Potential Cities
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Scott Budzynski (Savannah) Potential Cities Imagining the New Buildings and urban construction are understood in this paper as repre- sentations of the city. Their meanings, however, are often invisible, posi- ting unrealized urban visions, which are both imbedded in and which call up chains of associations expressing desires and fears. Narratives of what the city should be often contain the rejection of the existing urban situa- tion. Understanding architectural objects as potential underscores their imaginary nature. Freud, for example, uses the Roman ruins in Civiliza- tion and its Discontents (1929) as a means to imagine stages of history. Yet, mea nings of the new can also be covered over and layered. Milan is a city with fragments of the new, which once projected an ideal urban space into the future. The potentiality of Milan’s postwar urban objects is ana- lyzed in relationship to narratives of the city and insertion is framed as an imagining into the city. http://www.archimaera.de ISSN: 1865-7001 urn:nbn:de:0009-21-42533 September 2015 #6 "Einfügen" S. 37-49 “E il destino di Milano è tenace: la cit- the quarter was never fully realized. tà viene distrutta, la popolazione dis- It could best be brought into perspec- persa, viene sottomessa da invasori di tive in the associative device of cine- non eccelsa qualità. Eppure si rialza, si matic montage. In the opening of Mi- riforma, prosegue il suo filo, reprende chelangelo Antonioni’s 1961 La notte, le sue potenialità.” (Ludovio Festa and the tower’s windows appear as reflec- Carlo Tognoli)1 tive screens framing the construction of other surrounding high-rises. Pirelli Arrival in Milan Tower thus literally becomes an image of the city taking shape, a mirror for re- Leaving the Stazione centrale in Milan, flecting what Milan could become.3 the pedestrian’s view is drawn to the iconic Pirelli Tower. (fig. 1) The 127,10 It was originally planned that the Cen- meter high-rise marks out the begin- tro direzionale would relieve the histo- ning of a collection of tall modernist ric center of Milan of business activities. buildings of a commercial area cal- Both the Piano AR (Architetti Riuniti) led the Centro direzionale. Originally and the PRG (Piano regolatore gene- built for the tire manufacturer Pirelli, rale) ’53 had envisioned such a center, the tower is now the seat of the govern- but it was the latter’s design that was ment of Lombardy and its high security to be at least partially implemented.4 tract lends it an air of inapproachabili- Antonioni’s La notte portrays life in the ty. The polyhedronal slab, however, was new quarter as both a pristine realiza- meant to extoll its main architect Gio tion of new living, as well as entrapping Ponti’s conceptualization of a modern and aseptic. Moving past Pirelli Tower city. In the issue of Domus dedicated to onto via Luigi Galvani, a less perfect the inauguration of Pirelli Tower, Pon- image of the area takes shape. Ano- ti writes, “Buildings developed vertically ther impressive tower, Torre Galfa (Mel- are not at the best isolated: towns must chiorre Bega, 1956-59) could be easily grow with groups of high buildings, se- overlooked. (fig. 2, 3) Parts of it are bor- parated by green spaces and room for dered up, the dusty windowed facades traffic, but near each other, like clumps are covered with graffiti and the doors of high trees, not scattered, as up to to- chained shut. Looking closer, however, day in Milan. (The New York skyscra- the beauty of the skyscraper’s stringent pers clustered together give the city a fas- simplicity becomes evident. In contrast cinating appearance both by night and to the octagonal Pirelli Tower, the 109 by day).”2 meter Torre Galfa is a rectangular slab. And while Pirelli Tower’s glass win- Ponti makes it clear in his statement dows are more opaquely reflective, Tor- that the Pirelli Tower was not to be a re Galfa’s allow a view into the interior, singular structure, but a potentiality simultaneously condensing these with for the whole city of Milan, an inser- exterior reflections. tion of a new vision into the city. The urban ideal remained a fragment, as Empty and neglected, the tall glass mo- nolith appears as a ruin of postwar mo- dernity, a testimony to the elegance of and the belief in functionalism for a center that was never completed. Many of the buildings are run-down and ap- pear vacant. Open space was not taken into consideration in the often dense constructions and the mix between new and old appears accidental, rather than Fig. 1. Gio Ponti, with Egidio reflexive and intentional. (fig. 4) Today Dell'Orto, Antonio Fornaroli, a new generation of skyscrapers has Alberto Rosselli and Giuseppe sprung up around the quarter, many as Valtolina, Engineers: Pier Luigi part of the Expo Milano 2015, so that the Nervi and Arturo Danusso, Pirelli area has become a type of palimpsest of Tower (Sede della Regione the high-rise. Throughout, Milan con- Lombardia), 1955-60, Piazza tains layers of modernist construction Duca d'Aosta, 3, Milan, Source: attesting to contrasting narratives of https://www.flickr.com. the city. Pirelli Tower is countered by 38 the 106 meter Torre Velasca (1956-58) tative and posthumously published vo- by Studio BBPR. (fig. 5) Directly in the lume Milano: Costruzione di una città, center of town, this high-rise represents Giuseppe de Finetti, Novecento archi- a different urban vision than Ponti’s. It tect and architectural writer, situates recalls continuity with the Gothic forms the bomb destruction in Milan duri- of the historic center, particularly with ng World War II and the subsequent the cathedral, while still retaining a reconstruction in a trajectory of de- grounding in modernist principles. struction and reconstruction in which the re-entry into the city in 1167 after Besides individual buildings, it was it was destroyed by Barbarossa is cen- housing settlements, such as Quartiere tral.6 The same anxious spirit, relates de QT8, which in the history of Milanese Finetti, of old and new destruction and modernism were to be new social mo- the current – de Finetti is writing in dels for the city. Under the directorship 1945 – distraught state of the city inci- of Piero Bottoni, the quarter was to ap- tes thoughts of renewal and the search ply the lessons of Italian Rationalism for new and more wise urban norms.7 to solve the housing shortage genera- He continues that the city has been sa- ted by bomb destruction and the influx ved as something spiritual and eternal of immigrants. (fig. 6) But such semi- through those who gave their lives to autonomous settlements were also op- combat barbarism.8 portunities to re-form the city in a rati- onalist manner. Many such projects re- Although seemingly addressing the main today as fragments of the potenti- current situation and the fight against al of the new city. They may be thought Fascism, the open formulation insinu- of as insertions of potentiality into the ates a continuity in Milan of a battle city. Milan’s modernist fragments are against barbarism.9 not only functionalist constructions, they are objects for mediating an ideal The tradition of destruction and rene- of the future. wal is taken up by theater critic Eligo Possenti in 1962 in the more popularly Concurrently projecting into the fu- orientated photographic volume Addio ture, the “new” in architectural design vecchia Milano, Bunodì Milano nuova. represents a tradition, as Gio Ponti ex- Possenti emphasizes and heroicizes the plains in 1955 in calling for architects disappearance of the old and the emer- in Milan to express a continuity of the gence of new construction with phrases new in designing new houses in a new such as “The walls have disappeared to modus. As architects for centuries had let glass triumph.”10 Milan’s modern ar- developed new styles, continuing to do chitects are praised as being in a tradi- so would be, according to Ponti, to re- tion of teaching architecture at the Po- Fig. 2, 3. Melchiorre Bega, Torre turn to a true tradition.5 Traditions of litecnico infused with the principles Galfa, 1956-59, via Fara 41, the new and of re-construction have of a modern spirit that had been pre- Centro direzionale di Milano, been important in the formation of sent in Futurism and the work of An- Source: https://www.flickr.com. Milan’s urban identity. In his authori- tonio Sant’Elia.11 Yet, the old has not in 39 Fig. 4. View of Centro direzi- onale taken in 2013, Source: https://www.flickr.com. fact disappeared. While the new is do- in fact the impossibility of its realiza- minant, the author describes the old tion that makes the theme of modern city as facing the new one and the old architecture and planning in Milan of houses as being embedded into blocks interest. This paper intends to demons- of new construction.12 trate the nature of the new as an ima- ginative insertion into the built envi- Milan’s narrative of the new city invol- ronment and proposes that the poten- ves destruction and reconstruction and tial of the new manifested in moder- in the period following World War II, nist architecture is bound to memories this narrative involved an initial sense of that potential. Concrete instances of of optimism regarding the possibility the city as space for the transformati- of a more coherent urban form based on and continuation of those potenti- on principles of modernist architecture alities in Milan will be given through a as well as the associated formation of a discussion of narratives of the modern new form of living.