ORDINE DEGLI ARCHITETTI, FONDAZIONE DELL’ORDINE DEGLI ARCHITETTI, PIANIFICATORI, PAESAGGISTI E CONSERVATORI PIANIFICATORI, PAESAGGISTI E CONSERVATORI DELLA PROVINCIA DI MILANO DELLA PROVINCIA DI MILANO

/people Portraits of Milanese professionalism

The BBPR studio and Milano

Stefano Guidarini Luca Molinari Paolo Brambilla

Itineraries through Milan’s architecture Modern architecture as a description of the city “Itineraries through Milan’s architecture: Modern architecture as a description of the city” is a project of the Order of Architects Planners Landscape Architects and Conservators of the Province of Milan and its Foundation.

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Managing director: Paolo Brambilla

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Press Office: Ferdinando Crespi

“The BBPR studio and Milan” Paolo Brambilla, Stefano Guidarini, Luca Molinari

Edited by: Alessandro Sartori, Stefano Suriano, Barbara Palazzi

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BBPR e Milano 1931-1976

Stefano Guidarini Luca Molinari

BBPR studio was founded in 1932 by Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, and Ernesto Nathan Rogers. The studio was one of the first and most significant examples of an artistic and cultural partnership founded on teamwork rather than individual personalities. This form of working in agreement proved an essential cultural intuition that carried them beyond the craft dimension of a professional studio towards a conception of the architect’s work based on collegial contribution as a methodological principle. BBPR’s collaboration worked through respecting intentions and joint efforts to ensure the quality of the design with an approach defined by the team’s cohesiveness. These principles were taught to young professionals who worked with them and were publicly proclaimed. They were fond of repeating: “any design made by four people is always better than it would have been if done alone by each person... we will never reveal the individual paternity of an idea. Every idea is always our idea”. From its early years, BBPR was about unity of intent in design choices and discussion of cultural paradigms. This was so starting from their shared education at the Polytechnic of Milan, then as followers of Rationalism, through competitions in the 30s and their post-war maturation, which after a short-lived adherence to fascism, came to the painful experiences with the racial laws that Rogers suffered. Then came their membership in the “Partito d’azione”, Belgiojoso and Banfi’s dramatic deportation, and then the death of Banfi, on April 10, 1945 in the Mathausen-Gusen concentration camp. After Liberation, Belgiojoso (who survived the Mauthausen-Gusen camp), Peressutti, and Rogers (who had taken refuge in Switzerland after the armistice of September 8, 1943) decided to continue the studio’s

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN work, keeping the name BBPR. As their first act, they hired a young German architect in the name of reconciliation. After the war, the studio’s organization became a way to offer professional responses to the growing complexity of design, and take on increasingly broad, diverse themes, from interior design to town and territorial planning. It was the first time a professional Italian studio was organized following a model of work division, which had been an aspect of the English model, and is that of today’s design firms. From the start, their designs were conceived through collegial discussions, often very heated, that would lead to identifying an agreed-upon design tact. The studio had many kinds of partners, including architects and “maestri d’arte” hired to develop designs. There were surveyors and engineers in charge of exploring technical aspects and overseeing construction, as well as younger professionals (architects and surveyors) who served as draftsmen. Careers within the studio were based exclusively on merit and individual inclinations. This is part of what made the BBPR studio a standard setter in Milanese and Italian culture and a major crossroads in the careers of young, Milanese architects.

MONUMENT TO THE VICTIMS OF CONCENTRATION CAMPS (PHOTO BY BARBARA PALAZZI)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN The engagement of the studio’s individual members on many cultural fronts – participation in CIAM and the Movimento di Studi per l’Architettura (MSA), university teaching in Milan and Venice, work with the “Trienniali” starting in 1933, and the editing of “Domus” and “Casabella-Continuità” by Rogers – made it a true workshop of modernity in the 50s and 60s. It became a bridge to international discourse for the spread of Italian design culture. The studio was also a gateway for architects and intellectuals who came through Milan. Its interdisciplinary, cultural scope was also seen in frequent collaborations with other architects, as well as artists and intellectuals (such as Lucio Fontana, Max Bill, Alexander Calder, Corrado Cagli, Fausto Melotti, Saul Steinberg, Enzo Paci, Antonio Banfi, and many others). It was this orientation to team work that also brought BBPR to be one of the first in Italy, in the 30s, to work on the town and territorial planning scale, with interdisciplinary work teams. For example, there were the Master Plan of Valle d’Aosta in 1936, devised with Adriano Olivetti, Renato Zveteremich, Italo Lauro, Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini, Piero Bottoni; the Tourism Plan for the Island of Elba in 1939, which they presented as an

RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX IN VIA ALCUINO (PHOTO BY ALESSANDRO SARTORI)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN autonomous project, exhibited at the VII Milan Triennale in 1940; most significantly, the A.R. Plan, with Franco Albini, Ezio Cerutti, Ignazio Gardella, Gabriele Mucchi, Giancarlo Palanti, Mario Pucci and Aldo Putelli, started in January 1943 in the midst of bombings and submitted for the Competition for the Master Plan of Milan in 1945. In the 50s, BBPR started in-depth consideration about the renewal of modern architecture in relationship to its context, history, and tradition. From this perspective, the theory of pre- existing, environmental conditions that Rogers promulgated in “Casabella- Continuità” sought to consider design in relationship to a new concept of environment. Its goal was to represent empirically certain meaningful features of spaces in the architectural vocabulary, taking up aspects of material, color, and image. There is no doubt that the emblematic building of the outcome of this theory is the Velasca Tower, which was completed in Milan in 1958 after a design and construction process lasting almost ten years. The design and construction of Velasca, and

RENOVATION OF THE MUSEUMS OF SFORZA CASTLE (PHOTO BY ENRICO TOGNI)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN the debate that arose around it, shaped an entire generation of architects. In relationship to the curtain- wall theme, a hallmark of International Style, in the Velasca Tower, and many other of their designs, BBPR presented a concept of in-fill walls that, in the Perretian sense, are set alongside the bearing structure, leaving visible a series of opaque, pre-fabricated panels alternating with windowed panels. BBPR made their contribution to the great era of Italian museums with the restoration and exhibition design of Sforza Castle, between 1956 and 1963 with the curator of the art collections, Costantino Baroni. The design has a powerful expressive and symbolic resonance that alludes to the past through the eyes of modernity. The culmination of the exhibition is the final room, where a trajectory leads to the Pietà Rondanini, Michelangelo’s last work, surrounded by an enveloping wall of pietra serena, and resting, in 16th-century style, on a Roman-era votive stele. Here, and in their work in general, we need not bother looking for a taste for refined detail, for delicacy, harmony or lightness, like

OFFICE COMPLEX IN CORSO VITTORIO EMANUELE (PHOTO BY ALESSANDRO SARTORI)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN that found in many of Italian master architects of their generation. BBPR’s artistic approach works through a formal pursuit of gravity; in other words, they take to an extreme level the discharging of loads to the ground. They do this through an energetic oversizing of architectural structures and elements that come into physical contact with people (such as handrails, steps, handles, and parapets). At times, this “formalist hypertrophy” sometimes borders on a foreshadowing of Brutalism, and is particularly evident in their work in Milan, notably in the Velasca Tower and the ‘60s designs for Piazza Meda and Corso Vittorio Emanuele. The only, significant exception is in the lightweight, ethereal, poetic metal trellis of the Monument to the victims of concentration camps in Germany at the Monumental Cemetery in 1946. Starting in the mid-70s, the center of architectural and urban planning culture shifted towards an urban and landscape dimension and towards experiences that threw the traditional values of the architectural discipline in doubt. This came to detract from the primary role as standards setters from the master architects of the first generation of the Milanese school. After the death of Ernesto N. Rogers, in 1969, BBPR’s design work, as well as that of other leading Milanese studios, centered around individual professional works. It was in this period that we started to see a kind of datedness in an entire generation of architects in addressing the metropolitan dimension of development phenomena. Significantly, the greatest works in Milan by BBPR (as well as some of their contemporaries) were almost all in the old city. In the outlying areas, there were some clear low points, such as the Gratosoglio District, designed for the IACP of Milan between 1963 and 1967 on Via dei Missaglia. On this topic, a line of research could be explored about this generation of architects, considering this sensitive, little explored topic, comparing the part of their work that is of unquestionably high quality, seen in invaluable “inimitable fragments” set in history centers, and the part of their work that is of a considerably lesser tenor. Though less well publicized, they are still important works, precisely because they were affected by more difficult relationships with clients and a clear discomfort with the need to dialogue with a place and working conditions that had become irreparably affected by the mass construction boom.

STEFANO GUIDARINI LUCA MOLINARI

VELASCA TOWER (PHOTO BY STEFANO SURIANO)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN FONDAZIONE DELL’ORDINE DEGLI ARCHITETTI, PIANIFICATORI, PAESAGGISTI E CONSERVATORI DELLA PROVINCIA DI MILANO Bm.165 /itinerari

Monument to the victims of concentration camps / 1946 / BBPR

Cimitero Monumentale, Milano

The memorial to the victims of that protects an urn holding soil from the concentration camps was an essential concentration camp at Mauthausen. The moment in the renewal Milan’s fi gure’s regular quality is contradicted by architectural environment after the war, on the asymmetrical position of the black par with the Monument to the Martyrs of Sweden granite and Candoglia white marble Fosse Ardeatine in Rome. The structure is plaques set in the cage, bearing parts of made of welded metal tube, painted white, Jesus’s Sermon called “Discorso della forming a three-dimensional grid of 212 montagna” from the Gospel according to centimeters per side from the intersection Mathew. between the fi gures of a cube and a Latin The trellis projects over a cross-shaped cross. In its center is a glass display case base made of Moltrasio stone whose

FRONTAL VIEW OF THE MONUMENT (PHOTO BY BARBARA PALAZZI)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN Monument to the victims of concentration camps / 1946 / BBPR weightiness emphasizes the lightness of commemoration of an ideal that is still in the upper part. The theme of the three- effect, trying to establish continuity with dimensional frame is a tribute to the fi nest part of the Modern Movement’s tradition, expressions of Rationalism. In this way, that can be tied particularly to the person of the monument takes back up a discourse Edoardo Persico. tragically interrupted by the war. Some The monument we see today is have connected the wire-shaped cage to actually the third version of it, which is the Renaissance tradition, particularly to the reconstruction of the original design Piero della Francesca. It also alludes to the from 1946 that the Associazione dei Reduci Enlightenment ideals of the 30s as well as (Veteran’s Association) commissioned the “prisoner objects” artwork by Alberto to BBPR. The original work was made Giacometti and Fausto Melotti. Through very quickly. It rapidly deteriorated the tube trellis, the memorial becomes a and was replaced in 1950 with a similar construction but with different dimensions,

TOP VIEW (PHOTO BY BARBARA PALAZZI) a bronze framework, and a white marble base. But in 1955, BBPR itself already sought another renovation to return the monument to its fi rst version, after having convinced the Associazione dei Reduci that the second version was inappropriate as it was too refi ned and the materials too opulent. This project marked BBPR’s return to professional work after the forced interruption of the war. More than a declaration of architecture’s moral engagement, It is a sorrowful testament to the loss of many of their collegues, including Pagano, Beltrami, Giolli, Labò, and, above all, one of the studio’s founders, Gian Luigi Banfi .

PAOLO BRAMBILLA

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN FONDAZIONE DELL’ORDINE DEGLI ARCHITETTI, PIANIFICATORI, PAESAGGISTI E CONSERVATORI DELLA PROVINCIA DI MILANO Bm.151 /itinerari

Velasca Tower / 1951-1958 / BBPR, Arturo Danusso

piazza Velasca 5, Milano

In 1950, BBPR received the commission that the City of Milan to the Ricostruzione to design a multi-use complex with a Comparti Edilizi S.p.A. fi rm for building an large volumes layout area in several unusually tall tower in exchange for turning areas destroyed by Allied bombings. The part of the areas into public land. location was a few hundred meters from The Velasca Tower became an isolated the Cathedral, based on a carefully devised case, in contrast with the current concept functional plan to respond to regulations of skyscrapers as a repeatable type. The on state fi nancing for reconstruction. The tower’s contour rises a hundred meters, a project was made possible by a concession unique landmark on Milan’s skyline with

BOTTOM VIEW (PHOTO BY STEFANO SURIANO)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN Velasca Tower / 1951-1958 / BBPR, A. Danusso the clear intent of reconstructing the skyline The grid of the main structure, of a city that was losing all of its salient protected by a pink marble grit plaster, elements (such as bell towers, churches, and is completed by prefabricated columns, large pubic buildings) that were subsumed on which are anchored windows and by the increased average height of buildings. prefabricated panels of marble grit, and Since its fi rst sketches, BBPR delineated clinker fragments. The panels are arranged a tower with the upper part wider than irregularly, “tousles” as Paolo Portoghesi the lower one because the apartments termed them, can be considered a “more (from the 19th to 24th fl oors) require complex reworking of Italian rationalism’s more depth than the offi ces (from the 2nd dialectical between the structural cage and to 10th fl oors) and professional studios wall envelope”. In the moving from the steel with annexed apartment (from the 11th to design to the reinforced cement one, there 17th fl oors). On the 25th and 26th fl oors, was also a stylistic reversal, from a design in recessed from the tower’s projecting part full accord with the reigning International are six duplex penthouses on top of which Style to a design that Pevsner went so far are wide pitched copper roofs. The seventy- as to call “Neo Art Nouveau” that caused a two apartments on the top part have from stir at the CIAM Conference in Otterlo in two to seven rooms plus toilets, all have a 1959 because of its neo- Gothic structures, veranda or loggia and are equipped with top spires, and large pitch roof that covered built-in furnishings (closets, stoves, and the penthouse fl oor, and particularly for its appliances), following a model little used contour that suggested a medieval tower. in Italy, so that tenants needed only bring Less dramatically, the Velasca Tower can be actual portable furniture. During the initial considered a “tribute to Milan” that seeks a research, the architects envisioned a tower vibrant marriage, as Rogers wrote, “between clad with a glazed curtain wall supported local energies” and “trends that are part of by a steel structure. Based on a study by the universal heritage of ideas” to present a a specialized, New York-based fi rm, they less dogmatic view of modernity. changed to a reinforced concrete design PAOLO BRAMBILLA that reduced costs by a quarter. The cement structure, cast in situ and displaying with powerful tapered ribs that run along the façades and expand into distinctive, connecting struts on the 18th fl oor, was engineered by professor Arturo Danusso.

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Renovation of the Museums of Sforza Castle / 1956-1963 / BBPR

piazza Castello, Milano

The restoration and exhibition design the Cortile Ducale (which had already been project for the collection of the Sforza converted from a military architecture to Castle museums, with the support of Prof. a civil monument by Beltrami) and almost Costantino Baroni, is of prime importance completely rebuilding the ground floor, which in the history of Italian architecture, joining had been severely damaged in the war. In the ranks of other celebrated exhibition the first sequence of rooms, the visitor is designs by Albini and Scarpa. They all received by the large doorway of the Pusterla shared the need to bend the interior spaces dei Fabbri, a piece of the city brought indoors, of large historic buildings to fit exhibition whose focal point is the equestrian statue of needs. They also shared the desire to put into Bernabò Visconti in the second room. The effect experience gained in more innovative simplicity of the materials (iron, bronze, temporary exhibitions, breaking with the and stone) and the quite thick sections were collector, classifying approach of traditional chosen carefully to fit with the Castle’s solid museum design. BBPR worked on the Castle, architecture, without decorative whimsy, restoring its ground floor rooms around while giving extremely close attention to

THE STAIR IN SCARLIONI ROOM PIETÀ RONDANINI, MICHELANGELO’S LAST WORK (PHOTO BY ENRICO TOGNI) (PHOTO BY ENRICO TOGNI)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN Renovation of the Museums of Sforza Castle / 1956-1963 / BBPR construction details. This first series of rooms walls blocks of stone creating a section of is followed by spaces in which a variety of space on a scale befitting the size of the exhibition design inventions were used that work. The upper level (which holds the interpret the space and art works in ever antique furniture collection, picture gallery, changing ways. The small space of “Sala della and tapestry hall) has a more austere, spare Cappelletta” is divided from side to side by a style, made primarily of panel and tripod cross (almost a fragment of the grids loved by systems. After completing the first part in Rationalism) that supports a wooden Christ. 1956, the renovation work on the Castle’s In the large Sale delle Armi (Hall of Arms), museums continued through 1963 with the the armor displays become metaphysical renovation of the rooms around the Cortile mannequins that populate a Renaissance della Rocchetta. They were accused of being stage set. We can no longer see the exhibition invasive directors in the words of their design for the Sala delle Asse, which features harshest critic, Antonio Cederna. Taking up an amazing ceiling with intertwining plant what Manfredo Tafuri said, we could instead decorations by Leonardo da Vinci, where the see BBPR’s yearning to communicate as a bucolic theme was emphasized by a display way of taking on the architect’s responsibility. system of large lamps and walnut panels Aware of their role, they wanted to bring back forming a labyrinth, a popular theme in noble to life the private memory of the intellectual, gardens. At the end of the ground floor, the depositary of knowledge, in the collective climax is reached in the famed Sala degli memory. Though, over the years, the value Scarlioni which holds Michelangelo’s Pietà of BBPR’s exhibition design as a work in Rondanini. As BBPR was well-aware of the itself has been unanimously recognized, work’s extraordinary value, before they came there have been a succession of proposals for to the final design, they experimented with moving the Pietà Rondanini into a neutral different design approaches to the point of space, easily accessed by visitors. In 1999, demolishing the room’s floor to lower it by an ideas’ competition was called, won by 180 cm. The designers saw the need to build Alvaro Siza, but never implemented. In a gradual approach to Michelangelo’s work, November 2012, the City of Milan approved to which visitors would be introduced by a resolution providing for the reorganization going down a mixed-line stairway that makes of the displayed works and moving the them slow down and go around the space, piece to another space in the Castle, igniting preparing them for the ultimate viewing of impassioned debate that is still underway. the work. The sculpture is isolated from the PAOLO BRAMBILLA rest of the collection by two, semi-circular

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INA-Casa District / 1951-1958 / BBPR with F. Albini, G. Albricci, I. Gardella

Villaggio INA, Cesate

By the early 1950s, BBPR had already Families were housed in detached or had opportunities to work with residential row houses, gathered in groups of about developments in the employee housing 200 inhabitants to foster intermediate district, “Le Grazie” in Legnano (1939) communities between families and the and employee housing in Via Alcuino in neighborhood. Each group has an area Milan (1945). Compared to those projects, with facilities in its center, a “core”, as it the INA district in Cesate (a small town was termed in the project report, including fi fteen kilometers from Milan) had greater basic facilities, such as a playground, a functional and stylistic complexity. wash room, and a shared workshop. In

THE BBPR BLOCK IN CESATE DISTRICT (PHOTO BY STEFANO SURIANO)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN INA-Casa District / 1951-1958 / BBPR with F. Albini, G. Albricci, I. Gardella the center of the whole complex, near architecture and shows the effort that the train station, there are neighborhood BBPR made to contribute to modernized facilities, including a post offi ce, a school, a educational methods, particularly with its church, a restaurant, a movie theater, and use of pentagonal classrooms. The lack of a car garage. The street system follows a a dominant line of symmetry is meant to hierarchical layout as well. From the street suggest teaching methods that were less coming from Milan, a network of secondary rigid than in the past. The classrooms are streets departs and small pedestrian paths placed next to each other to form large, are connected to it leading to the individual jagged curves, arranged freely on the residential units. ground, starting from a central core for The involvement of other architects in administrative offi ces and shared facilities. addition to BBPR was born of the intent A severe reduction in the facilities provided to create as much variety as possible. and construction management being given Belgiojoso, Peressutti, and Rogers designed to a third party prevented the project from two types of row houses. One is not very being fully built. deep, with units of four rooms plus toilets The district was particularly affected with the living rooms and bedrooms facing by the failure to respect the original south, and the stairs and bathrooms facing plan, in which it covered 33 hectares, north. The other has a double structure reduced during construction to 20.5, to for apartments of fi ve rooms plus toilets, the disapproval of the architects who with an east-west orientation. Though complained of the change to the carefully- they included elements like vertical devised urban plan. Most markedly, only windows and tiled, pitched roofs, BBPR one of the three towers originally planned did not make any concessions to neo- on Enrico Castiglioni’s design was built. Realism. They reaffi rmed the continuity PAOLO BRAMBILLA of the project with work on the theme of affordable housing from previous years. The Cesate district showed they had moved beyond Rationalism’s schematic quality, particularly evident in the houses by Ignazio Gardella, where there is the most explicit reference to fi gures from the Lombard tradition. The school building may be the district’s most innovative

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CECA District / 1955-1957 / BBPR

via Catania, via Pisa, Sesto San Giovanni

CECA (European Coal and Steel was very determined to return Italy to the Community) was founded by the Paris international power establishment. CECA Treaty of 1951 to promote the free is considered a precursor to the EEC, movement of certain raw materials for founded by the Rome Treaty six years later. heavy industry in six countries (Belgium, In 1953, CECA’s High Authority founded France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and a special commission with the goal of the Netherlands) by abolishing custom planning new residential types that could fi t duties. Italy managed to become part of changed political and economic conditions, the six countries, though it was not a major and brought in Peressutti and Rogers to producer of coal or steel, through the will represent Italy. The Commission attempted of Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi, who to draft a plan of heavy prefabrication

BBPR BLOCK IN CECA DISTRCTI (PHOTO BY STEFANO SURIANO)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN CECA District / 1955-1957 / BBPR based on a list of standardized components, houses with the goal of fostering neighborly adapted to the climate of each country. relationships that were particularly Their attempts were obstructed by the important to Italians, according to the backwardness of the era’s building industry, project report. particularly in Italy. The pilot district of This district is a further exploration fi fty apartments built in Sesto San Giovanni of the row house type that Belgiojoso, (which received fi nancing from the United Peressutti, and Rogers had worked on States of a thousand dollars per apartment) in the 1950s. The buildings all have two used traditional building systems, adding above-ground fl oors; some with duplex standardized steel elements, when possible. apartments; and others with two stacked While the Commission envisioned a apartments. In the latter case, the entrance technical layout of independent houses, stairway to the upper fl oor, fl anked by the BBPR successfully insisted in grouped blind façades, becomes a compositional element that enhances the neighborhood’s

HOUSE IN CECA DISTRICT (PHOTO BY STEFANO SURIANO) design. The buildings’ unusual fl oor plan is made of two isosceles trapezoids, juxtaposed along the shorter base to form a butterfl y fi gure. It was designed to allow a great variety of combinations of base units to avoid the monotony common in row houses and create a lot of open spaces (meeting areas for the neighborhood’s dwellers) that compensate for the modesty of the construction devices used. A short while later, BBPR used the same butterfl y confi guration of apartments for the CECA district “La Loggetta” in Naples (1957) and for the IACP district “Moriggia” in Gallarate, outside of Varese.

PAOLO BRAMBILLA

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN FONDAZIONE DELL’ORDINE DEGLI ARCHITETTI, PIANIFICATORI, PAESAGGISTI E CONSERVATORI DELLA PROVINCIA DI MILANO Bm.171 /itinerari

Residential Complex / 1961-1968 / BBPR

via Ancona, via dei Chiostri, via Cavalieri del Santo Sepolcro, via Pontaccio, Milano

The residential complex includes three the internal garden. This building, which buildings. The fi rst one is on Via Solferino, is the largest and the tallest, is 11 fl oors consisting of a part on the street from 1890, high and has an elliptical indoor courtyard maintained and renovated, and a new part inside. The three buildings are visually that extends towards the cloisters of San connected from the side facing the gardens. Simpliciano. The second building has seven When they are seen from Via Cavalieri del fl oors and an entrance from Via Cavalieri Santo Sepolcro, they can be read as a single del Santo Sepolcro. The third building, complex, organized in jagged volumes made like the fi rst, has a façade on Via Pontaccio by combining a stepped confi guration with from the 18th century and extends towards highly irregular fl oor plans. The façades are

RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX VIEW FROM VIA ANCONA (PHOTO BY BARBARA PALAZZI)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN Residential Complex / 1961-1968 / BBPR closed by cement and grit panels, alternated to use this design was the restoration of with full-height wooden windows, combined Palazzo Ponti on Via Bigli (1950) where with hammered concrete stringcourse the Bramantesque cloister was freed of bands. The roofs are copper and the terrace add-ons and then expanded with three paving is terracotta. In this complex, we see additional fl oors, sloping so they are the theme of the stepped building developed invisible from the ground fl oor. A similar completely. spatial arrangement is also seen in the In a version favored by BBPR, it tends residential building on Via Vigna (1963). In to be used for the façade on the most this case, the part on the street is connected private side. The public façades maintain to the stepped building facing the garden a dialogue with the context by a façade in through the connection of the stairwell. line with the street front. The fi rst project The theme of stepped volumes returns in many other projects, each time in different, ONE OF THE COMPLEX BUILDING (PHOTO BY BARBARA PALAZZI) yet recognizable ways, including in the resi- dential buildings on Via Zezio in Como (1965) and on Corso Buenos Aires in Milan (1970); in the electrical substation for the Milan Subway in Sesto San Giovanni (1964) and in the crown in Piazza Meda (1969). It is worth note that the adjacent Cloisters of San Simpliciano were restored by BBPR in 1939, and that a wing of the cloisters then became the site of BBPR’s own studio. Since 1967, the cloisters have been the quarters of the Theological Faculty, which now also occupies the part that was BBPR’s.

PAOLO BRAMBILLA

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Chase Manhattan Bank Building / 1969 / BBPR

via Hoepli 7, Milano

For eleven years, from 1958 to 1969, of Piazza Meda hold majestic buildings BBPR worked on a reconstruction project built between 1928 and 1931, including on a lot of Piazza Meda, in Milan’s center. Palazzo Bolchini by Pier Giulio Magistretti, The detailed plan that the City adopted Palazzo Crespi by Piero Portaluppi, and the was from 1934 and stayed in effect after Banca Popolare di Milano by the architect the war. It entailed a building planned to Giovanni Greppi. BBPR, however, did not be in full keeping with the urban complex turn its attention to the 1920s façades of the of Piazza San Babila, Corso Matteotti, and buildings across from the project. Instead, Piazza Meda. The design of this part of the it took a perspective from the center of the city came out of a demolition in the historic square towards the new building. BBPR center defi ned in the Pavia Masera master felt that the trapezoidal shape planned for plan of 1910, continued under Fascism, and the building in the detailed plan of 1934 completed in the 60s. The other three sides would have gone poorly with the apse and

BOTTOM VIEW (PHOTO BY FEDERICO BALESTRINI)

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN Chase Manhattan Bank Building / 1969 / BBPR dome of San Fedele, to the extent that the an accessory beam that optically reduced plan needed to be modifi ed. They therefore its height to reestablish the correct façade sought a design that dialogues with the proportions. BBPR chose a more elaborate, volumes of the church on the right and expressive solution, with a series of connects on the left to the austere neo- polygonal portals that can be seen as a giant Rationalism of the building designed in row of Y-shaped supports, particularly at the 1955 by Figini and Pollini for the Hoepli end of the building. The pace of the pilasters publishing house. The resulting building of the nearby church becomes the geometric follows a wide curve, a massive, semi- basis for the thin, metal uprights that make cylindrical structure raised from the ground the façade’s surface dynamic. They are fi lled creating an upward shift in balance of its in with alternating pink trachyte slabs and mass, comparable to the Velasca Tower. glass panels with uprights set back from The very high arcade, required by the line of the metal structures. The façades regulations but out of scale, had been underwent a careful restoration completed resolved by Figini and Pollini next to it with in 2011. The crown (which had a lowered dome roof in an early design) is made of VIEW FROM VIA CATENA (PHOTO BY FEDERICO BALESTRINI) a recessed penthouse, screened by copper blades and covered by a pitch roof also clad in copper. Exposed, reinforced concrete stairwell towers emerge from the peak of the roof. The towers serve as a wind-brace for the steel frame structure. Interestingly, the actual connection with the main building of the church is managed by a section of the parish building that is set between the apse and the bank, designed by Luigi Caccia Dominioni in 1968. Caccia Dominioni’s true compositional virtuosity gave an interpretation which, though perhaps less didactic, is no less correct of the “preexisting environmental conditions” that Rogers envisioned.

PAOLO BRAMBILLA

THE BBPR STUDIO AND MILAN