Impressions of Milan – Principles of a Modern City
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Daniel Grünkranz Impressions of Milan – Principles of a Modern City The EXPO 2015 has shifted the attention of the global public once more to Milan, being already a world city of commerce, fashion and design. This event provides at the same time an opportunity to reflect on the modern Italian city of which Milan is an exceptional example. In the exhibition innesti- grafting at the 2014 Venice Biennale of Architecture curator Cino Zucci introduced Milan as a “laboratory of modernity” emphasizing a number of territorial transformations, which changed Milan’s urban structure over the past 100 years. Its urban mutations and architectural manifestations were generated within an experimental field constituted by multiple forces of social and political change, economic interests, and artistic movements. Today, Milan confronts its inhabitants and visitors with a variety of architectural forms. Yet, it seems that these distinct elements are not without relations to more extensive systems, which are traceable in the urban configuration. This text will sketch some of these situations detectable in the urban core of Milan. A set of forces Being an important link between Northern and Southern Europe, Milan had become the leading economic center of Italy by the end of the 19th century. At that time, a first master plan was developed to meet the problems associated with population increase, the growth of the city, and its mutation into a modern metropolis. This plan from 1884 was drafted by municipal engineer Cesare Beruto, “later reworked by a commission headed by rubber manufacturer Giovanni Battista Pirelli,” and finally “approved in 1889.”1 Substantial and prevailing principles of the plan were the concentric expansion of the city – circumscribed by a new ring road – and the insertion of straight axes into the “tangle of ancient streets” – leading to the city’s monuments. But in addition “the Pirelli Commission altered the plan […] to create greater opportunities for profit” through land speculation.2 At the beginning of the 20th century, a number of major Italian industries established new factories outside the border of the historic city whereas central Milan “became the domain of the city’s financial and commercial institutions.”3 The increasing industrialization and urbanization of Milan was accompanied by tensions within the population that erupted partly in violently led class struggles. In the turbulent rebuilding phase after the First World War, Benito Mussolini co-founded the fascist movement in Milan and led the later constituted National Fascist Party to national power in 1922. Due to its symbolic meaning for the fascist movement, the city became the iconic site of fascist rule in Italy and a center of fascist administration and propaganda activity. For 20 years the National Fascist Party was determined to impose its notion of a new order also onto the urban fabric of Milan. But despite centralizing tendencies, the authoritarian regime was still challenged by a “range of opinions and priorities” and 1 Maulsby, Lucy: Fascism, Architecture, and the Claiming of Modern Milan, 1922-1943. University of Toronto Press, 2014, pp. 18-21. 2 Ibid., p. 20. 3 Ibid., p. 23. 1 by the fact that “local narratives often took precedence over national ones,” which “affected individual architectural and urban projects”.4 Moreover, regardless their idealization of the rural community, the fascists had to deal with a solidly evolved and dynamic urban complex. Part of this dealing was Cesare Albertini’s master plan of 1934. The plan substantially reflected the political standing of the party; the close ties between the party and its supporters from the emerging middle classes and the economic elite, which feared the socialistic revolution. Albertini’s plan “helped to establish a structure of growth in which the urban core would become the exclusive domain of the middle and upper classes and the institutions they operated and patronized.”5 The plan forced “low-prestige institutions” out of the center to gain space for the implementation of the major institutions “of the modern (and capitalist) city.” Land speculation “was intended to help offset the cost inherent in [Albertini’s] proposal.” “Large mixed-used buildings – with shops and services on the ground floor and residences above (for the anticipated wealthy patrons) – and office buildings” began to dominate the renewal of the city center.6 At the same time, fascist organizations were keen to occupy prominent sites in the city, like corner blocks of intersections or plots along main arteries, in order to demonstrate their presence through architectural signs and built propaganda. Next to new monumental buildings like the Palazzo del Popolo d’Italia, which housed the political newspaper and the official party organ of the same name, it was the case del fascio – local party headquarters – that apparently embodied the presence of fascism. Serving as contact point between the population and party officials, the fascist houses were developed to feature particular typological characteristics like conspicuous towers, to underline the party’s claim to power, and well placed balconies for addressing the crowd. Since the 1930s a new building type, the high-rise building, transformed the urban life and image of Milan. It was also the high-rise buildings – the torri or grattacieli– which contributed not only to the metropolitan being of Milan but evoked notions of a futurist city. In his text Meaning and Vision in Looking to the Future: The Skyscraper in Milan Scott Budzynski explains how these vertical structures generated an imaginative space that found its expression in movies like Michelangelo Antonioni’s film La Notte from 1961. Budzynski refers further to “a type of architectural Narcissus of the modern city.” It “entails a fixation [of the high-rise city] on its own reflection” appearing in the shiny facades of its buildings.7 But the reflections in the façade of the Grattacielo Pirelli in the opening scene of Antonioni’s La Notte do not just show a modern city in its genesis. They also mirror its fractions and heterogeneities; a recurrent discontinuity between the city’s elements as between solitary architectural objects as well as between their surrounding area and intervening spaces. This is for example still sensible in Milan’s old business district Centro Direzionale, which was developed from the 1950s till the 1960s between the central station and Porta Garibaldi railway station. Here, the 4 Ibid., p. 8. 5 Ibid., p. 35. 6 Ibid., p. 35-36. 7 Budzynski, Scott: Meaning and Vision in Looking to the Future: The Skyscraper in Milan. In: STUDIO Architecture and Urbanism Magazine, Issue 3, ICON, 2012. 2 massive structure of the Torre Servizi Tecnici Comunali, built in 1966, sits surrealistically next to a rural field that separates the Centro Direzionale from the new business district Porta Nuova. Fig. 1. Torre Servizi Tecnici Comunali far opposite the Bosco Verticale by Boeri Studio and in the background the Unicredit Tower, Italy’s highest skyscraper. Sometimes a site is defined by a number of buildings, which date from different decades but which were designed by one architectural practice over time. Such a set of buildings may reflect an architectural development that adds to the characteristics of Milan. It concerns the rivalry between the Novecento movement and the architectural rationalism that occurred in the period between the two World Wars. This antagonism involved a number of the local architectural elite like Giovanni Muzio (1893-1982), Gio Ponti (1891-1979) or Guiseppe Terragni (1904-1943) and the Gruppo 7. The Novecento movement was conservative by tendency and it rejected the European architectural avant-garde. Its revolutionary paragons resided in the 19th century and it was hiding modern indicators behind classicistic inclinations or a plastic traditionalism. By contrast, the rationalists were committed to the modern reformulation of architecture. The Novecento movement was absorbed into the nationalistic alliance Mussolini had created. But also rationalist architects like Terragni developed an ambivalent mental relationship between the architectural razionalismo and the socio- political fascismo as both tendencies were perceived as the relevant revolutions of that time. The rationalist involvement in connection with fascist rule became later the issue of controversial discussions in which Terragni was sometimes presented as tragic figure that finally shattered as he faced the falsities of fascism and the consequences of militarism.8 Over the period of the interwar years, many representatives of the Novecento movement became gradually influenced by rationalism. This lead also to the creation of a kind of Milanese style, a local architectural variation opposite the International Style, and which became especially noticeable shortly after the Second World War.9 8 Cf. Zevi, Bruno: Guiseppe Terragni. Triangle Architectural Publ., 1989. 9 Berizzi, Carlo: Architectural Guide Milan. Buildings and Projects since 1919. DOM Publishers, 2015, p. 15. 3 A range of impacts are accountable for the shaping of Milan’s urban configuration and architectural structures. Beyond this dynamic, the following paragraphs will try to unveil some principles of the system, which is the built environment of Milan. More precisely, we will talk about three kinds of situations. The first is the juxtaposition principle. It entails a local conglomerate of distinct buildings – often evolved over time and representing