed with the intention of conveying: beyond its necessary religious value, the characteristics of peace and relaxation, capable to qualify it amidst the other elements of the urbanistic composition of the center … masses and lines are intentionally simple as they will acquire nobility from the measured and calm rhythm of their proportions … [and] its design concept is based on a free evolution from the models of the Medieval tradition of the Veneto.41 Various building types were envisioned to make up the built fabric of the complex: twelve-story towers—which ultimately were not realized—four-story multi-family buildings, two-story townhouses, and single-family homes. The multi-story buildings, in fairly close proximity to each other, were grouped in clusters, around a small public space, where children could play and be monitored and where it could be realized “the sense of neighborhood that is a profound humane characteristic of our people.”42 Then Rogers concluded thus: “In the end, after the actual examination of the design theme and its practical demands, we tried to interpret the co-existence of individuals within a society that, while it celebrates their free differences, recognizes their common bases and their fundamental common aspirations.”43 This brief text summed up quite well Rogers’ intentions for the Borgo. It cast also a revealing light on how he translated his lofty ideals and wide-ranging speculations of his writings into actual design concepts and solutions, with a genuine empathy toward the needs, aspirations, and culture of the inhabitants of the future neighborhood. It thus confirmed Rogers’ intense preoccupation for a more humane architecture. 42

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FIGURE 2.7  BBPR, civic center, Borgo San Sergio (1958). Photo 2019, © Author.

FIGURE 2.8  BBPR, Church of San Sergio Martire, Borgo San Sergio (1958). Photo 2019, © Author. SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

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FIGURE 2.9 BBPR, housing, Borgo San Sergio. View of one of the multi-family residential blocks on via Sergio Forti. Photo 2019, © Author.

FIGURE 2.10  BBPR, housing, Borgo San Sergio. View of one of the townhouse districts in the southern area of the neighborhood on via Eugenio Curiel—in the background, on the hill, the towers of the Ospedale di Cattinara, by Luciano Semerani and Gigetta Tamaro, 1965–83. Photo 2019, © Author.

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Metropolitan Scale: Gratosoglio The challenge of reconciling the goal of offering a humane habitat for the new urban communities with the new dimension of growth at the metropolitan scale came to Rogers and BBPR with the project of a new large housing complex at Gratosoglio on the southern outskirts of Milan (1962–67). During that time, major planning research was underway to outline a possible urbanistic vision for Milan and its larger region. The notion of “città-territorio” [city-region] was being discussed, analyzed, and tested as a planning concept, and Milan, with its vast and growing hinterland, filled by satellite towns and minor centers, was one of the most important laboratories. Administratively, Milan also experimented with the expansion of the scale of the master plan beyond its municipal boundaries to include the townships in its orbit, with the Piano Intercomunale Milanese (PIM). The president of the Technical Committee for the PIM was Lodovico Belgiojoso of the BBPR.44 After an initial concept of tall slabs of the same height (18 floors, 60 m – 197 ft.), a truly Corbusian a redents scheme, a more articulated parti was instead developed, still faithful to the planning concept “a bandiera” [flag-like], that is anchored on the via dei Missaglia axis at 45º and unfolding westward toward the South Lambro creek. As typically happened within the dynamics of the BBPR, Rogers played an important role in outlining the basic idea of the project. In the recollections by Alberico Belgiojoso Jr —son of partner Lodovico and young apprentice with the firm at that time: “I will always remember the sketch with which he [Rogers]

FIGURE 2.11 BBPR, neighborhood at Gratosoglio, Milan (1962–67). View along via dei Missaglia, looking north. On the left a school building—Scuola Santa Rosa, a­ pre-existing building—on the right, the light rail line to/from Milan. Photo 2019, © Author. SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

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indicated to us the design approach for the Quartiere Gratosoglio, the ‘flag-like’ relationship with the vehicular artery. The relationship between the high towers and the rest of the complex, the way of clustering the towers.”45 Thus a mix of different building types, which Rogers had not managed to achieve at Borgo San Sergio—due to the scrapping of the towers from the building program—was eventually accomplished by BBPR at Gratosoglio. Four pairs of towers (56 m high – 184 ft.)—for 16 floors plus a ground floor, raised on a podium for retail and services—a series of ten-story slabs, and a number of public amenities—such as a church, schools, kindergartens, day care centers, a health clinic, a civic center, a movie theater, parking structures. As Belgiojoso remarked, “[the towers] establish a figurative accent that, on one hand underscores the presence of the public amenities and services underneath them, while on the other hand they represent a fundamental compensatory factor against a certain, imposed monotony of the prefabricated system, thus becoming the defining note of the entire complex and a substantial element of the urban composition.”46 The towers had a clear distributive scheme with five dwellings per floor organized in a turbine pattern—a refined development of the 1952 scheme already tested, but with only four dwellings per floor, for the residential towers—not realized— for the Campi Elisi site in Trieste. The slabs were built with a pre-fabrication system—patented in France and used at Gratosoglio by the company Camus—an approach that BBPR had started to study and employ in those years. In order to minimize the undesirable effect of uniformity, the slabs were grouped in clusters around public spaces, and each cluster had a different color on the façade panels of the buildings. The road infrastructure reinforced the “flag-like” concept with a loop, serving the whole complex, but connected to the main axis of via dei Missaglia – in fact, Belgiojoso, reflecting on the project after almost a decade, rightly predicted how

FIGURE 2.12  BBPR, Gratosoglio. Community center with soccer field and Church of Santa Maria Madre della Chiesa. Photo 2019, © Author. 46

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this axis would eventually become a more robust infrastructural artery as in fact it is today, with a light rail running along the road, connecting to the north at Abbiategrasso, where the final station of Milan’s Green Line subway is now located. The planning philosophy for Gratosoglio, as a step forward from the experiences of the “organic” (Cesate) and “coordinated” (Borgo San Sergio) neighborhoods was clearly summarized by Lodovico Belgiojoso: in fact there have been several positive results—at the architectural and urbanistic levels—derived by the possibility to give unitary characters for the spatial organization or to experiment with the implementation of more refined typologies, or to achieve better outcomes in functional efficiency … [However] other aspects have appeared to be mostly negative. …. After the passage from the block to the neighborhood, we need to make another step, moving on from the “self-sufficient” neighborhood, to the “city fragment”—or, in other words, to the “city quantum.”47 In fact, Gratosoglio posed a much more difficult challenge to BBPR than had Cesate or Borgo San Sergio, also due to the sheer scale of the intervention. Yet they responded with the same design intelligence, capable of envisaging an urban atmosphere and a human habitat under different circumstances: “for example, by searching pleasant effects through eclectic variations on the façades or … by using, without fear, even the constant repetition of standardized elements as a factor of characterization … Grand scale and imposing volumes, negative if used through the rhetoric of monumentality, can be usefully re-employed as factors of the urban effect.”48 The experience at Gratosoglio had its own shortcomings. In spite of BBPR’s savvy in dealing with the challenges of high density and a building system that came with an unavoidable degree of uniformity, the overall design suffered from such constraints more than the authors hoped for. In fairness, BBPR were fully aware of the challenge as Belgiojoso himself recalled how “[Rogers] predicted that industrialized building construction would become a tool to develop social engagement for architecture, but at the same time he feared it as a potential overstepping over the freedom of choice that needs to be exercised in every moment.”49 In other words, Rogers had the intuition, already shown since his Domus years,50 that, in spite of its challenges, industrialized building, and prefabricated components—digital fabrication processes, we would say nowadays—could speed up the delivery of more refined and industrially controlled social housing. In turn, this would facilitate architects’ engagement and research in this field, allowing them to devote more energy and design intelligence in understanding and interpreting people’s needs, as well as involving future users of the architecture in the design and planning process – what evolved into the “participatory” approach, as championed since the early 1970s by Giancarlo De Carlo,51 one of Rogers’ early collaborators. SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

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FIGURE 2.13  BBPR, Gratosoglio. View of one of the towers. Photo 2019, © Author.

Gratosoglio does show a “design professionalism at a high level,”52 but more than that it was a valuable experiment in imagining a new modern urbanity within a metropolitan condition. Not an easy task, nor a perfect solution, but an important contribution to a problem that started then and is still with us today.

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FIGURE 2.14  BBPR, Gratosoglio. Aerial view. Photo 2017, © Stefano Topuntoli – Milan.

Vital Forms between Individual and Social Purpose Rogers was very sensitive—we could say, anticipating by fifty years our contemporary architectural debate—to the risks of an architectural approach that would primarily satisfy the architect’s ego and overlook people’s real needs and aspirations. He had the intellectual integrity to criticize even Le Corbusier, the modern architect–artist he most admired—while Gropius was the architect–intellectual, whom he found the most inspirational. While acknowledging that, at Chandigarh—“work of a genius”53— Corbu tried to “adhere with current expressions to the pre-existent environments,” the forms do not find the humanity that would “fill them, thus making them vital.”54 On Brasilia, for example, he was even more critical, with a critique that interestingly still resonates currently. Envisioned as an ideal scheme—like Renaissance cities—Rogers found the architecture of Brasilia had “the sole characteristic of showing the sign of the architect that designed it, so much so that its unitary appearance is the result of a superficial simplification.”55 In a round table on Brasilia, organized by the periodical L’Europeo in 1960,56 Rogers observed how the new capital was basically Lucio Costa’s planning vision: “ideological, because it reflects ideas not organic realities …. It is a geometric design, a big kite, with only a symbolic meaning. For us moderns, this is not enough.”57 Here, Rogers did not miss the opportunity to underscore that “for us moderns,” architecture has a higher standard to meet. And then he doubled down on Oscar Niemeyer, “whose practical execution [of Costa’s planning vision] is a graphic interpretation, in a

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negative sense, formal, I would say formalistic, of modern architecture … it is only new, but not modern, in the sense that we mean, that is: vital.”58 These critiques of Chandigarh and Brasilia are exemplary of Rogers’ ongoing exercise of criticality—as discussed in the previous chapter—in consistent alignment with that “modern method” of critical thought advocated by the pioneers—namely Gropius—of the Modern Movement. Walter Gropius—as we shall discuss in the chapter about “Masters”—had a great influence on Rogers. His influence was also on the social responsibility of the architect and on the special urgency that such a call came with the changing times of modernity. In Rogers’ words: Gropius reiterates that “the historical mission of the architect has always been that of operating the complete coordination of all the activities aimed at shaping the human built environment.”59 And it is naturally true, but precisely the constant presence of this task requires that we adapt our modes of operation to adjust to a changing society.60 People’s lebendige Leben [the actually lived life]—an expression by Gropius often quoted by Rogers—should remain the compass for the architect’s artistic intentions and research. However, more than Gropius, Rogers was willing to engage in the public sphere—as we shall see in the final chapter. Soon after the end of the Second World War, in the summer of 1945, amidst the urgency of reconstructing a country—indeed half a continent—Rogers coordinated a series of twenty-three radio talks, delivered through February 1946 by various architects—including his partners Belgiojoso and Peressutti, and a recited talk by Banfi, who had just died at Mauthausen.61 Rogers gave the first talk, titled “Architecture and the citizen”: Cause and end with which we operate, man is the prime matter, indeed the material, with which we build. I need to feel your presence, both as a spiritual entity and as a physical substance: I would like to see you. A man sitting, a man standing, a man walking: a man in space. And I need to know how you work, how you rest, how you have fun. […] It would be beautiful to invent a device opposite to this one that is on front of me [the radio], which instead of spreading out a voice in the world, would catch and gather all the dispersed voices. Every architect should have such a device in the office to put the ear next to it to catch the chattering of the world, your words. […] we want to create the city of man.62 Rogers saw a call for the architect to help create—beyond architectural education—the basis that Gropius was talking about, by engaging socially in a variety of ways, from committing to design and planning around social issues to contributing to the public sphere on a variety of societal challenges.

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3  TEAMWORK

Given Rogers’ interest in social engagement, for connecting with other people because of his empathetic sensibility toward humanity, it was only natural for him to have a keen interest in teamwork: “The ‘team’ is a short-cut of that historical process that, generally, develops from an individual to the other over the course of time.”1 However, such a predisposition for engagement with the other did not derive only from a personal emotional profile or a sort of professional convenience. It also had a theoretical grounding in the Modern Project and its assertion of the power of the collective and of a rational platform for a common discourse. Belgiojoso recalled how, for Rogers, “his greatest achievement was having insisted, after we graduated, that we should found the BBPR group, as he was firmly convinced, after our university experience, that doing architecture as a foursome would help us to obtain better results.”2 In fact, the BBPR team had already started in the school years as the young partners became first aware of the ideas and values of modern architecture and of its ethos. Yet, in spite of the fact that “teamwork” was at the center of the ideology and the pragmatics of modern architecture, the story of BBPR is quite unique. Prior to the founding of the BBPR partnership, since the early 1920s various groups of artists and architects had been formed. The most important of them in Italy was the Gruppo 7 founded in 1926 by Luigi Figini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco, Gino Pollini, Carlo Enrico Rava, Giuseppe Terragni, and Ubaldo Castagnoli, replaced after a few months by Adalberto Libera. However, as Giorgio Ciucci has observed, the Gruppo 7 “distinguishes itself for its polemical vein and statements of principles before projects, which, after a few years, will be numerous, but, even though being the results of partnerships within the Gruppo, there will never be one signed by the Gruppo as a team.”3 There had been other important partnerships—long standing such as Figini & Pollini, or occasional such as Edoardo Persico & Marcello Nizzoli, or just assembled for design competitions such as the famous ones for the railway station of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 1932, or for the Palazzo del Littorio in Rome, 1932–34— not only in Italy but also in other countries. Other examples in Europe included

Gropius and Meyer and the Luckhardt brothers in Germany, Brinkman & Van der Vlugt in The Netherlands, or the Vesnin brothers in Russia.4 However, none of them really operated with the ethos and internal dynamics of true teamwork like the BBPR. Gropius and Meyer had evident different roles—Gropius the front figure, Meyer the office manager. Within the Dutch duo—a collaboration that sadly did not last long due to Michiel Brinkman’s premature death and the subsequent entry of his son Johannes, civil engineer, as a partner—Van der Vlugt was the creative mind, also highly admired even by Corbu. The Vesnin brothers were probably the closest kind of partnership to the BBPR, but obviously brought together by family ties, and yet Alexander Vesnin was undoubtedly the leading creative. More common, since the nineteenth century, was the partnership format in the USA, but more due to a corporate business model followed by the firms than to philosophical and cultural ideals. BBPR was a larger than usual team for that time, with no family association but bound together by cultural “elective affinities,” and with a fairly evenly distributed set of interests, skills, expertise, and experience across its membership. It was, and it remains, a quite unique experiment of true teamwork. Even Gropius’ late career partnership of The Architects Collaborative—1945–95, surviving Gropius’ death in 1969 by a couple of decades5—though close in principle and ethos to BBPR, did not match the remarkable mix of diversity of sensibility and equality of importance for their respective creative input within the design process reached by Rogers’ and his partners.

The Four Stone Masons Much has been speculated about the internal dynamics of BBPR. Belgiojoso, being the last survivor of the four, has been frequently asked about the partners’ interaction and has offered, often with admirable humility—sustained though by his profound friendship and esteem for his friend-colleagues—various perspectives and recollections: From Banfi I have learned how to work, from Rogers how to think, from Peressutti how to imagine. Rogers, who since many years was considered an abstract thinker and theoretician, in reality was not one at all. Peressutti had the gift and the skills to represent by drawing his ideas, as if mind and hand were made out of the same fabric. Banfi had an iron will and was able, even in difficult moments, to bring to fruition the result of the various contributions.6 As remarked here by Belgiojoso, it is important to underscore Rogers’ concern—in spite of his natural inclination toward speculative thinking— in  the execution  of  a  project. In fact, he even liked, whenever he could, to be on the construction site. For example, he was the firm’s on-site project manager for the post office in Rome until he had to leave Italy due to the Racial Laws of 52

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1938. Belgiojoso’s best description, though, of BBPR’s internal dynamics, resorted to a poetic and very effective metaphor: When the four of us were working on a project, we were like four stone masons: Giangio [Gianluigi Banfi] outlined the wall foundations, Aurel [Enrico Peressutti] laid out the stones, I brought in the cement to keep them together, and Ernesto held the plumb bob to make sure that the wall would be erected vertically. This has been the secret of our collaboration, which many have tried to investigate, sometimes with totally wrong interpretations. … With Aurel things went pretty smoothly as he liked to draw without talking much, and every now and then he would call me for my opinion … With Ernesto, the co-habitation was quite different: he posed the problem and expressed himself with small sketches and gestures, to describe the image that he was proposing. I integrated his proposals with my ideas and translated the initial talking-points into more defined forms ‘I am the spark, you are the great fire’ he [Ernesto] used to tell me.7 The plumb bob metaphor used by Belgiojoso also corresponds well with Gregotti’s recollection of Rogers being involved in the project from beginning to end, making sure that the design development was kept consistent with its preliminary concepts: His intervention was decisive for the basic scheme of the project, and the choosing of its objectives; it was equally important in checking the coherence of the project’s development – so much so as to demand the reworking, in an inflexible way, of apparently closed and defined solutions in which he saw points that did not correspond sufficiently to the project’s objectives.8 The kind of teamwork that BBPR practiced was one that encouraged the unfolding of an ongoing conversation, from different perspectives, but grounded on a common basis of shared principles, where each partner contributed in his own way. For his intellectual stature Rogers might have been a primus inter pares, but BBPR was indeed a group of pares. And the team format, chosen to remain faithful to one of the tenets of the Modern Movement, for an effort to live and practice a modern way of life and work, was reinforcing, through its demands for a dialog on a rational basis, the very identity of the modern spirit. What confirms the notion of a team of pares is also that, while Rogers was the most prominent critic of the firm, the most distinguished educator and the most engaged in international circles, Belgiojoso and Peressutti—and Banfi, for that matter, as much as his short life allowed him—also remained very active in all of those areas, which were complementary to their practice. For example, all the partners, as mentioned earlier in this book, collaborated as associate editors on Quadrante (1933–36) and co-authored, a few years after TEAMWORK

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graduation, their first important publication, the volume Stile (1936)—which will be discussed later in the chapter on “History.” The three post-Second World War partners curated together—although Rogers de facto exercised the role of overall coordinator—a series of brief monographs on selected figures of modern architecture, “Architetti del Movimento Moderno” (Architects of the Modern Movement), from 1947 till 1959.9 Published by Il Balcone, a Milanese small publishing house directed by Massimo Carrà—son of Carlo, a leading painter of the Futurist movement—who had met and befriended Belgiojoso during the war years, this series wanted to offer brief summaries of the works of key figures of modern architecture, with very well curated sets of illustrations, critical supporting texts of the highest level and a superbly designed graphic layout—“the central role given by Rogers to the graphic design [of the series] will be evident also on the pages of Casabella-Continuità.”10 In spite of Rogers’ role, also by enlisting authors for various volumes, the fact that the series, in agreement with the publisher Massimo Carrà, was presented as directed by the three surviving BBPR partners, and dedicated “to the memory of Gianluigi Banfi, dead at Mauthausen,” is a clear indication of how this was a product of teamwork, expressing specific cultural positions and ideals. Both Belgiojoso and Peressutti continued to publish in national and international magazines—Peressutti was also an advisory board member for Metron, 1945–54, co-directed by Bruno Zevi—while also remaining very active within the CIAM, which the four BBPR partners had joined around 1935. The three post-Second World War members of the BBPR were all also very involved in teaching. Belgiojoso started teaching interior design at the Politecnico in Milan in 1949, then moved to the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice (IUAV) in 1954, to return to the Politecnico in 1963—from 1963 until 1967 he was also the Architectural Design Department Chair.11 Peressutti taught primarily abroad: at the Architectural Association (AA) in London (1951–52), at the MIT (1952), for more years and continuously at Princeton (1953–59), then at Yale (1957 and 1962) and at the University of Illinois (1968). Rogers had a more complicated academic trajectory and he had several experiences abroad. He was a visiting faculty member in South America (1948, in Argentina, Chile and Peru), at the AA (Architectural Association) in London (1949), at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1954) and other US universities—including Yale, University of Michigan, Berkeley—in China (1956) and Norway (1958). In Italy, Rogers started in 1953 at the Politecnico in Milan—with minor courses, also due to a certain boycott by the conservative section of the academy—where he continued to teach, achieving tenure as a design studio professor only in 1964, at fifty-five years of age, only five years before his death.

Solo Projects as Teamwork BBPR’s partners had also, on occasions, opportunities to develop works of their own. What is quite unique though is how these solo projects still look “as if ” they were the products of teamwork, without showing a markedly different character 54

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relative to the specific partner’s sensibility. Evidently, the amalgam of the team, evolved and strengthened since the college years, was such that it naturally flowed into individual work seamlessly. For example, an early work, by Belgiojoso, the Feltrinelli House (1934–35) in Milan, is a case in point. Belgiojoso—when he was still splitting his working time between the BBPR and his father’s office—designed the multi-story residential building together with his father Alberico Sr., who had actually received the

FIGURE 3.1 Lodovico Belgiojoso, with Alberico Belgiojoso Sr., Feltrinelli House, via Daniele Manin, Milan (1934–35). View along viale Città di Fiume. Photo 2018, © Author. TEAMWORK

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commission for a multi-family building from notable Milanese entrepreneur Antonio Feltrinelli. The Feltrinelli House is a typical example of the Italian Rationalism of those years, such as the Casa Rustici in Milan, by Pietro Lingeri and Giuseppe Terragni (1933–35). Terse composition, modernist vocabulary— in proportions, horizontality, elementary character—savvy distributive scheme, urban presence. It sits at the corner of via Daniele Manin and the Bastioni di Porta Venezia, in front of a public park designed by late-nineteenth-century landscape architect Giuseppe Balzaretto—formerly Giardini di Porta Venezia, currently Giardini Pubblici Indro Montanelli. It seamlessly fits into the existing surroundings—the “pre-existent environments,” as Rogers would have put it—of Novecento architectures, while clearly distancing itself from their historicism, and being capable of guiding like many other projects by BBPR, the future growth of the city around it. Gian Luigi Banfi presented the house on Quadrante as “a house clean and sparkling with glazed surfaces … the ideal has been accomplished, in the middle of a big city, a house open over an ample park.”12 The similarities with an earlier unbuilt project (1934), singularly signed by Banfi, Peressutti, and Rogers, a “casa qualunque” (any house), a prototypical multi-story residential corner block, published on Domus, are striking.13 Thus, one notices how even this early solo project by Belgiojoso is quite aligned with BBPR’s poetics. A rather unique episode to appreciate the BBPR partners’ only slightly different design sensibilities was a study, solicited by Domus in the early 1940s for ideal houses, to which the BBPR responded with individual projects—Rogers participated only in writing and anonymously, as he was in exile in Switzerland.14 If one can appreciate Peressutti’s sculptural sensibility, Banfi’s distinct rationalism, and Belgiojoso’s professional command of architectural tectonic and technology, all these particular qualities are minor accents in the individual poetics, remaining a modern mentality, vocabulary, and spatiality the shared and most evident common denominators. We have already discussed the Monumento ai Caduti at the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan, mainly designed by Peressutti. However, it is worth remarking not only how the work was subscribed by the BBPR—which was already reduced to three partners—but how it perfectly looked and came across as BBPR’s work. Another project where Peressutti played a major role was the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1954–58),15 for which Peressutti himself probably secured the commission thanks to his visits to North America as, in those years, he was regularly teaching at Princeton.16 The image of the tepee certainly worked well with the spiral parti of the plan, which had been already experimented with for the pavilion of the Labirinto dei Ragazzi at the 1954 X Milan Triennale. It was also a savvy and “politically correct” choice of a driving design image, as noted by Michelangelo Sabatino, because it avoided referencing the English or French traditions of the country. By evoking instead the humble hut of the native dwellers of the Canadian prairies, the architects also made a cultural statement in favor of

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FIGURE 3.2  BBPR, Canada Pavilion, Venice Biennale (1954–58). Photo 2018, © Author.

FIGURE 3.3  BBPR, Canada Pavilion. View of the interior with an exhibition about the history of the pavilion and its restoration project by Alberico Belgiojoso Jr. (2014–18). Photo 2018, © Author. TEAMWORK

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anti-monumentalism, in stark contrast with the neighboring English and German pavilions. The location between the two monumental pavilions allowed Peressutti and the BBPR to further underscore their anti-monumental modern ethos, as duly noted by Alberico Belgiojoso Jr., who recently authored the restoration of the pavilion (2014–18).17 In addition, the materiality of the pavilion, with its external brick masonry skin—in opposition to the stonework of its neighbors— emphasized the humble tone that the Canada pavilion wanted to assume. On the other hand, the steel construction and the interiors of the pavilion—beautifully restored under Belgiojoso Jr.’s supervision—wanted to convey an assertive image of modern technology.

Rocco Scotellaro’s Tomb The work that perhaps better illustrates the design dialog within the team and the interaction among the three different sensibilities, yet arriving at a common synthesis subscribed to by all, is the tomb for the poet Rocco Scotellaro at Tricarico, near Matera, in the region of Basilicata, in the south of Italy (1954–57). Scotellaro was a “meteor” within the landscape of post-Second World War Italian literature, as he died in 1953 at only thirty years old and earned due recognition only posthumously when he was awarded prestigious literary prizes.18 The peculiarity of Scotellaro’s experience, though, beyond his superb poetry, was his social engagement and civic commitment. During the war years, when he returned home to Tricarico—due to the death of his father—after a few years of law studies in Rome, Scotellaro became increasingly concerned with the living conditions—poverty, poor health, and lack of education—of rural workers and their families in the region of his hometown. Thus, he evolved into a political leader—also joining the Italian Socialist Party—and champion of rural populations’ struggles and demands against the lobbies of powerful landowners. Scotellaro soon became much admired and loved by the people of Tricarico who, in 1946, voted him into office as mayor.19 In 1946 Scotellaro had befriended Carlo Levi, more than a generation older than him, a painter but also a writer who, in 1945, had just published his seminal autobiographical novel Cristo si è fermato a Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli, 1947), about the poor living conditions of the Italian rural south, and who soon became Scotellaro’s mentor.20 In fact, it was thanks to Carlo Levi that Scotellaro’s works, after his premature death in 1953, were published and then recognized with important awards. Thus it was Levi who approached Rogers and BBPR to design the tomb that the people of Tricarico wanted to offer to the memory of their beloved fellow citizen and former mayor.21 The BBPR donated the project to Levi and it has been suggested that Adriano Olivetti made funds available for its execution.22 Initially (May 20, 1954), the city council voted to assign the necessary land (10 m2 – 108 sqft.) within the municipal cemetery to erect a “funerary chapel … to honor the esteemed fellow citizen … also as a sign of humble gratefulness by 58

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his contemporaries.”23 Just a little more than a year later, the city council approved BBPR’s project in a new location, and on a slightly larger area (16 m2 – 172 sqft.) at the edge of the cemetery, overlooking the ample landscape of the River Basento Valley, which Scotellaro had celebrated in his poems.24 It is not known whether the proposal for the new location was part of the BBPR project, but certainly the

FIGURE 3.4  BBPR, Rocco Scotellaro Tomb, Tricarico, Matera, It. (1954–57). Photo late 1950s, with Mrs. Scotellaro, Rocco’s mother; in the background the Basento Valley. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso. TEAMWORK

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FIGURE 3.5  BBPR, Rocco Scotellaro Tomb. Photo 2016, courtesy of © Raffaella Neri.

architects took full advantage of it, in order to underscore the relationship of the poet with the environment of its hometown, including the landscape of the land of his beloved fellow farmers. As noted by philosopher Enzo Paci, close friend of Rogers’, “in Rocco Scotellaro’s tomb, the arcane chant of the landscape gets united with the ancient, and yet always new, drama of man.”25 The land around Tricarico on which toiled the farmers with whom Scotellaro connected so intensely and who he helped in their struggles for economic and social emancipation, became the main protagonist of the design process. As recalled by Luciano Semerani, who worked on the project as an intern in the BBPR office,26 the creative dialog among the three partners started with a window on a masonry wall, sketched out by Rogers—maybe an echo of the windows overlooking the valley at the Hanging Garden of the Ducal Palace in Urbino, by Francesco di Giorgio Martini, whom Rogers highly admired.27 The conceptual, almost literary, idea of the window—a simple solution meant to reflect the simplicity and the poverty of local farmers’ culture—was transformed by the design dialog within the team, and mainly under Peressutti’s impulse, into a more plastic opening, cut with angled lines through an abstract concrete wall. Finally, thanks mostly to Belgiojoso, the design, while maintaining the idea of the angled cut, returned to a more archetypical resonance through the shaping of an incomplete corbeled arch, echoing funerary architecture of ancient Mediterranean civilizations, such as Egypt or Mycenae—whose Treasury of Atreus was a clear reference.28 In this final version of the design the choice for the material returned to the original version— local stone—and some of Scotellaro’s verses, “whose rich nostalgic content also 60

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speaks for the architects,”29 were inscribed in “free calligraphy”—another humble homage to popular culture: “But one does not turn back on one’s way / Other wings will flee the nests of straw / For the ages die slowly / The dawn is new, is new.”30 The Scotellaro tomb shows the dynamics of BBPR’s teamwork perhaps in a clearer way than in any other project.

Other Teams Throughout the course of his career, and true to his modern spirit, Rogers was also engaged in teams other than BBPR. While in these other experiences—whether with other design, editorial, or academic teams—he held a leading role, thus different to the equal responsibility at the firm on which all the BBPR partners unambiguously insisted throughout their career, Rogers exerted his mentorship role faithful to the “maieutic” method of always stimulating the team members with the right questions and helping them arrive at possible appropriate answers and innovative ideas. During his exile in Switzerland, for example, after having been posted in various locations, in 1944 he applied for and was granted a teaching appointment at the school of architecture of the Champ Universitaire Italien de Lausanne at Vevey, where Adriano Olivetti was also teaching—Rogers was later transferred to the Haute École d’Architecture in Geneva, January–March 1945.31 While at Vevey, he received a commission, under the good auspices of his good friend Alfred Roth, from the Fonds Européen de Secours aux Éstudiants, for a student dormitory prototype.32 The team was formed by Rogers and his students, Paolo Chessa, Luigi Fratico, and Vico Magistretti.33 In this period (1944–45), Rogers was also actively involved with Max Bill and Alfred Roth in the Bureau Technique de la Reconstruction (BTR), a research agency with the mission of pursuing design development of prototypes for large settlements, based on prefabrication, to address the foreseeable high demand of new homes in the postwar era. Contemporary to these design and research experiences, Rogers started to coordinate—when still at Vevey—the Bollettino del Centro Studi per l’Edilizia, which became, with issue no. 2, Centro Studi in Svizzera per la ricostruzione italiana. As noted by Roberto Fabbri, the Centro Studi became an important platform for the exchange of ideas about postwar reconstruction, with articles by, among others, Rogers, Roth, engineer Gustavo Colonnetti (Dean at Vevey), and Adriano Olivetti.34 Prefabrication systems were a major focus of the periodical and would remain an important theme for BBPR in subsequent years. These Swiss experiences somehow created the basis for Rogers to take the next step in his editorial career that would be Domus—which in turn prepared him for Casabella-Continuità. Thus, editorship was another area where Rogers practiced quite intensely the dynamics of teamwork. At Domus (1946–47), edited by Rogers for only two years—but nineteen issues, due to an irregular frequency in the TEAMWORK

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second year—the team was still minimal, with initially only Marco Zanuso as associate editor and Julia Banfi—Gianluigi Banfi’s widow—as editorial assistant, and Paolo Chessa in charge of graphic layout, the author of the beautiful graphic design being still uncertain.35 After five issues, in June 1946, Chessa and Nelo Risi joined Zanuso as associate editors. In Julia Banfi’s recollections, the sense of mission felt by that team, and inspired by Rogers, is palpable: In the summer of 1945, the publisher of Domus and Casabella, Gianni Mazzocchi asked Ernesto to direct Domus … Ernesto asked me to help. I accepted because it seemed to me to continue to be in Giangio’s [Gianluigi Banfi’s] world, and since then, with some pauses, I continued my ancillary work for architecture. … The contributors to Domus were progressive intellectuals, who were our friends, committed like us to rebuild not only the houses, but also a culture.36 After the end of the Domus experience (1947) and before embarking on the new  editorial project with Casabella-Continuità (1953), Rogers traveled extensively—especially in South America—lecturing, teaching, networking, and being more involved with CIAM. In most of these different circumstances he continued to engage with different teams, such as the planning experiences (1947–48) for Buenos Aires and Lima, where he joined a team with José Luis Sert.37 At Casabella-Continuità, which Rogers directed for eleven years (1954–64), the structure and its evolution were more articulated. The initial editorial team (1954–early 1957) was composed by Giancarlo de Carlo, Vittorio Gregotti, and Zanuso—still with Julia Banfi as editorial assistant, a role that she kept consistently  till the end of Rogers’ editorship—with Gregotti also at graphic design and layout. It then evolved into a leaner structure (February/March 1957–December 1960) with Gregotti only as associate editor and Gae Aulenti on graphic layout. An issue later (April/May 1957), an advisory board was added, consisting of distinguished figures from various disciplinary fields.38 From January 1961 until June 1962, Aldo Rossi and Francesco Tentori joined as associate editors, while Gregotti moved up as senior editor, and a Centro Studi (Research Center) was created, composed of young architects/researchers.39 The Centro Studi, quite a unique initiative for a magazine, was envisioned by Rogers as an incubator, a think tank of sorts, to grow collaborative research and share ideas. In July 1962, Gregotti joined the magazine board, Tentori became senior editor, and Matilde Baffa and Guido Canella joined the Centro Studi. In November 1962, the members of the Centro Studi started to serve as associate editors, later joined by Roman architect Carlo Aymonino in January 1964. Rogers used the magazines also to mentor and test a younger generation of architects and researchers, who, in the process and under his mentorship, offered their first essays of scholarship on the pages of Casabella-Continuità, such as the special issue on Adolf Loos curated by Rossi, or that on Peter Behrens by Gregotti, 62

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or the articles on the “Amsterdam School” and Marinus Dudok by Guido Canella. Through the process of intense dialog and further collaboration, the magazine became more collective and less dependent on Rogers’ personality and influence.40 Bonfanti and Porta have aptly remarked: Rogers has increasingly felt, over the years, the drive to reproduce, by expanding it, the experience of the firm teamwork also in other settings. One can say that the experiences with the magazines—first at Quadrante, then at Domus, but then more precisely at Casabella—represent the validation and the enrichment of the collaborative relationship, meant as the “right” form of work for the architecture of our time.41 Of course, there has been an overall influence on his students and/or young collaborators, especially at the Politecnico in Milan, namely Gregotti and Canella— but also Rossi and Semerani, who never assisted Rogers when he was an educator, but eventually also pursued careers in education. It was more an influence on the intellectual model, translated through their very different personalities, than on design poetics, which evidently turned out to be extremely different from one another. Likewise in this case, while Rogers clearly maintained a leading role with respect to his younger collaborators, he continued to exercise the Socratic maieutic approach of continuing to ask the important questions, both within his academic teams and the students, often shifting perspectives and broadening the context of the conversations, while deepening research efforts. In this case the teams became quite diverse, from junior academics, to voluntary assistants—eager to work within a Rogers’ team just for the experience—to outside consultants, to, obviously, the students. Many of those collaborators and students continued to grow in their distinguished careers, both in academia and in practice, also thanks to Rogers’ inspiring mentorship.42 Rogers, in turn, received continuous stimuli from his collaborators. For example, it was because of a suggestion by Semerani that Rogers found the title of his most important publication, Esperienza dell’architettura (1958): “the proposal of the title … which borrowed from Dewey content and expression, was immediately accepted, in fact he was enthusiastic about it, due to a sympathy for, and, moreover, a self-recognition into, an Anglo-American democratic criticism and esthetic a la Dewey or a la Herbert Read.”43 Or it was with Gregotti—and Giotto Stoppino—that Rogers co-authored the exhibition Architettura, misura dell’uomo at the 1951 IX Milan Triennale. Continuing a reflection on “the house of man” that he interrupted when he resigned from Domus in 1947, Rogers arranged with his collaborators a series of images and critical texts, suggesting similarities, analogies, or contrasts in a narrative about the measure of man—and the world of his/her measures—and their relationships, and various experiences of architecture and its proportions. From Piero della Francesca to Wright, from Mies to the Angkol Vat Temple, from the Modulor to the Reims Cathedral, from Francesco di Giorgio44 to Robert Maillart. The opening panel thus recited: TEAMWORK

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This hall is dedicated to architecture, concrete expression of man, synthesis of her/his physical and spiritual measure. The physical measure of man determines the necessary dimensions of architecture: it is the constant measure due to our anatomic and physiological conditions. But the measure necessary to satisfy the complex activities and the aspirations of man goes through many variations. The creative spirit (while it interprets them) confers to it various sizes.45

FIGURE 3.6 ENR, with Vittorio Gregotti and Giotto Stoppino, Architettura, misura dell’uomo, exhibition design and curation for the IX Milan Triennale (1951). Panels showing images from: on the ground, the Città Ideale (by Francesco di Giorgio Martini or Piero della Francesca); up high, an Egyptian pylon, and ergonomic studies for the Artek collection by Alvar Aalto. Courtesy of © Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections. 64

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FIGURE 3.7  ENR, with Gregotti and Stoppino, Architettura, misura dell’uomo. Panels showing images from: midway, interior view of the dome of Santa Maria del Calcinaio, near Cortona, Italy, by Francesco di Giorgio Martini; up high, the Châtelard Aqueduct by Robert Maillart. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

UNESCO A rather singular story of teamwork for Rogers was his participation in the project for the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris (1951–59). Once the architect for the new important UN building was chosen—inevitably, a French architect, Eugène Baudoin, Prix-de-Rome laureate—the UN agency required a team of TEAMWORK

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consultants as a professional interface between the client and the architect. From a pool of recommended professionals provided by the CIAM and the UIA (Union Internationale des Architectes), five architects were chosen—over candidates such as Mies, Aalto, Niemeyer, and Neutra: Corbu, Gropius, Lucio Costa, Sven Markelius, and Rogers, with Eero Saarinen as an adjunct member.46 They became known as the “Committee of Five,” (the Comité des Cinq or “Les Cinq”) and Gropius, being the only one recommended by both the CIAM and the UIA, was elected chair. It was clear from the beginning how uncomfortable Corbu was in the role of just a consultant and how eager he was to have a major role as influencer on the design process—namely, to be appointed as principal designer— especially, in his words, “after the great architectural misunderstanding of the UN [Headquarters] on the East River [in New York].”47 But Gropius and Rogers

FIGURE 3.8  UNESCO Headquarters project, Paris (1951–59). Meeting of the Committee of Five (CF) with the appointed designers (AD). From left to right: Eero Saarinen (external advisor), Pierluigi Nervi (AD), ENR (CF), Walter Gropius (CF), Bernard Henri Zehrfuss (standing, AD), Le Corbusier (CF), Marcel Breuer (standing, AD), Sven Markelius (CF); Lucio Costa (CF) is missing. Photo, 1952. Courtesy of © Canadian Centre for Architecture. 66

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were, not surprisingly—given their predisposition for, and trust in, teamwork— confident in a positive and fruitful collaboration—“we have a pretty good team,” commented Gropius48). Baudoin could not possibly sustain the criticism of a team of that caliber. Rogers recalled in a famous editorial on Casabella (April 1959), how each committee member “unequivocally condemned,” before a sizeable panel of UN delegates, the Comité du Siège (Committee for the Headquarters), Baudoin’s main scheme, and about ten variations. Therefore, another team of designers was appointed. For political reasons, it was decided to have three members: one American, one French, and another of a different citizenship. Marcel Breuer was settled on for the first spot and Bernard Zehrfuss for the second. Rogers recalled how he was able to exert his gentle influence for the choice of the third spot in favor of Pierluigi Nervi, an Italian engineer who “could turn out as a possible catalyst between the two architects who did not know each other.”49 The laborious design process was brilliantly summarized by Rogers in his editorial and he concluded with a positive, but critical assessment of the final result, that was, as usual, balanced and articulate: In conclusion, we are left with a noble office palazzo, clear in its “volume under the light” and in its compositional lines, conceived with a grand gesture, organic, and fertile within the city. Does it however reach with these qualities the supreme heights of “monument to world culture”? … The UNESCO Headquarters by Breuer, Nervi, Zehrfuss remains—at a high level—an example of the conditions of current democracy and of its limitations; it may serve in the future as an unquestionable historiographic document to know not what our epoch could have been able to produce thanks to a genius, but what in the real historical conditions valuable men and professionals have been able to accomplish.50 In the process, Rogers played more the role of the “team diplomat,” as Zehrfuss himself recalled Rogers’ work of appeasement, for example, between Corbu and Breuer.51 Rogers learned firsthand from Gropius about the art of navigating the turbulence of teamwork dynamics through the conflicting forces of political, administrative, environmental, economic, and artistic factors; he appreciated once more and in extreme, but exemplary, conditions how teamwork echoes the complexities of democracy and its imperfections, but also its unavoidable necessity and the promise of its perfectability.

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4  CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

By working in teams it was inevitable and natural for Rogers to collaborate with artists and professionals from other fields. However, it was not only a matter of professional convenience or humility—which was also part of Rogers’ personality— to tap the knowledge of experts in fields other than his own: “even though [the architects] are able to understand inter-disciplinary discourses, she/he should not believe to be good enough to substitute the experts.”1 Indeed, it was a matter of genuine intellectual curiosity for the potential enrichment of the disciplinary and cultural work of the architect that cross-disciplinarity is able to generate. Thus, it is with this dual lens of cross-pollination of architecture that can happen both through the various design fields and through other disciplines that Rogers’ works and theories will be discussed in this chapter. We will review projects of urban planning, interior design, industrial design, and small architectural scale where the landscape played a major role within the design process. Such a design mentality “across scales” was indeed natural for Rogers, as it was—and still is—a distinctive trait of Italian design culture. However, Rogers, understanding that such was not the case in other cultures, made a point of intentionally demonstrating through practice and theoretical reflection the potential of such an approach, to help grow a global sensibility in that direction, which indeed happened as we can witness in our times. The critical summary of projects will be framed by a preliminary overview of Rogers’ upbringing that prepared him for such an approach and by a concluding discussion on his progressive engagement throughout his career with other creative fields and the liberal arts, within the context of modern culture. The value of cross-disciplinarity in architecture is of course central to the Modern Project. For example, the Bauhaus, in Gropius’ vision, sought to bring the arts and the techniques together to inform the “total designer” of modern times. Gropius himself repeatedly elaborated on the importance for the architect to appreciate and cultivate a knowledge of the cognate fields and the visual arts: “The realization of my dream of ‘total architecture,’ embracing the entire visible environment

from the simplest utensil to the complicated city, demanded constantly renewed experimentation and searching after new truths in cooperation with other likeminded artists.”2 Gropius’ holistic vision of design was planted in Rogers’ mentality within the fertile humanistic sensibility developed through his education and upbringing that he had since his early years within his family: his father Romeo, though working as a clerk in Trieste in an insurance company, was a man of letters, befriending local intelligentsia, such as James Joyce. Later on during the high school years at the Liceo Classico Giuseppe Parini,3 Rogers had the opportunity to study with, among others, Antonio Banfi, a philosophy professor who would later also have a great influence on Rogers through one of his students at the Università Statale in Milan, Enzo Paci. Upon graduation from the Parini, Rogers’ interest in the humanities was evident, so much so that he planned to enroll as a literature major at university in Milan. It was Belgiojoso’s father, Alberico Sr., who was able to convince Rogers to study architecture only after making him understand that “architecture needs first to be thought, then drawn.”4 During his architectural studies and after his graduation from the Politecnico, Rogers increasingly absorbed the stimuli, ideas, and innovative research that permeated the lively cultural milieu of Milan in the late 1920s and 30s.

Milan’s Cultural Milieu Rogers studied at the Politecnico in Milan from 1927 to 1932. In those years, Milan had grown as a major cultural hub with a sparkling scene of artistic research, literary production, sociopolitical debate, as well as the expanding presence of modern architecture through built works, magazines, and exhibitions. However, many of the protagonists of that period had started earlier on in Turin, after the First World War and into the 1920s, thus making Piedmont’s capital the first major cultural hub of northern Italy. Compared to the relatively monocultural industrial growth of Turin—another major cultural hub in Italy at that time—where, for example, Giuseppe Pagano built his reputation, especially with the Gualino headquarters (1928–30) designed with Gino Levi-Moltalcini —Milan grew in a less linear way, but steadily gained a leading role as a major socioeconomic metropolis and cultural hub by the late 1920s and early 1930s.5 Milan became de facto “the cultural bridge” between Italy and the rest of Europe: “Milan expressed a vitality for research without equal, gathering more voices, and offering opportunities to multiple experiences.”6 During Rogers’ years at the Politecnico and as a young professional, Milan bubbled with cultural initiatives: from the competition for the new master plan of Milan (1926–27), which prompted the founding of the first Italian professional association dedicated to urbanism—the Club degli Urbanisti—to the growth of the Novecento movement in the arts—with a landmark exhibition in 1926 and a Manifesto published in 1934.7 Other moments and events of note included the creation at the Politecnico of the 70

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Gruppo 7 (1926–27), the relaunching of the Galleria Il Milione (1930) featuring the works of rising art stars such as Lucio Fontana, Renato Guttuso, and Marino Marini e Fausto Melotti, the founding of Domus by Gio’ Ponti (1928), the launching of Pagano’s editorship of Casabella (1933), the creation of the cultural association and art magazine Fiera Letteraria (1932–33), and the V (1933) and VI (1936) Triennale—which saw some of BBPR’s first collaborative and cross-disciplinary works.8 In 1934, with the “Sala delle Medaglie d’Oro” for the Italian Aeronautics Exhibition, Edoardo Persico and Marcello Nizzoli created what Vittorio Gregotti called “one of the most vigorously poetic expressions of Italian Rationalism”9— an interior design that also left Walter Gropius “spellbound.”10 It was within this cultural milieu that Rogers—as mentioned in the chapter on “Criticality”—started, even before graduating, his publishing activity by collaborating as an art critic with Le arti plastiche, devoted to painting and sculpture. Over about thirty articles, published between 1930 and 1932, Rogers discussed not only the works of painters Leonardo Dudreville and Guido Tallone but also of Mies van der Rohe.11 Also worthy of mention here is Corrente, an art magazine whose collaborators included leading artists and art critics, for which the BBPR authored the interior design of its gallery later in 1940. Within the Corrente circle, the BBPR team could mingle with rising artists such as Renato Guttuso, Renato Birolli, Aligi Sassu, Emilo Vedova, art and architecture critics such as Pier Maria Bardi— director at Quadrante—Giulio Carlo Argan, Gillo Dorfles, Raffaello Giolli, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, and modern architects such as Piero Bottoni, Franco Albini, and Ignazio Gardella. One of Corrente’s editors, Raffaele De Grada has acutely identified three lines of thought and research that converged to originate Corrente: the Turinese legacy represented by Persico, the Casabella and Rationalist group— Pagano, BBPR, and others—and the philosophical school of thought of Antonio Banfi, with his students and followers Luciano Anceschi and Enzo Paci—who later became a close friend and collaborator of Rogers.12 Antonio Banfi, who was philosophy professor for Banfi, Belgiojoso, and Rogers, was appointed at the Università Statale in Milan in 1931, solidifying what came to be known as the “Milan School” of Critical Rationalism, a Neo-Kantian approach that soon was at odds with the idealism of the most influential Italian philosopher of the time, Benedetto Croce. Banfi’s lectures became major moments of gathering and exchanging of ideas for the Milanese intelligentsia, including BBPR. Banfi played an important role in disseminating and promoting the phenomenological approach of Edmund Husserl and the pragmatism of John Dewey—even though he veered more toward Marxism later in his life due also to his increasing political engagement—started when joining anti-fascist movements in pre-Second World War times—with the Italian Communist Party. As we shall see, both Husserl and Dewey, via Paci, had great influence on Rogers’ thought.13 After 1943, Banfi became involved with the Resistenza, the clandestine movement which supported the Allies against the Nazi forces occupying Italy at that time. By hosting at his house the initial clandestine planning meetings, Banfi also encouraged an initiative by CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

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Elio Vittorini, a writer, critic, and an engaged intellectual, who was planning a new left-leaning, but independent periodical (Il Politecnico), as an engaged crossdisciplinary platform for intellectuals to participate in the reconstruction efforts. Also Il Politecnico was important for Rogers and the BBPR postwar activities: it published BBPR’s first most important collaborative and cross-disciplinary work— the Piano AR—and Rogers’ article “Una casa per tutti” (A house for everyone), which laid out the framework of his “Programma: una casa per l’uomo” (Program: The House of Man), published three months later as his first, seminal editorial for Domus and one of the highest moments of his intellectual trajectory.

From the City to the Spoon (I): Urbanism Urban plans were among BBPR’s first works of professional importance—the Pavia Plan—and their first work of high professional quality—the Valle d’Aosta Plan. However, the most important plan of their career—and they continued to be involved in urban planning later on—was the Piano AR for Milan (1944–46), “probably the only European plan for Milan.”14 The Piano AR—the acronym AR stood for “Architetti Riuniti” (Architects United)—had been drafted since early 1944, was made public as a draft in July 1945, finalized and then published on Il Politecnico, the cross-disciplinary periodical edited by Elio Vittorini, on October 13, 1945, issue. It was then discussed in thirty public meetings of the city council between January and March 1946 “with the participation of 161 urbanists, experts, professionals from various fields, and common citizens.”15 It was later published in CostruzioniCasabella 194 (September, 1946). In addition to BBPR—already reduced to three partners, as Banfi had died at Mauthausen on April 10, 194516—the crossdisciplinary team consisted of architects Franco Albini, Piero Bottoni, Ezio Cerutti, Ignazio Gardella, and Giancarlo Palanti; engineers Mario Pucci and Aldo Putelli; and artist Gabriele Mucchi. The team dedicated the plan to Gian Luigi Banfi.17 Besides thorough analyses and growth projections on all the various sectors of the urban organism, the plan was introduced by specific references to discussions and critical evaluations of the most advanced urban plans in other European cities of the past two decades, from the Amsterdam Plan of the 1920s, to the Russian experiments of the 1920s and 1930s, to the Abercrombie Plan of London of 1944. Then it featured with extreme clarity a synthesis map of the plan highlights, strategies, and elements of the new urban structure: a transformation of the historical radio-centric form of Milan into a more “stretched” a-centric system along the important southeast/northwest axis; an articulated infrastructural system of roads/rails/canals; major areas for public amenities for parks and sports—modulated at the various scales. The plan then tackled with consistent

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depth of analysis, appropriate vision, and clarity of representation the various topics of housing, the urban center, the business district, leisure and culture, transportation with proposals of strade attrezzate (infrastructured corridors), designed through interesting section studies. As Paolo Ceccarelli posited, “the Piano AR is remarkably modern and knowledgeable.”18 In his acute analysis, the plan had four main merits: it posed the urban questions and possible solutions within a larger regional—and national— context—thus anticipating the scalability of planning tools of later decades; it proposed a new polycentric urban structure, because it was more functional for a modern metropolis—thus anticipating a core planning concept of recent times;19 it advocated for the valorization of the historical center not through a growth of a typical CBD—as was common practice in those years—but through a densification of its residential character—another aspect of foresight; it called for the realization of a stock of public areas to moderate urban land rent and speculation, emphasized with remarkable foresightedness by Rogers in an article on Il Politecnico20—again, a topical question still for current urbanism. The Piano AR, in Ceccarelli’s view, “still remains the ‘high point’ of Milanese urbanism since WWII,”21 and I would argue one of the most thoughtful and visionary urban plans of modern times. It is true, as was noted in retrospect by Belgiojoso thirty years later, that some of the principles of the plan “[were] directly derived from the tenets of the Modern Movement and are today dated,”22 such as certain urban functionalism a la the Athens Charter, but it is also true that it introduced innovative approaches that tried to go beyond those same tenets—such as the guiding role of infrastructure, not as an abstract, isolated system, but fully integrated within the urban organism, and the residential urban center—that are still valid nowadays.

From the City to the Spoon (II): Interiors With the same commitment with which BBPR had tackled urbanism to envision the modern city, they engaged in interior design to envision the ambience of modern life. They were very active in interior design throughout their career and some of their most notable projects include Gairinger House (Trieste, 1933), offices for the Cassa Malattie agency (Trieste, 1935), attorney Banfi House (Milan, 1937), Gennarini-Gras House (Milan, 1938), BBPR studio as a refurbishment of a portion of the St. Simpliciano Cloisters (Milan, 1939), Bar Flora (Milan, 1947), Ravelli House (Milan, 1958), the restoration and refurbishment of Palazzina Mayer (Milan, 1960), Randazzo store (Palermo, 1960), and the lobby and exhibition hall for the Shell headquarters (London, 1966).23 The Olivetti Showroom in New York (1954) is arguably BBPR’s greatest interior, but this will be discussed in the next chapter on Internationalism.

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An example of how BBPR tackled this different scale of design and also continued to work collaboratively with other artists is the interior design for the Rollier House in via Poerio, Milan (1947–51). The apartment was on two levels in an existing building of the Porta Venezia area, in the center of Milan. The first phase of the intervention (1947), the least complex and architecturally less significant—concerned the furniture design of the dining room (lower level), the master bedroom and the children’s bedroom (upper level). The second phase (1951) involved, at the upper level, the furniture design of the daughter’s bedroom, and, at the lower level, the furniture design of the kitchen and, most importantly, the complete refurbishment of a former set of spaces that included a disproportionately large entry hall, a big kitchen—not needed any more with the new kitchen, arranged in a different room and more functionally connected to the dining room—and a large bathroom—also not needed any more, due to the upper level bathrooms. Thus, BBPR focused on creating a large single space, as entry hall-­ cum-living room, with a fireplace as the key element of the space—hence the project motto with which it was featured on Domus “Una casa intorno a un camino” (A house around a fireplace).24 The fireplace is emphasized through: location, central within the space, though not at the very center; scale relationships with other interior elements, definitely with presence, though not over-imposing; form, pure cone; and material, ceramic tiles in diminishing rectangles from the top, in pink, yellow, gray, and blue, designed by Fausto Melotti, who had previously collaborated with BBPR on the 1936 VI Milan Triennale.25 The fireplace was further emphasized as a “spatial hinge” by the wrapping of a staircase around it, leading to the upper floor. Semicircular for the first part—cantilevered from a new wall wrapped around the fireplace— then straight for the second part—cantilevered out of the side-wall—the staircase featured steel brackets, treads in walnut, and a railing in polished brass with black crossed steel wires. Ceramic tiles and walnut planks were also used for the floor finish of the main space, to differentiate, respectively, the entry area and the living room proper, also elevated by a step. The spatiality of the living room and its lighting mood were also augmented by a new rectangular bow window, overhanging the garden, and jutting out of the previous exterior wall. The bow window is defined by a minimalist steel frame with Venetian blinds: an ethereal diaphragm between inside and outside. The furnishing of the space was completed by a couple of antiques, two bamboo sofas with leather cushions—also custom-designed by BBPR—and a swinging support, cantilevered from the wall opposite to the fireplace, for a statue by Marino Marini, Il giocoliere (The acrobat), casting changing shadows on the shiny stucco wall finish: “about to venture on his tightrope … mischievous, weightless and very much at home.”26 A long carpet helped to emphasize the directionality of the space, at 90º from the entry area, and toward the daylight flooding of the bow window. 74

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FIGURE 4.1 BBPR, Rollier House, Milan (1951). © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

The atmosphere of the interior is peaceful, welcoming, calm, and soothing, especially with the generous cascading of daylight coming from the bow window, while at the same time also visually stimulating and surprising, through a thoughtful arrangement of objects with diverse and strong identities: a dynamic spatiality that however remains clear and well scaled. CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

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From the City to the Spoon (III): Industrial Design Beyond furniture items custom-designed for their interiors, the BBPR also became involved in the design of industrially fabricated products. Among these are the easy chair Alfa (1937), chairs and sofas for Arflex (1954–58), office furniture Spazio (1960–61) and Arco (1960–62) for Olivetti, lamps for Artemide (1961), radio and TV apparatus for CGE (1962): not a copious series of designs, when compared with the oeuvre of other Italian architects of that time, especially in northern Italy, where the presence of high quality small- and medium-size companies encouraged the boom of Italian industrial design of the 1950s and 1960s—a design and industrial tradition that continues to this present day. However, as with BBPR’s designs at other scales, some of their industrial designs also reached a high level of quality. The Arflex series (1954) of chairs, easy chairs, and sofas, consisting of the lines Elettra, Neptunia, and Giulietta, was their first important venture into this field and they stayed true to their modernist creed. In particular, the Elettra line seemed—and it was, from a commercial standpoint—the most successful for its combination of comfort, offered by the generous cushion in polyurethane foam, and clarity of slender lines of the black metal frame, rational also in its structural composition. As a result, the overall design is essential, but without being minimalist at the expense of comfort. The resting back is not attached to the seat, thus allowing for flexible adjustments to the positioning of the body,

FIGURE 4.2  BBPR, Arflex, Elettra Chair (1954). © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso. 76

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in alignment with other previous modern research in chair design, such as the iconic creations by Mies, Marcel Breuer, and Alvar Aalto. In particular, Aalto’s works were greatly admired by Rogers, who had also featured them on the last issue of his Domus.27 The Olivetti office furniture series, developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the notion of open space for office environments was becoming mainstream, was even a step higher in terms of design quality, especially in the Spazio series. The Spazio (1961) and the Arco (1962) series share a similar overall approach to office furniture design, with a focus on flexibility, but they were conceived with two different design concepts of flexibility: Spazio, to offer maximum flexibility of possible arrangements to the user, Arco to maximum flexibility of options to the designer to combine the elements of the system, according to user’s needs and input. Peressutti has thus summarized the design rationale: The “Spazio” series (“do-it-yourself ”) is characterized by a great flexibility in its possible arrangements. The set of basic elements, making up office desks, additional systems, shelves, etc., consists of elementary items of modular measures … These items are modular not only as entities, but also conceptually, as they derive from the simple products of industry: metal sheets, tubes, bars … The “Arco” series (that is the “ready-made” type) follows almost opposite concepts: in fact, its characteristic is that the user has to make very few operations  to  assemble the office desk, in its various dimensions, along with its accessories (type-writer desk, shelves, etc.) … In this case, the factory (or

FIGURE 4.3  BBPR, Olivetti Synthesis, office furniture Spazio Series (1960–61). Courtesy of © Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Ivrea (Italy). CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

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FIGURE 4.4  BBPR, Olivetti Synthesis, office furniture Arco Series (1960–62). Photo by Aldo Ballo. Courtesy of © Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Ivrea (Italy).

the designer) takes on the responsibility of not only analyzing and producing elementary modular pieces, but also of composing these pieces in other elements …28 Deservedly so, the Spazio series was awarded the prestigious Compasso d’Oro29 award in 1962 and recognized as “perhaps the highest level of research reached by the firm in this field.”30 More than in the Arco series, in the Spazio series the raw spirit of modern labor is honestly expressed. There is also a not so hidden attempt at conveying a sense of future, free, flexible working spaces. As Darko Pandakovic has noted: “The technical motivations are credible up to a point; in actuality, the invention is evocative of a hypothetically future mechanical world, as if it were told the story of an improbable Moon landing.”31 The series has a “grit” to its components and an unapologetic show of functionality, such as the holed corners, meant to hold supporting elements such as lamps, tray systems, etc., and the hinge systems where sub-elements, such as phone desks or typewriter desks, can be attached. Yet, the design was executed with forms and materials without indulging in simplistic and formalistic minimalism. Indeed, if the “utility” factor is maximum, the design is still able to reach high esthetic levels, especially in certain details, such as the footing of the vertical supports of the desks, where the requirements for adaptability of the desk in elevation and for a wider distribution of the load, to avoid possible damage to 78

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FIGURE 4.5  BBPR, Olivetti Synthesis, office furniture Spazio Series, detail of the desk leg foot. Courtesy of © Associazione Archivio Storico Olivetti, Ivrea (Italy).

floor finishes, were brilliantly resolved with a beautiful adjustable conical footing. In a speech delivered at the World Design Conference in Tokyo in 1960, Rogers argued that, due to the minor “dramatic intensity” that an object of industrial design possesses compared to a work of architecture, people tend to isolate architecture in a field of its own. Instead, “what brings together in one single world the various activities of design is the same method that is necessary to tackle the vast problematic spanning from the spoon to the city, in an on-going re-proposition of the synthesis between utility and beauty.”32

Two Pavilions, between Landscape and Art Only marginally, landscape entered as a main design topic within the overall arc of BBPR and Rogers’ career. However, there have been some instances when landscape was an important focus or at least a component of the design brief: CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

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among these, to be mentioned are the Tourist Plan for the Elba Isle (1939), Pavilion, and Parco Riva at Saronno, Varese (1952), the Landscape Plan for the Western Coast of Trieste—1957, by Rogers only, in collaboration with Luciano Semerani and Piero Cosulich—and the reconversion of the former Lanificio Rivetti industrial site, along the Cervo Creek, in Biella—1966, with Alberico Belgiojoso Jr. However, given the importance that the BBPR, and particularly Rogers, gave to the notion of “environment,” the relationship between architecture and its natural surrounding context was always carefully considered. Exhibition

FIGURE 4.6 BBPR, USA Pavilion, IX Milan Triennale, Parco Sempione (1951). Demolished. Plan. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

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FIGURE 4.7  BBPR, USA Pavilion, IX Milan Triennale. Interior view. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

pavilions, by their very nature of being relatively small structures within a natural setting, are obviously a case in point. We have already discussed the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in the previous chapter, so here we shall focus on two other important pavilions by BBPR. The USA Pavilion for the IX Milan Triennale (1951), commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for the first American participation in the Triennale, remains one of the most beautiful compositions by BBPR. The outside envelope was in plan a perfect circle, yet the interior geometry denied a center, but followed a perfectly consistent geometric pattern. The roof pitch converges onto a circular small courtyard—with trees—a void that is the offcenter “gravitational focus” of the composition, as well as of the roof structural system of radial beams. The roof pitch, though, seamlessly morphs from an outwardly main slope into an inwardly secondary slope around the inner void: a sophisticated and beautiful geometrical bravura—without the aid of current digital tools. A third circle—with yet another center—in addition to the outer envelope and the inner courtyard, served to lay out a series of super-slender and tightly spaced supporting columns. The centers of the three circles, though, were perfectly aligned on an axis. This pavilion showed a remarkable synthesis of geometrical perfection and plastic values that the Canada pavilion of a few years later was not able to achieve, in spite of being more powerful in its plastic presence and symbolism. For the USA pavilion, perhaps there was an intention to convey the idea of the CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

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FIGURE 4.8  BBPR, USA Pavilion, IX Milan Triennale. In the background, the Sforza Castle with the Filarete Tower—reconstructed in 1905 by Luca Beltrami following the 1452 original design and structure by Antonio di Pietro Averlino, better known as “Il Filarete.” © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

level of perfection reached by American technology and design of that era, but I believe that the landscape concerns were also paramount. This crystalline object was situated in the midst of the luxuriant nature of Parco Sempione—the most important public park in Milan—with views of the highly symbolic landmark of the Sforza Castle, and the dual visual relationships to/from the park were clearly a driver of the design idea. 82

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At the same Triennale—where Rogers curated the exhibition Architettura misura dell’uomo, with young collaborators Vittorio Gregotti and Giotto Stoppino, already discussed in the previous chapter on “Teamwork”—Belgiojoso and Peressutti curated an exhibition on industrial design: La forma dell’utile (The form of utility). The other pavilion worthy of note is an example of cross-disciplinarity for both the perspectives discussed so far—that is, scales of design and collaborations across art fields: the Labirinto dei Ragazzi (Labyrinth for the Youth, a.k.a. Children’s Labyrinth) for the X Milan Triennale (1954). In a proposal by BBPR to the Triennale—Rogers probably being the main author, given the style—dated April 15, 1954, the vision for the pavilion is clearly stated as a children’s museum— the original brief was slightly larger in scope than a simple pavilion—to educate the future users of art, because, as per the proposal’s opening. “the most pressing problem of contemporary art is that of establishing a contact between art and the public.”33 The argument went on to explain how visitors would learn about the visual arts and architecture—mainly in an enclosed nucleus of the pavilion, which was never realized—as well as music—through water sprinklers—stimulated also by the fifth sense of smell from the surrounding park: a comprehensive experience for the senses. The spiraling parti soon took center stage—perhaps symbolizing the educational growth of children toward a full appreciation of the beauty and purpose of art?— and the idea of the three spirals, to illustrate the nature of the three visual/plastic

FIGURE 4.9  BBPR, Labirinto dei Ragazzi, X Milan Triennale, Parco Sempione (1954). Demolished. Saul Steinberg’s murals on the inner walls and an Alexander Calder’s “mobile” sculpture at the center. Courtesy of © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

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arts—painting, sculpture, and architecture—started to solidify. The initial intention was to assign each field to a specific artist: Fernand Leger for painting, Costantino Nivola for sculpture, and Saul Steinberg for architecture.34 Later on in early July, with less than two months left before the opening, scheduled for August 28, BBPR contacted Steinberg and asked him, given the ascertained unfeasibility of enlisting the other two artists, to take over the whole artistic part of the project—while Alexander Calder had already donated one of his “mobiles.”35 “A crazy request” they acknowledged, but one can tell, by the tone of the letter—signed by the three partners, but clearly drafted by Rogers—how close they were in their friendship. Hence, they felt confident in making such a demanding request—drawings were due in Milan by August 15, to be executed as a sgraffito on site by others: “For us it is really a dream, because we think that this project of ours, without being too

FIGURE 4.10  BBPR, Labirinto dei Ragazzi, X Milan Triennale. Saul Steinberg, detail from Types of Architecture, one of the four drawings for The Children’s Labyrinth. The Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York. Courtesy of © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. 84

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modest, is rather resolved from a plastic standpoint, but with your work it would become marvelous.”36 Eventually, just one month before the opening, Steinberg accepted the invitation.37 In subsequent correspondence with Steinberg,38 Rogers clearly expressed BBPR’s concern for the relationship between the pavilion and the landscape—including the nearby monuments of the Sforza Castle and the Arco della Pace—which affected the height of the spiraling walls. But Rogers enquired about Steinberg’s vision for his drawings and his “narration, in order to have a more precise idea to establish the relationships with our architecture.”39 Rogers also reiterated—as this was typically his role in the partnership—the need not to depart from the project objective: “a clear pedagogical purpose; that is to explain to the youth the historical development of the three arts: painting, sculpture, and architecture.”40 Rogers entered also into the details of their cross-disciplinary collaboration. For example, he discussed Steinberg’s proposal of drawings in­

FIGURE 4.11  BBPR, Labirinto dei Ragazzi, X Milan Triennale. Team photo: (from left to right) Lodovico Belgiojoso, Saul Steinberg, Enrico Peressutti, Ernesto Nathan Rogers. Courtesy of © Architectural Press Archive / RIBA Collections. CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

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bas-relief—accepting it, but “not too protruding out as the space within the spirals is tight”—or rejecting the idea of displaying photographs “because they would detract from the character of the whole, besides being difficult to be displayed outdoors.”41 He also gave Steinberg a framework for the sgraffito operations— which Rogers erroneously called graffiti—besides expressing his joy at the news that Steinberg would be coming personally to execute the drawings, but urging him to arrive no later than August 23, the opening being still scheduled for August 28. The magic atmospheres and analogies evoked by Steinberg’s imaginative drawings, unfolded over 200 m [218 yd. 2 ft.] of wall surface,42 through images of the world, were quite remarkable: a castle-factory, iron bridges, railway stations, cowboys, monuments as furniture, including a color reproduction of a Mondrian’s painting. The contrast between the lightness of drawing style, with richness of meaning, allusions, and symbolism, of Steinberg’s artwork—which was, curiously, quite similar to Rogers’ style of sketching—and the bare tectonics of the labyrinth’s walls, the dynamic spatial breath of the spirals, the dialog between the varying elevation of the natural ground and the datum of the constant horizontality of the walls’ top line, the diverse—aptly staged—relationship to/from the surrounding landscape via cut-outs and breaks in the walls’ continuity, the climax of the central nucleus with three beams resting on the three spirals and meeting at the center to support Calder’s mobile, are the salient features of the composition. They are result of a truly cross-disciplinary artistic synthesis.

Liberal Arts The dialog—often a true collaboration—with disciplines and artists from other fields was a constant nutritious channel for Rogers and BBPR’s intellectual and creative growth. Frequent visitors to the BBPR studio included “Alfred Roth and Max Bill, [philosopher] Enzo Paci, [critic] Gillo Dorfles, [poet and critic] Leonardo Sinisgalli, [poet, writer, and film director] Nelo Risi, [writer] Elio Vittorini, [painter] Corrado Cagli, [sculptor] Costantino Nivola,”43 but also “Corbu, Gropius and Alvar and Aino Aalto, artists such as Calder, Steinberg or Lucio Fontana, and, at Rogers’ home in via Bigli, many protagonists of Italian and European culture, from Adriano Olivetti, to [poet] Eugenio Montale, Bernard Rudofsky, and Sigfried Giedion.”44 Enzo Paci, in particular, played a major role in Rogers’ intellectual evolution, by exposing him to the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl, hence, for example, Rogers’ frequent use of the term “architectural phenomenon.” Husserl, via Paci, was also crucial for Rogers to progressively include the notion of “environment” within his theory on the “pre-existent environments” and the relationship with history, arguably one of Rogers’ main contributions to the evolution of modern architecture in the second half of the twentieth century. In a 86

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profound reflection on the relationship between Rogers and Paci—both of whom he met personally—philosopher Salvatore Veca outlined the lines of thought leading to the two figures, from Alfred Whitehead, “the philosopher of process,” to Husserl “philosopher of the world of life”: [For Husserl, what matters] is the world of the lived experience, the surrounding environment, the Umwelt in which, as subjects, men and women experience what it means to have a life to be lived, questions of life and—among those— questions of architecture and philosophy. The phenomenologist underscores the role of the world of the “subjective” experience, not of the abstract experience, but of the lived experience, with all its inter-relationships, needs, lost or broken equilibriums, requiring new equilibriums.45 Rogers’ relationship with Paci solidified also through his collaboration with the philosophy journal aut-aut, founded by Paci in 1951, in which Rogers published two articles.46 His interest in phenomenology brought Rogers to title his 1961 book as Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico (The elements of the architectural phenomenon). In this book, there are many references to the arts, literature, and philosophy, including Klee, Goethe, Schiller, Stendhal, Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi, and John Dewey. The pragmatism and the notion of experience articulated by Dewey were particularly important for Rogers to shape his vision of architecture as a living process of perceiving, understanding, using, and modifying the environment. In his book Rogers had quite a long quote from Dewey’s seminal work Art as Experience (1934), where the American philosopher discussed—with an “analysis of pragmatic character,” underscored Rogers—the subjective nature of the artistic experience and the collective, public nature of art’s material.47 It is quite understandable why Rogers enthusiastically accepted the suggestion of referencing Dewey’s book by his young collaborator Luciano Semerani for the title of his most important book, Esperienza dell’architettura (1958). Beyond Paci and Dewey, though, Rogers’ curiosity did not know disciplinary borders. In Esperienza dell’architettura alone, one can find quotes or discussions about Saint Francis,48 William James “the great American philosopher who opened up for thought the plurality of experience,”49 Ortega y Gasset,50 Rilke,51 Freud,52 Bacon and Bergson,53 and Eliot.54 But also Proust was frequently referenced by Rogers, as in an opening lecture for his course at the Politecnico in 1963, per Antonio Monestiroli’s recollection, then in Rogers’ class: “‘Who among you has read Proust?’ asked Rogers, meaning that only those who had read him knew that it is possible to know the reality around us only by uncovering its magic.”55—Semerani recalled how Proust was a required reading for one of Rogers’ design studios.56 And Henri Focillon’s Vie des formes (1934), also had a great influence on Rogers’ thought, especially around the concepts of style, image, the art/life relationship, and environment, but also for his esthetic understanding CROSS-DISCIPLINARITY

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of architecture: “the builder … is a geometrician in the drafting of the plan, a mechanic in the assembling of the structure, a painter in the distribution of visual effects, and a sculptor in the treatment of masses.”57 However, in spite of his cross-disciplinary interests, particularly in philosophy, Rogers was quite aware that the architect still has the responsibility to operate and critically reflect within the fields of architecture—including design and urbanism. Gregotti has aptly pointed out: What I want to underscore is the kind of relationship that Rogers always had with philosophy, which he considered an indispensable material, as others from various cultures and disciplines, to be used though very carefully, without considering ourselves philosophers as, unfortunately, has happened quite often in the writings of architects of the last thirty years [that is since about 1980]. Rogers himself talked about consonanze d’intenzioni (consonances of intentions)  between Paci and himself, between “his [world] of theoretical experience, and mine of artistic and practical experience.”58 In other words, Rogers regarded the studies, inquries, or even ad hoc investigations into the fields of the liberal arts, as he often did,59 as necessary exercises for the formation of the architect’s mentality, because of—with Gropius—his concern with the trend of specialized architects and because of his appreciation for the benefits that this kind of exploration can bring to keep architecture centered on the human experience. The disciplines of science and the fields of art are the territories that the architect ought to know and study, from which to launch the “bridge” of architecture. As he elaborated at the symposium “Arte e Scienza,” held in Venice in 1957, which gathered distinguished Italian professionals and scholars from medicine, philosophy, literature, law, mathematics, music, paleontology, physics, and the visual arts—Rogers being the only architect: The bridge between the objective world and the subjective world needs to cross inside the architects in a way that is simultaneous and constant with their creative operations. The scientific-objective world, which they tap into, needs to translate into the humanistic-subjective world to which they aspire: utility becomes beauty and, reciprocally, beauty expresses itself as utility … the possibility of this symbiosis is the conditio sine qua non to give validity to architecture within the domain that is its own and which cannot be confused with that of other arts.60

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5  INTERNATIONALISM

“Within the Italian CIAM group, Ernesto Rogers had a pre-eminent position, being the Italian architect more connected with the rest of the world; he was also very generous because he did not keep for himself his connections, but he made them available to all of us, especially to us younger ones.”1 Thus Giancarlo De Carlo remembered Rogers’ role within the architectural cultural scene in Milan after the Second World War. Rogers’ drive to build an international discourse on the evolution of modern architecture remained one of his most important legacies for the generations that came after him. We discussed in the previous chapter how curious Rogers was toward other disciplines— especially the liberal arts—and other design fields. Similarly, he had a keen interest in other cultures and contexts: in their artistic and philosophical traditions and movements, in their aspirations and potential contributions toward a richer, global, and intercultural exchange, particularly in an era fraught with wars and geo-political blocs. Supported by the non-ideological pragmatism derived from his philosophical explorations and political orientations, he continuously challenged himself and encouraged others around him to look beyond borders, to seek thought-provoking ideas, intellectual stimuli, and artistic achievements wherever they were, to study different cultures and sociopolitical contexts. In presenting a special issue of Casabella-Continuità dedicated to the USSR in 1962—not an easy topic at the time of the Cold War—Rogers thus clarified the rationale of the initiative, showing all his mental openness and deep empathy, as well as another example of his lightning remarks: One does not need to be a communist—as I am not—nor, I hope, useful idiots, to know that talking about the USSR is like talking about any other country, where people work and suffer; where love and intelligence are positive forces for progress, while hate, bigotry (and the atomic bomb) represent destruction. At any rate, we need to remind ourselves that if we are alive and we can descant about architecture, we owe it also to the defense of Stalingrad.

It is to be noted that for the title of his editorial “Russia, contenuto e forma”— Russia, content and form—Rogers used the more cultural and less political term “Russia,” instead of USSR. The issue on postwar Russian architecture was only one of a series of special issues that Casabella-Continuità dedicated to various countries—such as those on the USA and Argentina2—along with extensive coverages of world cities. As noted by Richard Bullene: Besides the word “continuità,” Rogers had added the descriptive “rivista internazionale d’architettura” [international review of architecture]. The success of his eleven years as director can be seen in the degree to which he made good on this claim. In 1959 the review began to carry English and French translations and summaries. The letters to the editor evidence the international appreciation of the significance of these years, as does the appearance of articles in response to Casabella-Continuità in other periodicals.3 After all, a sense of cosmopolitanism—perhaps subliminally inherited from his hometown Trieste, a rather cosmopolitan port-city—had distinctly marked Rogers’ mentality since his early years. In what may be considered his first theoretical reflection, composed when he was still an architecture student—thus anticipating the international architectural debate by decades—Rogers elaborated that The internationality of architecture is to be meant not in an effort toward defining a singular type, rather in the sense that, given some universal principles, common to all people of all times, these correspond to the very essence of human nature and to the fundamental laws of cohabitation; international cannot, and should not, be the concrete implementation [of an international style], but the principle of autonomy of architecture from dogmas and cultural encrustations that developed over time.4 In fact, as Belgiojoso recalled, Rogers became an advocate for the Modern Movement from his college years, when BBPR started to learn about the new ideas from European magazines such as Moderne Bauformen and Innendekoration, as well as from Corbu’s early publications.5 Rogers’ debut on the international scene took place in 1933, just one year after graduation, on the occasion of the Reunion Internationale des Architectes, within the international symposium “La formazione dell’architetto” (On architect’s education), organized by the magazine L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, as part of the V Milan Triennale, an event that showed already Rogers’ “vocation for internationalism.”6 Finally, Pagano’s Casabella. In the emotional commemoration of his friend and mentor—who had died at Mauthausen in 1945—meaningfully titled “Catarsi” (Catharsis) on Costruzioni-Casabella (1946), with Pagano’s realization that he had to find not in fascism but “on the other side” the support for his battle 90

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for modern architecture, Rogers recalled Pagano’s vibrant polemic against the conservatives, who supported the fascist ideology for reasons of traditionalism, monumentalism, and rhetoric, trying “with the excuse of [protecting] tradition, to keep the Italians away from the fertile exchange with European thought.”7 The European breadth that Rogers sensed in Pagano’s work became more concrete and personally experienced during his sad—though fertile for future developments— years of Swiss exile. In his first writing after his return to Italy in 1945, Rogers wrote: “Europe without borders, architecture without borders. But that Europe is for now only a hope, an act of faith that some people try to transform into reality: architecture, instead, has anticipated the promise and soars in the various skies while bringing them together into a brotherhood.”8

The Swiss Years During the 1937 CIAM 5 in Paris, Rogers—like the other BBPR partners—had the opportunity to network with the major exponents of European architecture, including the Swiss architects and designers Alfred Roth and Max Bill, critic Sigfried Giedion, as well as “CIAM patroness” M.me Hélène de Mandrot. These friendships and connections were further reinforced during a first trip to Switzerland in the summer of 1939, after Rogers had to distance himself from BBPR and fall into anonymity, due to the fascist Racial Laws promulgated in the fall of 1938.9 Between 1939 and 1943, Rogers wandered as anonymously as possible, mainly between Milan and Trieste,10 in which city— “my dear Trieste” — like many in those years, he found refuge with family and friends. In this period he published in Domus the “Confessioni di un anonimo del XX secolo” (Confessions of a twentieth century anonymous), an idea that Rogers himself proposed to Pagano—at the time also co-editor of Domus—who, Rogers recalled, “as always brave and generous, immediately accepted.”11 This initiative strengthened the bond between Rogers and Pagano and somehow reinforced a sense of “passing of the baton”12 after Pagano’s death, as it also pertained to Pagano’s incessant efforts for internationalism. Soon after the armistice between the new Italian government and the Allies (September 8, 1943), as the Nazis were taking control over Italy, it became clear that the climate for Rogers was becoming more and more dangerous. Therefore, his partners and friends convinced him to seek permanent refuge in Switzerland. He was soon contacted by his Swiss friends, especially Alfred Roth, whom he had visited frequently and who made it possible for Rogers to be able to travel freely across the country. He moved between Vevey, Lausanne, and Zurich. The frequent contacts with Alfred Roth and Max Bill were also crucial for Rogers’ post-Second World War activities: “In particular, Bill offers Rogers a first refuge at his house-atelier in Zurich … [along with] other intellectuals escaping from Nazi persecutions, including Alfred Thomas … Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and INTERNATIONALISM

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Max Ernst.”13 However, “Haus Bill” was not just a political refuge, but it became a cultural laboratory on how to leverage the Bauhaus legacy in the reconstruction scenario of a postwar Europe. Bill also exposed Rogers to the artistic research of the “Concrete Art”—a movement envisioned by Theo Van Doesburg as an evolution out of the De Stijl experience, where the “concrete” was meant as a polemical paradox against a superficial or emotional notion of the “abstract.” Bill strengthened the logical and scientific interpretation of such an artistic approach— which he eventually brought with him in the founding of the Hochschule für Gestaltung at Ulm, Germany, in the 1950s. Rogers remained quite influenced by Bill’s theories for more logical and objective foundations for artistic expressions and, apart from a personal friendship that solidified over the years,14 he hosted a few articles by Bill on that topic in his Domus.15 As Giancarlo De Carlo pointed out, Roth had just published his important book The New Architecture (1940), with texts in three languages—French, German, and English—and the collaboration of Max Bill for the graphic layout, showing “a selection of buildings designed for different places, as well as the relationships of these architectures with the cultures with which they were dialoguing.”16 In his introduction to the first edition (1940), Roth, in fact, underscored this important new angle of analysis and creativity taken by the new—modern— architecture: “the ascertainment of a local cachet in examples of the New Architecture points to its consideration of topographical situations, scenic surroundings, climate, the material dependent on the locality, and living customs.”17 Rogers’ thought would

FIGURE 5.1 ENR (left) and Alfred Roth (right) during the symposium “De Divina Proportione” (September 27–29, 1951) at the IX Milan Triennale (1951). Courtesy of © Triennale Milano, Archivio Fotografico. 92

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eventually evolve in the same direction also out of these premises put forth by Roth. Moreover, in the introduction to the second edition of the book (1945), Roth mentioned a new initiative: “a new series of books under the general title ‘Civitas – The Human City Collection’.”18 A hint of some of the themes that would greatly preoccupy Rogers in his later activities. For example, the first conference on postwar reconstruction in Milan in 1945, in which Rogers played a major role, both Roth and Bill were invited as keynote speakers, championing their research on pre-fabrication—which started to interest Rogers as we saw in the chapter on “Social Engagement.” Also Rogers’ vision for the 1951 CIAM 8 in Hoddesdon on the “heart of the city,” was most probably inspired by Roth’s earlier reflections on the need for a new civitas for the postwar city. Finally, particularly important among Rogers’ Swiss contacts, was Sigfried Giedion. Secretary of the CIAM, for which he was the “theoretical and political mastermind”—along, later, with José Luis Sert—as much as Corbu and Gropius were the inspirational figures, Giedion had just published Space, Time and Architecture (1941) and was probably already working at Mechanization Takes Command (1948), of which Rogers would later publish a preview of two chapters in Domus.19 As remarked by Molinari: There had been a bond since 1934: Giedion maintained regular contact first with the BBPR studio and later with Rogers. The constant exchange of letters, their agreement on political and ideological issues (especially with regard to decision making within the CIAM after 1943) and the play of key-words ever present in their correspondence are testament to a strong friendship that would prove decisive for the fates of both in the post-war era.20

CIAM As previously discussed, Quadrante and the Gruppo 7 played an important role as trailblazers for BBPR to move toward the international stage of modern architecture, especially with regard to the CIAM. The exhibition of the CIRPAC at the 1933 V Milan Triennale, curated by Gino Pollini and Piero Bottoni, displaying, among other projects, the Casa del Fascio by Terragni, was also covered by Quadrante, as was the 1934 CIAM 4. As observed by Rifkind: “To their Italian peers, the Quadrante architects represented the very idea of international Modernism (for better or worse), while to the international community the Quadrante circle gave a cohesive identity to Italian Modernism.”21 Between 1934 and 1936,22 thus only a few years after graduation, BBPR were admitted as members of the CIAM and actively participated in the 1937 CIAM 5 in Paris. In 1939, Rogers, Peressutti and Belgiojoso attended a CIRPAC meeting in Zurich in preparation for the next CIAM congress to be held on September 1939.23 After the Second World War, in May 1947, upon invitation INTERNATIONALISM

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FIGURE 5.2  CIAM 6, Bridgwater, UK (1947), group photo taken at the Bristol Airplane Factory. ENR is in the top row, third from the left. Other recognizable participants are in the top row, left to right: Alfred Roth, eighth from the right; in the second row from top: Jaap Bakema, third from the right; in the third row from the top: Maxwell Fry (MARS Group) seventh from the right; in the front row, from the left: Le Corbusier (first), José Luis Sert (ninth), then next to him to the right Sigfried Giedion, Jane Drew (MARS Group), Cornelis van Eesteren, Minette da Silva, Walter Gropius, and Helena Syrkus, as well as Grete Schütte-Lihotzky (second from the right). (Papers of the Congrès Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne, CIAM, 1928–1970. Gifts of Josep Lluis Sert, 1981 and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, 1982. Folder D004. Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design.) Courtesy of ©The Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

from Giedion, Rogers and Peressutti attended the first meeting of the CIRPAC since 1939, when Rogers gave a group report on Italian architecture—while Aalto, for example, did the same for Finland.24 Rogers was the only Italian delegate at CIAM 6 in Bridgwater, UK, in September 1947, thus establishing his role as the Italian point of contact for the CIAM. That meeting signaled also a shift of CIAM’s main focus, more aligned with Rogers’ personal agenda, which he was pursuing with his BBPR practice and the editorship of Domus, at that time in its second year: “Sert’s election as president may have been an indication that the earlier CIAM focus on the functional city was now to give way to Giedion’s new concerns about aesthetics, Sert’s about civic centers, and perhaps even [James M.] Richard’s about the appeal of modern architecture to the ‘Common Man’.”25 In March 1948, Rogers replaced Pollini and Bottoni within the new CIAM Council,26 which, by June 1948, consisted of: Sert (president – he would continue as CIAM president until 1957), Gropius (vice-president), Cornelis van Eesteren (honorary president), Giedion (honorary secretary), Rudolf Steiger (honorary treasurer), Le Corbusier, Helena Syrkus, József Fischer, Josef Havlicek, Godfrey Samuel, and Rogers.27 In May 1949, while visiting the USA on his way back to Italy from South America, Rogers was invited to a meeting of the CIAM American Group—which was never numerous or widely representative—at Sert’s office in New York with, among others, Gropius, Oscar Stonorov, and Konrad Wachsmann.28 94

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At CIAM 7 in Bergamo (Italy) in September 1949, which saw Peressutti as the head organizer, Rogers chaired—for Gropius, in absentia—the Committee III on “Architectural and Town Planning Education,” comprising, among others, Jane Drew of the MARS Group (Vice-Chair) and Alfred Roth, with Giedion, van Eesteren, Sert, and van den Broek joining in during the discussion. The Rogers Commission worked out of a twelve-point document previously outlined by Gropius and sent to Drew,29 and focused on refining a definition of the architect: “as a creative designer as well as a coordinator … interpreter of progress … able to crystalize into a thing of beauty a synthesis of biological, sociological, economic and technical factors.”30 Rogers’ influence on the committee’s final document is clear, especially when it dealt with a curriculum devoting a long discussion to the teaching of history.31 The importance of history was underscored by Sert during the debate, thus signaling the forming of a solid commonality of viewpoints with Rogers. The document then recommended that teachers be selected among practitioners who were “open-minded to the problems of the time and experimental in their own work,” but “never engaged for a prolonged period … to ensure the continuance of a lively and unacademic teaching staff.”32 Finally, continuing in typical Rogers’ parlance, it stressed the value of the “intellectual independence” of the school, whose “spiritual atmosphere is of the utmost importance … [as] by the manner of its approach to architecture, it will inevitably become a center of progress and will be bound to have a direct influence upon public opinion.”33 It is clear how the CIAM discourse and Rogers’ thought were in a relationship of reciprocal influence. Sert and Rogers continued their intellectual alliance in steering CIAM interest toward the core—or “heart,” as Rogers preferred—of the city. Hence, the 1951 CIAM 8 in Hoddesdon had such a topic, was more successful than CIAM 7 at Bergamo, and resulted in an important proceedings book edited by Sert, Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, and Rogers.34 At CIAM 8 it was also approved—under Rogers’ auspices—that, after a first edition at the Architectural Association in London in 1949, the CIAM Summer School was to be transferred to Venice. The CIAM Summer School was another opportunity for Rogers to pursue his international agenda: Corbu, Wright, and Gropius guest-lectured there to around fifty students from all over the world, tutored by young assistants such as Giancarlo De Carlo and Gino Valle, under the supervision of the core faculty, comprising Giuseppe Samonà, Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, and Rogers himself.35 It was also an opportunity for Rogers to trial a new pedagogical model—which it was not possible to implement within the highly conservative Italian academy: “teamwork, lectures and workshops, crossdisciplinarity, integration of architecture and urbanism, real world socio-political design topics.”36 Yet, as much as Rogers had a keen interest in teaching, and later on was absorbed for eleven years (1954–64) by Casabella-Continuità, the CIAM— of course, besides his practice—remained a primary focus of his activities and preoccupations. As Tentori, a close collaborator of his, recalled: “first CIAM, then Casabella, then the school.”37 INTERNATIONALISM

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At the June 1952 meeting of the council, but open to almost sixty members, at Sigtuna (Sweden), with seven council members in attendance, including Rogers, it was decided that the venue of the CIAM 9 would be Marseille—where Corbu was just completing his Unité d’Habitation—a choice that Rogers supported “in homage to Le Corbusier.”38 On another topic, though, Rogers disagreed with the majority, as he opposed the creation of “a group of the young” to prepare CIAM 10. This idea had already been proposed in an “Extra Council Meeting” held at Corbu’s office in Paris the previous May when, in a meeting that Mumford aptly called pivotal, it was decided that “the intention remains to give increasing responsibility for the control of CIAM to the new generation of architects … [with] a period of transition until CIAM 10,” the theme and organization of which “would be placed in the hands of a new generation of architects.”39 Rogers was clearly concerned by the centrifugal forces within CIAM and, with his typical sense of premonition, understood—in fact, better than Corbu—that this process would have led to the dissolution of the CIAM, as indeed actually happened with the subsequent critique of Team 10.40 At CIAM 9 at Aix-en-Provence, near Marseille, in July 1953, again Rogers chaired the commission on “The Formation of the Architect”—other commission chairs included Sert on Urbanism and Giedion on Visual Arts—but the crisis of CIAM started to emerge in the conflicts between the generations, with the younger Smithsons, Bakema, van Eyck, and other Team 10 members posing increasingly critical challenges to the principles of the organization.41 At CIAM 10 in Dubrovnik—former Yugoslavia, current Croatia—in August 1956, Rogers was part of the Commission on Public Relations—which included Roth and van den Broek—charged to “wander between the various Congress Commissions and report directly to the President.”42 The discussion revolved around Corbu’s latest message and the thought-provoking, though still uncertain in their methods and goals, research exploration of Team 10. The crisis of the CIAM was looming. A last effort to revamp the organization was attempted and a CIAM reorganization committee was formed, of which Rogers was part, along with Emery, Roth, William Howell, and Team 10 members Bakema and the Smithsons. However, “Dubrovnik marked the end of CIAM for its national groups and most of its members.”43 In fact, as part of the consequences of the committee’s recommendations, the CIAM Council and the CIRPAC ceased to exist on December 31, 1956. Later discussions about how to continue the CIAM mission but without necessarily keeping the organizational structure that had shown, after Dubrovnik, its clear signs of crisis, included “a group of thirty”—proposed by a small ad hoc CIAM leadership group composed of Sert, Gropius, Giedion, and Tyrwhitt—to include Bakema as president, Rogers as vice-president, Emery as general secretary, and Alfred Roth as treasurer.44 In September 1957, the reorganization committee met at La Sarraz and outlined a possible path forward by renaming CIAM the “Research Group for Social and Visual Relationships”45 —this awkward renaming was also a clear indication of the crisis reaching breaking point. 96

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A committee of coordination was appointed, with Bakema, Roth, John Voelcker, André Wogenscky (Corbu’s associate) and Rogers. This committee met in Brussels in January 1958 and planned the next—and last—CIAM congress for September 1959, at the Van de Velde designed Kröller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, simply calling it “CIAM 1959” rather than CIAM 11, thus signaling de facto the end of the organization.46 The coordinating committee met one last time in June 1959, at Wogenscky’s house near Paris, co-opting also Jerzy Sołtan, Geir Grung (Norway) and Fritz Trautwein (Germany), to draft guidelines and an agenda for CIAM 1959. Rogers’ influence is still detectable in the letter of invitation drafted for invitees, where it was stated that participants should show “how the spatial and plastic implications of their work might contribute to a more positive connection between people and their surroundings. … If architects are no longer able to act through their building, their identity will be lost, they will become industrial designers, decorators, etc. Architecture should be life-enhancing.”47 The document-memo concluded, with a hint of hope, but an implied skepticism “that, if some affinity of approach is apparent at Otterlo, the coordinating group suggests that CIAM should become a simple center for the exchange of ideas and research in architecture and planning.”48 As we know, the affinity was not found. It was ironic that Rogers, a strenuous supporter of the CIAM idea, was a major contributor to the crisis due to the vibrant debate with some Team 10 members— namely Peter Smithson and Bakema—unleashed by his presentation of the BBPR’s Velasca Tower project—we shall return to this debate on the chapter on “History.” Even though Rogers, through his research and the work of BBPR, involuntarily contributed to the progressive crisis of the CIAM, he nevertheless represented one of the most important voices in this phase of the Modern Movement as far as internationalism was concerned. In fact, he still argued that “The CIAM represented the moment of greatest commitment and solidarity in modern architecture; a commitment still more valid today and increasingly necessary if we are not to abandon the debate and our hope for a progressive architecture.”49 What Rogers was lamenting was not an unaccomplished revival, but the loss of CIAM’s “international thought.”50

New York, Barcelona, Mumbai A first, important, opportunity for Rogers and his BBPR partners, for international work on a world stage of no minor challenge, was the Olivetti Showroom on Fifth Avenue in New York (1952–54). Meant to showcase, following the opening of its American branch in 1950, the innovative symbiosis of high-tech and design pursued by Olivetti—a sort of an anticipation of Steve Jobs’ Apple philosophy—the charge was to highlight the value of the products, as achievements of globalized knowledge and technology, while at the same time hint at traits of Italian taste and culture. In Belgiojoso’s recollection: “the theme that we gave ourselves since INTERNATIONALISM

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FIGURE 5.3 BBPR, Olivetti Showroom, 584 Fifth Avenue, New York (1952–54). Demolished. Interior view with the bas-relief sculpture by Constantino Nivola. Photo 1950s, courtesy of © Ezra Stoller / Esto.

the outset of the project … [was to express] the character of Italian creativity, anchored to the tradition of its origins and striving toward the solution of current technical problems.”51 For the technological aspect, the design inspirations for the showroom were Olivetti’s state-of-the-art typewriters and calculators, but also mathematics and calculus equations whose curves eventually governed the shapes of the products’ supports in marble emerging from the floor—a symbolism stated in the project 98

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FIGURE 5.4 BBPR, Olivetti Showroom. Interior view with the paternoster in the foreground. Photo 1950s, courtesy of © Ezra Stoller / Esto.

report, but presumably not readily comprehensible to the wider public.52. Aspects relative to Italian culture included the materials, such as the green Challand marble from Piedmont—from a quarry near Ivrea where Olivetti headquarters were located—for the floor and the stalagmite-like supports for the products, or the pink Candoglia marble—the same as Milan’s Duomo—for the store tabletops and the treads of the inner staircase; the all too powerful sculpted wall by Costantino Nivola53—whose artistic talent Rogers had started to appreciate years before during his Domus tenure54—using his unique plaster casting technique on sand molds to evoke memories and atmospheres of Italian rural culture;55 the historical reference to Leonardo’s machines with the paternoster (cyclical elevator) meant to be used to move the products to/from the underground storage but used only as a display device due to building code restrictions; the Murano glasses by Venini— Venetian top glass maker—used as stalactite-like diffusers for light projectors on the products. Another reference to Italian culture was the very entrance of the showroom, where BBPR created a portico-like ambience by retreating the actual showroom front with a bowed-in shop window, an unusual condition for the otherwise consistently aligned built front on Fifth Avenue. Yet this public space was also used for commercial reasons, as one of the interior stalagmites slid out in the portico to offer everybody the opportunity to test an Olivetti typewriter. INTERNATIONALISM

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There were also elements of surprise: a monumental walnut door, 16 ft. [4.8 m] tall, yet well hinged and surprisingly easy to operate, but only 41 in. [1 m] wide, contrasting with its mass with the ethereal shop window boasting the largest glass pane, 12 x 15 ft. [3.6 x 4.5 m], on Fifth Avenue at the time; a diagonal staircase to an office space at a mezzanine level inside the showroom, meant to be realized with simple marble treads anchored at lateral steel plates, but then constructed with two supporting girders due to building code requirements, much to Peressutti’s chagrin.56 This project sparked mixed reactions. Praised by Architectural Forum for its “hearty, exuberant voluptuousness … [and for being] bold, intricate and exciting,”57 it was chastised by Lewis Mumford from the pages of The New Yorker,58 flatly not understanding the “high poetic qualities of the ambience”59 sought and achieved by BBPR. In Peressutti’s words: “Here, in this long, narrow cube, we wished to give a sense of natural richness and interpenetration, like stalagmites and stalactites in some imaginable cave.”60 BBPR’s artistic intentions did not go unnoticed by Giò Ponti’s critical lens, as he appreciated from the pages of Domus the showroom’s inventions, “imagination and sense of freedom … [as well as] an absolutely poetic atmosphere,” recognizing that, even from a marketing standpoint, “the choice to purchase [a given product], in addition to functionality, technical perfection and affordability, is determined also by that irresistible sympathy derived by a formal

FIGURE 5.5  BBPR, Olivetti Showroom. View along Fifth Avenue. Photo 1950s, courtesy of © Ezra Stoller / Esto. 100

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FIGURE 5.6  BBPR, Olivetti Showroom. View of the entry portico. Photo 1950s, courtesy of © Ezra Stoller / Esto.

attractiveness.”61 In a more recent critical assessment, Daniel Sherer highlighted the surrealistic qualities of “one of the most daring and powerfully imagined designs in postwar New York.”62 For sure, the client, Adriano Olivetti, must have been quite happy with the project if, per Rogers’ recollection, he wrote a check for the BBPR for twice the sum of their professional fee.63 The BBPR team worked for another project abroad for the Olivetti company; the headquarters and showroom for the Hispano-Olivetti in Barcelona (1959– 65).64 This was the last project directly commissioned to BBPR by Adriano Olivetti, “[hence] our passionate commitment to it, to honor his memory.”65 Initially, in 1959, the project had been drafted by Gian Antonio Bernasconi, who had been in charge of the Olivetti Architectural Office since 1945.66 Bernasconi’s design though INTERNATIONALISM

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did not satisfy Olivetti “because it does not fit into the environment in a sufficient manner.”67 The documents shown by Michela Rosso in her thorough analysis of the project clearly show why Olivetti could not possibly have accepted Bernasconi’s design.68 As Rogers commented, “everybody knows how much weight he [Adriano Olivetti] assigned to architecture and urbanism, both in the practical and in the representational tasks of the phenomenon.”69 While the new building had to celebrate Olivetti’s drive for technological innovation and carefully designed products, one of the first themes tackled by BBPR during the design process was the relationship with the context. As Rogers put it, “it is clear that building in Barcelona implies that one inserts, and gives specific character to, the new intervention as part of a whole that has organized itself through history: Gaudí’s personality emerges from the ancient fabric and one cannot forget about it.”70 Thus Gaudí’s genius became part of the concept with the modulation of the façade: our work would not be what it is, had we not wanted to remember the formidable Gaudian accent that exalts some unmistakable environments of the city … [but] without wanting to passively repeat history, which in Gaudí’s works is mainly complacency of curves, here the whole façade and the most important parts present themselves with a strong chiaroscuro vibrations, such that to insert this new construction within the typical environment of the Catalonian capital.71 Therefore, the north and main façade on Ronda de la Universitat consists of a dense, but formally very clear, fabric of a plastic curtain wall that speaks of modern technology, but also of the modulation of Barcelona’s typical street fronts, particularly of the tribunas, enclosed cantilevered glazed loggias, as aptly noted by Rosso.72 Bookending the main seven-story office block are the double level commercial ground floor and the top levels of apartments, set back from the street front with ample terraces and views over the city: “the most sensible spots, as it should be of any healthy construction, are where the building touches the ground and where it soars toward the sky.”73 Thus at the top, the regularity of the north façade was contrasted by the vertical protrusion of volumes of the technical “guts” of the building—elevators, mechanical systems for environmental control, etc.—“to vent what we could call the metabolism of the whole organism.”74 At the bottom, was the two-level showroom. Reminiscent of the New York showroom, this one in Barcelona was also set back—in part—from the street front to create a vast shadow from the cantilevered volume of the offices above, also to downplay the driveway that is also part of the ground floor. The shop window is articulated into pure glass volumes to showcase the interior, where globes in Perspex contained the jewels of Olivetti’s production, thus providing a kind of “aura” to typewriters

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FIGURE 5.7  BBPR, Hispano-Olivetti Headquarters, Ronda de la Universitat, Barcelona (1959–65). Photo 2018, courtesy of © Nelson Zavaleta. INTERNATIONALISM

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FIGURE 5.8  BBPR, Hispano-Olivetti Headquarters. View toward Plaça de la Universitat. Photo 2018, courtesy of © Nelson Zavaleta. 104

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FIGURE 5.9  BBPR, Hispano-Olivetti Headquarters. Historic view of the interior lobby with display of Olivetti products. Photo 1960s by Francesc Català-Roca. Courtesy © Photographic Archive F. Català-Roca. Arxiu Històric del Collegi d’Arquitectes de Catalunya.

and calculators.75 The rest of the interior features included a floor in gray quartzite tiles, wall finish in pink Spanish granite panels, a wooden soffit with golden leaves, a somewhat overly decorative moment in BBPR’s vocabulary, but one that Rogers credited to a specific search for a “Spanish richness of materials that we never used elsewhere.”76 Both the soffit and the floor continued on the outside for a continuity between interior and public space already experimented on in New York. Another design feature of note was the structural solution. Given the shape of the lot, quite deep (26 m – 85 ft.), but for the main volume even deeper at the ground floor, and fairly narrow in width (18 m – 59 ft.), BBPR recognized that they could span the width with two structural bays of around 9 m (29 ft.). However, they used pairs of concrete cruciform columns—homage to Mies?—on rows 1.6 m (5 ft. 3 in.) apart that defined and organized a central spine of corridors and services, while at the same time formally reinforcing with their double presence their image on the ground floor of the main façade on the street. For its many thoughtful, sensitive, and elegant design solutions, as well as for showing, as Gillo Dorfles remarked, “a ductility of the architectonic line … [maybe reminiscent of the ‘line-force’ by Van de Velde, one of Rogers’ most admired ‘masters’] … [this building] constitutes one of the most important points of arrival of Rogers’ career as an architect.”77 The mixed-use building, New India Centre, for the New India Assurance Company in Mumbai (1968–73), followed a similar programmatic scheme and INTERNATIONALISM

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compositional parti as developed for Hispano-Olivetti, with the difference that in Mumbai the residential component was much bigger. Designed in collaboration with the National Design Institute, to offer a training experience for young graduates of the institute, the building consisted of a commercial/public program at the ground level—mostly open and defined by the structural columns—a consistently regular central volume—in this case of twelve floors—and a crowning group of setback volumes for common services, including a cafeteria and a children’s playroom. In this case, though, different to Barcelona, the office and the residential programs are differentiated vertically with two separate towers, joined by a vertical core. This smart solution not only maximized rental units from a real estate standpoint, but it also allowed to carve volume at the center of the complex in order to maximize exposure and cross-ventilation opportunities. While the outer envelope was initially meant to be in grit panels, budget restrictions led BBPR to opt for a plaster finish. Another important element of this tall building is a motif that the BBPR had already experimented with the much taller towers at Gratosoglio: the articulation of the tall volume with the repeated smaller volumes and void/solid regular rhythm of cantilevered balconies. These elements, though, in Mumbai became verandahs, recalling a typical building element of Indian architecture. The reinterpretation of traits of the local tradition—which BBPR mastered in many other projects and which will be discussed more in detail in the chapter on “History” —was also pursued on other building elements, such as the roofing of the top volumes and the

FIGURE 5.10 BBPR, New India Centre (New India Assurance Company), Mumbai (1968–73). Photo 2004, through the courtesy and property of © Dinodia Photos / Alamy Stock Photo. 106

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two colors used—beige and an earthy sienna—to seek a certain urban atmosphere, as they had done, though more successfully, in other cities. This concern for a relationship with the local culture is not only of an esthetic nature but also from an environmental perspective, such as the cross-ventilation solutions previously mentioned.

FIGURE 5.11  BBPR, New India Centre. View of the residential tower. Photo 2018, © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso. INTERNATIONALISM

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Overall, the architecture of this complex may slide toward an almost literal regionalism, but it constitutes a valid exploration of a difficult task. A modernist Indian architect of the caliber of Charles Correa, in the Kanchanjunga Apartments (1974), also in Mumbai and almost contemporary to BBPR’s New India Assurance building, achieved more complex and articulated solutions in the spatiality of the dwellings and to the environmental challenges, but in its overall image struggled, like BBPR, to find the fine balance between modernist abstraction and regionalist interpretation, bending perhaps too much toward the former, while BBPR emphasized too much the latter. Rogers was probably not much involved in this project, as he was already ill when the design started—he died in 1969. However, this building is another example, perhaps not of the highest level like so many of their works, yet still rich in thoughtful ideas and that cultural internationalism that Rogers and BBPR pursued and practiced throughout their careers.

Cultural Internationalism Rogers’ internationalism was more of a cultural nature and about a mentality than a design philosophy geared at finding a universal vocabulary for the modern age— an agenda that Rogers did not shy away from criticizing even when presenting on Casabella-Continuità, a most admired “master” like Mies.78 A strenuous champion of modern architecture, Rogers was fully aware that the danger of an “international style,” whether the one codified by Philip Johnson and Henry-Russell Hitchcock at the 1932 MoMA exhibition or in any other formula, was constantly looming. The Modern Movement had a mission to accomplish, hence “it is certain that polemical reasons, even though historically justifiable, have often conceded to pave the way for an a-critical internationalism across the board.”79 On the other hand, what Rogers was concerned for was a “critical internationalism,” a cultural hypothesis explored in depth by Gregotti in the last issue of his Casabella in 1996: A critical practice such as that which in this issue of Casabella emerges as “critical internationalism” … from the conviction that a critical practice, rather than a re-foundation, is possible today. This is not a clash between the novelty of internationalist culture and the stability of site and tradition. It is evident that from the interpretation of the latter, more novelty can emerge than from the messages of technological and behavioral internationalism.80 In his opening editorial for his relaunching of Casabella, Rogers clearly stated: “We stand for a truly international language, but made of reciprocal understanding, where everyone may contribute with inner liberty and the cultural input that is characteristic of the region in which she/he operates.”81 A few months later, when entering the debate on Wright’s project in Venice—by defending it as a cultural initiative, in spite of his personal reservations from a disciplinary standpoint— 108

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Rogers reiterated: “of the work of architecture we need to ask to be rooted on the site where it gets erected; that is right; but we need also to allow every artist— wherever she/he may come from—of being able to interpret universal values within every particular case.”82 What are, however, these “universal values”? This question was really never answered by Rogers with clarity, but his good friend, collaborator and “cultural confidant,” philosopher Enzo Paci, can be brought in for help. With a striking appropriateness to engage in an architectural debate, Paci posited with extreme lucidity that “the rationality of forms is a guarantee for overcoming nationalisms: internationalism is related to technology, to the uniformity of construction.”83 At about the same time, during his lectures at the Politecnico, Rogers echoed Paci’s thought predicting, with his usual foresightedness, that in a more globalized world, “without borders and, consequently, without customs—why should this be a utopia? … the choice of materials will benefit from the global scale of world markets.”84 Rogers recognized early on the increasing importance for the architect of the dialectical relationship between global and local, which, as Guido Canella, a young collaborator of Rogers’, remarked, “will pose the architects before the necessity of a judgment trying to find the right coordinates between provincialism and internationalism, between a correspondence to the society in which they are called to operate and a vision of the world.”85 It is interesting to note how anticipatory are these preoccupations by Rogers on themes that would much later resonate with the theorists of Critical Regionalism, in particular with Kenneth Frampton.86 Yet, for Rogers, the cultural dimension, a much broader issue than the question of the “Technique,” was key. For example, in discussing the meaning of “tradition,” Rogers acknowledged how Alvar Aalto, in a case of cultural internationalism while working in Italy, “is not only the best Finnish architect (the unsurpassed poet-singer of his homeland), but paradoxically also the best Italian architect […] he conflated in his own spirit the vernacular tradition of his country with that one, more complex, that he assimilated in Italy: he welded the broad cycle of tradition in terms of a precise architecture.”87 Cultural internationalism was, for Rogers, a way to be an architect generously open and intellectually curious toward other cultures, based on the recognition that modernity demanded, yes, a richly diverse world, but also a more interconnected international community.

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6  MASTERS

Between his humanistic upbringing and consequent wide exposure to historical and philosophical studies and his participation in intellectual circles since his early career, coupled with a natural humility that favored the recognition of mentors’ values and accomplishments, Rogers was highly influenced by “master figures.” Being just a generation younger than the Modern Movement pioneers who were, though, close enough in age to exercise a personal influence, certainly encouraged Rogers to look up to these figures, because in fact he could not recognize a master in academia during his college experience—where it would naturally be expected to happen. The conservative environment at the Politecnico in Milan in the 1920s and early 1930s did not foster the growth of any mentor championing the ideals of the Modern Movement. Thus, it was probably Giuseppe Pagano the first senior architect and intellectual—half a generation older—to offer a cultural guidance and inspiration to Rogers and his partners at BBPR, since the time when Pagano was a member of the jury that awarded a prize to the young partnership in 1932, still a few months before graduation, at the first “Littoriali di Architettura,” a competition for a prototypical Casa del Fascio—basically a similar program to the 1936 Terragni masterpiece.1 Pagano noticed the talent of the young Milanese team and from then he encouraged their careers. Pagano, though, while already an accomplished professional and intellectual,2 was only twelve to fourteen years older than the BBPR. Between him and the team there was not that critical distance and differential level of accomplishments that would cast on Pagano the light of a “master.” Yet, Pagano remained extremely inspirational for Rogers: in addition to the ideals of the Modern Movement and the principles for which the pioneers and their generation strived, the “continuity” that Rogers appended to the title of his Casabella was indeed mainly in reference to Pagano and his editorship, his struggles, his moral values, and the architecture he stood for. Pagano’s commitment to an ongoing critical discourse, both in practice and in theoretical reflection—in that also supported by Edoardo Persico’s example—was certainly inspirational for Rogers.

Similarly to “criticality”—for which also Adolf Loos was an inspiration—it is possible to trace the influence that other “master figures” exerted on Rogers relative to the other main themes that we have so far discussed. We can think of Gropius for “teamwork,” Corbu and his championing of the CIAM for “internationalism,” Van de Velde and his “arts and crafts” aesthetic sensibility for cross-disciplinarity, or, even outside of disciplinary boundaries, enlightened entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti, though not much older than Rogers, but with an already mature philosophy of a new industrial culture supporting community development, for “social engagement.” Looking up to “masters” and learning from them was for Rogers also consistent with his approach toward history—the other theme that will be discussed in the next chapter—regarded as a vital source of inspiration and as a challenge to bring a certain—selected—tradition into the future.

Monographic Studies: Perret, Loos, Van de Velde Another intermediate passage toward the consolidation of the notion of the “master” was the editorial initiative “Architetti del Movimento Moderno,” for the publisher Il Balcone, already discussed in the chapter on “Teamwork,” as it was directed by the three surviving partners of BBPR together and published between 1947 and 1959.3 It was then conceived when Rogers’ editorship of Domus was coming to an end and published for ten of the total twenty titles before Rogers embarked on the relaunching of Casabella in 1953. As mentioned in the chapter on Teamwork, the selection was very broad and hardly consistent with solid historiographic criteria relative to a genealogy of the Modern Movement—after all the curators were not all historians by profession but also architects with historic and cultural curiosity. The series included distant—as important as they were— nineteenth-century figures that could be credited only marginally being among the precursors of the Modern Movement, such as Camillo Boito— 1959, by historian and preservationist Liliana Grassi— William Morris—1947, by Giancarlo De Carlo4—Charles R. Mackintosh—1950, by renowned British historian Nikolaus Pevsner—and Raimondo D’Aronco—1955, by Manfredi Nicoletti—to actual “masters” such as Wright—1947, by historian and critic Bruno Zevi—and Mies— 1955, by Max Bill.5 Planned volumes that never came to fruition though, included one on Gropius by Peressutti—announced since 1948—and one on Corbu by Rogers himself—announced in 1955.6 Among the authors of the little books were professional historians and critics such as Bruno Zevi, Giulio Carlo Argan—on Nervi, 1955—and Giulia Veronesi—on Hoffmann, 1956—but also architects who would not continue to pursue a career as historians—in spite of becoming academics and critics—such as De Carlo, Nicoletti, and Carlo Melograni—on Pagano, 1955. In fact, having practicing architects authoring these studies was perfectly aligned with Rogers’ approach to architecture as a reflective practice. 112

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Without the ambition of being definitive historical studies, the balconcini7 (17 x 12 cm in size – 6.5 x 4.5 in.) were quite limited in scope with no more than a long essay—about 8,000 words—as an accompanying text in support of a set of thirty to forty carefully selected and organized illustrations, specifically curated by the author. These booklets were analyses but also endorsements of particular figures considered by the authors as major contributors to the growth of the Modern Movement. And the series was conceived by Rogers—together with his partners, but obviously mostly by him—as the constitution of a tradition of works and ideas for the future development of modern architecture. Rogers may have not endorsed completely and specifically each and every choice and the critical interpretations by the authors of the balconcini, but he certainly subscribed to the series as a cultural operation. Molinari has rightly observed that Rogers wanted to expand the genealogy established by Giedion in Space Time and Architecture (1941), with whom he was frequently in contact, especially since 1943 and through the end of the CIAM in 1959, by including “individuals such as Morris, Asplund, Mackintosh, Dudok, Oud, Mendelsohn, and Behrens, whilst also incorporating a selective reading of Giedion with militant stories of the Modern Movement’s architecture from Platz to Pevsner and Hitchcock.”8 However, the balconcino authored by Rogers himself on Auguste Perret constituted a first study of, and homage to, a “master” as it would later become characterized in Rogers’ thought. In his brief essay, Rogers clearly assigned to Perret the status of Maestro—with a capital letter: The characteristic of those who operate in this way [based not only on taste and feelings but on contents and reason] is that from them it was developed an esthetics that, beyond the signature of the personality (which is always the condition of any creation), is capable to express a transmissible language, so that the followers can amplify the groove of the trend, without becoming mannerists. … And I say so, in spite of the fact that in France, but indeed throughout the world, there are plenty of imitators who were not able to read the word, beyond the calligraphy of the Master.9 Rogers acknowledged Perret’s main contribution to form a tradition of modern architecture in his unique mastery of reinforced concrete technology—few pioneers of the Modern Movement better than Perret really embodied the persona of the “master builder”: Reinforced concrete and Auguste Perret establish a reciprocal relationship: one influences the other … The technique and the poetics of August Perret are irrevocably tied to the use of the material that he, first, used with intentions of artistic expression. He is capable to grasp the essence of a particular moment and to transcend it, thus inserting his own work within a universal system. Is it not the identification mark of a Master?10 MASTERS

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Yet, in spite of such admiration, Rogers’ critical spirit did not allow him to engage in a complete endorsement, which was, in fact, always beyond his intentions. In the final pages of his essay, Rogers critically recognized Perret’s “tangential interest” in interiors and urbanism—“extreme polarities of activities for a modern architect”11—his “insufficient sensibilities” to comprehend the changing life of a changing world, his tendencies toward dogmatism—which Rogers truly abhorred—and abstract idealism— Rogers was too pragmatic not to notice it. Rogers recognized also the “drying up” of Perret’s poetic vein in his later years. However, he suggested that, with an open mind, these questionable aspects should not be the focus of our interest: “his imitators, as useless as harmful, hung themselves onto a false image of Auguste Perret. However, his true followers will be able to find inspiration for many years to come while they pursue their ideas with creative and critical spirit within the fertile groove of the Master.”12 Among those inspired by Perret’s legacy, working with “creative and critical spirit,” were certainly BBPR, at the time developing the final scheme of their signature work and masterpiece, the Velasca Tower, which undoubtedly is indebted, among many other references, also to Perret. At about the same time—mid-1950s—by taking advantage of the unique tribune offered by Casabella-Continuità, Rogers started to focus periodically on critical reflections on other important figures of the Modern Movement. In a May– June 1954 editorial, he entered the debate on Wright’s project for the Fondazione Masieri in Venice. He clearly indicated his reservations about the projects, but a judgment on the particular design solution was beyond the point. In his able argumentation he stressed the value of the authoritative status of certain artists, when it is about the expression of a person that, over her/his long and glorious existence, has constantly proved complete dedication to one’s own ideals and the contempt for vulgar compromises; that counts more than paying homage to a formal tradition [of Venice, in this case]: it is the degree that a Van de Velde, a Walter Gropius, a Le Corbusier, a Wright, a Mies van der Rohe, can throw on the table of any jury, without fear of being denied.13 In 1955 Rogers turned to Gropius and Corbu: the former for an overall assessment of his legacy on the occasion of his seventieth birthday,14 the latter, relative to the controversial Chapel at Ronchamp—which was widely published on Casabella-Continuità and saw Rogers as one of its most committed defenders.15 In February 1957, it was Mies’ turn to be the focus of an editorial, where Rogers discussed “Mies’ problematic”: a master of outstanding authority, but with the illusion of being able to establish a universal language for modern architecture: “Mies’ effort, knowingly or not, of defining a treatise is not valid as such, because our current thought rejects in any case the organizing of the experience through

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a catalog … ”16 Nevertheless, Rogers recognized that “among all masters, Mies, is, today, the most popular and most valid model of the mannerists.”17 Then came the period of Casabella-Continuità special issues and in-depth studies that wanted to outline a broad framework of reference to understand how modern architecture developed and how it could grow in the future. It started with a special issue on Wright on May 1959, prompted by the passing of the American master the previous April. In his editorial, opened with a quote by Walt Whitman, Rogers recalled moments, anecdotes, and reflections from his visits to both Taliesin East and West. In his recollections, Rogers expressed admiration, for Wright’s genius and personality, and admonition, for the easy path that many mannerists took from his research: “to fully understand Wright’s works, one needs to immerse in his taste and that is in the representation of the continuous relativity of the phenomena, every time expressed by the daring operating of his imagination.”18 In November 1959, it was Aldo Rossi who, as a fresh graduate and member of Casabella-Continuità Centro Studi (Research Center) since September 1958, curated a special issue on Adolf Loos. In the opening of his editorial Rogers is very clear and, at the same time—as usual—articulate: The interest for Adolf Loos has the value of a choice: he is among those belonging to our world. Adolf Loos’ timeliness does not certainly consist in recognizing that his message has already been realized and that today’s architecture can be satisfied with the positions it has eventually reached; it is rather to realize the failings of the followers relative to his example and his positive suggestions of his thought; but also the erroneous assumptions superficially pursued by many.19 In his closing, Rogers further clarifies why Loos should be considered a “timely” figure—the editorial is titled “Attualità di Adolf Loos” (Timeliness of Adolf Loos): Adolf Loos’ timeliness, beyond his value, with which anyhow he ranks among the great ones, lies in having tackled together all the problems of his own epoch that remain in ours: the relationship between production and architecture considered as a consumption object; the architectural language also in its most representative and monumental instances; the adherence to the rationality of materials and building (“the architect is a brick-layer who has learned Latin”) the possibility of being decorative without pleasing oneself with ornament.20 No other definition of the architect, perhaps with the exception of the one by Alberti, was dearer to Rogers—who used to remind others of it time and again— than the one by Loos. In March 1960, Rogers curated himself a special issue on Henry Van de Velde— who had passed away just three years earlier. Van de Velde had always exercised a special influence on Rogers, possibly also inspired by Giedion, whom Rogers MASTERS

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visited assiduously during his Swiss exile in the 1940s, and later on through the CIAM. The figure of Van de Velde played a central role in Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture within his narrative of a “new tradition” that the Modern Movement was shaping up: “[Van de Velde] took the lead in the fight for l’art moderne.”21 In particular, Van de Velde’s concept of the relationship between utility and beauty that preoccupied Rogers for the entire arc of his career: Beauty for its own sake is beyond his [Van de Velde’s] conception, but some of his adversaries had thought that he stated “everything that is perfectly useful is necessarily beautiful,” while he rebuts that “the rational conception is only the conditio sine qua non for beauty.” Beauty is effectively produced when the artist communicates something personal that defies a rational definition.22 This was one of Van de Velde’s most important messages that qualified him, in Rogers’ view, as a “master,” that is, as someone who still had a valid lesson to teach. Other interesting aspects of Van de Velde’s works and thought were the notion of a rational ethics, or “the demand for morality” as Giedion interpreted Van de Velde’s plea for a rational coherence between new principles and practice23—Van de Velde’s morale de raison often evoked by Rogers; his compositional principle of the “line-force”—which BBPR used in various ways in many of their works; and his interest in the multiple scales of design, which was a key quality for Rogers to be nurtured by the modern architect. Again, Rogers: “if the ideal of the Arts & Crafts gets realized in one single personality, this is precisely Van de Velde, who has been really capable, more than any other, of dealing with the spoon and the monument with the same level of commitment.”24 Rogers—who had such high regard for history—even credited Van de Velde with the honor of having founded the first art school—the Kunstgewerbeschule in Weimar, progenitor of the Gropius’ Bauhaus—where the study of historical styles was banned. In fact, that was not the way history should have been studied for Rogers. However, that choice, continued even more so by Gropius—who, for Rogers, shared with Van de Velde a “complex of history”25—was for Rogers a “healthy revolution,” one that unleashed a liberating energy and allowed the following generation “to look at the past, also at theirs, capturing without fear the positive essential components and trying only of being able to realize themselves.”26 It was in Van de Velde’s evolutionary experience as an artist that Rogers found the most profound and fruitful message of the Belgian master’s legacy: an example of continuous growth and renewal, living the very ethos of modernity. Yet, even with his much admired master, Roger did not refrain from a critical notation when he carefully identified in Van de Velde’s pedagogy an absence of a method that would shield the students from becoming overly literal mannerist disciples of the master: a limit clearly seen by Gropius who made sure to overcome it in his Bauhaus. In June of the same year (1960), Casabella-Continuità featured a special issue on Peter Behrens, curated by senior editor Vittorio Gregotti. Behrens was a figure for 116

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whom Rogers had a tepid interest, and one can well sense that from his editorial, whose title “Behrens, architetto tedesco” (Behrens, German architect) betrays a certain distance, though in a respectful tone. Nevertheless, Behrens’ works was well framed and critically assessed by Rogers, who did take the opportunity to highlight the positive elements of his legacy, not least Behrens’ interest in the multiple scales of design. He also underscored Behrens’ “professional realism” and the simple fact that “three of the greatest architects of our epoch, Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Mies van der Rohe, have felt so much the call of a personality of that stature to entrust him their youth by going to learn in his office.”27 In fact, the issue included a brief testimonial by Gropius, who called Behrens “his master from 1907 till 1910,” and thus Behrens acquired more importance and meaning for having been the master of Rogers’ great master. Some of these monographic studies were included by Rogers in his Editoriali (1968). Meaningfully enough, the very first of the four parts in which the book is articulated—simply titled “The Masters”—is precisely dedicated to some key inspirational figures: Wright, Van de Velde, Gropius, Corbu, Behrens, Loos, and Adriano Olivetti, as a testament to the high regard in which he held the enlightened industrialist from Ivrea.

Gropius (via Alberti) No other pioneer of modern architecture has exerted a greater influence on Rogers than Walter Gropius. Many others were recognized as “masters,” Corbu was his most admired architect/artist, but Gropius was Rogers’ role model as a modern architect/intellectual: in his words, “his spiritual father.”28 Rogers’ first important statement on Gropius’ legacy was his editorial on Casabella-Continuità in May 1955, previously mentioned. He opened by arguing that there are three types of “masters”: those who inspire us mainly through “the creative virtues of their contributions”; those who can add reflections and “reveal to us the fascinating psychological recesses from which springs out their personal poetics”; those who, in addition to what the architects of the previous categories can offer, are able “to build an esthetics that projects that subjective experience into the dimensions of a universal system.”29 And he continues: “today, however, as in the past after all, only a small part of them are able to acquire the authority of master in its most complete meaning … In the past, Alberti; today, Gropius.”30 He could have not elevated Gropius more. Then he went on to praise Wright for having opened up “new and marvelous spatial visions,” Mies for his “constructional purity, elegance,” for being the Brunelleschi of our epoch, and Corbu for “having attempted the synthesis of the visual arts,” for being our Michelangelo. But “Walter Gropius is the conscience of the Modern Movement, he is our conscience, the educator: his logical rigor analyzes the problematic of architecture and synthesizes it; Gropius is the creator MASTERS

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of a method … Gropius is really the Leon Battista Alberti of the century.”31 The parallel that Rogers suggested between Gropius and Alberti was an expression of high esteem, for Rogers regarded Alberti as one of the greatest—if not “the” greatest—architects of all time. Rogers not only abundantly and repeatedly quoted Alberti—especially his definition of the architect—in his writings and speeches, but also in the daily experience at the office, so high was his esteem for Alberti that he wanted to make his presence alive with his partners and collaborators.32 What brought Rogers to associate Gropius to Alberti, beyond their artistic achievements through their works and their theories, was their common drive to educate present and future generations in the appreciation of architecture and the arts: Gropius through a school, Alberti through his treatise—which, as Marco Frascari acutely observed, was “a treatise for clients, more than for architects.”33 In his efforts to define a method, Gropius had the ambition to influence generations of architects and clients and have an impact on society to make it embrace the new architecture as an expression of modern culture. In his editorial, Rogers referenced an important study by Giulio Carlo Argan, Walter Gropius e la Bauhaus (1951), as it highlighted the “social motivations” of the new school founded by Gropius. A couple of years earlier, in 1949, Argan had published an essay that anticipated and lucidly discussed the theses of the book, especially with regard to Gropius’ method and its social dimension: Gropius does not limit himself to a new stylistics, new themes for architecture: how many times will he repeat that there was never, nor could it ever exist, a “Bauhaus style”? His purpose is different. Being “constructivity” the character of any conscious human activity (as, to its opposite, violence and “destructivity” are the character of the sub-conscious and the irrational), architecture is the typical form of constructivity: and this explains the very vast range of its possible social action.34 It was quite telling that Gropius was invited to contribute to the inaugural issue of Casabella-Continuità under Rogers’ editorship. Gropius prefaced his article— “Un nuovo capitolo della mia vita” (A new chapter of my life), that is, a new chapter after turning seventy—with a brief accompanying note where he returned Rogers’ admiration to express his appreciation and congratulations for the new enterprise with flattering words: “With great satisfaction I welcome the good news that Casabella reopens its pages again to the world and that Ernesto Rogers’ fertile mind – understanding the past and anticipating the future – shall give it creative guidance.”35 Indeed, Rogers admired Gropius’ overall persona: “Gropius’ style is his humanity. … modesty is the moral trait of Gropius’ personality. However, it is not only a matter of temperament or character: modesty is the cause and the effect of his convictions as lived with integrity and completely.”36

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FIGURE 6.1  ENR (second from left) leads a group of visitors at the IX Milan Triennale (1951). To his right: Walter Gropius. Photographer: Publifoto. Courtesy of © Triennale Milano, Archivio Fotografico.

Corbu (via Michelangelo and Galileo) Of different tone was Rogers’ admiration for Le Corbusier, whom he simply considered “the most important modern architect (perhaps the most important of the last two/three centuries).”37 Rogers devoted numerous writings, analysis of projects—exemplary will remain his critical appraisal of the Chapel at Ronchamp38—lectures at the Politecnico for his course on History of Modern Architecture, testimonials, until his commemoration at the Politecnico in 1966, MASTERS

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after Corbu’s death the year before. In this last homage, which was later published as a little booklet meaningfully titled Le Corbusier tra noi (Le Corbusier among us, 1966),39 Rogers thus summarized his assessment of Corbu’s legacy and personality in his opening statements: A man such as Le Corbusier cannot die. In fact, on August 27, 1965, it has changed only the way of thinking of him: before, we were in front of a human being in continuous evolution … now, unfortunately, we find ourselves before a personality that has completed its own cycle; inventions, logic, contradictions, images, have come to an end, already established within the precise borders of his existence.40 Rogers did not hesitate to qualify Corbu as a “genius,” with an “overpowering presence.”41 He frankly recognizes Corbu’s superior creative mind even compared with his beloved master Gropius. Alluding to the common experience within the Comité des Cinq for the project of the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, he recalled: I saw him, for example, competing with Gropius, on whose value any comment is superfluous, seeing things that in Gropius’ mind did not even start to show; Gropius has to be content to read clearly and also deeply within the context of a present reality, but Le Corbusier could read in between the lines or, better, beyond the lines themselves. All of a sudden, he revealed a fact hidden to everyone, which, thanks to him, became a patrimony for all. … A genius sees beyond, discovers and can immediately describe the phenomena of his/her discovery.42 Acutely so, Rogers saw in Corbu the formidable ability “to envision worlds” for the modern person: “More than a great inventor of original forms, he is an inventor of worlds: the world of those who dwell, the world of those who co-habit in cities, the world of those who work in the farmland or in factories, the world of those who retreat in a church or in a convent … ”43 Rogers recalled that he did not shy away from recognizing Corbu as “the total innovator of the architectural phenomenon.”44 He did not hesitate to compare him to Michelangelo, noting the common broad scope of artistic endeavor in the social and plastic arts—without distinguishing though, with more critical depth, the different levels of achievements reached by the two artists in the their specific fields of endeavor. The “artist dimension” is an important key for Rogers to put Corbu’s rationalism into perspective: “[Corbu] always considers reason as means, never as a sufficient end.45 Rogers further elaborated on this by singling out, with his typical critical acumen, two key projects by Corbu that did not always receive the special recognition they deserved:

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Yet, in his first works, for example in the Maison Domino of 1914, reason seems to be cause and end of the architectural action, which responds to a precise and verifiable geometrical measure, but which soon transforms itself as a manifesto of a way of life and as an ideal pattern that imagination corroborates and immediately transfers in the world of esthetics. In fact, already in the 1922 the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau is conceived as a model of a house whose quality can be quantified overcoming every measure and becoming method, offering itself to the consumption of a more perfect society.46 Rogers recognized, and practiced, Corbu’s ability to constantly question his own principles—such as the famous “Five Points”—which became in Rogers’ intriguing metaphorical image, a sort of “pentagram” where a musician/composer can write different kinds of compositions: “[for example] the buildings of the Ville Savoye’s time are a crescendo of volumetric and spatial inventions, of interpretations of life, where the ‘Five Points’ are not fully observed and where, instead, these can be considered as the pentagram of a musician.”47 Thus, Rogers acknowledged some inherent contradictions within the poetics of the master—a condition he certainly felt also for himself—where the relationship between rationalism—Corbu’s Cartesian spirit—and pragmatism—Corbu’s artistic inventions—never stifled the creative process, but rather created for it a fertile ground. Rogers closed his commemoration by comparing Corbu also to Galileo Galilei, one of the pioneers of modernity—broadly meant—and indicating Corbu’s ultimate legacy: A deeply loved and thoroughly studied present and the actualization of a past not less transformed toward unexplored heights, participate together in this intimate striving that we called utopia. Similar to Galileo Galilei’s spirit, when following his motto “trying and trying again” was fighting the narrow-minded dogmatism and was giving intention to the modern era, this same will ought to inspire us when we operate, with open critical thinking, in our research.48

Critical Distance and Contemporaneity Rogers’ approach toward a notion of the master was critical for what we may refer to as the Bildung—in the German sense of cultural growth—of the modern architect. Etymologically related to “building,” the German notion of Bildung implies “creation,” “formation”—of character— “evolution”—through education— “personal and cultural self-maturation.” The building foundations of such a process of Bildung are precisely the “masters.” Rogers’ approach was also characterized by two components: critical distance and contemporaneity. For the former, he meant a critical attitude to always evaluate the legacy of master figures, even of those that one most admires. This was a logical and consistent expansion of the criticality that we have already discussed and true

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to the critical mentality of modernity. For the latter—contemporaneity—he felt a sort of “living presence” of ideas and works of past masters today, with us, to help us understand the present and project the future. With no superiority complex or ideological opposition toward history and permeated by that humanistic culture that had nurtured him since high school studies—especially under philosophy teacher Antonio Banfi, another master in his own right—Rogers built a sense of “kinship” with a family of inspirational figures, critically selected from a more distant and much closer past, that would support him throughout his intellectual and professional trajectory. As far as critical distance is concerned, there are many instances that we could refer to in Rogers’ career. For example, Frank Lloyd Wright, a master certainly and respectfully considered as such, but obviously not quite close to Rogers’ sensibility. One case in point would be Wright’s famous boutade to historian Sigfried Giedion: “both of us deal with history, but you write about it, I make it.” In spite of his admiration for the American master, Rogers called this, point blank, an “absurd dualism.” In addressing his students at the Politecnico he said: [This is a] pretty good joke, but wrong, because it separates two facts that, if often distinct within people’s activities (one cannot do everything), they are not all distinct within the conscience of the problem at hand. Critique and action are two moments of the same intentional act. We will try with humility and without Wright’s presumptuousness, which we are not allowed to have, to understand that this unity exists and we will try to achieve it.49 Rogers critiqued Wright also on his opinion over Michelangelo’s dome for St. Peter’s in Rome, which Wright—dismissing it as “a Pantheon on top of a Parthenon”—treated in Rogers’ view, with “scorn and irony,” with a “complete misunderstanding.” He continued: “We do not have this [Wright’s] presumption because we do not need to do this and because we are not as great as Frank Lloyd Wright who can be forgiven his error as he was a man of exceptional creativity even if not sufficiently gifted for historical and critical evaluation.”50 Even Corbu, “the greatest architect alive,” is not spared a disagreement. In his study on Perret mentioned earlier, Rogers referred to Corbu’s comments on Perret’s Notre Dame du Raincy near Paris (1923): Le Corbusier wrote, with much humor, that Perret received his official award from the conservatives of the “Institut” [de France] with delay because [they were opposed to] its magnificent interiors and that the honor was finally given to him when they remembered the tower bell, thus certainly meaning [for Corbu] that this latter part of the work is rhetorical or, at any rate, not genuinely modern. Frankly, I must say that I don’t share this opinion, and that, indeed, in its parts and as a whole, the work in question seems to me as deriving from the same approach and as achieving a result of high and exemplary eloquence.51 122

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More substantially, Rogers disagreed with Gropius on history, a topic that he particularly cared about. In a lecture given at the Politecnico on “the building of the architect,”52 Rogers criticized Gropius’ pedagogical idea that history should be taught in the third year of the architecture curriculum, not to influence the proper creative growth of the beginning student. As Canella pointed out: The positive critique that Rogers was moving to Gropius’ (but also Van de Velde’s) legacy focused on the presumption that one could avoid “historicity”; denouncing how they, men of culture, possessing a complete knowledge of the epochs and the styles of architecture, could pretend that the youths could get a proper education out of the blank slate of the present: only from a non academic knowledge of history could have come a non formalistic regeneration of modern architecture.53 In order to pursue such a regeneration, Rogers felt the need to draw from the legacy of past masters. He felt their presence as a daily conversation with likeminded colleagues, regardless of time or generations, whether just a bit older like Aalto or a generation older like Corbu, Gropius, and Mies, or substantially older like Wright, Van de Velde, Loos, and Behrens, or even from distant history such as Palladio and Alberti. For Rogers they were, in a sense, all contemporaries, each of them contributing in their own way to the growth of the art. In support of his arguments, Rogers often quoted T. S. Eliot, who was another artist very sensitive to a notion of diachronic continuity of creators and artists across time. In discussing, in Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico (1961), the relationship of the artistic actions of today with the those of the past, Rogers referred again to Eliot: “every great poet adds some elements to the complex material, out of which future poetry will be written.”54

On the Shoulders of Giants In fact, Gropius, similar to Rogers in terms of intellectual and personal humility, also liked to recognize the value of others and of his own master Peter Behrens, who in turn admitted a cultural debt to Karl Friedrich Schinkel, his “artistic ancestor”: “From 1907 to 1910, Peter Behrens was my master who introduced me to the problems of design and architecture. He gave me the first foundation on which later on I could build up my own development as an architect. … I owe him much, particularly the habit of thinking in principles.”55 Rogers liked to recall often an anecdote when he took a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris with Corbu and Gropius, during one of their working sessions for the UNESCO Headquarters project, and the two, who had worked together in Behrens’ office, confided to him one of their master’s favorite thoughts: “in Architektur kann man alles lösen”—in architecture one can solve anything—hinting at the importance of a method— naturally, the modern method—that can assist the architect to tackle any problem. MASTERS

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This curiosity and respect for the precursors of the Modern Movement, but also for a need to understand the origins and the process—thus the profound motivations—through which such a monumental revolution in the history of architecture came about, was recalled also by Belgiojoso: joining the Modern Movement had acquired for many the character of an a-critical, almost dogmatic, acceptance of its tenets. That is, people tended to forget that the formal results which the Modern Movement had achieved were the outcome of a complex process initiated from the thought and the action of architects such as Perret, Van de Velde, Horta, etc. They made the break with nineteenth-century eclecticism, each of them according to his own particular inclination, opening up the way to new ideas. In our case, we felt at a certain point the need to not indulge in a too easy acceptance of the rationalist language and we went back to analyze the profound reasons, beyond the codified formal aspects. … Le Corbusier, the Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, etc. certainly are our direct masters, but we did not want to forget the Masters of the Masters.56 Rogers, though, did not regard the masters, nor the masters of the masters, nor himself for that matter—because, eventually, he had become a master for some of his young collaborators at the office, at Casabella, and at the Politecnico, such as Aldo Rossi, Vittorio Gregotti, Luciano Semerani, Guido Canella, Giorgio Grassi, and Carlo Aymonino—as pompous figures dispensing knowledge to the public. In his speech given to celebrate the honorary degree conferred by the Politecnico in Milan to Alvar Aalto, Kenzo Tange, and Louis Kahn on April 4, 1964, Rogers started precisely from this concept—also because he had just been awarded tenure and full professorship by an academic establishment historically hostile to him: I would like immediately to clarify that this way of considering a tenured full professorship academic appointment as a podium from which one lets descend a kind of authoritative word is alien to me, because, on the contrary, I consider that my task is ennobled by the ability to participate, with more responsibility, to the life of the School, identifying myself in my assistants and all the students in an on-going conversation. … And there is no more energizing nutrient than that which comes from the youths, to whom we have stimulated the conscience in the common discovery of new horizons. … Galileo Galilei thus expressed himself in his bitter poem Contro il portar la toga (Against wearing the academic robe): “True science lies in facts, not in showing off.” The attack—it is clear—is against the academic robe when, instead of representing a sign of dignity and distinction, [it] becomes only a pompous travesty to impose oneself, without merit, with the fake authority of bureaucratic titles. Galileo, as Antonio Banfi, one of my masters, used to recall, underscores the crisis between form without contents and the humble but concrete reality.57

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In Rogers’ pedagogical model, which transitioned seamlessly in the practice of the office, the role of the master was one of a Socratic expert-confidant, who, with a “maieutic method,” would help the younger collaborator or student grow her/his own ability and sensibility. In one of his early texts about architectural education, Rogers posited that the figure of the master, as a trusted and admired chosen mentor, should start in the school environment, where the students would choose the teachings that would fit everyone’s “temperament”: “that way the synthesis of the architectural process is summarized in the living personality of the Master, like in the old ateliers. We cannot teach the art, but only the method and the craft, which, eventually, make the art possible.”58 All the chosen masters, for Rogers, were his contemporaries, to help him in his ongoing search for an architecture of the evolving modernity. We can recall the famous metaphor by twelfthcentury French Neo-Platonist philosopher and scholar Bernard of Chartres of the “[modern men as] dwarfs on the shoulders of giants”—meaning of the giant figures of the Classical Age—thus being able, even as dwarfs, to stand taller and see farther: one of the most significant concepts, according to Tomás Maldonado, in the history of the idea of modernity.59 Yet, humility in recognizing master figures did not mean an a-critical acceptance of their contributions. In his opening editorial for the first issue of his CasabellaContinuità, meant to outline the programmatic framework of the new initiative, Rogers made sure to also touch on this point: “We are not idolaters nor iconoclasts: we love the Masters (of contemporary and past history), recognizing, with joy, the nutrition that we received from their example, but we do not renounce to the most jealous part of our spirit which we reserve to the serene judgment of every experience.”60 The masters that Rogers was referring to—and every architect/artist should make up her/his own group of masters—formed what art critic and theorist Henri Focillon—another of Rogers’ favorite authors—called “families of the mind, or as it were families of forms,” whenever “a certain order of minds corresponds to a certain order of forms.”61 It is here that one sees people of the same stamp recognizing and calling out to one another. Human friendship may intervene in these relationships and further them, but the play of receptive affinities and of elective affinities in the world of forms occurs in another realm than that merely of sympathy, since sympathy always runs the risk of being either propitious or adverse. … Although each individual is contemporary first of all with oneself and with her/his own generation, she/he is also contemporary with the spiritual group of which she/ he is a member. This is even more the case as regards the artist, because to her/ him the ancestors and friends are not recollections, but presence.62

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7  HISTORY

Recognizing master figures was also part of Rogers’ preoccupation with establishing a meaningful relationship with history. A reassessment of the value of history for modern architecture and how to devise the right approach to make it a fertile ground for the architect to develop new visions for the future, without falling short of a commitment to the Modern Project, has been the defining contribution of Rogers’ career.

Precursors “Since the first masters of the Modern Movement considered each thing as if it were primordial (did they not refuse even to put an antique piece of furniture within their walls?), we now know how to discount long genealogies of precursors, and we feel the step that we are taking to be like that of a mountain climber on a rope.” So Rogers in 1955.1 As much as he gave to this new evolution of modern architecture a broader voice—especially through Casabella-Continuità—theoretical basis, and artistic verification through the works of BBPR, there were already cultural “underground streams,” championing “a sense of history”—to use one of Rogers’ favorite expression— across the early phase of Italian Modernism. Particularly, the Gruppo 7 merits to be mentioned as far as Modernism in Italy is concerned. As David Rifkind posited, the Gruppo 7 members argued in their manifesto: that modern architecture must be a continuing development of traditional Italian and Roman architecture. The manifesto’s authors attempted to reconcile modernity and tradition by focusing on shared concerns, such as typology, geometry, and the appropriate use of materials. “There is no incompatibility between our past and our present,” the Gruppo 7 wrote, “We do not want to break with tradition: it is tradition which transforms itself, and assumes new aspects.”2 Another source came from Quadrante. Rifkind rightly observed that the Quadrante circle tried to be the standard-bearer for Italian Modernism, as testified

by the “Programma di architettura” that inaugurated the magazine, signed by a group of eleven architects, four of whom were from BBPR, but three of whom were Gruppo 7 members: Figini, Pollini, and Guido Frette. Furthermore, Belgiojoso recognized the importance of the Gruppo 7 among the key influences BBPR had during their college years and early career.3 In his thorough analysis of Italian Rationalism, Dennis Doordan pointed out how: History, not machinery and certainly not nature, constituted the primary point of reference for Gruppo 7 … In one of the most important passages of their manifesto, Gruppo 7 addressed the issue of the relationship between historical and contemporary architectural languages. Gruppo 7 rejected the Futurist position that an utter antithesis existed between the twentieth century and previous epochs.4 This unequivocal stance by early Italian Modernists, championed by the Gruppo  7—too young to be regarded as “masters” by Rogers but already well recognized as role models—on the importance of history and the need for a particular articulation of general modernist principles in response to a specific culture, offered Rogers a fertile ground on which to evolve his more nuanced and mature approach toward tradition, history, and the pre-existent environments. In his 1991 extensive analysis of Modernism in Italy (1890–1940), Richard Etlin documented how as early as 1932, Italian rationalists, obviously under pressure from the fascist regime to find Italian roots for any artistic expression, were already trying to prove the thesis that “seeds” of Modernism were in the great Italian art of the past. A case in point, brought up by Etlin was a series of articles by Giovanni Michelucci—a generation older than BBPR—for Domus,5 where some contemporary examples of Italian modern architecture—especially by rising Italian master Mario Ridolfi, Michelucci’s contemporary—were formally compared with works by Alberti and paintings by Giotto.6 The growth of a “contextual avant-garde” found another crucial moment in the 1936 VI Milan Triennale with the exhibition curated by Giuseppe Pagano and Guarniero Daniel on Italian rural architecture: “This study represents the result of an investigation on the Italian rural house, undertaken with the aim of demonstrating the esthetic value of its functionality … with the hope that this work of ours will help to understand the esthetic value of the rural house.”7 With photographs personally taken, for the most part, by Pagano and Daniel, and beautifully rendered within an impeccably rationalist graphic layout of the catalog, the study showed examples of rural buildings in Italy and the Mediterranean region, including North African indigenous settlements. These concerns started to resonate also within BBPR, as testified by a brief article by Peressutti on Quadrante in 1935, titled “Architettura mediterranea.” With a poetic photograph by Enrico Galassi8 of an adobe house from Biskra—a city some 400 km southeast of Algiers—Peressutti outlines an appreciation of 128

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the character of this anonymous building tradition as the proof that modern architecture was not an “alien style” imported from Northern Europe, but could well claim its roots in the Mediterranean region.9 In the following issue of Quadrante, Peressutti continued his study with a simple but meaningful photo of his, titled “Mediterraneity. A House in Livorno”10—Livorno is a port-city on the west coast of Tuscany. It was a humble, but typologically precise, historical, mixeduse, three-story residential building, with a single-corridor distribution facing the street and characterized by a cantilevered loggia on masonry brackets. A harbinger of works to come. Other important external influences on Rogers’ reflections on tradition were Roth’s 1940 book The New Architecture—already mentioned11—and Giedion’s 1941 book, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, where the Modern Movement, beyond style, started to be framed in a programmatic and cultural position.12 In Roth’s book a few seminal ideas—which Rogers further developed and articulated—started to emerge, such as the notions of a “living tradition,” a critique of “historicism,” and a sense of modern progress, which architecture had to be part of: “History will thus become an indispensable element of practical life in as far as it contributes to affirm and extend the consciousness of one’s own times. It lies on the same plane as architecture and all progressive creative spheres … [On the contrary] Historicism – so-called – has nothing to do with real history.”13 Recognizing he was no historian, Roth was also hoping in his book that a history of “the New Architecture development” would soon come to fruition.14 In fact, he was probably hinting at his friend Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture, which was published the following year. In his book, Giedion further elaborated on the notion of history as a vital process, in continuity with the evolution of culture and society—of which architecture is an essential component—in ways that clearly anticipated Rogers’ reflections, especially on “continuity”: “History is not static but dynamic. No generation is privileged to grasp a work of art from all sides; each actively living generation discovers new aspects of it … History is not simply the repository of unchanging facts, but a process, a pattern of living and changing attitudes and interpretations.”15

Tradition and Environment The terrain for Rogers was thus ready for what would become a landmark revision of modern architecture. Already in 1936, together with his partners, he had published a highly distinctive study, titled Stile (Style), where the aim was to outline the cultural style—also expressed through works of the visual and plastic arts—of various epochs throughout history. In a somewhat rhetorical way, typical of that time, they stated: “There is a compelling need to reconnect the art phenomenon to the substance of culture, to the civilization that, in every epoch, has been able to possess and give to art the responsibility that it deserves, not only as interpreter, but, more importantly, as the maker of the moral position of civilization.”16 HISTORY

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The 1951 IX Milan Triennale, with an exhibition curated by Giuseppe Samonà and Franco Albini, and designed by De Carlo and Albe Steiner—influential graphic designer for, among others, Domus and Il Politecnico—on Italian vernacular architecture, in the footsteps of Pagano’s research,17 and the debate on tradition within the MSA (Movimento Studi per l’Architettura), which Rogers featured on Casabella-Continuità,18 continued to stimulate Rogers’ line of inquiry. Building on his early reflections and on these contributions, Rogers continued to sharpen his theory. In introducing his Esperienza dell’architettura (1958), a key editorial on “the responsibilities toward tradition”19 he remarked that “both ‘tradizione’ (tradition) and ‘tradimento’ (betrayal) originate from the [Latin] verb tradere, [in Italian] ‘trasmettere’ (to transmit)”; the opposite goals of the two terms depending on the moral intention with which one operates.”20 In this seminal writing—drafted while engaged with BBPR on two landmark projects of the firm’s entire career, the museum at the Sforza Castle and the Velasca Tower, both in Milan—Rogers invited the reader to remember precisely the etymological meaning of “tradition”: “the term tradition loses any value the moment it is emptied out of the vitality that comes to it from its sense of motion: taking and bringing beyond, continuity within the dialectic exchange of relationships, open account, with no possibility of being crystalized, of a final accounting balance.”21 In a speech given at Aspen in 1957, titled “Tradizione e attualità” (Tradition and the Present), Rogers tackled the question at its very core. Moving from a recollection of his teaching experiences at two very different schools, in Tucuman (Argentina) and the Architectural Association in London, chosen as two extreme examples, with the former representing a mentality with the absence of tradition and the latter with an “excess” of critical knowledge that was not translated into valid creativity, Rogers addressed the crux of the matter: The early Modern Movement designers’ impulse to rebel against that situation [of eclecticism’s empty formalism] necessarily had to turn into a polemic against the past. This feeling was so strong that the new buildings represented an act of violence against the pre-existing environment. … [Now] we examine the problem of the pre-existing environment in a new light. We are no longer satisfied if a work expresses our epoch; it must also assert contemporary values in full by blending with society and space—both of which are deeply rooted in tradition. The modern meaning of tradition is close to that of historicity. … For us, tradition is the common origin of opinions, feelings and facts, from which a certain social group derives, and toward which every individual’s thoughts and actions move.22 We notice here that Rogers started to link the notion of tradition, as a vital patrimony of collective values and memory with which to infuse the work of architecture, with the notion of the “pre-existent environments.” One could argue 130

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that this reflection was just another version of the notion of “place”—which, in fact, was developed after Rogers, especially thanks to his disciple Aldo Rossi, and later by Christian Norberg-Schulz. However, “environment” is a more complex, powerful, and comprehensive concept. Influenced by Husserl, via Paci—as we have seen in the chapter on cross-disciplinarity—the concept of environment is tied to that of Umwelt (in German, “world around us”), Rogers understood how the environment implies the human dimension, culture, and artifacts, therefore history—memory and tradition. He wrote in 1955: Considering the environment means to consider history: being a major indepth analysis of the meaning of the latter one of the most characteristic topics of current philosophical thought, architectural thought, albeit slowly, could not remain impermeable to its influence: from considering past and present in the inner motivation of qualifying contents, the two notions get re-affirmed and increasingly tied together, being, while apparently in contradiction with one another, perfectly interconnected.23 This was a fundamental passage in Rogers’ theory that set him apart from other important theoretical reflections of those years and one which came to be widely misunderstood as we shall see later in this chapter. Other theoretical streams were intersecting in Rogers’ thought on the notion of environment. An important one was Henri Focillon’s elaborations on the “life of forms”: “In spite of the importance of the various phenomena of transference, it seems difficult to conceive of architecture as existing outside of an environment. … No one can predict what environments architecture will create. It satisfies old needs, and begets new ones. It invents a world all its own.”24 A world that obviously includes history, as, for Rogers, “building makes no sense if it is not meant as a continuation of the historical process: it is the matter of clarifying in ourselves the sense of history.”25 And, with Eliot of the Four Quartets (1943), “the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.”

The Velasca Tower Where Rogers’ reflections and preoccupations through the 1940s and early 1950s came to coalesce in a work of architecture was the Velasca Tower in Milan (1950–58). Appointed by the RICE company (Ricostruzione Comparti Edilizi) to design a mixed-use development exploiting the postwar real estate potential of an area (2.5 acres) a few blocks south of the Duomo, severely damaged by the bombardments of 1943, BBPR started by studying various massing options. They eventually came to evaluate two alternatives: based on an initial massing devised by the municipal  office, a series of traditional courtyard blocks (30 m [98 ft.] high), consistent with the fabric of the surrounding neighborhood, or a tower. As HISTORY

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Belgiojoso recalled, “the tower solution was chosen as it coincided with the clients’ and our own interests: architectural interest for us, prestige for our clients.”26 Even though the tower solution—for a total of 126,000 m3 [4.4 cubic ft.] offered 12 percent less of what was permitted by the FAR (Floor Area Ratio) established by  the city master plan27—which, on the other hand, did not pose height limitations—BBPR started to sketch out preliminary designs, initially with a steel construction system. Already in this phase, after a few iterations, the image of a tower with a wider upper volume over a slenderer lower trunk started to appear, along with a triangulated bracket solution supporting the upper volume. However, after an estimative metric computation performed by the firm Edwards in New York in 1952, it was agreed that a reinforced concrete solution would have been much cheaper. It was probably also welcomed by BBPR as an artistic opportunity. Therefore, engineer Arturo Danusso, professor emeritus at the Politecnico and a renowned expert on reinforced concrete, was hired.28 He worked out an ingenious structural system, in close collaboration with BBPR, who he found to be uniquely “statics-oriented architects.”29 Danusso could rely also on a technologically advanced laboratory over which he presided, the ISMES (Istituto Sperimentale Modelli E Strutture) in Bergamo, near Milan, where he and his team could test scale and full-size models, such as a 1:100 [1/8”:1’] model of the whole building and a full-size model of one of the pillars.30 Such a careful consideration for structural matters was perfectly aligned with Rogers’ convictions about the tectonic value of architecture. As Raffaella Neri has rightly observed, “Rogers highly appreciated the material and technical aspects in architecture … he argued that construction is the expressive tool of architecture, the essential instrument of its formal definition.”31 Neri has also pointed out Rogers’ interest in Perret as a source of inspiration, as already mentioned.32 The contractor SOGENE (Società Generale Costruzioni) also followed state-of-the-art construction systems criteria, technology, and best practices. It even arranged a test, with a team led by Belgiojoso himself, for wind resistance, in São Paulo (Brazil), where high-rise reinforced concrete buildings had reached a high level of innovation.33 The tower consisted of a total of twenty-eight floors, plus two underground levels for mechanicals and a garage for a total height of 99 m [325 ft.] above ground— as per planning regulations no building in Milan could be taller than the Virgin Mary statue atop of the Duomo, reaching 108 m [354 ft.]. Over a ground floor for retail and a mezzanine for retail and offices, there are nine floors for offices—for a maximum of ninety-five units of two/three rooms each; seven floors for live-work studios; just below the wider volume, a floor for more mechanicals and staff and custodians’ dwellings; eight floors for residences of two to seven room size, each with a verandah; two last floors in the attic with maisonettes. It is important to note the programmatic diagram, because BBPR repeatedly affirmed that it was the main factor determining the tower form—not a preconceived historical image—as the residences needed a longer building depth. Certainly though they welcomed the fact that this functional solution resulted in a form that could work well 132

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FIGURE 7.1  BBPR, Velasca Tower, Milan (1950–58). Aerial view, with the Ca’ Granda (“large house,” Ospedale Maggiore – main hospital), by Pietro Averlino, a.k.a. Filarete (built in 1456–99, with later modifications until a partial reconstruction after the Second World War bombings). Since 1958, the complex has been the seat of the Università degli Studi di Milano. Photo 1998, © Stefano Topuntoli – Milan.

with the overall artistic intention of the design. A similar logic supported the choice for the terminal part: the BBPR team studied various solutions, including flat ones, but then opted for a tall roof with two level units with set-backs that, along with the block of emphasized vents for the mechanicals protruding out of the roof, gave the tower an unmistakable—and quite unique for a high-rise building—residential, urban, familiar flair. The Velasca is a “tall house” not a high-rise, a “tower” not a skyscraper, in perfect alignment with BBPR’s and Rogers’ convictions. Much has been said about the Velasca. Here we shall briefly recap some moments of the controversy that it sparked. The first to review the building, in February 1958, thus soon after completion—in fact, with photos still showing some scaffolding—was Gerhard Kallmann on Architectural Forum, with an insightful commentary, defining the tower as “a valiant essay in the neglected art of fitting modern architecture into a historic continuity of building.”34 Kallmann’s expert architectural eye did not miss the refined design of the structure, including a piece of bravura by BBPR, which was the corner solution of the built version— the initial steel structure design resolved the corner with the triangulated bracket system in an easy, almost scholastic, way. However, Kallmann maintained some HISTORY

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FIGURE 7.2 BBPR, Velasca Tower. Structural plan of the reinforcement tying steel cables at the 19th floor. © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

FIGURE 7.3  BBPR, Velasca Tower. Plan of typical live-work floor (11th–17th floor). © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

reservations and concluded that “the effort to achieve total harmony is what makes this building significant, though not wholly beautiful.”35 But what was the beauty that BBPR were pursuing? It was not an abstract ideal according to the “International Style canon.” They were precisely trying to go beyond that and their goal was the enrichment of modern architecture’s 134

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FIGURE 7.4  BBPR, Velasca Tower. Plan of typical residential floor (19th–26th floor). © BBPR, courtesy of Alberico Belgiojoso.

FIGURE 7.5  BBPR, Velasca Tower. View of the wider side. Photo 2018, © Author.

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set of values with the manifold relationship of the work with the preexisting environment. Rogers often used to recall Mies’ favorite quote from St. Augustine, “Beauty is the splendor of truth.” If, in the case of Mies, it was clear what kind of truth he was after—the truth of construction—in the case of BBPR there were many misunderstandings and critics failed to grasp the actual truth of their poetic: the truth of an architecture interpreting the tradition of a particular pre-existent environment, in respectful dialog with it. According to that meaning, the Velasca is a remarkably beautiful building.

FIGURE 7.6  BBPR, Velasca Tower. View of the narrower side. Photo 2018, © Author. 136

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Other critical assessments continued to pour in from all over the world, so much so that Giuseppe Samonà titled his important review a year later (February 1959) “Il grattacielo più discusso d’Europa” (The most debated skyscraper in Europe).36 In his acute review, Samonà correctly understood BBPR’s artistic intention: the Tower tries to merge, through material continuity, with the environment, it makes an effort to present its volume with the same masonry solidity of the houses that make up the prevailing fabric of the city, so that it really appears as the explosion of a compact magma that, suddenly in a specific point, has shot with a vertical jet the matter of which it consists.37 Minor reservations on the two-story volume at the level of the piazza in front of the tower did not prevent Samonà from offering an overall positive judgment: “[the Velasca Tower] conquers us for the familiarity with which the powerful body of its tectonic members is artistically faded away in a language that reverberates and reproduces that of the city as a whole.”38 Certainly, the Velasca shows an extraordinary compositional virtuosity, such as the corner solutions, the tracé regulateur of the prefabricated newels in dialog with the irregularity of the openings—especially in the upper residential volume— the various distributive and spatial solutions in the floor plans, the shaping of the

FIGURE 7.7  BBPR, Velasca Tower. View of piazza Velasca, with the protruding entry pavilion, looking toward via Larga—the steel frame visible above the pavilion is a temporary scaffolding for maintenance works on the façade. Photo 2018, © Author. HISTORY

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FIGURE 7.8 BBPR, Velasca Tower. View from piazza Giuseppe Missori, looking eastward toward corso di Porta Romana. Photo 2018, © Author.

reinforced concrete ribbing, the color choice for the finishing plaster with pink Verona graniglia (crushed marble), the elegant interiors, the proportioning of the overall massing, the seamless crowning solution for the attic complex. However, more than that, the Velasca is a building able, like few others, to reverberate the distinct elements of a city: the Gothic ethos of the Duomo, the Filarete’s tower of the Sforza Castle,39 the dense materiality and the chromatism of its urban fabric 138

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FIGURE 7.9  BBPR, Velasca Tower. View from corso di Porta Romana. Photo 2018, © Author.

and, appropriately so, a certain roughness and functionality of its industrial architecture, as well as the grit, matter-of-factness, pragmatic, constructive, productive, earnest spirit of the Milanese. But nobody better than Rogers could have described the artistic intention of this masterpiece as he did in a brief commentary on the last image—the Velasca— of his Esperienza, in one of the most articulate and thoughtful design narratives ever written for a work of architecture by its own designer: HISTORY

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FIGURE 7.10 BBPR, Velasca Tower. View from largo Francesco Richini (Università Statale), looking westward. Photo 2018, © Author.

The intentional value of this architecture is to culturally summarize, without retracing the language of any of its buildings, the atmosphere of the city of Milan; the ineffable yet perceivable characteristic. It is not a Gothic tower, nor a revival exercise, as some have seemed to believe. It is the result of a functional method that determines form by deriving it from the determinants of the surrounding environment and from the distributive 140

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FIGURE 7.11  BBPR, Velasca Tower. View from the roof of the Duomo. Photo 2018, © Author.

rationale of the organism. The decorative expression is realized as a direct emphasis of objective data, without indulging in ornament of analogical character. It wants to be—and I hope that at least it partially is—the testimony of a vocation: of a technologically correct and timely way of building; of a current language, inserted as image in the continuity of tradition: that is entirely created. The limits of urbanistic validity, as we know it, are conditioned by the contradictory situation of the city. The tower wants to be an active part of reality; nor can we assume, even fighting and rejecting any compromise, to ignore the imperfections of circumstances.

The Banham Affair The Velasca Tower was only the high point of a longer and broader cultural project that Rogers had embarked on since the postwar years. And when he took on the editorship of Casabella-Continuità in 1953, he fully embraced the opportunity to use the platform of the magazine for instigating and amplifying a debate on how to grow the legacy of the Modern Movement, but in continuity with its ideals. The themes of tradition, memory, history, and pre-existent environments continued to acquire importance, exposure, and coverage. HISTORY

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The climax of that trajectory was reached in 1957 with issue 215 (April–May), “a memorable issue” in Manfredo Tafuri’s words,40 when Casabella-Continuità featured a series of contributions revolving, more clearly than ever, around the theme of tradition. Particularly, the project Bottega d’Erasmo by Gabetti & d’Isola  (1953–56), was “the cornerstone of the scandal.”41 Indeed, the Bottega did revisit liberty motifs of Turin, but beyond just an inspirational level, and it came across almost as a calligraphy of pre-modern architecture.42 In addition, the authors’ correspondence with senior editor Vittorio Gregotti, accompanying the images and titled “L’impegno della tradizione” (The commitment towards tradition), sounded closely derived from Rogers’ thought—when indeed it was only partially related to it. Gregotti tried to contextualize the project within a more problematic framework, but his argumentation was too nuanced and the critical assessment too suspended, compared to the powerful impact of the images. Also a book review by Aldo Rossi on a recent study on the Art Nouveau was in fact articulate and critical, but the magazine’s pages looked to be filled with decorative motifs of the turn of the century. Guido Canella’s study on the bourgeois “epic” of the Amsterdam School, also of the late nineteenth century, sealed the perception of a magazine advocating for a historicist revival. The trend continued with other issues, especially the March–April 1958 issue 219. It featured works clearly flirting with Neo-Liberty motifs by Gae Aulenti, Gregotti-Meneghetti-Stoppino, and especially Giorgio Raineri, with Rossi providing a theoretical background. Rossi also advocated, through a critical review of a book by Hans Sedlmayr, for a re-appreciation of the architecture of the Enlightenment, Neo-Classicism, and more broadly for the urban and civic values of nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. Rogers did not discourage the trend and this was probably the greatest mistake of his career. On one hand, he did not gauge the impact that these explorations would have had, while on the other hand he overestimated the influence of his word in being able to frame such explorations and put them in the right perspective. Certainly, he did it in good faith, to give some exponents of a younger generation a platform to disseminate their explorations. He—and BBPR—did not join them on those paths, which would soon appear as a dead end and die out in a few years, but he did not recognize them as such and underestimated, perhaps for an excess of modesty, how closely his patronage and the magazine’s editorial policy were monitored and critically evaluated at the international level. In May of 1958, on the wave of the debate unleashed by the Italian Pavilion at the Expo in Brussels—which had opened in April—designed by an oddly composed team that included BBPR, Gardella, and Quaroni, the debate between Rogers and some exponents of European architectural culture started to brew with an exchange with Alexandre Persitz of L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, and his famous “casus belli” critique.43 More criticism came from the pages of The Architectural Review, The Architect’s Journal, Progress, and it was not unwarranted, as the Expo Pavilion, though done in collaboration, was probably one of the 142

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lowest points in BBPR’s otherwise outstanding career. In December 1958, Paolo Portoghesi added fuel to the fire by sanctioning—with self-interest, in order to justify some personal research at that time—with a premature historiographic certification the existence of a supposed “neo-liberty movement.” As aptly remarked by Enrico Bordogna, Portoghesi’s essay was “a debatable critical interpretation, bearer at a later date of many misunderstandings, that conflated under the sign of ‘neo-liberty’ trends and lines of inquiry very different from one another.”44 Then, in April 1959, came Reyner Banham’s attack. In his famous article “Neo-Liberty. The Italian Retreat from Modern Architecture”—hinting at, with a not so hidden sarcasm, frequent Italian military retreats, especially during the Second World War—Banham launched a scathing critique on the Italian architectural culture of the time, but in particular of Casabella-Continuità and Rogers:45 “Indeed, these recent works of Gae Aulenti, Gregotti-MeneghettiStoppino, Gabetti, their associates and followers, and the polemics advanced in their defence by Aldo Rossi and others – all these call the whole status of the Modern Movement in Italy in question.”46 Then, Banham attacked Rossi for invoking “the forms of a middle class of the past, of the tempi felici [happy times],” and borrowed Portoghesi’s “apt term Neoliberty,” to chastise these recent works, by also warning that the “youngs” were not the only ones to be blamed: “the whole body of Italian Modernism must share the blame.”47 He also mentioned the domestic revolution that, through mechanization, revolutionized modern life—also through new technical devices equipping modern homes—and with it, culture and taste. In contrast, Banham pointed at examples of a so-called “De Stijl revival … visible in Anglo-Saxon countries”—which though it did not gain much traction over the years—“[at least revived] forms created since the watershed.”48 His sarcasm and some questionable critical mistakes notwithstanding, Banham did have a point in his closing: “The performance of the revolutionaries may not have matched their promise, but the promise remains and is real. It is the promise of liberty, not Liberty nor ‘Neoliberty,’ the promise of freedom from having to wear the discarded clothes of previous cultures, even if those previous cultures have the air of tempi felici.”49 With all its misunderstandings, generalizations, and preconceptions, Banham did hit a nerve and denounced an irrefutably potentially negative path that architecture in Italy—and elsewhere—could have taken—as, in fact, it did, with a different paradigm and esthetics, several years later, during Post-Modernism. Franco Purini, with intellectual honesty and his usual critical acumen, recently conceded that “now, after many years, I believe that Banham was not completely wrong.”50 Banham’s article had a vast impact worldwide and unleashed a heated debate for months, including at the last CIAM in Otterlo in September 1959. After another critical intervention by Carlo Melograni on Il Contemporaneo in May, Rogers’ reaction came fast and pointed, responding with sarcasm to sarcasm, in a long editorial in the June issue of Casabella-Continuità, titled “L’evoluzione HISTORY

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dell’architettura. Risposta al custode dei frigidaires” (The Evolution of Architecture. Reply to the Custodian of Refrigerators).51 After denouncing the confusion with which Banham’s article and the debate that followed treated the topic—“with extemporaneous classifications, typical of Banham”52—Rogers clarified an important point: “if it is obvious that nothing appears in this journal [Casabella-Continuità] without my consent for its publication, I have openly shown my criticism precisely of the tendentious and conclusory value of these products, limiting myself to considering them significant examples of some young people intelligent enough to react to modernist formalism.”53 Rogers then claimed that the works of a less young generation, that of Ridolfi, Gardella, Albini, Samonà, Michelucci, Piccinato, and BBPR, should have been recognized for their contribution to Italian architecture: “their strength has really been that of having understood the Modern Movement as a ‘continuous revolution,’ that is to say, as a continuous development of the principle of adherence to the changeable contents of life.”54 His pride wounded, Rogers took a rare dig at Banham on the point of mechanization: “ Yet, I am persuaded that along with the dangers that Italian architecture is running, awareness does surface, despite the arrogant goading of Mr. Banham, who plays the part of custodian of refrigerators.”55 In September 1959, the final act of the CIAM was held in Otterlo (The Netherlands), at Van de Velde’s Kröller-Müller Museum—what an irony for Rogers! Much of the discussions revolved around the “works of the Italians”— such as Gardella, De Carlo, and BBPR—but especially the Velasca Tower presented by Rogers himself, against the background of the “Banham affair.” With the fresh echo of the polemic still in the air, Peter Smithson unleashed the harshest criticism by calling Rogers’ and BBPR’s use of historical references “irresponsible” and the Velasca “a bad model” with potential “ethically and esthetically wrong” outcomes.56 Jaap Bakema also joined in the criticism by accusing the Velasca of not communicating contemporary life, such as traffic, cars, mechanical systems, of not being a “life-form”—also in this case, without elaborating what that meant—finally blaming Rogers for “resisting contemporary life.”57 Alison Smithson concluded the critical demolition by affirming that “the Velasca was laid onto Milan like a pudding!”58 Rogers tried to counter the criticism and explain again what he had already said about the project and the topic, but the critics seemed preconceived in their opinions and not able or willing to understand. On the wave of the Otterlo confrontation, the December issue of The Architectural Review published the responses received since Banham’s first article, along with Banham’s rebuttals to them.59 Among the many commentaries, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy’s passionate defense of BBPR’s work and trenchant critique of Banham’s attack—a “hatchet-job” using Banham’s own words—stood out. Accusing Banham of “condescension,” Moholy-Nagy articulated the rationale of BBPR’s “profound obligation toward Historical Continuity”—capital letters hers—as an expression of a larger cultural trait of Italian architecture.60 Banham 144

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retorted that he remained “undismantled” by Moholy-Nagy’s critique and doubled down on Rogers as “the patron of Italian defeatism … and the CIAM group of Italian architects … [who] disgusted the younger members of CIAM to the point of revolt.”61 Later, Bruno Zevi tried to sum up the debate with a more balanced take: “the ‘neoliberty’ movement is rather limited, a small episode in the story of modern Italian architecture: Banham was right in attacking it, but he should not overemphasize its importance. It is a ‘lapsus’ more than a disease.”62 In October, Rogers published on Casabella-Continuità three BBPR’s works— the Velasca Tower, a mixed-use development in Turin, and an extension of a historic residential building in Milan—all concerned with relationships with pre-existent environments. In fact, the coverage was called “Tre problemi di ambientamento” (Three problems of environmental setting). In an introductory note signed BPR, to signify that it was a personal statement by the three living architects and not by the firm, titled “Chiarimento” (Clarification), Rogers and partners tried to clarify their positions right in the opening of the piece: “The environments of the three buildings that we present here are very different; precisely because we followed the same method to tackle the problems, they are similar in the process that has formed them, and, consequently, very different in the results of their appearances.”63 They reiterated that a new relationship with history—and the pre-existent environments—could represent a possible and necessary “extension of the Modern Movement.”64 Through an articulated discourse they clarified their intentions, the awareness of the challenges and undesirable outcomes that could potentially evolve from such research, as well as the pride in exploring paths that could only renew the promise of modern architecture—which, in fact, was the same invoked by Banham. And, in closing, with the same—justified—pride, they recalled what Alvar Aalto, notoriously a man of few words, had to say when he first saw the Velasca: “It is very Milanese!”65

More on Pre-Existent Environments The Velasca Tower not only represented the high point in BBPR’s career, but it also confirmed to them—and to their followers, in Italy and beyond—the validity of a direction of work. It is worthwhile here to mention three other works. The first is one of the projects that BBPR presented on Casabella-Continuità with the “Chiarimento” mentioned above: the mixed-use development on corso Francia in Turin (1956–59). As stated by the project report, the massing of the complex—which was commissioned by the Reale Mutua Assicurazioni—was pretty much determined by the building code, and the element of the portico (arcade), so characteristic of the urban fabric of Turin’s historic center, was prescribed by the master plan. The bar-like portion of the complex responds very well to the scale of corso Francia, while the tower-like portion leaps to the appropriate scale of the much wider corso d’Inghilterra and the large expanse HISTORY

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of piazza Statuto. In fact, when viewed from the piazza, the tower component correctly assumes the role of a “visual hinge” at the point in which the grid of the historic center—up to piazza Statuto and corso d’Inghilterra—meets the grid of the district around corso Francia, which is the main east - west axis—toward France—organizing the western section of the city. BBPR seized the opportunity to shape the portico as the driving element of the project. Not only it is well scaled and proportioned, it is well resolved in its materiality, such as the trachyte for the pavement and the partial cladding of the columns. These latter elements, in particular, became the dominant feature of the complex, by giving it rhythm, scale, and formal identity, with a specific modulation of the section in both directions. In spite of the different structural stresses between the columns of the tower-like part and those of the bar-like part, their horizontal section was kept the same to guarantee the visual integrity of the portico. Spatial distribution and materiality show BBPR’s professional mastery, but, as the architects themselves admitted in the “Chiarimento”: “perhaps, with some more indulging [compared to the Velasca] in certain expressive construction details, interpreted from tradition.”66 In fact, Tafuri also recognized “the methodological value” of this mature work, which is “though, diminished by the frequent residuals of alluding or evoking nature.”67 The other project is a restoration and vertical addition—for the Banca Privata Italiana—to a historical building in via Verdi in Milan (1966), around the

FIGURE 7.12  BBPR, mixed-use development, corso Francia, Turin, It. (1956–59). View along corso Francia. Photo 2018, © Author. 146

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FIGURE 7.13 BBPR, mixed-use development, Turin. View from piazza Statuto and across corso d’Inghilterra. Photo 2018, © Author.

FIGURE 7.14 BBPR, mixed-use development, Turin. Detailed view at the corner of corso Francia. Photo 2018, © Author. HISTORY

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FIGURE 7.15  BBPR, mixed-use development, Turin. View of the portico. Photo 2018, © Author.

corner of Teatro alla Scala. The original early nineteenth-century, neo-classical building had been considerably altered in 1935 by Pier Giulio Magistretti.68 Besides reordering the plan at the ground floor to better accommodate the public program of the bank with savvy and thoughtful moves, BBPR returned to the original scheme of the façade, with one central entrance, eliminating the pilasters, and demolishing Magistretti’s vertical extension. In its place, they 148

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FIGURE 7.16  View of via Giuseppe Verdi, Milan (circa 1905). The neo-classical building that BBPR renovated is at the turn of the street. Historic postcard.

FIGURE 7.17  View of via Giuseppe Verdi, Milan (circa late 1930s). The neo-classical building that BBPR renovated after the intervention by Pier Giulio Magistretti (1930–35). Historic postcard. HISTORY

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FIGURE 7.18  BBPR, renovation and vertical addition for the Banca Privata Italiana, via Giuseppe Verdi, Milan (1966). Looking north toward via Brera. Photo 2018, © Author.

added a smaller volume, well scaled and modulated through pairs of steel I-beam columns, but also detached from the historic building and completely glazed. The roof is pitched and finished in copper to blend the new intervention with the surrounding fabric. This project does not have the tension and the pathos of the Velasca, treading on a safer ground than the Turin project, but remains another piece of BBPR’s bravura. 150

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FIGURE 7.19  BBPR, office building in piazza Meda, Milan (1968–69). In the foreground, Ruota Solare or Grande Disco, bronze sculpture by Arnaldo Pomodoro (1980); in the background: Church of San Fedele (1559–69) by Pellegrino Tibaldi. Photo 2018, © Author.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the office building in piazza Meda, also in Milan, for the Immobiliare CAGISA (1968–69). Revising the initial guidelines of the 1934 Milan Master Plan, which suggested a volume of seven stories, polygonal in plan and symmetrical to the other side of the piazza, BBPR took a different approach in order to properly celebrate the presence of the apse of the San Fedele Church,69 west of the site. From the project report: “the perimeter [of the plan], straight in the first segment of via Hoepli, becomes polygonal and circumscribes a semicircle, to invert the curving with an inflecting alignment toward via Catena in order to offer an ampler breadth to the space immediately behind the apse [of San Fedele].”70 The other salient feature of this architecture is the portico. Prescribed at 9 m [29 ft. 6 in.], according to the master plan, BBPR clearly recognized the inappropriate scale set by that provision: “The portico … has been resolved with a series of portals that want to fraction the excessive dimension in relationship to the total height of the building.”71 These portals not only break down the scale of the portico, but with the choice of steel, articulate the chiaroscuro effect offered by the flanges of the vertical and horizontal I-beams, without conceding in ornament, while at the same time speaking in an unabashedly modern language. The round volume beautifully dialogs with the San Fedele’s apse through analogy of forms and contrast of materials. HISTORY

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FIGURE 7.20  BBPR, office building in piazza Meda, Milan. View of the portico, looking south along via Ulrico Hoepli. Photo 2018, © Author.

Memory and Modernity “Memory confers to the things of space, the measure of time.”72 Thus Rogers introduced his discussion on “memory and invention” in Tokyo in 1960. He then continued: “Memory is a condition of invention, which moves from its premises; therefore, memory is a necessary element of the artistic action but it is not sufficient 152

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in itself to the continuation of the artistic phenomenon, which originates from invention, that is from the individual’s act … ”73 Already in his opening editorial for the new Casabella-Continuità, in December 1953, Rogers clearly stated the relationship between history/tradition and modernity. First, there was a need to establish a continuity with the tradition that had come from Persico and Pagano as “a precise acceptance of a tendenza, which for them, as for us, is in the eternal variation of the spirit, contrary to any past or current formalism.”74 Then, he clearly stated, as a philosophical position that became a component of his editorial manifesto: It is not truly modern the work that has no authentic foundations in tradition; but the ancient works have current meaning as long as they can resonate through our voice; so, beyond chronology and, a not less abstract, idealism, having overcome conventional borders, we shall be able to examine the architectural phenomenon in the timeliness of the being: in its historical concreteness.75 Rogers regarded history as a continuous process and modernity not a break with the past, but simply as a new phase: “Being modern simply means feeling contemporary history within the order of the entire history, that is feeling the responsibility for our own acts … as a collaboration that, with our contribution, augments and enriches the eternal timeliness of the possible formal combinations  of universal relationship.”76 For Rogers, knowing the past meant to know our roots, knowing where we come from “because, as children, we are different, [but] we are also similar in order to be different … knowledge entrusts itself to memory.”77 Memory becomes, in Rogers’ thought, an active ingredient in the process of invention: “[we need] to invent in memory, so that tomorrow we can continue with renewed inventions and a renewed capacity of memory.”78 As Benedetto Gravagnuolo remarked: “the enthusiastic embracing, in his youth, of Rimbaud’s categorical imperative—‘Il faut être absolument moderne' (One has to be absolutely modern)—will be substituted, in the postwar years, by Rogers’ more problematic consideration: ‘It is not enough any more to be generically modern, we need to specify the character of such modernity’.”79 Rogers strived to clear modern architecture from the “complex of history,” in view of a new phase of modernity—different from the one that inspired the Modern Movement—nondogmatic, richer and more complex, and yet part of modernity itself.

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8  CIVIC COMMITMENT AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

In his last editorial for Casabella-Continuità, December 1964, Rogers revisited the very mission of the magazine and the purpose of his editorship: I have the illusion that my editorials were not useless both in regard to the theoretical inquiry on the architectural phenomenon, the pre-existent environments, the utopia of reality, the evolution of the Modern Movement, the concept of tradition, and in regard to my entering the public arena to debate social and political problems, convinced as I am of the moral unity of the person man-citizen-architect, who, first of all, ought to be a person, then a citizen, then an architect, in order to realize the inalienable synthesis on her/ his own body. In order to try to move forward towards this synthesis I directed Casabella-Continuità for eleven years.1

Utopia of Reality and the Public Sphere The notion of man-citizen-architect was very important for Rogers as he liked to reference it often in his speeches, lectures, and writings. It was a natural consequence of his vision of architecture as an artistic practice grounded in the liberal arts and the humanities, as a social art for the betterment of people’s life as well as of modern architecture, as a way to approach the fulfillment of the promise of modernity for a freer and more democratic world. The social and pluralistic character of the terrain in which the modern architect operates is also reflected in another one of Rogers’ favorite remarks. When quoting Alberti’s famous definition of the architect as the creator of works that will “beautifully serve the noble uses of men,”2 Rogers underscored time and again the plural “men, that is society.”3 Therefore, the condition of citizenship for the architect was not an optional broadening of her/his scope of activity or perspective, out of which to derive materials for design, but a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for her/his works to simply qualify as works of architecture.

Citizenship for Rogers was more than simply social engagement which, as we have seen, was still very important. Citizenship also encompassed empathy for people’s needs and aspirations—one could think, for example, about the metaphor of a device that every architect should have at the office in order “to hear all the voices of the world,” mentioned by Rogers in his July 1945 radio address “L’architettura e il cittadino” (Architecture and the Citizen).4 As derived from cives (Latin for “citizen”) and civitas (Latin for “politically organized community”), citizenship implied for Rogers, engagement in the public discourse, active participation in the public arena, but also taking up responsibilities. It came along with civic conscience and, therefore, ethical challenges, because the choices, the actions, and the decisions of an architect have repercussions on the public realm, the habitat, and the environment. In one of his late writings, prepared in 1965 to introduce a compendium of two academic years of design studio at the Politecnico, meaningfully titled Utopia della realtà (Utopia of Reality), Rogers elaborated on the ultimate task of the architect as “responsible creator of forms,” which has not changed throughout history from Palladio to Gropius.5 But what kind of responsibility was Rogers talking about? The responsibility of an architect as a citizen, and as an active participant in the civic conversation of the public sphere, because the architect’s forms and thoughts contribute to the character of that very sphere. Gregotti has well discussed this  point: Above all, there is in his [Rogers’] thought the firm conviction that the duty of the architect intellectual (even though, for sure, architecture for him was completely an artistic practice) is first of all regarding her/his own discipline, but which is, in turn, in its concrete form, a way to access the world, to be part of it, to transform it, assuming with full conscience also the collective responsibility of her/his own very architectural actions as pre-eminent material of the project.6 Raffaella Neri also discussed Rogers’ civic commitment, tying it in with the ultimate quality of architecture (beauty): “the quality of architecture is measured in its response to this demand for civic commitment.”7 For this reason, and because the architect could not renounce her/his mission “to project”—into the future— and envision new worlds, Rogers used to talk with his students about the “utopia of reality.” In the recollection of one of his students, Luciano Patetta: For Rogers, the utopia of reality was the will “to project the present into a possible future … ” The expression “utopia of reality” echoed the words “substance of hoped for things,” written in 1935 by Edoardo Persico as a closing to his “Profezia dell’architettura” (Prophecy of Architecture), which in turn was a quote from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews: ‘Faith as substance of hoped for things’.”8 156

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The school, for Rogers, had to build men, before architects. It had to form a conscience: “it is the task of the school to support them in the development of all their abilities, but not in order to trick their future clients, rather to express their personality in a more complete way: expressing it, translating it into an architectural language and being communicative.”9 Architects should be “communicative” as they need to be active participants in the public discourse. In his somewhat sad and bitter farewell editorial from Domus,10 Rogers claimed the label of “humanist” as a badge of honor: we accepted the appellation of “humanists” that has been given to us as the induction into a chivalric order, to which can have access only those who demonstrate to harmonize themselves, with the art and the trade that are specific to them, with the broader human breadth. Human and humanists; therefore, also social and political; as you see, an ambitious, conceited, stubborn program, which could not find approval in those circles where they breed cicisbei.11 In spite of its commercial shortcomings, Rogers’ Domus was not only, as Gregotti noted, “one of the most advanced magazines in the world,”12 but also an open platform for criticality, social engagement, and cross-disciplinarity, where architects and other design professionals could recognize the broad breadth of their fields. It was also from Domus that Rogers wrote an “open letter” to the—yet to be elected—President of the Italian Republic, newly established after the Second World War, to advocate for a renewed role of the arts within the renewed society: “art is precisely the sensible form of our moral world. Can thus the President of the Republic disregard it?”13 With the same openness toward others’ opinions, as well as interest for, and commitment to, the public arena, Rogers conducted Casabella-Continuità, perhaps with less experimentalism than at Domus, and more emphasis on a disciplinary agenda—and a better commercial response, which probably came together.14 However, the “broad breadth” remained and in-depth analyses of projects, plans, historical and contemporary leading figures and movements were intertwined with problematic presentations and critical reports of pressing environmental and societal issues in Italy and abroad. As Gregotti recalled: “Rogers wanted also, through the magazine, that architecture would recapture its own precise role within the world of culture, its own capacity of dialog and its own specific contribution.”15 Editorship was not for Rogers a side activity but, as Gregotti, again, has rightly recognized, “integral to the activity of design, of constructing architecture, at least of constructing architecture the way Rogers meant it and how he taught us to mean it.”16 The architectural magazines that he directed were not Rogers’ only channels for civic engagement but also other non-architectural periodicals where he contributed, more as a public intellectual, with the same passion and commitment. One of these periodicals was Il Politecnico, directed by Elio Vittorini. Thanks also CIVIC COMMITMENT AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

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to Albe Steiner’s superb, innovative, and highly communicative graphic design, Il Politecnico was inspired by its nineteenth-century predecessor of the same name, envisioned and directed by Milanese distinguished philosopher and intellectual Carlo Cattaneo. Vittorini’s periodical became one of the most important platforms in Italy—but with an international breadth—for promoting a progressive liberal culture, not aligned with any particular party. At about the same time (October 1945), in France, Jean-Paul Sartre was launching, with Simone de Beauvoir, a similar periodical, Les Temps Modernes— borrowing the title from Charlie Chaplin’s famous movie—which had a significant impact on European and global culture by championing, especially through examples of littérature engagée (engaged/committed literature), a new role for the intellectual. The journal was also a forum to promote philosophical discourse around Sartre’s interest in existentialism, related to Husserl’s phenomenology. From its manifesto: “Our intention is to influence the society we live in. Les Temps Modernes will take sides.”17—Sartre was also often discussed in Rogers’ Domus.18 Inspired by Sartre, Vittorini represented the typical figure of the public intellectual committed to advance a culture that wanted “to participate in, and not just to console”19 a society that needed much healing and reconstruction after the horrors and the destructions of the Second World War. A profile of intellectual that certainly appealed to Rogers, who was directing Domus (1946–47) at the same time as Vittorini was directing Il Politecnico (1945–47). The other important non-architectural periodical with which Rogers entertained significant contacts was Il Mondo (1949–1966)—in fact, even sharing, initially, the office space with Casabella-Continuità:20 Founded and directed by Mario Pannunzio, Il Mondo. Settimanale di politica e letteratura (The World—Weekly of politics and literature), is launched in 1949 … [and it exercised] a significant influence for the capacity with which it came to highlight the daily practices of the leading class, by offering an ironic and merciless documentation of the customs and mentality ruling in [Italy’s] public life.21 Without being a disciplinary journal, Il Mondo recognized the importance of urbanism for the growth of the social conscience. Influential figures from architectural criticism and urbanism contributed to the periodical, such as Sergio Bettini, Ludovico Ragghianti, Leonardo Benevolo, Mario Manieri Elia, Roberto Pane, and Ludovico Quaroni. Also Antonio Cederna, a champion of urban conservation—on which, over the years, he would assume increasingly conservative positions—regularly contributed to Il Mondo in its polemic against insensitive urban renewals. Similar to issues such as “tradition” and the “preexistent environments,” Rogers wove a conversation—obviously from a more specific point of view, related to his own disciplinary field—with the debates and the polemics of Il Mondo.22 As Gemma Belli has aptly demonstrated, “Il Mondo, 158

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in fact, showed an incredible savviness in keeping in focus the themes through which the public opinion operates, themes whose choice does not prescind from consensus probability.”23 An approach taken also by Rogers with his CasabellaContinuità.

Epilogue and New Public Presence The cultural legacies of Adolf Loos—who famously stated that “only a very small part of architecture belongs to the realm of art: the tomb and the monument”—and Giuseppe Pagano—whose civic commitment was always an ethical benchmark for Rogers—both of whom were highly inspirational figures of architect-intellectuals, can help us review two more architectural works: Rogers’ own tomb and a service station designed with BBPR, recently refurbished as a cultural center dedicated to him. Both of them are in Rogers’ “dear Trieste,”24 his home town. Rogers was working on the tomb for his family, to be realized at the municipal Cimitero Sant’Anna in Trieste, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.25 Initially meant to commemorate his parents, Romeo (1878–1944), who died in Auschwitz, and Ida (1882–1943), the tomb consists of a simple plane of marble slabs with two crosses—later on, Rogers clearly realized that it would also become his own tomb. The slabs are of two colors, in the refined chromatic combination of pink and

Figure 8.1  ENR, Rogers family’s tomb—ENR, together with his father Romeo and mother Ida—Cimitero Sant’ Anna, Trieste, It. (late 1950s). Photo 2019, © Author. CIVIC COMMITMENT AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

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green, where the colors of crosses and background are reversed in each case. The inscriptions run along the short sides in some sort of classic serif typeface. In Semerani’s comments: It is a thick plane of marble, just slightly angled like an architect’s drawing desk when it is used as a support. For their colors, pink and green, and their patterns, the slabs chosen by Ernesto are worthy of the Saint Mark’s Basilica [in Venice] or of Mies van der Rohe’s pavilion in Barcelona, and they express a contrast between the tenderness of the hues, the decorative richness of the cut, exposing their millennial layering, and the heaviness of the crystalline matter.26 One can see in this very personal, intimate work by Rogers the distillation of some of his beliefs. First and foremost, the “magic formula of architecture,” as he jokingly called it—but conscious of its great descriptive power, like a law of physics—where architecture is a function of utility and beauty, where none of the two variables, though, can be brought down to zero nor up to infinite value as, in either case, architecture would become pure art or strict engineering.27

A “formula” that for Rogers, though, beyond its powerful effectability—and the only possible understanding and experiencing of architecture—represents also the “drama of the architect,” challenged to compose the tension between the two elements.28 A “drama” that, as Marco Biraghi has aptly pointed out, is central to Rogers’ reflection on the notion of the architect–intellectual.29 Here, at Rogers’ tomb, utility is reduced to a minimum, yet present, while beauty is fully achieved through purity of elements and restrained composition— yet with a balanced use of color—symbolism without ornament, and materiality celebrated in its naked texture. Thanks to set-backs at its base, the plane also looks floating—in contrast with the heaviness of its tectonic—thus acquiring a more suspended character and, due to its true horizontality, compared to the sloping site, it establishes a “critical distance” that the work of architecture, in spite of its dialog with pre-existent environments, ought always to pursue. A modern tomb. More than the artistic value in itself, we can appreciate the human dimension— measure—and meaning that Semerani read in Rogers’ tomb: I came to think that a double semantic value is deposited both in those crosses and in that slab, which remembers the tombs of the not distant Jewish Cemetery, and that the very act that reunite under the same roof, in Trieste, a Jewish mother who had died there, a deported father, and a wandering intellectual, agnostic in matters of religion, is in the end the true expression of a profound human need of finding ourselves again.30 160

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FIGURE 8.2  ENR, Rogers family’s tomb, Trieste. Photo 2014, courtesy of © Schirra/ Giraldi.

FIGURE 8.3  ENR, Rogers family’s tomb, Trieste. Photo 2014, courtesy of © Schirra/ Giraldi.

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As private as it is, but as public as a home is not, Rogers’ tomb can be seen also as a monument—thus conflating Loos’ supreme architectural types—in the sense that Rogers so often returned to this term in its etymological roots of moneo (admonish) and memini (remember): the admonishment to pursue the mission of the modern architect as public intellectual and the memory of a life conducted at the service of architecture and its modern ideals. Partly private final resting home and partly civic memorial for a public figure, the tomb has the presence of a coherently modern artwork for a public space, such as a civic cemetery. Fittingly so, a few years ago, under the leadership of Luciano Semerani and his partner, the late Gigetta Tamaro (1931–2016), a small work by BBPR in Trieste, a gas and automotive station for the company Aquila (1953),31 was restored and renovated for public use (2008). The complex, prudently and smartly kept at a scale small enough to convey the image of an urban pavilion, but emphasized enough in its tectonic to acquire a distinct urban presence, is articulated in three modules where the primary structure in reinforced concrete is clearly differentiated by the envelope of the units. Decorative motifs, such as the playful rounding of the envelope corners at the encounter—without touching—with the columns, complete the crisp tectonic essay of the building. The units are offset with one another and perfectly fitting in the shape of the site, at a 30º angle to the grid of the fabric of the historic center, but aligned with the grid of the adjacent district, thus marking with a dynamic accent both the

FIGURE 8.4 Stazione Rogers cultural center, Riva Grumula, Trieste, It. (2008). Restoration and renovation by Luciano Semerani, Giovanni Semerani and Gigetta Tamaro of a gas and automotive service station for Aquila by the BBPR (1953). Photo 2019, © Author. 162

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south-western end of the main urban waterfront and its turn toward the former railway station at Campo Marzio to the west. The sense of dynamism is further emphasized by the cantilevered vaults of the front façade. In 2008, an ad hoc team of architects, led by Semerani and Tamaro, and local cultural operators won a competition for the renovation and reprogramming of the station, transforming it into a “service station for culture.”32 Among its activities

FIGURE 8.5  Stazione Rogers. Aerial view. Photo 2020, courtesy of © Schirra/Giraldi.

FIGURE 8.6  Stazione Rogers. Interior view of a cultural event. Photo 2016, courtesy of © Gianni Peteani. CIVIC COMMITMENT AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

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FIGURE 8.7  Stazione Rogers. Interior view of a cultural event in the series “Rogers Now,” a program to promote “contemporary expressivity of young creatives.” Photo 2017, courtesy of © Gianni Peteani.

are exhibitions and events for contemporary artists (Rogers Now), creative labs for children (Rogers Kids) and culinary events (Rogers Food): “Stazione Rogers, as any supply station, is open to anyone and offers the supply that best suits everyone’s needs.”33 As a truly public resource, Stazione Rogers offers also an open patio as a spillover space for the café or for special events. It is just fitting that this little work by BBPR is now perpetuating Rogers’ legacy of public presence and activity, for the support of culture, encounter, and free exchange of ideas. A modern way to continue to remember and celebrate Rogers, with an ethical finality and within an esthetic that breathes the human measure, responding in contemporary terms to the exhortation of his message.

La veritable tâche Rogers’ commitment of disseminating the ideals of modern architecture went well beyond the disciplinary boundaries. When planning his first important book Esperienza dell’architettura (1958), he wrote a letter in 1950 to the publisher Giulio Einaudi in which he outlined a larger editorial project.34 It consisted of three books: “a theoretical book (treatise); a manual for the public; an anthology of essays.”35 Obviously, he started to work on the third book—which became Esperienza—but never managed to complete the other two. Yet it is important to note that he had in mind a “manual for the public”—sort of a modern version

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of Alberti’s treatise—as a testament to his central concern to broaden the conversation about architecture and its Modern Project, and to engage as an intellectual with the public sphere. Indeed, Rogers did not mind being a participant in mass media conversations in order to reach his goal: as we mentioned, he was on the radio, giving talks and coordinating a series of conversations soon after the Second World War, but he also embraced the new medium of television. In fact, he started even when the Italian public broadcasting agency (RAI) was still in experimental mode. On December 20, 1953, he went on camera for a program titled—not surprisingly— “La casa dell’uomo” (The house of man) and dedicated—not surprisingly—to Corbu and his Unité d’Habitation in Marseille. After the RAI started its regular programming on January 3, 1954—right at the time of Rogers’ Casabella-Continuità first issue—the series “La casa dell’uomo,” most probably—given the title—designed by Rogers himself, continued also in the following months, at least until July 1954, according to RAI’s records.36 The series consisted of episodes curated by different architects, including another by Rogers on architectural magazines on April 27, 1954—just when he was in the middle of launching his new Casabella-Continuità. It is interesting to see how Rogers intended to explain to a general public the true meaning and purpose of architectural magazines which, in his view, had to go beyond specialized professional continuing education and to become vehicles for a broader cultural growth in the appreciation of the physical environment. If Alberti wrote his treatise in Latin for the nobility of his time, Rogers took it to television for the right of everyone to understand and appreciate his message. Rogers’ engagement in the public sphere was not limited to discuss with the general public the values and the experience of modern architecture. On a broader scope, his reflections also included the relationships between architecture, culture, and politics. In his editorial for the November/December 1955 issue of CasabellaContinuità, titled “Politica e architettura” (Politics and architecture)—clearly paraphrasing Italian philosopher and political theorist Norberto Bobbio’s seminal book Politica e cultura (1955)37—Rogers claimed the role of the intellectual as an independent critical voice within the public sphere and the value of the individual conscience vs the notion of the “organic intellectual.”38 The liberty of the intellectual to exercise her/his free faculty of criticism and argumentation was central to Rogers’ vision. In fact, he closed his editorial with a meaningful quote from Bobbio: To the fundamental question: which society do we consider more humane, more civil? That in which the great work of art grows or that where the great process of human renewal is possible? We should answer: that in which there is more liberty, that is to say that in which the great work of art or the process of human renewal are compatible with a greater liberty.39

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It is an important theme in Rogers’ thought, given that he not only included that editorial in Esperienza, but he framed it with a fairly lengthy accompanying commentary, which was his response to an invitation by the weekly Settimo Giorno, extended in July 1956 to Italian intellectuals to react to the profound transformations going on at that time in the Soviet Union with Khrushchev‘s revisionism: “In Russia, as in Italy or elsewhere, the ‘liberty of the artist’ cannot be other than that one of supporting the development of ideas from inside the conscience of everyone … because only by recognizing the individual differences can we hope that from their dialectic contrast can be determined the synthesis of a truly democratic civilization.”40 With the same concern for cultural freedom, as a precondition for the fullest artistic expression, and the critical role of the intellectual, Rogers approached his activities and duties as an educator, always challenging his students to approach a “utopia of reality.” The tension toward a utopia of reality was integral, for Rogers, to modern architecture as a constant stimulus for the architect to imagine “possible worlds.” Earlier on in his career, soon after the Second World War, in the hectic restart of activities and visioning of the future of reconstruction—and while he was planning the launch of his Domus (The House of Man), Rogers wrote an article in Il Politecnico, titled “Una casa a ciascuno” (A house for everyone).41 In it Rogers came to define architects as “prophets,” for their capacity—but also duty—to imagine new scenarios for the betterment of people’s lives: “For a few decades now, architecture and urbanism, with an unprecedented gap, have preceded history. Architects have transformed themselves into prophets.”42 Rogers then closed with a plea to place the housing question at the forefront of the reconstruction agenda, also remembering his late friend and partner Gian Luigi Banfi’s advocacy for the rights and the needs of the individual: “We ask the wealthy to understand the new demands, which are, for us, being able to give a house to all or—as much better Giangio Banfi used to say, by emphasizing the individual accent—‘a house to everyone’.”43 Claiming the crucial role of the public intellectual for the modern architect was not dictated for Rogers by some desire of protagonism44 or a sense of competition with other professions—typically philosophy, literature, criticism—to claim the best qualifications for playing that role. It was essential to the very agenda of redefining the Modern Project in a new phase of modernity, especially through the central role of culture—which demanded a new relationship with history. Eugenia Lopez Reus has aptly observed: Considering the historical reality of place as a spring of resources to include culture within the project of architecture implies, if one aspires to be truly critical, a necessary mediation between the historical element derived from reality and the creation properly: these are the terms of the synthesis of which the modern project consists for Rogers, and in which the role of the architect is irreplaceable.45 166

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As culture—per Vittorini, in its pursuit of the truth—should also unearth elements of crisis and help dealing with them—again, with Vittorini, not just “consoling” about them—the intellectual has to remain a critical voice of society, even a problematic one, asking difficult questions and raising productive doubts.46 Enzo Paci, the philosopher with whom Rogers had an intense dialog based on a reciprocal high esteem, clearly articulated a perspective on these themes in his essay “La crisi della cultura e la fenomenologia dell’architettura contemporanea” (The crisis of culture and the phenomenology of contemporary architecture), where he discussed the intellectual as the one that “embraces and nurtures the crisis,” as a way of overcoming it. Bonfanti and Porta noted that “one can see here the convergence of themes and language between Paci and Rogers: it fully emerges from the refusal to rest while in the crisis.”47 We can also note Paci’s relationism—as elaborated from Whitehead and Dewey—at work, as also discussed by Marco Biraghi in his recent L’architetto come intellettuale (The architect as intellectual, 2019).48 In his final arguments, Biraghi points out how crises can—should—become productive, as long  as the intellectual adopts an approach that, through criticality, “produces crises,” as opposed to a purely speculative approach. Thus, the intellectual is seen as someone that not only disseminates culture but “breaks constellations of consolidated  knowledge … such a crisis-making work has been always  fundamental for the productive and progressive intellectual.”49 Consequently, architecture needs to fully embrace its projective potential, so that a design is not just a problem-solving strategy for the delivery of mere professional service, but is enriched with a discourse that engages society for its cultural growth. Architecture as a project means that architecture in its whole, as a practical and conceptual discipline, in all its aspects and steps – from the theoretical elaboration to the productive organization, going of course through the architectural project meant in the traditional sense, with all the processes that make possible its realization – is re-thought in a projective perspective, with an open notion that risks to imagine the future …50 Architecture as a project is not dissimilar to what I was arguing for in my essay “Wittgenstein’s Ladder. The Non-Operational Value of History in Architecture” (2010), when I posited that it is the narrative—that is the discourse in all its complexities and elements, where obviously history can play an important role— elaborated for/with/on a given design, that can elevate such design to a “project.”51 Biraghi’s dichotomy between the “architect–supplier”—meaning someone supplying just professional services—vs the “architect–producer” is a real one, increasingly facing our field as an ethical dilemma, the former type progressively eroding the architect’s very own raison d’être, the latter type still addressing the true task of the modern architect as public intellectual. CIVIC COMMITMENT AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

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Rogers, “architect–producer” par excellence, could have not imagined the current state-of-the-art in our field, and did not choose his role as a result of a “professional branding” strategy but, with all that he stood for, it came as a logical consequence of his approach to architecture, in a modern sense. In fact, as we have seen through this book, Rogers was a modern architect also because he maintained the necessity to exercise criticality in every aspect of the architect’s work—including writing—to keep the focus on the social mission of the profession, to embrace teamwork as a mode of modern labor in a complex society, to be curious toward other fields of knowledge and the liberal arts and appreciate what they can bring to architecture, to nurture a cultural internationalism with ample breadth for cooperation and cultural exchange, to learn with humility of spirit from the masters of recent and distant past, to include memory/ tradition/history as active components of a method that wants to be responsive to preexistent environments. And because of all this and his will to engage with society politically but independently—with a sense of civic responsibility—he was also a public intellectual. As Zygmunt Bauman has aptly put it: “The intentional meaning of ‘being an intellectual’ is to rise above the partial preoccupation of one’s own profession or artistic genre and engage with the global issues of truth, judgment and taste of the time.”52 Assuming, as I do, with Tomás Maldonado, that “the modern condition is a project,”53 and with Jürgen Habermas, that “modernity is an unfinished project,”54 and with Corbu, as he shared with Rogers, that “la veritable tâche des temps modernes” (the true task of modern times) is yet to be accomplished,55 then we can even more clearly see in Rogers’ works, words, and overall legacy, some fundamental elements for the profile of the modern architect as public intellectual. A profile that, with the due revisions and adjustments to current conditions, technology, cultural values, and societal demands, can also be effective in our time—in fact, the most effective way of being an architect. This does not mean to elevate Rogers’ stature as a benchmark, thus setting a required high bar of artistic and intellectual accomplishment. As rightly pointed out by Biraghi, the architect– intellectual does not necessarily need to fulfill a high cultural obligation: “No empty ‘intellectualism’ is therefore required—and permitted—for the architect that would operate sub specie intellectualis … And while the architect–intellectual does not necessarily need to master oratorical and rhetorical skills, she/he does not need necessarily to channel her/his commitment onto a field other than the one of architecture proper.”56 There are many ways to articulate, according to personal aspirations, interests, and capacities, the type of architect that Rogers modeled throughout his life. Whether within a local community at the scale of a neighborhood, or within larger national or international organizations and global networks, whether through publishing and/or active participation on social media platforms, whether through teaching and/or contributing to professional organizations at various levels, whether by joining forms of activism or more organized political organizations, or 168

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even by just focusing on professional work, but with an intellectual mentality, the paths to effect the type of architect that Rogers showed us are many and can lead to ever stimulating and fertile results and scenarios. It is important to remember how Rogers understood, with Gropius, and perhaps better than Gropius, how it is essential for the modern architect to be an intellectual committed in the pursuit of the Modern Project. His last published writing is meaningfully titled “Qualche principio per l’architetto” (A few principles for the architect, 1966),57 thus circling back to where he started, with the first article he authored after graduation on Quadrante, the already mentioned “La formazione dell’architetto” (The architect’s education, 1933), and the preface to Esperienza—the only piece expressly written for his seminal book—titled “Il mestiere dell’architetto” (The craft of the architect, 1958). This indicates how Rogers’ main concern was more about defining the profile of the modern architect—a more difficult task—rather than about architecture per se. In his 1966 final article, Rogers recapped a few salient points of a lifelong line of inquiry. Rogers started out with defining the angle that was specifically his in tackling the “true task of modern times,” somehow sensed by the pioneers of modern architecture, but not made so explicit and clear as he did with his typical empathy: the human dimension of the work of the architect, whose conquest was the underlying theme of his Esperienza: “We shall begin with an heterodox and grammatically paradoxical statement: ‘man-citizen-architect.’ The paradoxical character of this statement consists in conferring to ‘citizen’ and ‘architect’ the function of qualifying adjectives referred to the substantive word ‘man’.”58 But the human experience, which is the perspective to envision any architecture and to which architecture should always be reconducted, needs “a critical choice that gives intention to every action towards a vital operation, fundamental for the society, of which it is both cause and effect.”59 Rogers was always very clear about the importance of the social milieu for the work of architecture: “the architect that believes of being able to live by her/himself is a quite miserable person, not grasping the relationships given to her/him by the human consortium in which she/he operates.”60 Equally important for Rogers was the power of “intentioning”—giving intention to—the design process—we inevitably recall how Rogers beautifully explained the “intentional value” of the Velasca Tower—according to a narrative that derives from an intense dialog with the preexistent environments and their history: “intentionally artistic has to be the whole creative process, from design to execution every moment ought to be a testament to the dramatic development of the dialectic research.”61 Then, turning to the ethical challenge, still tied to the social question with which he started out, he warned against “the old illusion by which one could feel satisfied to just deliver with the craft, a noble game of the intellect, without ethical preoccupations. Inevitably, due to its internal logic, art for its own sake ends up to become an ideology, if not the most dangerous, certainly the CIVIC COMMITMENT AND THE PUBLIC INTELLECTUAL

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most sterile.”62 Rogers raised his polemic throughout his life against any ideology, including the modern ideology—that is, the ideology of modern formalism and orthodoxy. True to his adherence to the critical mentality of the Modern Project— meant in its philosophical terms, a la Habermas—he was always uncomfortable with any dictum that would prescribe formulas or orthodox stereotypes and quell the truly modern method of constant critical challenging of consolidated ideas and practices to which Rogers abided with steady coherence. Too deep was his respect and empathy for the human condition and its essential values of liberty and peaceful cohabitation for bending to any ideological or authoritarian imposition: the artist must come to terms on a daily basis with the world around her/him and find in this relationship the sense of her/his liberty as man, citizen, and architect. It is clear that, when I speak of man, citizen and architect, I place them within a democratic thought wholly permeated of justice and liberty. And, at the cost of closing in a rhetorical way, it is in this kind of society that we can establish the accord among diverse entities, while being able to hope that everyone will express the best of her/himself, ready to pay in person and receiving in exchange the faculty of being fully what she/he is.”63 As the true task of modernity—Corbu’s veritable tâche—is yet to be accomplished, Rogers’ legacy can help us understand it better.

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NOTES

Series Preface 1 Reyner Banham, “Neoliberty. The Italian Retreat from Modern Architecture,” The Architectural Review 125, no. 747 (April 1959): 231–35.

Introduction 1 ENR, “La formazione dell’architetto,” in Quadrante 6 (October 1933): 30 and following. 2 ENR, “Prefazione. Il mestiere dell’architetto,” in Esperienza dell’architettura, ed. Luca Molinari (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 11–33; or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958). From now on, references will be made to the 1997 edition. 3 ENR, “Qualche principio per l’architetto,” Lineastruttura 1 (1966): 6. 4 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 1988); or. ed. De re aedificatoria, written in Latin between 1443 and 1452 (Florence, It.: Niccolo’ di Lorenzo Alamanni, 1486); 1st It. ed., trans. Pietro Lauro of Siena (Venice, It.: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1546); 1st Engl. ed., trans. James Leoni from Cosimo Bartoli’s It. translation (London, 1726). 5 ENR, “Introduzione alla prima edizione,” in Esperienza, 8. 6 Bruno Zevi, “Un libro di Rogers. Esperienze di un architetto,” L’Espresso (January 11, 1959): 16. 7 Peter Smithson, “L’importanza di chiamarsi zio Ernesto” (The importance of being uncle Ernest), in Quaderni del Dipartimento di Progettazione dell’Architettura del Politecnico di Milano 15 (1993): 35–36 (35). The title’s obvious reference to Oscar Wilde’s frivolous comedy—without being able though to play Wilde’s subtle game of double-meanings—is another sign of Smithson’s unresolved discomfort with Rogers’ legacy. On the other hand, Alison Smithson, in her testimonial included in the same publication—which was an effort by the Politecnico to commemorate Rogers after twenty years of his passing—had no restraint in reiterating her caustic critique of “poor uncle Ernesto.” See Alison Smithson, “L’incidente di Otterlo,” in Quaderni, 37–38 (38). 8 Luciano Semerani, “Ernesto N. Rogers,” in Incontri e Lezioni. Attrazione e contrasto tra le forme (Naples, It.: CLEAN, 2013), 80–85 (80). 9 According to Jerzy Sołtan (1913–2005), who worked with Corbu, was part of Team 10 and taught at Harvard from 1959 till 1979. Sołtan has been cited on this by two

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15 16 17 18

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sources: Anthony Alofsin, The Struggle for Modernism. Architecture, Landscape Architecture and City Planning at Harvard (New York & London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2002): 235, 294n35 (conversation with Alofsin, June 19, 1986); and Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse in Urbanism, 1928–1960 (Cambridge MA, USA: 2000), 238, 331n139 (conversation with Mumford, March 1991). In 1952, after the debacle of the Joseph Hudnut–Gropius showdown, with both resigning, as dean and architecture chair respectively, a search for a new dean for the Harvard Graduate School of Design was launched, spearheaded by President Conant himself. Initially, upon recommendations from the alumni, Oscar Niemeyer was the first choice but, during the “McCarthy era” in the USA, he was not considered a valid candidate due to his membership of the Italian Communist Party. As prestigious as it might have sounded, the appointment must not have looked feasible to Rogers, as he was about to embark on his major editorial project, with the new series of Casabella—to be launched in December 1953—and the BBPR office being busy with arguably the most important commissions of their career, the Sforza Castle Museum and the Velasca Tower, both in Milan. Other candidates—none of them in the top tier, according to Alofsin—included: I.M. Pei, G. Holmes Perkins, and William Wurster. In February 1953, José Luis Sert was appointed as the new Dean—and he eventually also gained the Architecture Department Chairmanship—taking up duties the following Fall. Reyner Banham, “Neoliberty. The Italian Retreat from Modern Architecture,” The Architectural Review 125, no. 747 (April 1959): 231–35 (231). Ezio Bonfanti and Marco Porta, Città, Museo e Architettura. Il Gruppo BBPR nella cultura architettonica italiana 1932–1970 (Milan: Hoepli, 2009); or. publ. (Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1973). From now on, references will be made to the 2009 edition. A few exceptions are Richard Bullene, “Architetto-cittadino. Ernesto Nathan Rogers.” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994; Eugenia López Reus, Ernesto Rogers y la arquitectura de la continuità (Pamplona, Sp.: EUNSA, 2002); Luca Molinari, “Continuità: A Response to Identity Crises. Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Italian Architectural Culture after 1945,” PhD dissertation, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands, 2008. Other, though more focused, studies are: Michelangelo Sabatino, “Ernesto Nathan Rogers: la formazione di un architetto europeo nell’Italia fascista (1927–32),” master thesis, advisor Francesco Dal Co, co-advisor Manuela Morresi, Fall 1998; and Valeria Lattante, “Ernesto Nathan Rogers e le preesistenze ambientali. Itinerario teorico, 1948–1964.” PhD dissertation, Università di Bologna, It., 2013. Vittorio Gregotti, “BBPR 100,” in Chiara Baglione, ed., Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909–1969 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 373–80 (374). See Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity: An Unfinished Poject,” in Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves and Seyla Benhabib, ed., Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity (Cambridge MA, USA: 1997), 38–55; or. publ. as “Die Moderne – ein unvollendetes Projekt,” in Kleine Politische Schriften I–IV (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981), 444–64. The essay is the transcript of Habermas’ acceptance speech upon receiving the Theodor W. Adorno Prize awarded by the City of Frankfurt in September 1980. Marco Biraghi, L’architetto come intellettuale (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 2019). Smithson, “L’importanza,” 35. See the excellent study by M. Christine Boyer, Le Corbusier, home de lettres (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). Alexander Tzonis, “Prologo. Nuestro Contemporaneo Rogers,” in López Reus, Ernesto Rogers, 13–15 (15) – my translation.

NOTES

19 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855, as quoted (in Italian) by Francesco Tentori, “Dall’officina di ‘Quadrante’,” in Marina Montuori, ed., Lezioni di progettazione: 10 maestri dell’architettura italiana (Milan: Electa, 1988), 225–32 (225). 20 ENR, Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico, ed. Cesare de Seta (Milan: Christian Marinotti Edizioni, 2006); or. ed. (Bari, It.: Laterza 1961); 2nd ed., ed. Cesare de Seta, (Naples, It.: Guida, 1981). From now on, references will be made to the 2006 edition. 21 The issue, supposed to be published in September 1959, was initially proposed by Aldo Rossi and Vittorio Gregotti, who continued to champion the idea. However, Rogers canceled the project, concerned by further misunderstandings that the issue might have caused. See Elisabetta Vasumi Roveri, “Ernesto Nathan Rogers e Aldo Rossi. La ‘lezione’ del maestro negli scritti dell’allievo: continuità e discontinuità,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 162–70 (167). 22 Lodovico Belgiojoso, “Alcuni ricordi,” in ENR, Architettura, misura e grandezza dell’uomo. Scritti, 1930–1969, ed. Serena Maffioletti (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2010), 15–21 (17). 23 Ibid., 17–18. 24 Lodovico Belgiojoso, Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari, It.: Laterza, 1979), 144. 25 The three parts are: “Testimonianze, interventi polemici e critici” (Testimonials, polemical and critical interventions), “Utilita’ e bellezza. Metodologia della composizione architettonica” (Utility and beauty. Methodology of architectural composition), and “Tradizione e architettura moderna” (Tradition and modern architecture). 26 Federico Bucci, “Rogers ‘as a Young Man’,” in Anna Giannetti and Luca Molinari, eds., Continuità e crisi: Ernesto Nathan Rogers e la cultura architettonica italiana del secondo dopoguerra (Florence, It.: Alinea, 2010), 85–89 (89). 27 See on this Guido Canella, “Per Ernesto Nathan Rogers,” in Montuori, Lezioni, 233–41 (236).

Chapter 1 1 According to Bonfanti and Porta, Gustavo Giovannoni even banned, at the school of architecture in Rome, “modern” magazines such as Casabella—see Ezio Bonfanti and Marco Porta, Città, museo e architettura. Il gruppo BBPR nella cultura architettonica italiana 1932–70 (Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1973); reprint (Milan: Hoepli, 2009), 11. 2 For a discussion on “method,” inspired by Rogers’ thought, see Vittorio Gregotti, “Per il metodo / For the sake of method. In memoria di Ernesto Nathan Rogers.” Casabella 569 (June 1990): 2–3. 3 ENR, “Le Corbusier,” in Editoriali di architettura, eds. Gabriella Lo Ricco and Mario Viganò, foreword by Angelo Torricelli, introduction by Silvia Micheli (Rovereto, It.: Zandonai, 2009; or. ed., Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1968), 42–53 (45); or. publ. in “Catalogo Cassina,” 1965 and Edilizia Moderna 86 (1965). The reference to Le Corbusier’s seminal projects—that Rogers highly admired—of the chapel at Ronchamp, the convent at La Tourette, and the hospital in Venice, are evident. 4 In his Editoriali, the first part is dedicated to those whom Rogers considered “masters”: Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Van de Velde, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Peter Behrens, Adolf Loos, and Adriano Olivetti—Auguste Perret was missing only because Rogers had not written an editorial on him, though Rogers curated a whole book within the series “Architetti del Movimento Moderno” (Milan: Il Balcone, 1955).

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5 See Adriano Olivetti, “Razionalizzazioni e corporazioni,” Quadrante 21 (January 1935). It should be noted that the four BBPR partners were associate editors at Quadrante at that time—more on Quadrante later in this chapter, and on “corporativism” in the next chapter on “Social Engagement.” 6 ENR, “L’unità di Adriano Olivetti,” in Editoriali, 62–77; or. publ. in CasabellaContinuità 270 (December 1962). 7 Adriano Olivetti in ibid., 65, as quoted by Rogers from Adriano Olivetti, “Presentazione del piano,” in Studi e proposte preliminari per il piano regolatore della Valle d’Aosta (Ivrea, It.: 1943), 14. 8 Bonfanti and Porta, Città, A19. 9 ENR, “Catarsi,” in Esperienza dell’architettura, ed. Luca Molinari (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 62–71 (66); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958). 10 Palmiro Togliatti, Lezioni sul fascismo (1935; Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1974; 3rd. ed. as Corso sugli avversari. Lezioni sul Fascismo, Turin, It.: Einaudi, 2010), 14 (1974 edition), as quoted by Giorgio Ciucci, in Gli architetti e il Fascismo. Architettura e città: 1922–1944 (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1989), 3. The quote is taken by a speech given by the young Togliatti in Moscow in 1935 during a brief course for Italian workers living in the Soviet Union. 11 Bonfanti and Porta, Città, 52. 12 Ibid., A12. 13 Ibid., A13. 14 Vittorio Gregotti, “Ernesto Rogers 1909–1969,” Casabella 557 (May 1989): 2–3, 63 (3) – transl. Cioni Carpi and Ilene Steingut. 15 Alfred Roth, ed., The New Architecture (Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1947); or. ed. (1940). Rogers, a Jew, befriended Swiss architect and critic Alfred Roth during his exile in Switzerland, after escaping Italy in 1939 due to the fascist Racial Laws against the Jews. 16 Lodovico Belgiojoso, Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari, It.: Laterza, 1979), 56. 17 Bonfanti and Porta, Città, A27. 18 Rogers was in fact the firm’s on-site project manager until he had to escape from Italy in 1939 due to the fascist Racial Laws. 19 ENR, “Prefazione,” in Esperienza, 22. 20 Ignasi de Solá Morales, “Significacion actual de Ernesto N. Rogers,” C.A.U.: construcción, arquitectura, urbanismo, nos. 2–3 (1970): 8–11 (9). 21 Federico Bucci, “Il mestiere dell ’architetto,” in Chiara Baglione, ed., Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909-1969 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 18–25 (23). 22 See David Rifkind, The Battle for Modernism. Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy (Venice, It.: Marsilio, 2012). With this book, Rifkind has done superb scholarly work on the history of Quadrante and we refer to his study for a more in-depth understanding of the phenomenon. (Appropriately, Rifkind’s excellent study was selected for publication by winning the James Ackerman 2011 Prize for the History of Architecture, through the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio.) 23 Julia Banfi, “Esperienze con Rogers. Quadrante, Domus, Casabella,” in Quaderni del Dipartimento di Progettazione dell’Architettura del Politecnico di Milano 15, 1993: 19–21 (19). 24 Ibid., 128. 25 ENR, “Elogio della Tendenza,” Domus 216 (December 1946): 2–3 (3). 26 Rogers, “Prefazione,” in Esperienza, 19, and Bonfanti and Porta, Città, 111.

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27 According to Bonfanti and Porta, the first version, designed and built within a week, but quickly deteriorating, was requested by Edgar Kaufmann Jr. for the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A second version (1950) was then realized, which included bronze for the 3D grid and slightly larger dimensions, in order to elevate the urn and bring it to eye level. In 1955, the memorial was reconstructed according to its original version. (Bonfanti and Porta, Città, A54.) 28 Among others, Edoardo Persico’s and Marcello Nizzoli’s advertising scaffolding exhibition at the main Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan (1935). 29 Enrico Peressutti, “Dedica,” Costruzioni-Casabella 193 (March 1946): 3. 30 Giuseppe Samonà, the renowned Dean of the School of Architecture in Venice (IUAV), one of the most important influencers—with Rogers—of Italian postSecond World War architectural debate, and acute critic, rightly read in this little monument an expression of “anti-monumentality” —in a truly modern spirit—and of “cageability”—his neologism—as a reference to the spatiality of wire mesh perspective of Piero della Francesca: hence to the golden, enlightened, age of Humanism. See Giuseppe Samonà, “Testimonianza,” in Antonio Piva, ed., Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti e Rogers: lo studio architetti BBPR a Milano. L’impegno permanente (Milan: Electa, 1982), 9–11 (11). 31 Lodovico Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, and Ernesto N. Rogers, “Carattere stilistico del museo del castello,” Casabella-Continuità, 211 (June/July 1956): 63–68 (63, 65). 32 Marco Frascari, “Tolerance or Play: Conventional Criticism or Critical Conventionalism in Light of the Italian Retreat from the Modern Movement,” Midgård 1, no. 1 (1987): 7–10 (9). 33 See note 31, 65. 34 The statue was in Michelangelo’s workshop at the time of his death in 1564. It disappeared for a long time, to reappear again in 1807 in the palace of the Marquis Rondinini—later corrupted to Rondanini—in Rome. The statue changed owner various times and started to attract the attention of cultural institutions worldwide, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, which wanted to acquire it in 1949. Previous legislation, however, declaring the statue a “national asset,” prevented the art piece from leaving Italy. After the Second World War, when the then owner, Count Vimercati Sanseverino of Rome wanted to sell it, the municipality of Milan, under the leadership of Mayor Virgilio Ferrari, supported by the efforts of the Pinacoteca di Brera Director Fernanda Wittgens—who was not able to bring it to her museum—acquired the ownership of the statue in 1952, also thanks to a public fundraising. It arrived in Milan on November 1, 1952 and it was put on temporary display in the castle’s Cappella Ducale until the summer of 1953. 35 Costantino Baroni, March 28, 1954, as quoted by Carolina Di Biase, “Nel cuore della città. Progetto e cantiere al Castello Sforzesco di Milano (1946–1956),” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 221–34 (231). 36 By the late 1990s, the idea of redefining the display of the Pietà started to gain momentum, with the argument that BBPR’s original arrangement no longer complied with accessibility codes and regulations and that the number of visitors had significantly increased and the space had become too constrained. In 1999 the municipality launched an international design competition with the participation of Gabetti and Isola, Hans Hollein, Enric Miralles, Umberto Riva, and Alvaro Siza, who won the contest. Siza’s vision of freeing up the whole space of the Sala degli Scarlioni, eliminating the walnut soffit designed by BBPR, reestablishing the floor to its original level thus placing the Pietà in a more central position within the Sala on full display, with no screening niche, was never realized. However, the idea of a

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new display of the Pietà was not abandoned and in 2012, Stefano Boeri, architect, professor, and Alderman for Culture at the Comune di Milano, relaunched the civic debate on the issue and a new location—in the former Spanish Hospital, within the entry courtyard of the castle—was finally found. Michele De Lucchi designed the new arrangement, which was inaugurated on May 2, 2015, within the initiatives for the Milan World Expo. 37 Antonio Cederna, “Il Regista invadente,” Il Mondo (October 9, 1956), in Bonfanti and Porta, Città, A77. Cederna went on to call the intervention: “a hyperbolic arrangement, an artificial, uncovered, illogical, environment … the light that hits the masonry background is cold and dispersed, isolating the Pietà in a hostile atmosphere.” 38 Roberto Pane, “Riserve sul museo,” L’architettura. Cronache e storia 33 (July 1958): 162–63; George E. Kidder Smith, The New Architecture of Europe (Cleveland OH, USA & New York: World Publishing Co., 1961), 190–91. 39 Belgiojoso, Intervista, 126. 40 Luciano Semerani, “L’immagine dell’oggetto e il senso della storia,” in Incontri e lezioni. Attrazione e contrasto tra le forme (Naples, It.: Clean, 2013), 144–51 (147). 41 “The solitude and silence of war seemed to have heightened Rogers’ belief in the need for a real, moral and, above all, human dimension to the Modern Project.” Luca Molinari, “Continuità: A Response to Identity Crises. Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Italian Architectural Culture after 1945.” PhD dissertation. TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands, 2008, 121. 42 Rogers, letter to CIAM delegates in La Sarraz (Switzerland), September 1955, in Molinari, “Continuità,” 184. 43 See Molinari, “Continuità,” 206. 44 Gregotti, “Ernesto Rogers,” 63. 45 Lopez Reus, Ernesto Rogers y la arquitectura de la continuità (Pamplona, Sp.: EUNSA, 2002), 163. 46 K. Michael Hays, “Critical Architecture: Between Culture and Form,” Perspecta 21 (1984): 14–29. 47 ENR in Serena Maffioletti, ed., Il pentagramma di Rogers: lezioni universitarie di Ernesto N. Rogers (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2009), 220.

Chapter 2 1 ENR, “Problemi: arte e pubblico,” Domus 103 (July 1936): 4. 2 ENR, “Polemica per una polemica,” May 1954, in Esperienza dell’architettura, ed. Luca Molinari (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 115–20 (116); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958). Rogers added, at the end, the expression in Venetian dialect “in volta de canal”—at the turn of the canal, that is of the Grand Canal—to underscore the small scale of Wright’s intervention in that particular site and its impact limited to the local Venetian community—which indulges speaking in dialect, more so than in other Italian major cities. Incidentally, Rogers did not much appreciate the design per se, but he welcomed the opportunity of having a project by Wright in a historic center like Venice. 3 ENR, “Il fattore economico nell’architettura,” in Serena Maffioletti, ed., Il pentagramma di Rogers: lezioni universitarie di Ernesto N. Rogers (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2009), 68–74. 4 Ibid., 68.

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5 As mentioned in the previous chapter on “Criticality,” see Palmiro Togliatti, Lezioni sul fascismo (1935; Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1974; 3rd. ed. as Corso sugli avversari. Lezioni sul Fascismo, Turin, It.: Einaudi, 2010), 14 (1974 edition), as quoted by Giorgio Ciucci, in Gli architetti e il Fascismo. Architettura e città: 1922–1944 (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1989), 3. 6 It should not be forgotten that, to complete the confused picture of the fascist ideology, Mussolini started his political career in the 1910s with the Socialist Party. 7 The Galleria Il Milione, directed by Virginio (Gino), Livio, and Peppino Ghiringhelli, with the collaboration of influential architect/critic/intellectual Edoardo Persico— who was working with Giuseppe Pagano also at Casabella), was a renewed vision— with a new name—of a previous gallery, run, since the mid-1920s, by Pier Maria Bardi, one of the founders of Quadrante, until his move to Rome in 1930. 8 In fact, by Rogers we have only a co-authored article: Gaetano Ciocca and ENR, “La città corporativa,” Quadrante 10, (February 1934): 25. On the other hand, we have BBPR, “Corsivo N.109” and “Corsivo N. 112” Quadrante 11 (March 1934): 9, 20 “in the future corporativist structure, every city will have its own function” in “Corsivo N. 112”: 20; Gian Luigi Banfi and Lodovico Belgiojoso, “Urbanistica anno XII – la città corporativa” Quadrante 13 (May 1934): 1–2 “ … consequently, the State will organize urbanism in a corporativist way, so that each city master plan will be the development of a national master plan.”: 1–2. Enrico Peressutti, “Urbanistica corporativa e piani regolatori” Quadrante 20 (December 1934): 1, and “Corsivo 169” Quadrante 23 (March 1935): 44. 9 The jury for the national competition was led by Giovanni Muzio and Gustavo Giovannoni. Muzio was an important figure of Milanese 1920s Novecento movement in architecture (a kind of historicist revival, nostalgic for Italian classicism, with stylistic traits of abstractism), author of the famous Ca’ Brüta—“ugly house,” in Milanese dialect, as it was popularly nicknamed—in 1922. Giovannoni was known for being the champion of an ideologically strict approach to urban conservation and building preservation. On the whole story of the Pavia Master Plan, see David Rifkind, “ ‘Everything in the State, Nothing against the State, Nothing outside the State’: Corporativist Urbanism and Rationalist Architecture in Fascist Italy,” Planning Perspectives 27, no. 1 (2012): 51–80. No surprise then that the jury did not recognize the value of BBPR’s entry but awarded first place to the plan by engineer Carlo Morandotti of Pavia, though criticizing it for “a certain megalomania in allowing for an excessive expansion of the city.” (Allegato C, Documento di Piano, Piano di Governo del Territorio, Comune di Pavia, 2010, 7). 10 Le Corbusier, The Athens Charter, intr. Jean Giraudoux, trans. Anthony Eardley, new foreword by José Luis Sert (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973): 44, 101, 103, 105; or. Fr. ed. (Paris: Plon, 1941). The Charter was initially published as “Findings” within an extensive report—in Greek and French—of the works of the 4th CIAM on a triple issue of Les Annales Techniques, organ of the Greek Chamber of Technics, 44–45-46 (November 1933). 11 Quadrante 11 (March 1934): 21. 12 As reported by Paola Ferri, it should be noted that, while the 1940 iteration of the project, submitted for approval to the municipal offices, did not show Rogers’ name—as he had to distance himself from the firm due to the fascist Racial Laws, promulgated in the fall of 1938—the 1938 first version showed all the partners. Correspondence with the author, July 7, 2019. 13 From Paola Ferri, correspondence with the author, July 7, 2019. 14 A total number of inhabitants of about 300 is our deduction from the total number of dwellings (117). The total number was originally reported as 740, both in

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Costruzioni-Casabella 180 (December 1942): 16–22, and in Ezio Bonfanti and Marco Porta, Città, museo e architettura. Il gruppo BBPR nella cultura architettonica italiana 1932–70 (Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1973); reprint: Milan: Hoepli, 2009, A37—probably relying on Costruzioni-Casabella’s information. The error must have been caused by the territorial density of the intervention at about 750 inhab./ha. Our hypothesis is also supported by the current population of 190 inhabitants over 86 dwellings (source: arch. Patrizia Dellavedova, Comune di Legnano, correspondence with the author, October 24, 2019). 15 Paola Ferri, “Quartiere operaio ‘Le Grazie’ / 1940–1942 / BBPR,” in “Architetture Moderne a Legnano,” “/itinerari di architettura Milanese. L’architettura moderna come descrizione della città,” Ordine degli Architetti, Pianificatori, Paesaggisti e Conservatori della Provincia di Milano: https://www.ordinearchitetti.mi.it/it/mappe/ itinerari/edificio/647-quartiere-le-grazie/31-architetture-moderne-a-legnano 16 ENR, “L’unità di Adriano Olivetti,” in Editoriali di architettura, eds. Gabriella Lo Ricco and Mario Viganò, foreword by Angelo Torricelli, introduction Silvia Micheli (Rovereto, It.: Zandonai, 2009), 62–77 (73); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1968); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 270 (December 1962). 17 Adriano Olivetti, “L’architettura, la comunità e l’urbanistica,” in Città dell’uomo (Turin, It.: Edizioni di Comunità, 1960): 85, as quoted in Rogers, “L’unità,” 73. 18 See Manfredo Tafuri, Ludovico Quaroni e lo sviluppo dell’architettura moderna in Italia (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1964), 102–03. 19 ENR, “Non si può fare a meno dell’architettura,” in Editoriali, 95–99 (99); first publ. in Casabella-Continuità 247 (January 1961). 20 ENR, “Program: Domus, the House of Man,” in Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture Culture, 1943–1968: A Documentary Anthology (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 77–79 (78) – transl. Rebecca Williamson; or. publ. as “Programma: Domus, la casa dell’uomo,” in Domus 205 (January 1946): 2–3. 21 Ibid., 79. 22 Ibid. 23 Ockman, Architecture Culture, 77. 24 ENR, “Program,” 79. 25 As noted by Luca Molinari, the INA-Casa experience has long been discarded, until the mid-1990s, by architectural critics—such as Manfredo Tafuri—as a failed attempt at chasing a nostalgic idea of “community,” as opposed to embracing the new urban dimension of the metropolis – see Luca Molinari, “Continuità: A Response to Identity Crises. Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Italian Architectural Culture after 1945,” PhD dissertation, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands, 2008, 177n11. More nuanced and less ideological analyses emerged more recently though: see Paola Di Biagi, ed., La grande ricostruzione. Il Piano INA-Casa degli anni Cinquanta (Rome: Donzelli, 2001). The INA-Casa plan—also known as “Piano Fanfani,” from Amintore Fanfani, then Minister of Labor, who spearheaded the initiative—was implemented for two seven-year periods from 1949 to 1963. It delivered around 500 dwelling units a week, with a total, at the end of the fourteen-year period, of 355,000 dwelling units. It kept running 20,000 construction sites a year, employing on average 41,000 construction workers a year, making around 10 percent of total worker-hours at the time. It was managed by a dedicated, publicly controlled organization, Gestione INA-Casa, set up under the umbrella of the INA (Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni), a public insurance company for life insurance, established in 1912. In the mid-1990s INA was sold to the private company Assicurazioni Generali. 26 “Project Report,” Casabella-Continuità 216 (1957): 20.

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27 Ibid. 28 Luciano Patetta, “L’edilizia residenziale tra 1933 e il 1970,” in Antonio Piva, ed., Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti e Rogers: lo studio BBPR a Milano. L’impegno permanente (Milan: Electa, 1982), 24–30 (28). 29 The “strapaese” artistic—mostly literary—movement, emerged in 1926 after the affirmation of the fascist regime, in symmetrical opposition to the movement “stracittà,” founded by Massimo Bontempelli—one of the founders of Quadrante. Strapaese (meaning “ultra-village”) advocated for the preservation of and a return to provincial, rural culture. Stracittà (meaning “ultra-city”), initiated by Bontempelli, advocated for cosmopolitanism, toward an internationalization of Italian culture. Rogers was well aware of such a debate as he featured it in his postwar Domus: see Paolo Chessa, “Strapaese e Stracittà,” Domus 216 (December 1946): 4–9, where Chessa made a case for the need of a critical distance from both—arguably with Rogers’ blessing, as Chessa was a close collaborator at Domus—after having been his student in Switzerland during the Second World War—first for graphic layout and, since June 1946, as Associate Editor. 30 ENR, “La casa dei popoli,” Domus 207 (1946), as quoted in Molinari, “Continuità,” 143. 31 Ignasi de Solà-Morales, “Significacion actual de Ernesto N. Rogers,” C.A.U.: construcción, arquitectura, urbanismo, no. 2–3, 1970: 8–11 (9). 32 Michelangelo Sabatino, “Ernesto Nathan Rogers: la formazione di un architetto europeo nell’Italia fascista (1927–32),” master thesis, advisor Francesco Dal Co, coadvisor Manuela Morresi, Fall 1998, vol. 1, xi. 33 Ibid., 104. 34 ENR, Aldo Badalotti et al. “Introductory Report,” Master Plan Outline for “Borgo San Sergio. Zona Residenziale del Porto Industriale di Trieste” (April 28, 1955), 2. The preliminary scheme was submitted on July 28, 1954 35 “The CEP (Comitato di coordinamento per l’Ediliza Popolare [Coordinating Committee for Affordable Housing]) was established on January 25, 1954, by the then Minister for Public Works Giuseppe Romita. Beyond an initial charge to coordinate the various building activities funded by central government, “later the CEP was assigned specific tasks to experiment in the realization of new neighborhoods in a limited number of cities.” (Paola Di Biagi, “Letture del Novecento: urbanistica moderna e città pubblica. Trieste 1902–2002,” in Paola Di Biagi, Elena Marchigiani, Alessandra Marin, eds., Trieste ‘900. Edilizia sociale, urbanistica, architettura. Un secolo dalla fondazione dell’Ater (Cinisello Balsamo, Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2002), 24. 36 The cities involved in the CEP program—and their relative planners in charge, all of distinguished reputation—were, among others: Bergamo with Gino Pollini, Treviso with Mario Ridolfi, Milan with Giò Ponti, Turin with Gino Levi-Montalcini, Genoa with Luigi Carlo Daneri, Trieste with Rogers, Bologna with Giuseppe Vaccaro, Florence with Giovanni Michelucci, Livorno with Luigi Moretti, Brindisi with Mario De Renzi, and Messina with Giuseppe Samonà. Initially, fourteen neighborhoods were slated, then augmented to twenty-eight, and finally reduced to sixteen. (Di Biagi, “Letture,” 25 and 31n49. See also Elisa Fedrigo, “I quartieri CEP 1954–62. Un episodio dell’edilizia pubblica in Italia e la vicenda di Borgo San Sergio a Trieste,” master thesis, advisor Paola Di Biagi, Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia, AY 1999–2000.) The final protocol agreement for the CEP in Trieste was signed in Rome on October 15, 1957 (Il Piccolo, Trieste, October 16, 1957).

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37 Di Biagi, “Letture,” 25. 38 ENR, “Introductory Report,” 6. 39 Ibid, “Allegato,” 1. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., 2. 42 Ibid., 7. 43 Ibid., 8. 44 The regional area for which the PIM was to be elaborated was declared by a decree of the Italian government on February 28, 1959, including thirty-five municipalities around Milan, which was charged with the coordinated elaboration of the PIM. In 1961, a Comitato Tecnico Urbanistico (Technical-Urbanistic Committee) was also formed with the remit to conduct the necessary studies and outline a first draft of the plan—from 1962 to 1968, the president of this Committee was Lodovico Belgiojoso of BBPR. In 1963, the first planning document was presented and approved. The planning team was led by Giancarlo De Carlo, Silvano Tintori—both collaborators of Rogers’ at Casabella, the former in the earlier phase of the magazine’s history (1954–57), the latter in the last phase (1961–64)—and Alessandro Tutino, who had engaged with Rogers in various discussions—see Casabella- Continuità 211 (1956): 84–86. In 1967, a first complete version of the plan was presented and adopted. Highlights of the plan include minimum standards for public amenities and services, which were to be used as a template for a landmark national regulation of the same nature—government decree of 1968. 45 Alberico Belgiojoso Jr., “Maestro nella scuola e maestro nel lavoro,” in Quaderni del Dipartimento di Progettazione dell’Architettura del Politecnico di Milano 15, 1993, 64–66 (65). 46 Lodovico Belgiojoso, “Problemi attuali nelle realizzazioni dell’edilizia sovvenzionata: l’esperienza di un quartiere.” Edilizia Popolare 77, July–August (1967): 5–20 (13). 47 Ibid., 5–6, 15. 48 Ibid., 9. 49 Lodovico Belgiojoso, “Testimonianza per Ernesto Rogers,” in ENR, Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico, ed. Cesare de Seta (Milan: Christian Marinotti Edizioni, 2006), 16; or. ed. (Bari, It.: Laterza 1961); 2nd ed., ed. Cesare de Seta (Naples, It.: Guida, 1981). 50 See “Una casa in 24 ore,” Domus 209 (May 1946): 28–29 on a prefabrication system— “a house in twenty-four hours”—experimented in Texas, USA, and “Nuove forme strutturali: due case pre-fabbricate francesi,” Domus 210 (June 1946): 28–29, on a French system, republishing material previously featured in the French magazine Technique et Architecture. 51 In fact, Rogers started to encourage De Carlo on this line of inquiry since his tenure at Domus: see Giancarlo De Carlo, “William Morris, pioniere dell’arte sociale,” Domus 211 (July 1946): 18–21. 52 Patetta, “L’edilizia,” 28. 53 Rogers, Gli elementi (2006), 57. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 The round table was organized by the periodical L’Europeo, and it involved, besides Rogers, architects Luigi Dodi, Giulio Minoletti, Marco Zanuso, engineer Guido Amorosi, critic Gillo Dorfles, and a young architecture graduate, Aldo Rossi. The transcript of that conversation was published in L’Europeo, no. 17 (1960) and

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republished in “Processo alla capitale nuda,” ed. Giorgio Pecorini, L’Europeo, no. 12 (2009): 56–67. 57 ENR in Pecorini, ed., “La capitale,” 65. 58 Ibid. 59 ENR quotes from Walter Gropius, Architettura integrata, trans. Renato Pedio (Milan: Mondadori 1959), 103; or. ed., Scope of Total Architecture (New York: Collier Books, 1955). 60 ENR, Gli elementi, 66. 61 The other talks were given by, among others, Piero Bottoni, Ignazio Gardella, Marco Zanuso, Vico Magistretti, Giuseppe de Finetti, Francesco Marescotti, and Giancarlo Palanti. See note by Serena Maffioletti in ENR, Architettura, misura e grandezza dell’uomo. Scritti, 1930–1969, ed. Serena Maffioletti (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2010), 278–279n. 62 ENR, Architettura, 279.

Chapter 3 1 ENR, “Preface. The craft of the architect,” in Esperienza dell’architettura, ed. Luca Molinari (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 23; or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958). 2 “Intervista all’architetto Belgiojoso,” in Leonardo Fiori and Massimo Prizzon, eds., BBPR. La Torre Velasca (Milan): Editrice Abitare Segesta, 19820: 19–30 (29) – trans. Angela Martelli and Michael Langley. 3 Giorgio Ciucci, Gli architetti e il fascismo. Architettura e città: 1922–1944 (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1989), 69–70. 4 “In fact, in prior years [before the Second World War] the formation of architect teams represented an important chapter (perhaps still not yet sufficiently investigated, especially for comparing the various European experiences) within the history of the building of modern avant-garde movements. Also in Italy, starting from the second half of the 1920s, numerous ‘teams of tendenza’ engaged in public projects were formed, but also stable professional collaborations (such as Asnago & Vender, the BBPR, Diotallevi & Marescotti, Figini & Pollini, Lingeri & Terragni, Magnaghi & Terzaghi) and teams to participate in architectural and urban design competitions.” Sara Protasoni, “Per un ‘comune orientamento’: le associazioni di architetti italiani,” in Matilde Baffa, Corinna Morandi, Sara Protasoni, and Augusto Rossari, Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura, 1945–61 (Rome and Bari, It.: Laterza 1995), 121 and 142n38. 5 The members of The Architects Collaborative, in addition to Walter Gropius (1883–1969), were Norman C. Fletcher (1917–2007), Jean B. Fletcher (1915–1965), John C. Harkness (1916–2016), Sarah P. Harkness (1914–2013), Robert S. McMillan (1916–2001), Louis A. McMillen (1916–1998), Benjamin C. Thompson (1918–2002). A good generation younger than Gropius, the seven friends had already discussed the idea of forming a partnership, when John Harkness, invited by Gropius to teach at Harvard as an adjunct, asked the senior “master,” who accepted, to join the team. See Walter Gropius and Sarah Harkness, eds., The Architects Collaborative, 1945–1965 (Teufen, Switz.: Niggli, 1966 and London: A. Tiranti, 1966). 6 Lodovico Belgiojoso, Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari, It.: Laterza, 1979), 26. 7 Lodovico Belgiojoso, “Alcuni ricordi,” in ENR, Architettura, misura e grandezza dell’uomo. Scritti, 1930–1969, ed. Serena Maffioletti (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2010), 15–21 (18). NOTES

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8 Vittorio Gregotti, “Ernesto Rogers 1909–69,” Casabella 557 (May 1989): 2–3 (3) transl. Cioni Carpi and Ilene Steingut. 9 See Fiorella Vanini, “La collana ‘Architetti del Movimento Moderno’ e l’ ‘anomalia italiana’ (1947–1959),” in Chiara Baglione, ed., Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909–1969 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 91–102. 10 Ibid., 97. The author of the graphic design of the series was Lanfranco Bombelli Tiravanti (1921–2008). Born and raised in Milan, Bombelli frequented in his youth the key cultural and artistic hub of the Galleria del Milione. He started to study architecture at the Politecnico in Milan in 1940, but in 1944, expatriated to Switzerland, where he continued to study at the Polytechnic in Zurich. There he came to know and befriend Max Huber and Max Bill, as well as Rogers, then teaching at the university campus in Vevey. With Huber and Bill, Bombelli organized in 1947— thus at the time of the launch of the Il Balcone series—the important exhibition “Arte astratta e concreta,” at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. He later was a founding member of the MAC (Movimento Arte Concreta). For Rogers’ Casabella-Continuità graphic design, see Gae Aulenti, “Architettura e forma grafica,” Casabella 440–441, (October– November 1978). Gae Aulenti was Rogers’ graphic designer for Casabella-Continuità from the 214 issue (February-March 1957) up to the 294 issue, the last one of his editorship (December,1964-January 1965). 11 Ezio Bonfanti and Marco Porta, Città, museo e architettura. Il gruppo BBPR nella cultura architettonica italiana 1932–70 (Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1973); reprint (Milan: Hoepli, 2009), A137. 12 Gian Luigi Banfi, “Una casa a Milano,” Quadrante 21 (1935): 24–25. 13 See Gianluigi Banfi, “La casa contemporanea al regime corporativo,” Domus 83 (November 1934): 14–15—although the project by Banfi, Peressutti, and Rogers is indicated as “typical,” it is in fact situated, hypothetically, in a specific corner site in Milan, at the intersection between via Poggi and via Vallazze, quite distant from Belgiojoso’s building site. In his introduction, Banfi highlights, somehow in a still superficial way, how “Any House” could be the building block of the future city, obviously developed within the “grand vision” of corporativist urbanism. The merit of the effort though lies more in testing a set of conceptual and linguistic ideas for a prototype of the anonymous residential building for the modern city. 14 ENR, “La casa dell’anonimo,” (August, 1942) in Esperienza, 45–46. 15 See Michelangelo Sabatino, “A Tipi in Venice: BBPR’s Canadian Pavilion for the Biennale (1954–58),” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 261–70 (265 and 270n16): “Despite the explicitly collaborative nature of the group, archival materials and official accounts attribute the design primarily to Enrico Peressutti,” 265. Also a quote by Donald Buchanan, Associate Director of the National Gallery of Canada at the time—“Peressutti has given Canada an exceptionally fine, small pavilion”—shown at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale exhibition, seemed to corroborate such hypothesis. 16 Ibid. 265. At Princeton, Peressutti had, among his students, Charles Moore and William Turnbull. Peressutti’s research—shared with his BBPR partners—on evolving the modern paradigm and vocabulary certainly influenced Moore and his subsequent personal line of inquiry, even though it led Moore into positions—of Post-Modernism—that Peressutti and his partners, would have unequivocally not subscribed to. 17 Conversation with the author, Milan, November 15, 2018. On the restoration work, see Alberico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, “The Restoration of the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale,” The Plan Journal vol. 4, no. 1, (2019): 7–16.

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18 Among these were the Premio Viareggio and the Premio San Pellegrino, both in 1954. The Premio Viareggio was established in 1929 and the ceremony for the first edition of the prize, in Viareggio, a coastal city west of Florence, was attended by Nobel Prize Luigi Pirandello and Massimo Bontempelli—one of the founders of Quadrante, where the BBPR were very active. The Premio San Pellegrino had less continuity, but no less prestige and it was devoted only to poetry. It was established in 1946, with the award ceremony held in the thermal city of San Pellegrino, in the province of Bergamo, in northern Italy, and it ran until 1950. It was resumed—as “Incontri Letterari”—in 1954, when Scotellaro was awarded the prize by a prestigious jury that included Giuseppe Ungaretti (nominated for the Nobel Prize by T. S. Eliot in 1955), Leonida Repaci (of the Viareggio Prize), and Eugenio Montale (Nobel Prize for Literature in 1975). 19 Scotellaro’s popularity, though, came with a price tag, as a lobby of the landowners became hostile toward him. In 1950 he was accused of corruption and incarcerated, but soon released as the accusations appeared to have been fabricated. However, the episode produced a great disappointment in Scotellaro, and he retired from active political involvement. 20 Carlo Levi was a prominent figure of Italian culture during the fascist regime and after the Second World War. Due to his anti-fascist political activities, he was arrested in 1935 and sent to a confino (forced exile) in the south of Italy, in Aliano, Basilicata, some forty miles from Matera and Tricarico. In Aliano, Levi was struck by the living conditions of the rural populations of that region and wrote a touching autobiographical novel, Cristo si è fermato ad Eboli (Christ Stopped at Eboli), published in 1945, which would garner national and international recognition. 21 See Carmela Biscaglia, “Rogers e il monumento funebre a Scotellaro,” Oggi e Domani xxii, 2/3 (1994): 11–12. 22 See Orlando Di Marino, “La tomba di Rocco Scotellaro. Il monumento, la tradizione, il ‘Mezzogiorno’ di Rogers (1954–57),” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 245–54 (246). The idea that Olivetti funded the project has been proposed by Francesco Tentori—one of Rogers’ collaborators at Casabella-Continuità—at the symposium on Rogers, held at the Sala del Grechetto, Palazzo Sormani, Milan on December 14, 1989 – see Di Marino, “La tomba,” 253n5. In supporting Tentori’s hypothesis, Di Marino recalled how Olivetti, through the Ufficio Studi e Ricerche Sociali del Movimento Comunità, had offered Scotellaro a fellowship in 1948–49 for his research on the living conditions in the Italian South, and that Scotellaro published two poems in 1950 and a novel in 1951 on the magazine Comunità—founded by Olivetti himself in March 1946, who also initially directed it until December 1947, while it continued to be published until 1992—see Di Marino, “La tomba.” 23 Biscaglia, “Rogers e il monumento,” 11. 24 Ibid. 25 Enzo Paci, “Continuità e coerenza dei BBPR,” in Pier Aldo Rovatti and Daniele Vitale, “Ernesto Rogers e Enzo Paci, Considerazioni sul rapporto tra architettura, ingegneria e pensiero filosofico,” Francesca Floridia and Chiara Occhipinti, eds., PhD School General Course, Politecnico di Milano, fascicolo [vol.] 11, booklet [no.] 11, (May 14, 2013): 42–47 (43); first publ. in Zodiac 4 (1959): 82–115. This citation and all subsequent citations refer to the Politecnico di Milano edition. 26 Luciano Semerani, “Ernesto N. Rogers Un modo di intendere l’architettura.” Phalaris 10, (October-November 1990): 1–3 (3). 27 Rogers dedicated a quite unique editorial/book review to Francesco di Giorgio on Domus 218 (1947): 1–4. In it he discussed a then recent study by Roberto Papini: Francesco di Giorgio architetto, 2 vol. (Florence: Electa Editrice, 1946). In his text NOTES

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Rogers expressed all his appreciation for the critical reappraisal by Papini of the Renaissance master, especially for his role in the construction of the Ducal Palace at Urbino, where di Giorgio in 1472 replaced Luciano Laurana—working on the palazzo since 1468—who historically has received more credit than deserved—in Papini’s and Rogers’ view—for the final result of the complex. Among the parts of the palazzo that di Giorgio designed and supervised in their execution was the Hanging Garden, characterized—besides its ingenious hydraulic system—by a wall punctuated by windows overlooking the city and the landscape across from the palazzo. In di Giorgio, architect, painter, and sculptor, but also theoretician of a renowned architectural treatise, as well as engineer and military architect, thus with a “functionalist” mentality and minimally indulging in decoration—“only as much as just an underscoring element”—Rogers saw the embodiment of a Renaissance spirit as a precursor of a modern sensibility. In fact, Rogers picked the image of the ideal city from di Giorgio’s painting for his exhibition Architettura, misura dell’uomo, at the 1951 IX Milan Triennale. 28 Bonfanti and Porta even suggested an iconographic influence of Incaic gateways (see Città, 207), as they refer to an image of that nature included by Rogers in his 1958 book (see Esperienza, 196). There is no evidence though to support that hypothesis. In fact, the Incaic gateway is closer to the final version of the tomb—proposed by Belgiojoso—not to Rogers’ initial idea of the window. Hence, we tend to maintain our hypothesis of the Urbino windows. 29 Manfredo Tafuri, History of Italian Architecture, 1944–85, trans. Jessica Levine (Cambridge MA, USA and London: The MIT Press, 1989), 53; first publ. as Storia dell’architettura italiana, 1944–1985 (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1982). 30 Ibid. 31 For a comprehensive account of Rogers’ “Swiss years,” see Luca Molinari, “Continuità: A Response to Identity Crises. Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Italian Architectural Culture after 1945,” PhD dissertation, TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands, 2008: 115–19. 32 See Roberto Fabbri, “ ‘Accordeon.’ Tra Zurigo e Milano, Ernesto Nathan Rogers e Max Bill,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 138–47 (139). 33 Paolo Chessa (1922–1981) would eventually also collaborate with Rogers at Domus, first for graphic layout and then as associate editor. Vico Magistretti (1920–2006), who always acknowledged Rogers as his mentor, would go on and become one of the protagonists of post-Second World War Italian architecture and design. Magistretti, with his Arosio House at Arenzano (1956–59) was among the Italian architects— together with Giancarlo De Carlo, Ignazio Gardella, and Rogers—who presented their works at the last CIAM at Otterlo (1959), sparking a controversy that prompted the CIAM final crisis and was part of its disbanding process. Magistretti was also very active in industrial design, collaborating with prominent companies such as Artemide and Cassina, and earning national and international recognition, such as the Compasso d’Oro (1967, 1979) and the Gold Medal of the Society of Industrial Artists and Designers (1986). 34 Fabbri, “ ‘Accordeon’,” 142. 35 A probable author could be Albe Steiner, whose extraordinary graphic research—e.g., often combining modern abstract elementarism of colors, grids, and bands, with classical typography and typefaces of the Bodoni family—could well include Rogers’ Domus. Steiner worked on Domus covers in the early 1940s (until 1943), had just won a graphic design competition for Editoriale Domus in 1943 for the new magazine A-Attualità, Architettura, Arredamento, Arte—with one of the draft cover very similar to Rogers’ Domus cover—and designed a catalog in 1945 for the publisher Rosa e Ballo with great similarities to Rogers’ Domus. With his wife and professional partner 184

NOTES

36 37 38

39 40 41 42

43

44

Lica, he was a close friend of Rogers’ and the BBPR. Albe and Lica left for Mexico in 1946, just when Domus started to be published—the graphic design project could have been done just before departure, in late 1945, as happened with the magazines Costruzioni (1946) and Il Politecnico (1945), both designed by Albe. The frequent correspondence (1944–47) between the Steiners and Rogers—and Julia Banfi at Domus—with Albe mentioning in a letter (July 4, 1946) the “praise received for ‘the magazine’ in New York, at MOMA, etc.,” would further corroborate such a hypothesis. However, no evidence has been found to date. On Albe and Lica Steiner see: Albe Steiner, Il mestiere di grafico (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1978); Giuseppe Longhi, ed., with Anna and Lica Steiner, Albe Steiner. La costruzione civile del progetto (Rome: Officina, 2003), with the mentioned correspondence; Anna Steiner, ed., Licalbe Steiner, grafici partigiani (Mantua, It.: Corraini, 2016). Other possible authors include Bombelli Tiravanti—given his subsequent collaboration with the BBPR on the series for Il Balcone—or even Max Huber, in whose artistic vocabulary Rogers’ Domus would fit as well. Julia Banfi, “Esperienze con Rogers. ‘Quadrante,’ ‘Domus,’ ‘Casabella’,” 19–21 (21). See Eric Mumford, Defining Urban Design: CIAM Architects and the Formation of a Discipline, 1937–69 (New Haven CT, USA: Yale University Press, 2009), 81, 84–85. The Comitato di Redazione included, in addition to prominent architects and educators Lodovico Quaroni and Giuseppe Samonà, art historian/critic Giulio Carlo Argan, urbanist Roberto Guiducci, engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, philosopher Enzo Paci, journalist/writer/critic Filippo Sacchi, and architect/industrial designer Marco Zanuso. The first composition of the Centro Studi consisted of Aurelio Cortesi, Giorgio Grassi, Luciano Semerani, and Silvano Tintori (secretary). See Francesco Tentori, “Dall’officina di ‘Quadrante’,” in Marina Montuori, ed., Lezioni di progettazione: 10 maestri dell’architettura italiana (Milan: Electa, 1988), 225–32 (231). Bonfanti and Porta, Città, 219. See ENR, “Esperienza di un corso universitario,” in L’utopia della realtà. Problemi della nuova dimensione, (Milan: Leonardo da Vinci Editrice, 1965): 12–23. During those years, Rogers’ collaborators included Vittorio Gregotti and Piergiacomo Castiglioni as appointed assistants; Guido Canella, Enrico Mantero, Francesco Tentori, Gae Aulenti, and Ezio Bonfanti as voluntary assistants; and engineer Roberto Guiducci and art critic Gillo Dorfles as outside consultants and experts. Among the students, whose works were also featured in the book, were Epifanio Li Calzi, Pierluigi Cerri, Pierluigi Nicolin, and Antonella Roversi Monaco, all of whom, in various ways, achieved professional recognition and distinguished accomplishments. Semerani, “Ernesto N. Rogers,” 3. By the time he was working for Rogers in the office on the layout of the book in the mid-1950s, Semerani was quite acquainted with Dewey’s thought as, in the early 1950s, he had just taken an esthetic monographic course on the American philosopher at the IUAV, taught by Manlio Dazzi— correspondence with the author, May 5, 2019. It is telling that for an image of the Ideal City—the three fifteenth-century paintings, representing three different iterations of visions of an ideal city’s architecture and public space by still unknown authors—Rogers picked the one, although less famous, with the highest probability of having been authored by Francesco di Giorgio. Di Giorgio’s authorship is probable because his painting is more adherent than the other two paintings to Alberti’s theories; di Giorgio, even though he was a more practically oriented architect-engineer, looked up to Alberti as a reference figure. The original painting chosen by Rogers is kept in Berlin and it is considered the oldest of the NOTES

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45 46 47 48 49

50 51

three (1477). Of the other two, one is kept in Baltimore (1480–84), probably to be attributed to Fra Carnevale, and the other one, the most famous (1470–90), with a more uncertain attribution among Piero della Francesca, Luciano Laurana, and di Giorgio himself, at the Ducal Palace in Urbino—the palace for which all three paintings were intended. More recently (2006), new research on the underlying drawings of the Urbino painting has led experts to attribute, at least the concept—if not the actual painting—to Alberti himself—see exhibition L’uomo del Rinascimento. Leon Battista Alberti e le Arti a Firenze tra Ragione e Bellezza, curated by Gabriele Morolli and Cristina Acidini, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, It., March 11 – July 23, 2006. Bonfanti and Porta, Città, A63. See Serena Maffioletti in ENR, Architettura, 688n. Ibid., 687n. Ibid., 688n. Ibid., 693. Rogers had a great appreciation for Nervi’s work. After the UNESCO project—a crucial work in Nervi’s career—Rogers wrote a celebratory introduction to a Nervi monograph in 1957 and afterwards invited Nervi, in 1959, to collaborate at Casabella-Continuità, by writing a column on structural and construction issues, “Critica delle strutture” (Critical review of structures). The collaboration though lasted only for four articles and ended up being more turbulent than either of them expected: for an in-depth analysis of this relationship, see Roberta Martinis, “Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Pier Luigi Nervi e ‘Casabella’,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 156–161. See Serena Maffioletti in ENR, Architettura, 696. Ibid., 690n.

Chapter 4 1 ENR, “Elogio dell’architettura,” in Editoriali di architettura, eds. Gabriella Lo Ricco and Mario Viganò, foreword Angelo Torricelli, introduction Silvia Micheli (Rovereto, It.: Zandonai, 2009), 283–89 (289); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1968); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 287 (May 1964). 2 Walter Gropius, “Apollo in the Democracy,” address given upon receiving the Hansische Goethepreis in Hamburg, Germany, 1956, in Apollo in the Democracy: The Cultural Obligation of the Architect (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 1–11 (9). 3 The Liceo Classico—established as a general pedagogical concept in 1859, then reformed in 1923 by philosopher Giovanni Gentile for Mussolini’s fascist government—was, in Rogers’ time, an 11th–13th grade high school program with a curriculum highly focused on the humanities, including mandatory classes in each grade on Latin, Ancient Greek, and philosophy, without discounting the sciences, such as mathematics, physics, and the natural sciences. It was typically considered the high school program for the future elite of Italian society. Until 1969, it was the only secondary school to grant access to any university. It still exists today as a 9th–13th grade high school program, though replaced in popularity by the Liceo Scientifico, with more emphasis on the sciences. 4 Lodovico Belgiojoso, Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari, It.:Laterza, 1979), 143. 5 In 1931, Milan doubled, with almost a million inhabitants, the population it had in 1901 (491.000). Source: Giorgio Ciucci, Gli architetti e il Fascismo. Architettura e città: 1922–1944 (Turin: Einaudi, 1989), 58–59n3. 6 Ibid., 76. 7 See Dennis Doordan, “The Novecento Movement,” in Building Modern Italy: Italian Architecture 1914–36 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988), 29–44. 186

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8 At the V Milan Triennale (1933), BBPR participated with a holiday retreat for a couple (Casa del sabato per gli sposi), in collaboration with their thesis advisor at the Politecnico, eclectic architect, but established professional Piero Portaluppi (1988– 67), with a sculpture by Lucio Fontana and a stained glass by Ticinese artist Pietro Chiesa. This debut by BBPR which garnered praise from an influential critic such as Edoardo Persico—Casabella 6 (June 1933): 10–11—then fueled Pagano’s increasing support, encouragement, and mentorship for the group. At the VI Triennale (1936), under Pagano’s direction, BBPR participated with two exhibition designs, the “Sala della Coerenza”—an historical panorama on the correspondences between architectural forms and characters of past civilization, parallel to what the group did in the book of the same year, BBPR, Stile, 1936—and the “Sala delle Priorità Italiche” (Hall of Italic Priorities); interior designs for a passenger ship cabin and a bedroom prototype for a “sport-loving couple”; as well as designs for a silverware set. 9 Vittorio Gregotti, Orientamenti nuovi nell’architettura italiana (Milan: Electa, 1969), 21. 10 Letter by Walter Gropius to Edoardo Persico, cited in Giulia Veronesi, ed., Edoardo Persico. Scritti d’architettura (1927–1935) (Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1968), 192; also in Doordan, Building Modern Italy, 125. 11 Federico Bucci, “Il mestiere dell’architetto,” in Chiara Baglione, ed., Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909–1969 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 18–25 (23)—emphases in quotation marks are by Rogers, as quoted by Bucci. 12 See Raffaele De Grada, Corrente trent’anni dopo, catalog of the exhibition, held in Ravenna, It., in 1971, of Corrente painters (Milan: Arti Grafiche Errepi, 1971), and also the discussion by Matilde Baffa, “Progetti e dibattito nell’architettura dei BBPR,” in Antonio Piva, ed., Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti e Rogers: lo studio BBPR a Milano. L’impegno permanente (Milan: Electa, 1982), 31–39 (33). 13 Toward the end of the Second World War, Banfi was also among the founders of the Fronte della Cultura, a “compact” for engaged intellectuals, professionals, and exponents of the humanities to join forces with the working class in the reconstruction efforts. He was also among the founders of the Casa della Cultura, an association and cultural forum in Milan, where Rogers became very involved. 14 Paolo Ceccarelli, “I BBPR e la vicenda urbanistica Milanese. Dal Piano AR al PIM,” in Piva, Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti e Rogers, 18–23 (18). 15 Costruzioni-Casabella 194 (September, 1946): 4. Casabella interrupted publications in December 1943 after Pagano’s capture by the fascist militia—since June 1943 he had a conversion, abandoning fascism and joining the clandestine fights of anti-fascist groups. He died at Mauthausen on April 22, 1945. The magazine was resurrected in 1946 as Costruzioni-Casabella, under the editorship of Franco Albini and Giancarlo Palanti, but only for three issues—March, September, December. It stopped publication again until Rogers relaunched it with the 199th issue, December 1953– January 1954. 16 Gian Luigi Banfi was arrested, with Belgiojoso, at Belgiojoso’s house on March 21, 1944, so it is not clear whether the two partners had any involvement with the initial drafting of the Piano AR—most probably not. Banfi never returned to Milan, while Belgiojoso, also detained at Mauthausen, managed miraculously to survive, and returned to Milan on June 12, 1945. He was probably involved in the later phase of the plan. Rogers, as a Jew, had to escape to Switzerland after the September 8, 1943, armistice, to return only after the Liberation. Rogers too must have been involved in the plan only in its later phase. Thus, the only one who was part of the team from the very beginning was Peressutti, who was the only one in Milan from March 1944 until May/June 1945, although very busy with Resistance activities. However, given that the plan was still in its draft form in July 1945, and given the great energy and NOTES

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17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24

25

26 27 28 29

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enthusiasm generated by the end of the war, it is possible that most of the work was done by the AR team between July and October 1945, with the three partners all back at the office. Costruzioni-Casabella 194 (September, 1946): 4. Ceccarelli, “I BBPR,” 18. The most recent PGT (Piano di Governo del Territorio), drafted by a team lead by the Milanese firm Metrogramma of Andrea Boschetti and Alberto Francini, adopted on July 14, 2010, and approved on May 22, 2012, has “polycentrism” as one of the core guiding concepts. ENR, “Una casa per tutti,” Il Politecnico 4 (October 20, 1945). Ceccarelli, “I BBPR,” 20–21. Lodovico Belgiojoso, Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari, It.: Laterza, 1979), 78. Other important interior designs include: Marietti House (Milan, 1933), Gian Luigi Banfi House (Milian, 1939), La Lampada bookshop (Milan, 1940), Lodovico Belgiojoso House (Milan, 1940), Galleria della Spiga and Galleria Corrente (Milan, 1940), furniture store (Milan, 1942—with Franco Albini and Ignazio Gardella), Rogers’ House (Milan, 1956), Banca Privata Finanziaria (1966). “Casa intorno a un camino,” Domus 258 (May, 1951): 11–17. The article’s title curiously paraphrased a previously published article, which appeared on Rogers’ Domus, for a project by Milanese architects Renato Radici and Mario Righini: “Alloggio attorno a un camino,” Domus 225 (December 1947): 116–19. In fact, BBPR had published in the same magazine some preliminary designs and fragments of the Rollier House refurbishing—living room furniture, bed-boudoir, children’s bedroom: “Elementi d’arredamento pubblico e privato,” Domus 222 (September 1947): 85–91. Fausto Melotti (1901–1986), was a renowned Italian sculptor. He studied at the Accademia di Brera in Milan, where he met fellow student Lucio Fontana, with whom he developed a strong friendship. Melotti was part of the vibrant cultural scene in Milan of the 1930s, particularly the circle of abstract artists gathered around the Galleria Il Milione and the Bar Craya. In the 1940s, he focused on ceramics and his superb works were recognized with the Grand Prix at the 1951 Triennale in Milan, and gold medals in Prague and Munich. Melotti exhibited internationally, for example in New York, London, Zurich, Frankfurt, and Paris. Soon after his death, in 1986, the Venice Art Biennale awarded him with the Golden Lion. Throughout his career, he collaborated also with other architects, such as Figini and Pollini, and Gio’ Ponti. Olga Guelft, “The Spiral and the Acrobat,” Interiors CXII, no. 5 (December, 1952): 78–81 (81). See the final issue of Rogers’ Domus, 223/224/225 (October-December 1947): 109. Enrico Peressutti, “Considerazioni sui mobili ‘Spazio’ e ‘Arco,”Notizie Olivetti 84 (July 1965): 20 – the terms in quotation marks “do-it-yourself ” and “ready-made” are in English in the original text. The Compasso d’Oro is a highly prestigious award for industrial design and the oldest of its kind. It was established in 1954 from an idea by Gio’ Ponti, Domus director for many years and influential architect and designer, and founder, in 1956, of the ADI (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale). The name “Golden Compass” comes from the logo—and the actual award trophy—designed by Albe Steiner, recalling an 1893 invention by Adalbert Göringer of a compass whose three tips always mark the proportions of the Golden Section (1:1.6). The actual

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award trophy was styled by Marco Zanuso and Alberto Rosselli. The Compasso d’Oro—initially sponsored by the La Rinascente group, then since 1964 managed by the ADI—has been awarded every two/three years, it now has various categories and a more international scope than the original version. The last edition was in 2018. 30 Darko Pandakovic, “L’impegno nel design: ‘nugellae’,” in Piva, Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti e Rogers, 49–54 (52). 31 Ibid. 32 ENR, “Memoria e invenzione nel ‘design’,” speech at the World Design Conference in Tokyo, in Editoriali, 142–153 (150); first publ. in Casabella-Continuità 239 (May 1960). 33 Proposal by the BBPR to the Triennale, April 15, 1954. BBPR Letters Triennale di Milano Archives, Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York. 34 Costantino Nivola (1911–88) was an Italian sculptor, originally from a poor village in Sardinia, who grew up artistically in Milan, studying with Pagano, who invited him to work for the 1936 VI Triennale in Milan and the Italian Pavilion at the 1937 International Exposition. On this later occasion, Olivetti noted the young artist and appointed Nivola art director of his company’s publicity department. In 1938, he immigrated to the USA and settled in New York where he resumed his friendship with Saul Steinberg, whom he had met during his Milanese years. Over the 1940s and 1950s, Nivola’s works started to acquire national and international reputation; Rogers featured a couple of his drawings— interpreting New York’s congested urban landscape—on his Domus in April (219) and May (220) 1947—and he collaborated with BBPR for the Olivetti Showroom on Fifth Ave in New York in the mid-1950s. Nivola was Director of the Design Workshop at the Harvard GSD (1954–57) and a visiting professor at various universities around the world. His stylistic hallmark was a particular technique of concrete sandcasting. Saul Steinberg (1914–99), originally from Romania, moved to Milan in 1933 to study architecture at the Politecnico, and was soon introduced to Milan’s cultural milieu, frequented also by the BBPR team. Still an architecture student, he started to work for the humor magazine Bertoldo, which earned him immediate recognition and appreciation. In 1938 he joined Bertoldo’s rival Settebello, but fascist Racial Laws—promulgated between September 5 and November 11, 1938—cut short his career in Italy as, by November of the same year, Jews were banned from most professions. Steinberg continued to work here and there, but anonymously, thus experiencing a condition similar to Rogers. This might have been another factor of their strong friendship bond. Foreign Jews were still allowed to complete their degree in Italy, so Steinberg could finish his studies at the Politecnico in 1940. He graduated in 1940 and tried to leave Italy, but a series of visa problems prevented him from leaving until 1941 for the Dominican Republic, while friends in New York continued to work for a US visa. During his yearlong stay in Santo Domingo, he contributed his first drawing to The New Yorker, which then helped provide documentation to get him that visa for the USA, where he finally arrived in 1942. Steinberg later contributed, with his acute and imaginative drawings—including an iconic view of Milan’s Galleria (1951)— to the proceedings of CIAM 8 at Hoddesdon, The Heart of the City, co-edited by Rogers, with José Luis Sert and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt (London: Lund Humphries, 1952). 35 Letter by BBPR to Steinberg, July 9, 1954. Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York. 36 Ibid.

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37 Cable from BBPR to Steinberg, rejoicing about his acceptance, July 28, 1954. By midJuly, Steinberg had not yet replied (BBPR cable, soliciting a reply, of July 15). Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York. 38 Letter by Rogers to Steinberg, August 2, 1954. Saul Steinberg Foundation, New York. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 “Il Labirinto alla Triennale,” Domus 300 (November 1954): 2–5 (4). 43 Franca Helg, “Introduzione all’attività dello studio BBPR ed evoluzione del linguaggio nel restauro dell’ambiente urbano,” in Piva, Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti e Rogers, 12–17 (13). 44 Vittorio Gregotti, “BBPR 100,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 373–80 (377). 45 Salvatore Veca, “In ricordo di Enzo Paci: il filosofo e l’architetto,” in Quaderni del Dipartimento di Progettazione dell’Architettura del Politecnico di Milano 15, 1993: 48–50 (48). 46 ENR, “Situazione dell’architettura italiana,” aut-aut 5 (September 5, 1951): 452–56, and “Struttura dell’architettura” aut-aut (July 16, 1953), also publ. as “Struttura della composizione architettonica,” in Esperienza dell’architettura, ed. Luca Molinari (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 171–83; or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958). For John Dewey’s influence on Rogers, via Paci, see Concetta Lenza, “Il nodo della tradizione,” in Anna Giannetti and Luca Molinari, eds., Continuità e crisi : Ernesto Nathan Rogers e la cultura architettonica italiana del secondo dopoguerra (Florence, It.: Alinea, 2010), 3–13. 47 See ENR, Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico, ed. Cesare de Seta (Milan: Christian Marinotti Edizioni, 2006), 33; or. ed. (Bari, It.: Laterza 1961); 2nd ed., ed. Cesare de Seta (Naples, It.: Guida, 1981). 48 ENR, Esperienza, 38. 49 Ibid., 153. 50 Ibid., 158. 51 Ibid., 167. 52 Ibid., 176. 53 Ibid., 185. 54 Ibid., 262. 55 Antonio Monestiroli, “Lezioni ex cathedra,” in Quaderni, 63. 56 Semerani, “L’immagine dell’oggetto e il senso della storia,” in Incontri e lezioni. Attrazione e contrasto tra le forme (Naples, It.: Clean, 2013), 145–51 (145). 57 Henri Focillon, The Life of Forms in Art, trans. Charles Beecher Hogan and George Kubler (New York: George Wittenborn, 1948): 22; first English ed. (New Haven CT, USA: Yale University Press, 1942); or. ed., Vie des formes (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1934). 58 ENR, Esperienza, 154. 59 See Rogers’ discussions on chemistry, colors, and poetry, respectively in: ENR, “Dialogo con i tecnici,” in Architettura, misura e grandezza dell’uomo. Scritti, 1930–1969, ed. Serena Maffioletti (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2010), 534–41, first publ. in Casabella-Continuità 205 (April/May 1955); “Il colore nella casa,” in Architettura, 630–32; “Consumo della poesia,” in Architettura, 772–73, first publ. in Rendiconto 4–6 (May 1962). 60 ENR, “Architettura, ponte tra scienza ed arte,” in Architettura, 641–45 (642). The quote is from one of three speeches that Rogers gave at the symposium “Arte e Scienza,” held at the Centro di Cultura e Civiltà of the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, May 31June 2, 1957. See note by Serena Maffioletti in ENR, Architettura, 641n.

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Chapter 5 1 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Una scelta di campo,” in Matilde Baffa, Corinna Morandi, Sara Protasoni, and Augusto Rossari, Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura (Rome-Bari, It.: Laterza, 1995), 7–14 (9). 2 See Casabella-Continuità 1962 issues 261 (March) on France and 262 (April) on the USSR; 1963 issues 273 (March) on Japan and 281 (November) on the USA; 1964 issues 285 (March) on Argentina, 288 (June) on Berlin and 294–295 (December– January 1965) again on the USA. 3 Richard Bullene, “Architetto-cittadino. Ernesto Nathan Rogers.” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994, 36. English original text. 4 ENR, “Considerazioni sull’architettura moderna,” paper for the course “Organismi e storia dell’architettura,” held at the Politecnico in Milan by Prof. Ambrogio Annoni, 1931, in Architettura, misura e grandezza dell’uomo. Scritti, 1930–1969, ed. Serena Maffioletti (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2010), 75–85 (82). 5 Belgiojoso, “Il lavoro di gruppo,” in Quaderni del Dipartimento di Progettazione dell’Architettura del Politecnico di Milano 15 (1993), 11–14 (11). 6 See Maria Vittoria Capitanucci, “Una vocazione all’internazionalita’: dalla Reunion Internationale d’Architectes all’UIA Congress,” in Chiara Baglione, ed. Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909–1969 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 43–51. 7 ENR, “Catarsi,” in Esperienza dell’architettura, ed. Luca Molinari (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 62–71 (67); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958); or. publ. in CostruzioniCasabella 195–198 (December, 1946): 40. 8 ENR, “Architettura senza confini,” in Architettura, 30; or. publ. in L’unità europea 12 (June 17, 1945). 9 Luca Molinari, “Continuità: A Response to Identity Crises. Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Italian Architectural Culture after 1945,” PhD dissertation, TU Delft (Delft, The Netherlands, 2008), 111nn50–51. 10 Ibid., 100n16. 11 ENR, commentary in Esperienza, 43. 12 Molinari, “Continuità,” 114. 13 Roberto Fabbri, “‘Accordeon.’ Tra Zurigo e Milano, Ernesto Nathan Rogers e Max Bill,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 138–47 (138). 14 See Bill’s in memoriam for Rogers, a few years after his passing, in Max Bill, “Max Bill rievoca Ernesto,” L’architettura. Cronache e storia, 205 (1972): 427. 15 See Max Bill, “La pittura concreta,” Domus 206 (February 1946): 37–43, and “La costruzione concreta e il dominio dello spazio,” Domus 210 (June 1946): 18–21. Rogers’ appreciation for Bill’s work was attested by the article on the last issue of Domus by Hans Kaiser, “ ‘Continuità di Max Bill,” trans. Lanfranco Bombelli Tiravanti, Domus 223 (October 1947): 40–43, on Bill’s “concrete art” granite sculpture, titled in fact “Kontinuität” and developed around the theme of the “Möbius loop.” Initially displayed in a park in Zurich, it is now a piece of public art in Frankfurt. 16 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Una scelta,” 11. 17 Alfred Roth, “The Reality of the New Architecture,” in The New Architecture (Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1947), 8; or. ed., 1940. As already mentioned, BBPR’s Colonia in Legnano was the only Italian example out of the only twenty featured architectures of the 1930s, selected more because of the set criteria, than for their broader international reputation, the single exception being perhaps Alvar Aalto’s library at Viipuri, Fin. (1932–36). NOTES

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18 Ibid., 1. 19 Sigfried Giedion, “L’età della meccanizzazione totale,” Domus 216, trans. Lanfranco Bombelli Tiravanti (December 1946): 25–31, and “Il progresso delle comodità,” excerpt from the chapter “The Constituent Furniture of the Nineteenth Century,” Domus 217 (January 1947): 11–16. Bombelli Tiravanti later collaborated with Rogers and BBPR for the series “Architetti del Movimento Moderno,” and had potentially contributed to Domus graphic layout, as already discussed in the chapter on “Teamwork”—see Chapter 3, note 35. 20 Molinari, “Continuità,” 194. 21 David Rifkind, The Battle for Modernism. Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy (Venice, It.: Marsilio, 2012), 125. 22 A 1934 date is recalled by Lodovico Belgiojoso, in Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari, It.: Laterza, 1979), 30; a 1935 date is indicated by Ezio Bonfanti and Marco Porta in Città, museo e architettura. Il gruppo BBPR nella cultura architettonica italiana 1932–70 (Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1973), reprint (Milan: Hoepli, 2009), A135, and by Giovanni Durbiano in I Nuovi Maestri. Architetti tra politica e cultura nel dopoguerra (Venice, It.: Marsilio, 2000), 26; a 1936 date is given by Molinari, in “Continuità,” 87. 23 Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928–1960, foreword by Kenneth Frampton (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 2000), 129. 24 Ibid., 168. 25 Ibid., 175. James Maude Richards (1907–92) was among the founding members of MARS (Modern Architectural ReSearch group) in 1933 and an editor at the Architectural Review (1937–71). 26 Ibid., 182, 318n225. 27 Letter of Giedion to Sert, 27 June 1948, The CIAM Collection, Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University Graduate School of Design - hereafter designated as “CIAMLoeb.” 28 Letter of Sert to Giedion, 4 May 1949, CIAM-Loeb. 29 Letter of Gropius to Sert, 4 May 1949, CIAM-Loeb. 30 CIAM 7, Report & Discussion on Committee III, 1–2, CIAM-Loeb. 31 Against any possible CIAM or Modern Movement orthodoxy, the first paragraph was about history: “The teaching of History of Architecture must be freed from its isolation and be shown to be the functional expression of the general history of mankind. The students will then understand that architecture is the most faithful witness to contemporary social, cultural, economic, and political conceptions, past and present. The students will acquire pride in their own period and will disdain imitating others. The students must receive a liberal education in the humanities before they can be expected to harmonize the various branches of their studies and resolve them into architecture.” Ibid., 3. 32 Ibid., 4. 33 Ibid., 5. 34 Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, José Luis Sert, and Ernesto N. Rogers, eds., The Heart of the City (London: Lund Humphries, 1952). The book boasted, on the back cover, in the publisher’s language, “contributions by world authorities,” such as Corbu, Gropius, Sert, Giedion, Jaap Bakema, Maxwell Fry, Richard Neutra, and Rogers. For a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of CIAM 8, see Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi, The Heart of the City. Legacy and Complexity of a Modern Design Idea, foreword by Tom Avermaete and Paola Viganò, afterword by Vittorio Gregotti (London and New York: Routledge, 2018).

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35 For a discussion of the CIAM Summer School in Venice, see Leonardo Zuccaro Marchi, “CIAM Summer School in Venice: The Heart of the City as Continuity,” in The Heart of the City, 98–148. 36 Giovanni Durbiano, I Nuovi Maestri. Architetti tra politica e cultura nel dopoguerra (Venice: Marsilio, 2000), 27. 37 Francesco Tentori, “Dall’officina di ‘Quadrante’,” in Marina Montuori, ed. Lezioni di progettazione: 10 maestri dell’architettura italiana (Milan: Electa, 1988), 225–31 (226). 38 Mumford, The CIAM, 222. 39 Circular letter, signed by Corbu, Giedion, and Tyrwhitt, 14 May 1952, as quoted by Mumford, The CIAM, 218, 328n79. 40 The “core group” of Team 10, officially formed in 1954 and whose membership was, on ideological grounds, kept loose and variable, is historically considered to have consisted of Jaap Bakema, Georges Candilis, Giancarlo De Carlo, Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Peter Smithson, and Shadrach Woods. 41 It was at CIAM 9 at Aix that, according to Alison Smithson, Team 10 was founded, also as a reaction to the perceived “snobbish” and patronizing attitude of the older generation, particularly of the BBPR team. Alison Smithson, “L’incidente di Otterlo,” in Quaderni, 37–38 (37). 42 Mumford, The CIAM, 247, 335n178. 43 Ibid., 258. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid., 259. 46 Ibid., 259–60. 47 Letter and Memo of the Coordinating Committee to CIAM 1959 Participants, 17 July 1959, CIAM-Loeb. 48 Ibid. 49 “CIAM: Resurrection Move Fails at Otterlo,” Architectural Review (March 1960): 78–79 (79). 50 ENR, Esperienza, 257. 51 Lodovico Belgiojoso, Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari: Laterza, 1979), 108. 52 See Orietta Lanzarini, “’Il senso della storia’: note sul pensiero teorico di Ernesto Nathan Rogers,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 103–11 (109). 53 On Costantino Nivola, see the chapter on “Cross-Disciplinarity,” with the discussion of BBPR’s Labirinto dei Ragazzi for the 1954 X Milan Triennale. Rogers’ continued admiration for Nivola is also testified by the brief but acute critical presentation that he wrote in Casabella-Continuità (post-Olivetti New York) to present the sculptor’s works, defined as “a highly significant contribution to the relationships between the plastic art and its environment”—an obvious reference to his concern for an architecture that relates to the “pre-existent environments”: ENR, “Sculture ambientate,” Casabella-Continuità 223 (January 1959): 41. 54 Domus 219 (April 1947): 59, and Domus 220 (May 1947): 47. 55 Belgiojoso, Intervista, 107. 56 See Samuel N. Behrman, “Natural,” column “The Talk of the Town,” The New Yorker (June 5, 1954): 21–22. 57 “Typewriter Palazzo in New York,” Architectural Forum (August 1954):98–103 (99). 58 Lewis Mumford, “Charivari and Confetti,” for the column “The Skyline,” The New Yorker (December 18, 1954): 114–19. 59 Project report, Bonfanti and Porta, Città, A68. 60 Enrico Peressutti, as quoted in Behrman, “Natural,” 21.

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61 Giò Ponti, “Italia a New York,” Domus 298 (September 1954): 3–10 (3). The piece is not signed but given the quality and the refinement of the criticism is most probably by Ponti himself. 62 Daniel Sherer, “BBPR on Fifth Avenue: The Olivetti Showroom in New York City,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 255–60 (260). 63 ENR, “L’unità di Adriano Olivetti,” in Editoriali, 62–77 (67); or. publ. in CasabellaContinuità 270 (December 1962). 64 Hispano-Olivetti was Olivetti’s associated company in Spain, established by Camillo Olivetti (Adriano’s father) back in 1929. 65 BBPR as quoted in Bonfanti and Porta, Città, A112. 66 Bernasconi would eventually replace Rogers as Casabella editor—Rogers finished in January 1964—starting in August 1965, a position that he retained until May 1970. 67 Adriano Olivetti, letter to Bernasconi, September 2, 1959, as quoted in Michela Rosso, “L’edificio della Hispano-Olivetti a Barcellona, frammento di un dialogo,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 271–82 (272). 68 Rosso, “L’edificio,” 272–73 and figures. 69 ENR, “Il nuovo palazzo Olivetti a Barcellona,” Notizie Olivetti 85 (December 1965): 50–52 (50) – capital letter is Rogers’. 70 Ibid., 52. 71 Ibid. 72 Rosso, “L’edificio,” 280–81 and figures. 73 ENR, “Il nuovo palazzo,” 50. 74 Ibid., 52. 75 Bonfanti and Porta, Città, A113. 76 ENR as quoted in Rosso, “L’edificio,” 278. 77 Gillo Dorfles, “Fare architettura,” in Quaderni, 58–59 (59). 78 ENR, “Classicità di Mies van der Rohe,” Casabella-Continuità 228 (June 1959): 5. The admiration was reciprocal: Rogers’ brief comment was capped by a photo of Mies with his dedication “to Casabella, MvdR, March 31, 1959.” And that one was not a “routine issue” for Casabella-Continuità and Rogers, as it was opened by Rogers’ famous rebuttal of Reyner Banham’s critique: “L’evoluzione dell’architettura. Risposta al custode dei frigidaires” (The evolution of architecture. Response to the custodian of refrigerators) – see on this debate the following chapter on “History.” 79 ENR, Esperienza, 267. 80 Vittorio Gregotti, “In Our Skies Devoid of Ideas,” Casabella 630–631 (JanuaryFebruary 1996): 3–11 (11) – trans. Steve Piccolo. 81 ENR, “Continuità,” in Casabella-Continuità 199 (December 1953/January 1954): 2–3 (3). 82 ENR, “Polemica,” 116. 83 Enzo Paci, as quoted by Michela Beatrice Ferri, “Ernesto Nathan Rogers ed Enzo Paci,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 151. The quote is from Enzo Paci, “Processo, relazione e architettura,” in Rivista di Estetica 1 (1956): 51–68. 84 ENR, “Il fattore economico nell’architettura,” in Serena Maffioletti, ed., Il pentagramma di Rogers: lezioni universitarie di Ernesto N. Rogers (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2009), 68–74 (69). 85 Guido Canella, “Lontani da dove?,” in Quaderni, 101–04 (104). 86 Kenneth Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance.” In The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays in Post-Modern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle WA, USA: Bay Press, 1983), 16–30. 87 ENR, “Le responsabilità verso la tradizione,” in Esperienza, 267–79 (277).

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Chapter 6 1 The Littoriali di Architettura were design competitions as part of a larger initiative by the fascist regime called “Littoriali” (games of the littori), in the sporting, cultural, and artistic fields, open to university students. The terms littoriale (“of the littore”) and littore were part of the fascist rhetoric echoing Ancient Roman traditions, when the lictores were sort of personal bodyguards of public figures, such as kings, emperors, dictators, consuls, judges. They used to be armed with bundles (fasci) of wooden rods, tied together by leather belts, with an ax in between: they became the symbol/logo of fascism. Besides the BBPR in architecture—as well as Cesare Cattaneo and Bruno Zevi—participants in the Littoriali included individuals who later became important figures in Italian culture, such as politicians Luigi Preti and Aldo Moro, philosophers Rosario Assunto and Enzo Paci—who later became a close friend of Rogers’—economists Franco Modigliani (1985 Nobel Prize) and Paolo Sylos Labini, writers Giorgio Bassani, Alfonso Gatto, and Franco Fortini, movie director Michelangelo Antonioni, critic and academician Carlo Bo, writer/poet/movie director Pierpaolo Pasolini, and painter Renato Guttuso. 2 For example, at the time of the first Littoriali dell’Architettura, Pagano had already built, with his partner Gino Levi-Montalcini, the seminal modern building of Palazzo Gualino in Turin (1928–29) and was about to start his editorship of Casabella in January 1933. 3 Fifty titles were announced, but only twenty were actually published. 4 As mentioned in the chapter on “Social Engagement,” De Carlo had already published in Rogers’ Domus an article on William Morris: see Giancarlo De Carlo, “William Morris, pioniere dell’arte sociale,” Domus 211 (July 1946): 18–21. 5 Other volumes were on more contemporary figures, such as Gunnar Asplund and Richard Neutra—both by Bruno Zevi, 1947 and 1954 respectively—Giuseppe Terragni—1947, by Mario Labò—and Pier Luigi Nervi—1955, by art historian Giulio Carlo Argan. 6 Fiorella Vanini, “La collana ‘Architetti del Movimento Moderno e l’anomalia’ italiana (1947–1959),” in Chiara Baglione, ed. Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909–1969 (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2012), 91–102 (96–97). 7 The booklets were edited by the publisher Il Balcone, which in Italian means “the balcony,” hence their nickname as balconcini (little balconies). 8 Luca Molinari, “Continuità: A Response to Identity Crises. Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Italian Architectural Culture after 1945,” PhD dissertation, TU Delft (Delft, The Netherlands, 2008), 194–95. Here Molinari refers to: Gustav Adolf Platz, Die Baukunst der neusten Zeit (Berlin: Propyläen Verlag with Bauwelt, 1927), HenryRussell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, The International Style. Architecture since 1922 (New York: MoMA, 1932), Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of the Modern Movement from William Morris to Walter Gropius (London: Faber & Faber, 1936): all found in BBPR’s library (ibid. 195n53). 9 ENR, Auguste Perret (Milan: Il Balcone, 1955): 18. 10 Ibid., 20–21. 11 Ibid., 44. 12 Ibid., 46. 13 ENR, “Polemica,” in Esperienza dell’architettura, ed. Luca Molinari (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 115–20 (119); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958). 14 Casabella-Continuità 205 (April/May 1955). 15 Casabella-Continuità 207 (September/October 1955). NOTES

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16 ENR, “Problematica di Mies van der Rohe,” in Esperienza, 120–25 (123). 17 Ibid. 18 ENR, “L’ultimo incontro con Frank Lloyd Wright,” in Editoriali, 8–15 (14); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 227 (May 1959). 19 ENR, “Attualità di Adolf Loos,” in Editoriali di architettura. ed. Gabriella Lo Ricco and Mario Viganò, foreword by Angelo Torricelli, introduction by Silvia Micheli (Rovereto, It.: Zandonai, 2009), 59–61 (59); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1968); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità (November 1959). 20 Ibid., 61. 21 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture. The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge MA, USA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 227; or. ed. (Cambridge MA, USA: 1941). 22 ENR, “Henry van de Velde o dell’evoluzione,” in Editoriali, 16–35 (21); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 237 (March 1960). 23 Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture, Part IV: “The Demand for Morality in Architecture,” 225–67, where Giedion identified Van de Velde, Victor Horta, Hendrik P. Berlage, Otto Wagner, Auguste Perret, and Tony Garnier as the precursors of the “new tradition” and advocates for a coherence between new principles and practice— hence the moral stance. 24 ENR, “Henry van de Velde,” 20. 25 Ibid., 28. 26 Ibid. 27 ENR, “Behrens, architetto tedesco,” in Editoriali, 54–57 (56); or. publ. in CasabellaContinuità 240 (June 1960). 28 ENR, “Gropius e il senso della storia,” in Editoriali, 36–41 (40); or. publ. in CasabellaContinuità 271 (January 1963). 29 ENR, “L’insegnamento di Gropius,” in Esperienza, 134–42 (134); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 205 (April/May 1955). 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Luciano Semerani, conversation with the author, Trieste (Italy), June 5, 2019. Semerani worked for BBPR from August 1956 to December 1964. 33 Marco Frascari, conversation with the author, at a symposium held at the Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, Alexandria VA (USA), May 1999. The point is also made by Joseph Rykwert, although with less emphasis, in his “Introduction” to Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 1988), ix–xxi (x). 34 Giulio Carlo Argan, “Gropius e la metodologia,” in Progetto e destino (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1965): 281–93 (283–84); or. publ., 1949. 35 Walter Gropius, note to the editorial team, Casabella-Continuità 199 (December 1953–January 1954): translations 1 - or. text in English. 36 ENR, “L’insegnamento,” 141–42. 37 Guido Canella, “Per Ernesto Nathan Rogers,” in Marina Montuori, ed. Lezioni di progettazione: 10 maestri dell’architettura italiana (Milan: Electa, 1988), 237. Canella worked with Rogers as a member of the Centro Studi at Casabella-Continuità (July 1962–January 1965) and as his assistant at the Politecnico from 1962 till 1969. 38 ENR, “Il metodo di Le Corbusier e la forma nella ‘Chapelle de Ronchamp’,” Casabella-Continuità 207 (September–October 1955): 2–6. In addition to Rogers’ particularly lengthy editorial—more of an essay—the issue included a note by Corbu and an extraordinarily extensive coverage of the project, with original drawings, for 196

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twenty-seven pages. Rogers continued to defend the project for a year, until issue 211 (June–July 1956), against the criticism of colleagues, critics, and even priests, including a lively polemic against critic Giulio Carlo Argan, dear friend, common admirer of Gropius, and close collaborator, who would later join the magazine’s advisory committee from issue 215 (April–May 1957). 39 ENR, Le Corbusier tra noi, eds. Vanni Scheiwiller and Piero Draghi (Milan: All’insegna del Pesce d’Oro coop., 1966). Excerpts from Rogers’ text, from the commemorative speech on Le Corbusier, delivered at the Politecnico in Milan on May 26, 1966, are in Marco Bovati and Martina Landsberger, eds., Le Corbusier tra noi. Le Corbusier, Milan and the architectural debate 1934–1966, exhibition catalog (Soveria Mannelli, Catanzaro, It.: Rubbettino, 2015). 40 ENR, Le Corbusier, 9; from now on, references will be made to the 1966 original edition. 41 Ibid., 10. 42 Ibid., 10–11. 43 Ibid., 13. 44 Ibid., 16. 45 Ibid., 25. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., 28. The metaphor of the “pentagram” also inspired the appropriate title chosen by Serena Maffioletti for her precious curatorial work of compiling Rogers’ lectures in Serena Maffioletti, ed., Il pentagramma di Rogers: lezioni universitarie di Ernesto N. Rogers (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2009). 48 ENR, Le Corbusier, 33. 49 ENR, “Appunti per la prolusione al corso,” notes for his inaugural lecture for the course of History of Art and History and Styles of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, a.a. 1964–65, in Maffioletti, Il pentagramma, 213–19 (219). 50 ENR, Il senso della storia/The Sense of History, with an essay by Luciano Semerani (Milan: UNICOPLI, 1999): 65; trans. Christine Johnson Rusignuolo. 51 ENR, Auguste Perret, 34. 52 ENR, “Appunti,” 213–14. 53 Canella, “Per Ernesto,” 237. 54 T. S. Eliot, “Notes Towards the Definitions of Culture,” in Selected Prose (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1958): 24n), as quoted by Rogers in Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico, ed. Cesare de Seta (Milan: Christian Marinotti Edizioni, 2006), 82; or. ed. (Bari, It.: Laterza 1961); 2nd ed., ed. Cesare de Seta (Naples, It.: Guida, 1981). 55 Walter Gropius, “Encounters – Peter Behrens,” in Apollo in the Democracy: The Cultural Obligation of the Architect (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 165–66. 56 Belgiojoso, Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari, It.: Laterza, 1979), 105–06. 57 ENR, “Elogio dell’architettura,” in Editoriali, 283–89 (283–84); or. publ. in CasabellaContinuità 287 (May 1964). 58 ENR, “Problemi di una scuola di architettura,” in Esperienza, 47–52 (51). 59 Tomás Maldonado, Il futuro della modernità (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1987), 180. In that book, Maldonado argued that the dawn of modernity unfolded around the tenth and the eleventh centuries, when the Latin terms modernus— “of the present,” from modo, Latin for “now”—and modernitas started to be more frequently used in cultural discourse. 60 ENR, “Continuità,” in Esperienza, 92–95 (93); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 199 (December 1953–January 1954). NOTES

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61 Henri Focillon, The Life of Forms in Art,2nd Engl. ed. with a revised translation by Charles Beecher Hogan and George Kubler (New York: George Wittenborn, 1948), 51; or. Engl. ed. (New Haven CT, USA: Yale University Press, 1942); or. ed. (Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux, 1934). From now on, references will be made to the 1948 edition. 62 Ibid., 52.

Chapter 7 1 ENR, “Le pre-esistenze ambientali e i temi pratici contemporanei,” in Esperienza dell’architettura. Edited by Luca Molinari. (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 279–86; or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958); Engl. trans. “Preexisting Conditions and Issues of Contemporary Building Practice,” trans. Rebecca Williamson, in Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture culture 1943–1968: A Documentary Anthology (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 201–04 (203) – trans. Rebecca Williamson. 2 David Rifkind, The Battle for Modernism. Quadrante and the Politicization of Architectural Discourse in Fascist Italy (Venice, It.: Marsilio, 2012), 24. As mentioned in the chapter on “Teamwork,” the members of the Gruppo 7—formed in 1926— were Luigi Figini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco, Gino Pollini, Carlo Enrico Rava, Giuseppe Terragni, and Ubaldo Castagnoli, replaced after a few months by Adalberto Libera. 3 Lodovico Belgiojoso, Intervista sul mestiere di architetto, ed. Cesare De Seta (Bari, It.: Laterza, 1979), 5. 4 Dennis Doordan, Building Modern Italy: Italian Architecture 1914–36 (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1988), 47. 5 See Giovanni Michelucci, “Contatti fra architetture antiche e moderne,” Domus (February 1932): 70–71, and (March 1932): 134–35, and “Fonti della moderna architettura italiana,” Domus (August 1932): 460–61. 6 Richard Etlin, Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890–1940 (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 1991), 301–07. 7 Giuseppe Pagano and Guarniero Daniel, preface in Architettura rurale italiana (Milan: Hoepli, 1936), 6. For a comprehensive discussion of the topic, see Michelangelo Sabatino, Pride in Modesty. Modernist Architecture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010). 8 Enrico Galassi (1907–1980) was a prolific artist—painter, mosaics master, architect, poet, and writer—highly esteemed by his dear friend Alberto Savinio, notable Italian writer and painter—brother of the more famous Novecento painter Giorgio de Chirico—who called Galassi “a very ingenious architect” and “a Leonardian man.” Among other projects, Galassi, a self-educated architect, designed Savinio’s house. In the 1930s, Galassi frequented, and exhibited at, the Galleria del Milione in Milan and was part of Pier Maria Bardi’s circle, where most likely he came to know the BBPR team. 9 Enrico Peressutti, “Architettura mediterranea,” in Quadrante 21 (1935): 40–41 (40). 10 Enrico Peressutti, photo in Quadrante 22 (1935): 25. 11 “[In that book] a few selected buildings were presented in relationship with the cultures with which they established a dialog… Tradition started to be a subject of reflection; it was a matter of not making it return within the ambit of a new eclecticism (as, unfortunately, it did happen soon after), but to absorb it instead as a stimulus for the opening up of the Modern Movement towards territories that it had not yet explored.” De Carlo, “Una scelta di campo,” in Matilde Baffa, 198

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Corinna Morandi, Sara Protasoni, and Augusto Rossari, Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura (Rome-Bari, It.: Laterza, 1995), 7–14 (11–12). 12 See Luca Molinari, “Tra continuità e crisi,” in Giannetti and Molinari, Giannetti, Anna and Luca Molinari, ed. Continuità e crisi: Ernesto Nathan Rogers e la cultura architettonica italiana del secondo dopoguerra (Florence, It.: Alinea, 2010), 23–32 (27). 13 Alfred Roth, The New Architecture (Zurich: Les Editions d’Architecture, 1947), 8; or. ed., 1940. 14 Ibid., 7. 15 Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture. The Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge MA, USA: 1949), 5, 7; or. ed., Cambridge MA, USA: 1949. 16 BBPR, Stile, supplement for Domus 108 (1936), introduction. 17 “[The exhibition] re-evaluated the values of tradition, not in the sense of form, but in the sense of inter-dependence among customs, environmental and climatic conditions, construction techniques, distributive solutions, and architectural forms.” Franca Helg, “Introduzione all’attività dello studio BBPR ed evoluzione del linguaggio nel restauro dell’ambiente urbano,” in Antonio Piva, ed., Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti e Rogers: lo studio BBPR a Milano. L’impegno permanente (Milan: Electa, 1982), 12–17 (14). 18 Casabella-Continuità 206 (July–August 1955): 45–52. 19 ENR, “Le responsabilità verso la tradizione,” in Esperienza, 267–79; or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 202 (August-September 1954). 20 Ibid., 267. 21 Ibid., 272. 22 ENR, “Tradition and the Present,” in Serena Maffioletti, ed., BBPR. Architecture 1932–87, catalog of the exhibition held at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, in March 1988, organized by BBPR, Alessandra Latour and Maffioletti (New York: Italian Cultural Institute, 1988), section “1945–70,” pages not numbered. 23 ENR, “Le preesitenze ambientali,” in Esperienza, 279–86 (284); or. publ. in CasabellaContinuità 204 (February–March 1955). 24 Focillon, The Life, 59–60. 25 ENR, “Verifica culturale dell’azione urbanistica,” in Esperienza, 291–93 (292). 26 Lodovico Belgiojoso, “Intervista all’architetto Belgiojoso,” in Leonardo Fiori and Massimo Prizzon, BBPR. La Torre Velasca (Miian: Editrice Abitare Segesta, 1982), 19–30 (26)—trans. Angela Martelli and Michael Langley. 27 These and other technical data about the tower are derived from the Project Technical Report by engineer Antonio Cecchi, presented at the Collegio degli Ingengneri in Milan, May 15, 1957; publ. in Casabella-Continuità 232 (October 1959): 6–8. 28 Arturo Danusso (1880–1968), soon after graduation (1902) from the Politecnico in Turin, joined the Porcheddu company, licensee in Italy of the Hennebique patent for reinforced concrete. Among his notable works are the Ponte del Risorgimento in Rome (1911), the consultancy for the reconstruction of the San Marco Campanile in Venice—1912, after its collapse in 1902—and other consultancies on major historic monuments such as the Tower of Pisa, the Mole in Turin, the Duomo in Milan. He also collaborated with Gio Ponti for the Grattacileo Pirelli in Milan (1956–60). He taught structures at the Politecnico in Milan from 1915 until 1950, where he directed the Materials Testing Laboratory, held major research appointments with the CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), and served as President of the ISMES, founded in 1951, “the world’s largest laboratory for model-based study of structural performance,” according to Raffaella Neri. See Raffella Neri, “The Forms of Reinforced Concrete Construction: The Velasca Tower, Milan 1950–1958,” in Tomasz NOTES

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Kozłowski, ed., Defining the Architectural Space. Transmutations of Concrete (Cracow, Pol.: Cracow University of Technology, 2017), 93–102 (98). 29 Belgiojoso, “Intervista all’architetto Belgiojoso,” 28. 30 Ibid. 31 Neri, “The Forms,” 99. 32 Ibid. 33 Belgiojoso, “Intervista all’architetto Belgiojoso,” 30. 34 Gerhard Kallmann (1915–2012), “Modern Tower in Old Milan,” Architectural Forum 108 (February 1958): 108–11 (109). At that time, Kallmann, of German origin and immigrated to the USA in 1948, was Assistant Professor at Columbia University. In 1962, with Columbia graduate student Michael McKinnell, he won the design competition for the new Boston City Hall. To better follow up on the project, the same year he and McKinnell moved to Boston to start the firm Kallmann, McKinnell & Knowles. The Boston City Hall became one of the icons of late-Modern architecture. 35 Ibid. 36 Giuseppe Samonà, “Il grattacielo più discusso d’Europa,” L’architettura. Cronache e storia anno IV, no. 10 (February 1959): 659–61. 37 Ibid., 659. 38 Ibid. 39 The so-called “Filarete Tower” is the central tower at the main entrance of the Sforza Castle. The present tower is a carefully and philologically conducted reconstruction, authored by Luca Beltrami (1854–1933) in 1905, who supervised the restoration of the castle from 1893. The original tower, built in 1452 by Tuscan architect, artist, and theorist Pietro Averlino, also known as “Filarete” (c. 1400–1469), had collapsed in 1521 due to a gunpowder explosion. 40 Manfredo Tafuri, History of Italian Architecture, 1944–1985, trans. Jessica Levine (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 1989), 54; or. ed., Storia dell’architettura italiana, 1944–1945 (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1982). 41 Ibid. 42 I differ here from a surprisingly benevolent judgment by Tafuri, who called the Bottega a “well-calibrated synthesis of compositional savvy and allusive language.” See Tafuri, History, 54. 43 Alexandre Persitz, “Casabella … casus belli?,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 77 (May 1958): xxxiii. On the whole story of the Italian Pavilion at the Expo Fair in Brussels, see Rika Devos, “All too modern? The pavilions of the Federal Republic of Germany, the USA and Italy at Expo 58,” paper presented at the 61st annual meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians (Cincinnati OH, USA: April 2008). 44 Enrico Bordogna, La Torre Velasca dei BBPR a Milano, simbolo e monumento dell’architettura italiana del dopoguerra (Naples, It.: CLEAN, 2017), 50. 45 Reyner Banham, “Neoliberty. The Italian Retreat from Modern Architecture,” The Architectural Review XXV, no. 747 (April 1959): 231–232. 46 Ibid., 231. 47 Ibid., 232. 48 Ibid., 235. 49 Ibid. 50 Franco Purini, commemorating Guido Canella at a symposium at the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca, Rome, May 31, 2016. Purini prefaced his insightful reflections on Canella—one of Rogers’ closest collaborators at Casabella-Continuità and at the Politecnico—with introductory remarks about Rogers’ legacy treasured by his disciples, who took paths completely different from one another. Yet, Purini acutely summarized three of Rogers’ ideas that were passed onto the next generation, who 200

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leveraged them to develop different poetics—Purini used the poetic image of a ray of light that gets diffracted through a prism: an organic relationship between city and architecture, the balance between tradition and innovation, and the necessity of contextualization. 51 ENR, “L’evoluzione dell’architettura. Risposta al custode dei frigidaires” CasabellaContinuità 228 (June 1959): 2–4; publ. as “The Evolution of Architecture: Reply to the Custodian of Frigidaires,” trans. Rebecca Williamson in Joan Ockman, ed., Architecture Culture 1943–1968: A Documentary Anthology (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 301-07—from now on, references will be made to Williamson’s translation, although we differ from Williamson on keeping the original term “Frigidaires” by translating it with “refrigerators,” as such was the meaning - of a generic domestic appliance, not of the particular brand Frigidaire - intended, with not so hidden sarcasm, by Rogers. 52 Ibid., 304. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid., 306. 55 Ibid. 56 Newman, Oscar, ed., CIAM ’59 in Otterlo (Stuttgart, Ger.: Krämer, 1961), 95. 57 Ibid. 58 Alison Smithson, “L’incidente di Otterlo,” in Quaderni, 37–38 (38). In that recollection, even decades after the Otterlo meeting, Alison Smithson lamented that her remark did not make the proceedings book—by Oscar Newman—nor the transcripts of the tape recordings, but proudly noted that it had entered anyway into “the Team 10 mythology.” She added that she did not regret anything from her “fit of anger against poor uncle Ernesto.” (Ibid.) 59 “Neoliberty: The Debate,” The Architectual Review 126, no. 754 (December 1959): 341–44. 60 Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, ibid., 341–42. On Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, see the recent and excellent monograph (published in this series “Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture”) by Hilde Heynen, Sibyl Moholy-Nagy. Architecture, Modernism and Its Discontents (London: Bloomsbury, 2019). 61 Reyner Banham, “Neoliberty: The Debate,” 342. 62 Bruno Zevi, ibid., 343. 63 Belgiojoso, Peressutti and Rogers, “Chiarimento,” Casabella-Continuità 232 (October 1959), 5–6 (5). 64 Ibid., 6. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid. 67 Manfredo Tafuri, “Rogers, Ernesto Nathan,” entry in Enciclopedia Italiana – III Appendice (Rome: Treccani, 1961). 68 Pier Luigi Magistretti (1891–1945) belonged to the Milanese Novecento movement, whose major exponent was Giovanni Muzio, with whom, Magistretti, Piero Portaluppi and Enrico Griffini worked at the important Palazzo dell’Arengario (1936–56) on Piazza Duomo in Milan. His son, Vico, who was a student of Rogers’ in Switzerland, became a renowned architect and, especially, an accomplished industrial designer. 69 The San Fedele Church (1959–69) was built as a Jesuit church by Pellegrino Tibaldi (1527–96), a quite well-known painter and architect of the Mannerism, who was commissioned the project by Cardinal Saint Carlo Borromeo (1538–84), a highly preeminent figure in the history and culture of Milan, and of the Catholic Church at large. Hence, also, the importance of the church. NOTES

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70 BBPR, Project Report, in Ezio Bonfanti and Marco Porta, Città, museo e architettura. Il gruppo BBPR nella cultura architettonica italiana 1932–70 (Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1973); reprint (Milan: Hoepli, 2009), A125. 71 Ibid. 72 ENR, “Memoria e invenzione nel ‘design’,” speech given at the World Design Conference, held in Tokyo in 1960, in Editoriali di architettura, eds. Gabriella Lo Ricco and Mario Viganò, foreword Angelo Torricelli, introduction Silvia Micheli (Rovereto, It.: Zandonai, 2009), 142–53 (143); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1968); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 239 (May 1960). 73 Ibid. 74 ENR, “Continuità,” in Esperienza, 92–95 (92); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 199 (December 1953–January 1954), 2–3. 75 Ibid., 94. 76 ENR, “Le pre-esitenze ambientali,” in Esperienza, 284. 77 ENR, Il senso della storia/The Sense of History, with an essay by Luciano Semerani (Milan: UNICOPLI, 1999), 66 - trans. Christine Johnson Rusignuolo. 78 ENR, Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico, ed. Cesare de Seta (Milan: Christian Marinotti Edizioni, 2006), 81; or. ed. (Bari, It.: Laterza 1961); 2nd ed., ed. Cesare de Seta (Naples, It.: Guida, 1981). For a more in-depth discussion of the notion of “memory,” see my “Memoria,” in Dizionario critico illustrato delle voci più utili all’architetto moderno, directed by Luciano Semerani (Faenza, It.: Faenza Editrice, 1993), 108–13. The chapter was a synopsis of my PhD dissertation “La composizione architettonica e la memoria,” advisor Luciano Semerani, respondent Guido Canella, IUAV, November 1987. 79 Benedetto Gravagnuolo, “Esperienza e metodo. Digressione sul lascito di Ernesto Rogers,” in Chiara Baglione, ed., Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909–1969 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 367–72 (367).

Chapter 8 1 ENR, “Discontinuità o Continuità,” in Editoriali di architettura, eds. Gabriella Lo Ricco and Mario Viganò, foreword by Angelo Torricelli, introduction by Silvia Micheli (Rovereto, It.: Zandonai, 2009), 178–81 (180–81); or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1968); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità, 294–295 (December 1964-January 1965). 2 My translation, from ENR, Esperienza dell’architettura, ed. Luca Molinari. (Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997), 168; or. ed. (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1958). The current English translation is slightly different, but especially different is the final term—“man,” instead of “men” as in Alberti’s original—even though the singular “man” is meant as “mankind,” therefore “men,” and sounds more elegant in English. However, as we point out, this was particularly important for Rogers. The current English translation of the whole paragraph reads thus: “Him I consider the architect, who by sure and wonderful reason and method, knows both how to devise through his own mind and energy, and to realize by construction, whatever can be most beautifully fitted out for the noble needs of man, by the movement of weights and the joining and massing of bodies.” Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 1988); or. ed. De re aedificatoria, written in Latin between 1443 and 1452. Printed in 1485, Alberti’s treatise preceded Vitruvius’ De architectura (30–15 BCE) printed version by one year, thus being the first printed book on architecture. 3 ENR, Esperienza, 168. 202

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4 ENR, “L’architettura e il cittadino,” typed document of a radio address, July 18, 1945, in Architettura, misura e grandezza dell’uomo. Scritti, 1930–1969, ed. Serena Maffioletti (Padua, It.: Il Poligrafo, 2010), 278–80 (279). 5 ENR, “Esperienza di un corso universitario,” in L’utopia della realtà. Un esperimento didattico sulla tipologia della scuola primaria, with texts by Guido Canella, Vittorio Gregotti et al (Bari, It.: Leonardo da Vinci Editrice, 1965), 12–23 (15). 6 Vittorio Gregotti, “BBPR 100,” in Chiara Baglione, ed., Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909–1969 (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012), 373–80 (379–80). 7 Raffaella Neri, “Architettura come impegno civile,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 329–36 (331). 8 Patetta, “Alcune riflessioni su Ernesto Nathan Rogers,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 392–97 (395). For Persico’s text, transcript of a speech given in Turin, at the Istituto Pro Coltura Femminile, on January 21, 1935, see Edoardo Persico, “Prophecy of Architecture,” trans. Diane Ghirardo Archetype 1, no. 1 (Spring 1979): 26–19; or. publ. as “Profezia dell’architettura,” Casabella 102–103 (June–July 1936): 2–5. 9 ENR, “Professionisti o mestieranti nelle nostre scuole di architettura,” in Editoriali, 243–47 (245); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 234 (December 1959). 10 Rogers was terminated as editor of Domus after only two years of publication and nineteen issues—only seven issues in his second year—due to financial difficulties. In spite of its superb quality by any standard, and a declared will of a broad outreach, Rogers’ Domus remained still only a product for the elite—“aristocratic” in Manfredo Tafuri’s words—and was not able to achieve high levels of sales. In 1946 Rogers was chosen over Ponti as editor of Domus—which Ponti had launched in 1928 and directed until 1940—when it resumed publication after the interruption in 1944, due to Ponti’s ambiguous relationship with fascism—see Luca Molinari, “Continuità: A Response to Identity Crises. Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Italian Architectural Culture after 1945.” PhD dissertation. TU Delft, Delft, The Netherlands, 2008, 139. In 1948, Ponti accepted publisher Gianni Mazzocchi’s invitation to return to Domus after Rogers’ firing, “on condition that Rogers, while losing Domus, may re-launch Casabella”—Mazzocchi owned both magazines. See Luigi Spinelli, “La ‘Domus’ di Rogers (1946–47),” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 71–78 (78n9). Rogers never forgot Ponti’s gesture. In 1955, he resigned from the MSA—which he held in high regard and co-founded in 1946—because the organization would not approve Ponti’s membership, perhaps due to cultural and political differences—see Matilde Baffa, Corinna Morandi, Sara Protasoni, and Augusto Rossari, Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura (Rome-Bari, It.: Laterza, 1995), 254. After his retirement from Casabella, Rogers sent Ponti in 1965 a brief letter of heartfelt thanks (see Molinari, “Continuità,” 185n22). The Ponti–Rogers relationship was quite peculiar: two artists at almost opposite ends of the theoretical and artistic spectrum, but with great respect for one another. 11 ENR, “Saluto,” in Esperienza, 90–92 (91); or. publ. in Domus 223/224/225 (October– December 1947). The cicisbei were a sort of servant escorts for noble women of the eighteenth century, often officially appointed by their husbands. They were actually regarded as servants for futile purposes, and in this derogatory sense the term is here used by Rogers. 12 Vittorio Gregotti, Orientamenti nuovi nell’architettura italiana (Milan: Electa, 1969), 38. 13 ENR, “Lo Stato dell’Arte (Lettera aperta al Presidente della Repubblica Italiana),” in Esperienza, 84–88 (87); or. publ. in Domus 210 (June 1946). 14 Yet, Casabella-Continuità’s run was still quite limited, with 5,000 copies on average, of which half were for subscribers and 800 for sales abroad. In August 1965—that is the first issue, n. 296, after Rogers’ last issue in January of the same year—CasabellaNOTES

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19 20 21

22 23 24 25

26 27

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Continuità’s run was one-fourth of Domus’ run—8,000 vs 30,000 copies—and still a fraction of magazines of general interest of the same publisher, such as Quattrosoldi (finance) or Quattroruote (automotive), running 200,000 and 300,000 copies respectively. See Giovanni Durbiano, I Nuovi Maestri. Architetti tra politica e cultura nel dopoguerra (Venice, It.: Marsilio, 2000), 34 and 164n104. Gregotti, “Rogers e Casabella,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 98–100 (99). Ibid., 98. Le Temps Modernes ceased publications only in spring 2019, after the death of its editor-in-chief, movie director Claude Lanzmann—who had succeeded Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre’s successor. See poet and art critic Guido Ballo’s review of Sartre’s theatrical piece Huis Clos (No Exit, 1944) in “A porte chiuse,” Domus 208 (April 1946): 48; or poet and filmmaker Nelo Risi’s review of Sartre’s L’âge de raison (The Age of Reason, 1945) in “Sartre romanziere,” Domus 219 (1947): 38. Ezio Bonfanti and Marco Porta, Città, museo e architettura. Il gruppo BBPR nella cultura architettonica italiana 1932–70 (Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1973); reprint (Milan: Hoepli, 2009), 90. See Durbiano, I Nuovi Maestri, 186n98. See Gemma Belli, “Il ‘Mondo’ e la ricerca di moderni indirizzi per il governo della città e la tutela del territorio in Italia negli anni Cinquanta,” in Anna Giannetti and Luca Molinari, ed., Continuità e crisi: Ernesto Nathan Rogers e la cultura architettonica italiana del secondo dopoguerra (Florence, It.: Alinea, 2010), 208–16 (208). Under various editorships, ownerships and frequency—until it became a weekly supplement of Italian leading newspaper Il Corriere della Sera—Il Mondo, launched on February 19, 1949, survived until 2014. The greatest names of Italian journalism, politics, culture, and intelligentsia contributed to Il Mondo, and renowned writers such as Thomas Mann and George Orwell were among the foreign correspondents. Ibid., 213–15. Ibid., 216. ENR, letter from Trieste to the office in Milan, 31 August 1938, in Molinari, “Continuità,” 100. Correspondence with the author, May 5, 2019. Luciano Semerani, collaborator of Rogers’ at Casabella-Continuità, interned with BBPR from 1956 to 1964—until 1958 full-time, then part-time due to his duties with the magazine. He worked on the projects for Scotellaro’s tomb, then primarily for Rogers’ works in Trieste—the Piano Paesistico della Costiera Triestina, Borgo San Sergio, and Rogers’ tomb. Semerani was also involved with the editing of Esperienza, for which he suggested the title to Rogers. Luciano Semerani, “My Darling Little Ernest,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 398–400 (400). This is a transcript of the “magic formula,” as sketched by Rogers—who so called it with self-irony—signed with the post-scriptum: “con auguri per molte costruzioni”— with best wishes for many buildings. The sketch cannot be located any more, but it has been reproduced numerous times, such as in Aldo De Poli and Chiara Visentin, eds., Ernesto Nathan Rogers e la costruzione dell’architettura (Parma, It.: MUP Editore, 2009). Beyond the irony, this remains one of the most effective definitions of architecture, where Rogers, in another lightning moment of logic, has further reduced the Vitruvian triad to two elements by, rightfully so, conflating in utility both firmness and commodity. See ENR, “Il drama dell’architetto,” in Esperienza, 165–70—text of a lecture held in Lima, Peru, 1949. NOTES

29 See Marco Biraghi’s discussion of Rogers’ contribution to the notion of the architect– intellectual in his L’architetto come intellettuale (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 2019), 57–60. Biraghi reiterated his argument on this point during a presentation of his book, organized by Lina Malfona, at the Univerisità di Pisa on November 21, 2019. 30 Semerani, “My Darling,” 400. 31 The Società Anonima Tecnico Industriale Aquila was founded in Trieste in 1934, with the aim of managing a large refinery and the industrial production of oilderived products. The refinery started operations in 1937 and by 1938 had already reached a production level to warrant the establishment of a worker’s village, south of Trieste, called Aquilinia, in typical fascist style. In the postwar years the refinery grew at a more rapid pace, by becoming in 1954, thus at the time of the BBPR’s commissions—BBPR, in fact, also designed Aquila’s headquarters at Aquilinia in 1958—the second establishment of its kind in Italy. The decline of the 1960s and 1970s would bring the refinery to a closing in 1985. The complex has been subsequently reconverted for other industrial uses. 32 From the Stazione Rogers website: www.stazionerogers.eu “Today, Stazione Rogers is a center of cultural divulgation in the widest sense; it offers an exhibition and meeting space, an info point for tourists, a café and a bookshop.” 33 Ibid. 34 See Luca Molinari, “Alcune note sull’esperienza di Ernesto Nathan Rogers,” in ENR, Esperienza, 305–27 (305). 35 ENR, letter to Giulio Einaudi, June 11, 1950, BBPR Archives, as quoted in Molinari, “Alcune note,” 305. 36 Archivio RAI—formerly “Radio Audizioni Italiane,” now “Radiotelevisione Italiana”—and historical index from the Radiocorriere TV. 37 Norberto Bobbio, Politica e cultura (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1955). Norberto Bobbio (1909–2004) was a highly influential philosopher and political theorist, belonging to the area of liberal-socialism, inspired by the thought of early twentieth-century political theorists Carlo Rosselli and Piero Gobetti. Bobbio joined in 1942 the Partito d’Azione (Action Party, 1942–47), founded on the legacy of the anti-fascist and Resistance movement Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Liberty, 1929–40). Rogers was very close to the political area of the Action Party and also served as its political commissioner in Vevey, during his Swiss exile. 38 On these themes, as they relate also to the relationship between Rogers and Aldo Rossi, who was quite close to the Italian Communist Party, see Elisabetta Vasumi Roveri, “Ernesto Nathan Rogers e Aldo Rossi. La ‘lezione’ del maestro negli scritti dell’allievo: continuità e discontinuità,” in Baglione, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 162–70. 39 Bobbio, Politica e cultura, as quoted by Rogers in “Politica e architettura,” in Esperienza, 95–103 (103); or. publ. in Casabella-Continuità 208 (November/ December 1955): 1. 40 ENR, commentary (July 1956) to “Politica e architettura,” ibid., 97. 41 ENR, “Una casa a ciascuno,” in Esperienza, 71–75; or. publ. in Il Politecnico 4 (October 20, 1945). 42 Ibid., 74. 43 Ibid., 75. 44 Rogers even wrote an article on the dangers for the profession to fall prey to a sense of protagonism; see ENR, “L’architetto non e’ una prima donna,” Tempo 36 (September 1951): 13. 45 Eugenia López Reus, Ernesto Rogers y la arquitectura de la continuità (Pamplona, Sp.: EUNSA, 2002), 163. 46 See Roberta Marcaccio, “The Hero of Doubts,” AAFiles 75 (2017): 59–70. NOTES

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47 Bonfanti and Porta, Città, 209. 48 Biraghi, L’architetto come intellettuale (Turin, It.: Einaudi, 2019). 49 Biraghi, L’architetto, 189. 50 Ibid., 185. 51 Maurizio Sabini, “Wittgenstein’s Ladder. The Non-Operational Value of History in Architecture” Journal of Architectural Education 64, no. 2 (March 2011): 46–58. 52 Zygmunt Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters. On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals (Ithaca NY, USA: Cornell University Press, 1987), 2. 53 See Tomás Maldonado, Il futuro della modernità (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1987). 54 Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity: An Unfinished Project,” trans. by Nicholas Walker, in Maurizio Passerin d’Entrèves and Seyla Benhabib, eds., Habermas and the Unfinished Project of Modernity (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 1997), 38–55; or. publ., Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985. As it relates to the notion of “public sphere,” discussed in this chapter, see also by Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 1991); 1st ed., 1989; or. publ. as Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (Darmstadt and Neuwied, Ger.: Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1962). 55 Le Corbusier, letter to ENR, October 9, 1956, in ENR, Architettura, 598. Corbu wrote this letter upon receipt of an issue of Casabella-Continuità, which is probably the 1956 June–July issue no. 211, with Rogers’ editorial “L’architettura moderna dopo la generazione dei Maestri” (Modern architecture after the generation of the Masters), and letters to the editor, with Rogers’ responses, on the debate generated by the publication of Corbu’s chapel at Ronchamp the year before. Corbu complimented Rogers for his writing (“Vous écrivez et vous pensez très bien”) and concurred with Rogers’ conclusions: “Je vous donne mon parfait accord sur la conclusion de votre exposé, qui est de proclaimer que la véritable tâche des temps moderns est ancore à accomplir; qui est devant nous et non pas derrière.” 56 Biraghi, L’architetto, 191. 57 ENR, “Qualche principio per l’architetto,” Lineastruttura 1 (1966): 6. Lineastruttura was a quarterly on “architecture, design and visual arts,” published in Naples for just a couple of years. It is interesting to note how Rogers, with the humility that characterized him, and in spite of his illness that already required him to curtail his activities, did not decline the invitation to contribute, as a gesture of encouragement, to the first issue of this new, small cultural initiative. The editors recognized that and prefaced the article thus: “We thank Ernesto N. Rogers for having affectionately adhered to our initiative with this writing.” In fact, Rogers’ essay “Image. The Inalienable Architect’s Vision,” in György Kepes, ed., Sign Image Symbol (New York: George Braziller, 1966), 242–251, was also published in 1966, but almost certainly written before the article in Lineastruttura. Editoriali (1968) was technically Rogers’ last publication, but it contained writings published until 1965. 58 Ibid. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

By Ernesto Nathan Rogers (in chronological order) Ed., with Jaqueline Tyrwhitt and José Luis Sert. The Heart of the City: Towards the Humanization of Urban Life. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1979 (reprint); or. ed., London: Lund Humphries, 1952. “Sintesi di Le Corbusier.” In Le Corbusier. Catalog of the exhibition held in Como, It., Villa Comunale dell’Olmo, October 16–November 16, 1954. Como, It.: Tipografia Antonio Noseda, 1954 (pages not numbered). Auguste Perret. Milan: Il Balcone, 1955. La Chapelle de Notre Dame du Haut a Ronchamp de Le Corbusier, “Collezione Casabella– continuità.” Milan: Editoriale Domus, 1955/1956. “Personalità di Pier Luigi Nervi.” In Pier Luigi Nervi. Preface by Pier Luigi Nervi and text by Jürgen Joedicke. Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1957 (IX–XII). Esperienza dell’architettura. Edited by Luca Molinari. Milan, Geneva: Skira, 1997; or. ed., Turin: Einaudi, 1958. Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico. Edited by Cesare de Seta, Milan: Christian Marinotti Edizioni, 2006; or. ed., Bari: Laterza 1961; 2nd ed., Cesare de Seta ed., Naples, It.: Guida, 1981. L’utopia della realtà. Un esperimento didattico sulla tipologia della scuola primaria, with texts by Guido Canella, Vittorio Gregotti et al. Bari, It.: Leonardo da Vinci Editrice, 1965 (12–23). Le Corbusier tra noi. Edited by Vanni Scheiwiller and Piero Draghi. Milan: All’Insegna del Pesce d’Oro, 1966. Excerpts of Rogers’ text, from a speech on Le Corbusier delivered at the Politecnico in Milan on May 26, 1966, are in: Bovati, Marco and Martina Landsberger, eds., Le Corbusier tra noi. Le Corbusier, Milan and the architectural debate 1934–1966. Exhibition catalog, Soveria Mannelli, Catanzaro, It.: Rubbettino, 2015. Editoriali di architettura. Edited by Gabriella Lo Ricco and Mario Viganò, foreword by Angelo Torricelli, introduction by Silvia Micheli. Rovereto, It.: Zandonai, 2009; or. ed., Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1968. Il senso della storia/The Sense of History. With an essay by Luciano Semerani. Milan: UNICOPLI, 1999. Lettere di Ernesto a Ernesto e viceversa. Edited by Luca Molinari. Milan: Archinto, 2000. Architettura, misura e grandezza dell’uomo. Scritti, 1930–1969. Edited by Serena Maffioletti. Padua,: Il Poligrafo, 2010.

On or Regarding Ernesto Nathan Rogers Alberti, Leon Battista. On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge MA, USA: The MIT Press, 1988); or. ed. De re aedificatoria, written in Latin between 1443 and 1452 (Florence, It.: Niccolo’ di Lorenzo Alamanni, 1486); 1st It. ed., trans. Pietro Lauro of Siena (Venice, It.: Vincenzo Valgrisi, 1546); 1st Engl. ed., trans. James Leoni from Cosimo Bartoli’s It. translation (London, 1726). Argan, Giulio Carlo. Progetto e destino. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1965. Avon, A., “BBPR Architectural Studio” (vol. 3), and “Ernesto Nathan Rogers” (vol. 26), in The Dictionary of Art, J. Turner ed., New York 1996. Baffa, Matilde, Corinna Morandi, Sara Protasoni, and Augusto Rossari. Il Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura. Rome-Bari, It.: Laterza, 1995. BBPR. Stile. Supplement for Domus no. 108 (1936). Baglione, Chiara, ed. Ernesto Nathan Rogers, 1909–1969. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2012. Baglione, Chiara. Casabella 1928–2008. Milan: Electa 2008. Banham, Reyner. “Neoliberty. The Italian Retreat from Modern Architecture.” The Architectural Review XXV, no. 747 (April 1959): 231–32. Banham, Reyner. The New Brutalism. Ethic or Aesthetic? New York: Reinhold and Stuttgart, Germany: Karl Krämer Verlag, 1966. Baumann, Zygmunt. Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals. Ithaca NY, USA: Cornell University Press, 1987. Belgiojoso, Lodovico Barbiano di. “Problemi attuali nelle realizzazioni dell’edilizia sovvenzionata: l’esperienza di un quartiere.” Edilizia Popolare 77 (July–August 1967): 5–20. Belgiojoso, Lodovico Barbiano di. Intervista sul mestiere di architetto. Edited by Cesare De Seta. Bari, It.: Laterza, 1979. Bill, Max. “Max Bill rievoca Ernesto,” L’architettura. Cronache e storia, 205 (1972): 427. Biscaglia, Carmela. “Rogers e il monumento funebre a Scotellaro.” Oggi e domani, XXII/2/3 (1994): 11–12. Bonfanti, Ezio. “Ernesto Nathan Rogers.” Entry for Dizionario enciclopedico di architettura e urbanistica. Edited by Paolo Portoghesi. Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2006 (254–255); or. ed., Rome: Istituto Editoriale Romano, 1969. Bonfanti, Ezio, and Marco Porta. Città, museo e architettura. Il gruppo BBPR nella cultura architettonica italiana 1932–70. Florence, It.: Vallecchi, 1973; reprint: Milan: Hoepli, 2009. Bordogna, Enrico. La Torre Velasca dei BBPR a Milano, simbolo e monumento dell’architettura italiana del dopoguerra. Naples, It.: CLEAN, 2017. Bullene, Richard. “Architetto-cittadino. Ernesto Nathan Rogers.” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994. Calvesi, Maurizio, Enrico Guidoni, Simonetta Lux, eds., E 42: Utopia e Scenario Del Regime. Rome: Archivio Centrale dello Stato, 1987. Ciucci, Giorgio. Gli architetti e il fascismo. Architettura e città: 1922–1944. Turin, It.: Einaudi, 1989. Costi, Dario. La lezione del progetto: scritti intorno a Ernesto Nathan Rogers. Parma, It.: MUP Editore, 2012. De Poli, Aldo and Chiara Visentin, eds. Ernesto Nathan Rogers e la costruzione dell’architettura. Parma, It.: MUP Editore, 2009. De Seta, Cesare. “Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti and Rogers,” MacMillan Dictionary of Architects, vol. 1, New York 1982. Dewey, John. Art as Experience. London: Penguin Books, 1980; or. ed., 1934. 208

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Monographies or Magazine Special Issues L’architettura. Cronache e storia, 205 (November 1972): 422–84; with Zevi, Bruno, “The Testament of Ernesto N. Rogers,” 425; Bill, Max, “Max Bill rievoca Ernesto,” 427; Belgiojoso, Lodovico, and Peressutti, Enrico, “Ricordi e testimonianze,” 430–31; and excerpts from BBPR, Stile (1936), 443–55. Zodiac 3, 1st semester (1990). Quaderni del Dipartimento di Progettazione dell’Architettura del Politecnico di Milano 15, 1993. Rassegna di architettura e urbanistica 115 and 116 (Jan–Aug 2005). Phalaris 10 (October–November 1990).

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INDEX

Aalto, Aino 86 Aalto, Alvar 2, 28, 64, 66, 77, 86, 94, 109, 124–5 Artek 64 Abercrombie Plan of London 72 Alberti, Leon Battista 1, 8, 29, 115, 117–18, 123, 128, 155, 165, 202 n.2 Albini, Franco 19, 37–8, 71–2, 95, 130, 144 Albricci, Gianni 37–8 Aleati, Ernesto 32 Amsterdam Plan 72 Amsterdam School 62, 142 Anceschi, Luciano 71 Angkor Vat Temple 63 Annoni, Ambrogio 7 Architectural Association 54, 95, 130 Architectural Forum 100, 133 Arco della Pace (Milan) 85 Argan, Giulio Carlo 71, 112, 118 Argentina 54, 90, 130, 191 n.2 Arp, Hans 91 Art Nouveau 142 Arts & Crafts 116 Asplund, Gunnar 113 Athens Charter 32–3, 73, 177 n.10 Aulenti, Gae 62, 143 Auschwitz 159 Austria 8 Aymonino, Carlo 62, 124 Bacon, Francis 87 Baffa, Matilde 62 Bakema, Jacob (Jaap) 96–7, 144 Balzaretto, Giuseppe 55 Banfi, Antonio 70–1, 122, 124 Banfi, Gianluigi 1, 5, 7, 9, 10, 20, 32, 50, 52–4, 56, 62, 72, 166, 187 n.13, 187–8 n.16

Banfi, Julia 18, 62 Banham, Reyner 2, 141, 143–5 Bardi, Pier Maria 18, 71 Baroni, Costantino 21, 23 Baudoin, Eugène 65, 67 Bauhaus 69, 92, 116, 118, 124 Bauman, Zygmunt 168 BBPR 1–27, 32–4, 37–8, 42, 46–7, 51–6, 57–61, 71–86, 90–1, 93, 97–101, 103–8, 111–12, 114, 116, 127–8, 130–52, 159, 162, 164 Aquila gas and automotive station (Trieste) 162–3 “Architetti del Movimento Moderno” (book series) 54, 112 Arflex furniture 76 Banca Privata Italiana (Milan) 146, 148–50 Borgo San Sergio (Trieste) 37, 39–44, 46–7 Canada Pavilion (Venice) 56–8, 81 casa qualunque (any house) 56, 182 n.13 Colonia Elioterapica (Legnano, Milan) 12–14 Gratosoglio, neighborhood (Milan) 45–8, 106 Hispano-Olivetti headquarters (Barcelona) 101–6 “ideal houses” 56 INA-Casa, neighborhood (Cesate, Milan) 37, 38, 47 Italian Pavilion (Brussels World’s Fair – Expo 58) 142 Labirinto dei Ragazzi (Milan) 56, 83–6 Le Grazie, housing complex (Legnano, Milan) 32–4

Mixed-use development, corso Francia (Turin) 145–8 Monumento ai Caduti at the Cimitero Monumentale (Milan) 19, 20, 56 Monumento alla Vittoria (Milan) 20 New India Center (Mumbai) 105–8 office building, piazza Meda (Milan) 151, 152 Olivetti Furniture (Synthesis) 76–9 Olivetti Showroom (New York) 73, 97–101 Palazzo delle Poste (post office, Rome) 14–16 Palazzo del Littorio (Rome) 11, 12, 16, 51 Pavia Master Plan 32–3, 72 Piano AR (Milan) 72–3 rationalism of the 1930s 10–17 Rocco Scotellaro’s Tomb (Tricarico, Matera) 58–61 Rollier House (Milan) 73–5 Sforza Castle Museum (Milan) 19, 21–6, 130 Stile (1936) 54, 129 USA Pavilion (Milan) 80–2 Valle d’Aosta Master Plan 8–10, 72 Velasca Tower (Milan) 11, 97, 114, 130–41, 144–6, 150, 169 Behrens, Peter 62, 113, 116–17, 123 Belgiojoso, Alberico Jr. 45, 57–8, 80 Belgiojoso, Alberico Sr. 55–6, 70 Belgiojoso, Lodovico 1, 4, 5, 7, 10, 16, 25, 32, 45–7, 50–6, 70, 73, 83, 85, 90, 93, 97, 128, 132, 187–8 n.16 Feltrinelli House 55–6 Belli, Gemma 158 Beltrami, Filippo 20 Benevolo, Leonardo 158 Bergson, Henri 87 Berlin 191 n.2 Bernard of Chartres 125 Bernasconi, Gian Antonio 101–2 Bettini, Sergio 158 Biennale (Venice) 56–7, 81 Bill, Max 28, 61, 86, 91, 92, 112 Biraghi, Marco 3, 160, 167–8, 205 n.29 Birolli, Renato 71 Bobbio, Norberto 165, 205 n.37 Boito, Camillo 112 Bombelli Tiravanti, Lanfranco 182 n.10, 192 n.19 214

INDEX

Bonfanti, Ezio 2, 11, 63, 167 Bontempelli, Massimo 18, 179 n.29 Bordogna, Enrico 143 Boschetti, Andrea 188 n.19 Bottoni, Piero 10, 18, 71, 72, 93, 94 Brasilia 49, 50 Breuer, Marcel 66–7, 77 Brinkman & Van der Flugt 52 Brinkman, Michiel 52 Van der Flugt, Leendert 52 Brunelleschi, Filippo 117 Bucci, Anselmo 18 Bucci, Francesco 6 Buenos Aires 62 Bullene, Richard 90 Bureau Technique de la Reconstruction 61 Cagli, Corrado 86 Calder, Alexander 83–4, 86 Canella, Guido 62–3, 109, 123–4, 142, 196 n.37 Carrà, Carlo 54 Carrà, Massimo 54 Casabella 18, 28, 37, 62–3, 67, 71, 90, 108, 111–12 Costruzioni-Casabella 19, 72, 187 n.15 Casabella-Continuità 3–4, 21, 28, 36, 54, 61–2, 89, 90, 95, 108, 114–18, 124–5, 127, 130, 141–5, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159, 165 Centro Studi 62, 115, 185 n.39 Castagnoli, Ubaldo 51 Castiglioni, Enrico 37 Cattaneo, Carlo 158 CBD 73 Ceccarelli, Paolo 73 Cederna, Antonio 24, 25, 158 CEP Program 39, 179 n.35, 179 n.36 Cerutti, Ezio 72 Champ Universitaire Italien de Lausanne (Vevey) 61 Chandigarh, Punjab (India) 49, 50 Chessa, Paolo 61–2, 184 n.33 Chile 54 China 54 CIAM 2, 28, 54, 62, 66, 89, 91, 93–7, 112–13, 116, 145 CIAM 4 (Athens) 32, 93 CIAM 5 (Paris) 91, 93 CIAM 6 (Bridgwater, UK) 94 CIAM 7 (Bergamo, It.) 95

CIAM 8 (Hoddesdon, UK) 93, 95 CIAM 9 (Aix-en-Provence, Fr.) 96 CIAM 10 (Dubrovnik, Cr.) 96 CIAM 1959 (11, Otterlo, The Neth.) 97, 143–4 CIAM Summer School 95 CIRPAC 93–4, 96 Council Meeting (Sigtuna, Sw.) 96 Ciocca, Gaetano 32 Ciucci, Giorgio 51 Cold War 89 Colonnetti, Gustavo 61 Compasso d’Oro award 78, 188–9 n.29 Comunità 35 Concrete Art 92, 191 n.15 Corbu see Le Corbusier corporativism 9, 32 corporativist urbanism 4, 32, 177 n.8, 177 n.9, 182 n.13 Correa, Charles 108 Corrente 71 Costa, Lucio 49, 66 Cosulich, Piero 80 Critical Rationalism 3, 71 Critical Regionalism 109 Croce, Benedetto 71 Daniel, Guarniero 128 Danusso, Arturo 11, 132, 199 n.28 D’Aronco, Raimondo 112 da Silva, Minette 94 de Beauvoir, Simone 158 De Carlo, Giancarlo 2, 47, 62, 89, 92, 95, 112, 130, 144 De Grada, Raffaele 71 della Francesca, Piero 63, 64 de Mandrot, Hélèn 91 de Solà-Morales, Ignasi 17, 39 Dewey, John 63, 71, 87, 167 Art as Experience 87 Di Biagi, Paola 40 di Giorgio Martini, Francesco 60, 63–5, 183–4 n.27 Domus 18, 19, 36, 37, 47, 55, 61–3, 71, 74, 77, 91–4, 99, 100, 112, 128, 130, 157, 158, 166, 183 n.35, 203 n.10 Doordan, Dennis 128 Dorfles, Gillo 71, 86, 105 Ducal Palace (Urbino) 60 Dudok, Marinus 63, 113 Dudreville, Leonardo 71

Egypt 60 Einaudi, Giulio 164 Einfühlung 21 Eliot, Thomas Stearns 87, 123, 131 Emery, Pierre-André 96 Enlightenment 142 Ernst, Max 92 Etlin, Richard 128 EUR (Rome) 14–16 existenzminimum 35 Fabbri, Roberto 61 Fascist National Party 11 Feltrinelli, Antonio 56 Ferri, Paola 33 Fiera Letteraria 71 Figini, Luigi 10, 11, 18, 51, 128 Filarete (Antonio di Pietro Averlino, aka) 82, 133, 138, 200 n.39 First World War 70 Fischer, Jószef 94 Focillon, Henri 87, 125, 131 Vie des forms 87 Fontana, Lucio 71, 86 Frampton, Kenneth 3, 109 France 8, 46, 113, 146, 158, 191 n.2 Francini, Alberto 188 n.19 Frascari, Marco 21, 118, 196 n.33 Fratico, Luigi 61 Frette, Guido 51, 128 Freud, Sigmund 87 Gabetti, Roberto 143 Gabetti & d’Isola (Aimaro) 142 Bottega d’Erasmo 142 Galassi, Enrico 128, 198 n.8 Galileo Galilei 119, 121, 124 Galleria del Milione, Milan 32, 71, 177 n.7 Gardella, Ignazio 37, 38, 71, 72, 95, 142, 144 Gaudì, Antoni 102 Germany 8, 19, 20, 52, 92, 97 Ghiringhelli, brothers 32, 177 n.7 Ghiringhelli Giuseppe 18 Giedion, Sigfried 28, 86, 91, 93–6, 113, 115–16, 122, 129 Mechanization Takes Command 93, 192 n.19 Space, Time and Architecture 93, 113, 116, 129 Giolli, Raffaello 20, 71 INDEX

215

Giotto (di Bondone) 128 Giovannoni, Gustavo 7 Goethe, Wolfgang 87 Grassi, Giorgio 124 Grassi, Liliana 112 Gravagnuolo, Benedetto 153 Gregotti, Vittorio 2, 14, 28, 52, 62–5, 71, 83, 88, 108, 116, 124, 142, 156–7 Gregotti-Meneghetti-Stoppino 142–3 Griffini, Enrico A. 18 Gropius, Walter 2, 8, 12, 28, 49, 50, 66–7, 69–71, 86, 88, 93–6, 112, 114, 116–20, 122–3, 156, 169 Gropius & Meyer 52 The Architects Collaborative 52, 181 n.5 Grung, Geir 97 Gruppo 7 18, 51, 71, 93, 127–8 Guttuso, Renato 71 Habermas, Jürgen 2, 168, 170 Harvard University Graduate School of Design 2, 54 Haute Ecole d’Architecture (Geneva) 61 Havlicek, Josef 94 Hays, K. Michael 29 Hitchcock, Henry-Russell 108, 113 Hochschule für Gestaltung (Ulm) 92 Hoffmann, Josef 112 Horta, Victor 124 Howell, William 96 Husserl, Edmund 71, 86, 87, 158 Il Balcone 54, 112 Il Contemporaneo 143 Il Mondo 158 Il Politecnico 72, 73, 130, 157–8, 166 INA-Casa Program 39, 40, 178 n.25 Innendekoration 90 Institut de France 122 Italian Communist Party 11, 71 Italian Socialist Party 58 IUAV 54 James, William 87 Japan 191 n.2 Jobs, Steve 97 Johnson, Philip 108 Joyce, James 70 Kahn, Louis I. 124 Kallmann, Gerhard 133, 200 n.34 216

INDEX

Kidder Smith, George E. 25 Klee, Paul 87 Kunstgewerbeschule (Weimar, Ger.) 116 Labò, Giorgio 20 La Padula, Ernesto Bruno 14 L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 90, 142 Larco, Sebastiano 51 Lausanne 91 Le arti plastiche 18, 71 Le Corbusier 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, 12, 32, 33, 49, 52, 66–7, 86, 90, 93–6, 112, 114, 117, 119–24, 165, 168, 170 Chapel at Ronchamp 114, 119, 196–7 n.38 Five Points 121 Maison Domino 121 Modulor 63 Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau 121 Unité d’Habitation (Marseille) 96, 165 Léger, Fernand 84 Legnano (Milan) 33 Leonardo (da Vinci) 22, 99 Leopardi, Giacomo 87 Les Temps Modernes 158 L’Europeo 49 Levi, Carlo 58, 183 n.20 Cristo si e’ fermato a Eboli (1947) 58 Levi-Montalcini, Gino 70 Libera, Adalberto 51 Liceo Classico Giuseppe Parini 70, 186 n.3 Lima (Peru) 62 Lineastruttura 206 n.57 Lingeri, Pietro 56 Littoriali di Architettura 111, 195 n.1 London 39, 54, 72–3, 95, 130 Loos, Adolf 8, 62, 112, 115, 117, 123, 159 Lopez Reus, Eugenia 28, 166 Luckhardt brothers 52 Mackintosh, Charles R. 112, 113 Magistretti, Pier Giulio 148–9, 201 n.68 Magistretti, Vico 61, 184 n.33 Maillart, Robert 63, 65 Maldonado, Tomás 125, 168, 197 n.59 Manieri-Elia, Mario 158 Marini, Marino 71, 74 Markelius, Sven 66 MARS Group 94–5 Drew, Jane 94–5 Fry, Maxwell 94

Masieri Memorial 31 Mauthausen (Austria) 50, 54, 72 Mazzocchi, Gianni 62 Mazzocchi, Maurizio 32 Melograni, Carlo 112, 143 Melotti, Fausto 71, 74, 188 n.29 Mendelsohn, Erich 113 Metrogramma 188 n.19 Metron 54 Meyer, Adolf 52 Michelangelo (Buonarroti) 21, 23–7, 117, 119, 120, 122 Pietà Rondanini 21, 23–7, 175 n.34, 175 n.36 Michelucci, Giovanni 11, 128, 144 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig 2, 29, 63, 66, 71, 77, 105, 108, 112, 114, 117, 123–4, 136, 160 Milan 70, 89, 91, 93 Duomo 99, 131–2, 138, 141 Parco Sempione 21, 80, 82–3 Sforza Castle 82, 85, 138 MIT 54 Modern Movement 28, 50, 53, 73, 90, 97, 108, 111–14, 116–17, 124, 127, 129–30, 141, 143–5, 153, 155 Modern Project 1, 7, 28, 29, 37, 51, 69, 127, 165, 166, 169–70 Moderne Bauformen 90 Modernism 32, 93, 127, 128 modernity 2, 6, 18, 109, 116, 122, 125, 153, 168, 197 n.59 Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl 144–5, 201 n.60 Molinari, Luca 93, 113 Monestiroli, Antonio 87 Montale, Eugenio 86 Morris, William 112, 113 MSA (Movimento Studi per l’Architettura) 130 Mucchi, Gabriele 72 Mumford, Lewis 100 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, New York) 81, 108 Mussolini, Benito 14 Muzio, Giovanni 177 n.9 Mycenae (Greece) 60 National Design Institute (Mumbai) 106 neighborhood coordinated 47 organic 39, 47

Neo-Classicism 142 Neo-Liberty 3, 142–3 Neri, Raffaella 132, 156 Nervi, Pierluigi 66–7, 112, 186 n.49 Neutra, Richard 66 Nicoletti, Manfredi 112 Niemeyer, Oscar 49, 66 Nivola, Costantino 84, 86, 98–9, 189 n.34, 193 n.53 Nizzoli, Marcello 51, 71 Norberg-Schulz, Christian 131 North America 55 Norway 54 Novecento movement 14, 56, 70, 177 n.9 Ockman, Joan 37 Ojetti, Ugo 11, 12 Olivetti (company) 8, 97–9, 102 Hispano-Olivetti 101 Olivetti, Adriano 8–10, 35, 36, 58, 61, 86, 101–2, 112, 117 Olivetti, Camillo 8, 9 Ortega y Gasset, José 87 Oud, Jacobus J. P. 113 Paci, Enzo 8, 60, 70–1, 86–8, 109, 167 Pagano, Giuseppe 19, 20, 36, 70–1, 90–1, 111–12, 128, 130, 153, 159 Gualino Headquarters (Turin) 70 Palanti, Giancarlo 19 Palladio, Andrea 123, 156 Pandakovic, Darko 78 Pane, Roberto 25, 158 Pannunzio, Mario 158 Paris 2, 33, 65, 66, 91, 93, 96, 97, 120, 122–3 Patetta, Luciano 156 Peressutti, Enrico 1, 5, 7, 9, 19, 20, 32, 50, 52–4, 56, 58, 83, 85, 93–5, 100, 112, 128–9 Perret, Auguste 113, 114, 122, 124, 132 Persico, Edoardo 11, 12, 19, 51, 71, 111, 153, 156 Persico & Nizzoli 51, 71 Sala delle Medaglie d’Oro 71 Persitz, Alexandre 142 Peru 54 Pevsner, Nikolaus 112, 113 Piacentini, Marcello 14, 17 Piano di Governo del Territorio (PGT, Milan) 188 n.19 Piano Intercomunale Milanese 45, 180 n.44 INDEX

217

Piccinato, Luigi 144 Piedmont 70, 99 Plan Voisin 33 Platz, Gustav Adolf 113 Politecnico, Milan 7, 31, 54, 63, 70, 87, 109, 111, 119, 122, 124, 156 Pollini, Gino 10, 11, 18, 51, 93–4, 128 polycentric urban structure/polycentrism 73, 188 n.19 Pomodoro, Arnaldo 151 Ponti, Giò 36, 37, 71, 203 n.10 Porta, Marco 2, 11, 63, 167 Portoghesi, Paolo 143 Post-Modernism 3, 143 Princeton University 54, 56 Prix-de-Rome 65 Progress 142 Proust, Marcel 87 Pucci, Mario 72 Purini, Franco 143, 200 n.50 Putelli, Aldo 72 Quadrante 18, 32, 33, 53, 56, 63, 71, 127–9, 169 Quaroni, Ludovico 142, 158 Quartiere Tiburtino (Rome) 38, 93 Radice, Mario 18 Ragghianti, Carlo Ludovico 71, 158 RAI 165 Raineri, Giorgio 142 Rava, Carlo Enrico 51 Read, Herbert 63 Reims (Cathedral) 63 Resistenza 71 Richard, James 94 Ridolfi, Mario 128, 144 Rifkind, David 18, 93, 127, 174 n.22 Rilke, Rainer Maria 87 Rimbaud, Arthur 153 Risi, Nelo 62, 86 River Basento Valley 59 Rogers, Ernesto Nathan Architettura, misura dell’uomo 63–5, 83 “Arte e Scienza” (symposium) 88 Banham Affair, the 141–5 Centro Studi in Svizzera per la ricostruzione italiana 61 CIAM 93–7 citizenship 155–6 218

INDEX

Città Ideale (Ideal City) 64, 185–6 n.44 continuità (continuity) 90 cultural internationalism 108–9 “De Divina Proportione” (symposium) 92 Editoriali di architettura 117, 173 n.4, 206 n.57 environment see Rogers/Umwelt Esperienza dell’architettura 1, 4, 6, 17, 63, 87, 130, 139, 164, 166, 169 family’s tomb 159–62 from the city to the spoon: urbanism, interiors, industrial design 72–9 Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico 4, 87, 123 House of Man, the 35, 36, 63, 72, 165 Humanism/humanist/humanistic 36, 70, 88, 111, 122, 157 landscape and art 79–86 liberal arts 86–8 “magic formula” (of architecture) 28, 160, 204 n.27 man-citizen-architect 155, 169–70 memory and modernity 152–3 Milan’s cultural milieu 70–2 monographic studies 112–17 other teams 61–5 “pentagram,” the 121, 197 n.47 pre-existent environments 56, 128, 130, 145, 155, 158 radio talks 50, 156, 165, 203 n.4 Stazione Rogers 162–4, 205 n.32 Swiss years (exile) 28, 91–3 tendenza (trend) 18, 153 tradition 4, 109, 128, 130–1, 142, 153, 155, 158, 173 n.21 Umwelt (environment) 87, 131, 156 UNESCO teamwork see UNESCO “utopia of reality” and the public sphere 155–9, 166 vital forms 49 Rogers, Ida 159 Rogers, Romeo 70, 159 Rome 7, 10–12, 14, 17, 39, 51–2, 58, 122 Rossi, Aldo 4, 62–3, 115, 124, 131, 142–3 The Architecture of the City 4 Rosso, Michela 102 Rotary Club (Trieste) 39 Roth, Alfred 14, 28, 61, 86, 91–7, 129, 191 n.17 The New Architecture 14, 92, 129, 191 n.17, 198 n.11

Rudofsky, Bernard 86 Russia 8, 52, 90, 166 Saarinen, Eero 66 Sabatino, Michelangelo 56 Saint Augustine 136 Saint Francis 87 Samonà, Giuseppe 95, 130, 137, 144 Samuel, Godfrey 94 Santa Maria Novella (Florence) 51 Sartre, Jean-Paul 158 Sassu, Aligi 71 Schiller, Friedrich 87 Schinkel, Karl Friedrich 123 Schütte-Lihotzky, Margarete “Grete” 94 Scotellaro, Rocco 58–60 Second World War 6, 11, 23, 35–7, 54, 58, 71, 73, 89, 91, 93, 133, 143, 157–8, 165–6 Sedlmayr, Hans 142 Semerani, Giovanni 162 Semerani, Luciano 2, 26, 41, 44, 60, 63, 80, 87, 124, 160, 162–3, 204 n.25 Sert, José Luis 62, 93–6 Settimo Giorno 166 Sherer, Daniel 101 Sinisgalli, Leonardo 86 Smithsons, the 96 Smithson, Alison 144, 171 n.7, 193 n.41, 201 n.58 Smithson, Peter 2, 3, 97, 144, 171 n.7 Sołtan, Jerzy 97, 171 n.9 South America 54, 62, 94 Steiger, Rudolf 94 Steinberg, Saul 83–6, 189 n.34 Steiner, Albe 130, 158, 184–5 n.35, 188 n.29 Steiner, Lica 184–5 n.35 Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) 87 Stonorov, Oscar 94 Stoppino, Giotto 63–5, 83 stracittà 179 n.29 strapaese 38, 179 n.29 Switzerland 56, 61, 91 Syrkus, Helena 94 Taeuber-Arp, Sophie 91 Tafuri, Manfredo 142, 146 Tallone, Guido 71 Tamaro, Gigetta 44, 162–3 Tange, Kenzo 124 Team 10 96, 193 n.40, 193 n.41

Tentori, Francesco 4, 62, 95 Terragni, Giuseppe 11, 16, 17, 18, 20, 51, 56, 93, 111 Casa del Fascio (Como) 17, 93, 111 Casa Rustici (Milan) 56 The Architect’s Journal 142 The Architectural Review 142, 144 The New Yorker 100 Thomas, Alfred 91 Tibaldi, Pellegrino 151 Togliatti, Palmiro 11, 32 Trautwein, Fritz 97 Treasury of Atreus (Mycenae) 60 Tricarico (Matera) 58–60 Triennale (Milan) 10, 56, 63–4, 71, 74, 80–3, 90, 92–3, 119, 128, 130 Trieste 8, 37, 39, 40–1, 46, 70, 73, 80, 90–1, 159–62, 179 n.35, 179 n.36, 205 n.31 Turin 70 Tyrwhitt, Jaqueline 95, 96 Tzonis, Alexander 3 UIA 66 UNESCO 65 Committee for the Headquarters 67 Committee of Five (Comité des Cinq) 2, 66, 120 UNESCO Headquarters 2, 65, 67, 120, 123 Università Statale (Milan) 70, 71 University of California, Berkeley 54 University of Illinois 54 University of Michigan 54 USA 52, 90, 94, 191 n.2 USSR 89, 90, 191 n.2 Valle, Gino 95 van den Broek, Johannes H. 95–6 Van de Velde, Henry 8, 105, 112, 114–17, 123–4, 144 van Eesteren, Cornelis 94–5 van Eyck, Aldo 96 Veca, Salvatore 87 Vedova, Emilio 71 Venini (Murano glasses) 99 Veronesi, Giulia 112 Vesnin brothers 52 Vesnin, Alexander 52 Vevey 61, 91 Vittorini, Elio 72, 86, 157–8, 167 Volcker, John 97 INDEX

219

Wachsmann, Konrad 94 Whitehead, Alfred 87, 167 Whitman, Walt 4, 115 Wogenscky, André 97 World Design Conference (Tokyo) 79 Wright, Frank Lloyd 2, 31, 63, 95, 108, 112, 114–15, 117, 122–3, 176 n.2 Masieri Memorial (Venice) 31, 176 n.2

220

INDEX

Yale University 54 Zanuso, Marco 62 Zehrfuss, Bernard Henri 66–7 Zevi, Bruno 1, 54, 112, 145 Zurich 91, 93