«Smooth, Hard, Clean, Perfect» Terranova, History of a Modern Plaster
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Proceedings of the First International Congress on Construction History, Madrid, 20th-24th January 2003, ed. S. Huerta, Madrid: I. Juan de Herrera, SEdHC, ETSAM, A. E. Benvenuto, COAM, F. Dragados, 2003. «Smooth, hard, clean, perfect» Terranova, history of a modern plaster Emilia Garda TERRANOV A: PLASTER AND POETICS synonymous in those years) material, well able, precisely because of its touted modernity, to redeem Developed in Freihung, Bavaria by Kapferer in 1893, architecture from its backward-Iooking immobility. «Terranova» -a ready-mix, factory tinted plaster for In aclimate such as this which extolled al! that was exterior facade use- came into widespread use in new, technical and economic motivations are Italy starting in 1932, thanks to the efforts of Aristide inextricably mixed with ideological ones, an Sironi and his plant in Via Stephenson, Milano. 1 unswerving faith in progress with allusions to the It was in this period that Terranova plaster first artificial imagery of the Futurists and their ilk- not begins to receive extensive attention in technical just as regards the use of Terranova, but also for al! journals, manuals, handbooks and advertising material s employed in architecture and interior brochures; it figures in the statements and theoretical decoration. So pervasive was this ethos that, writings of the Rationalist architects; above al!, it frequently, synthetic materials -developed as emerges as the finish material of choice -virtual!y to substitutes for other, more costly products- ended the exclusion of al! others- for the facades of civil by being more highly prized than the original s and industrial buildings, where it is applied in broad themselves. Such, indeed, was the case of the areas or more limited bands, used for contrast in Bakelite used in place of amber or tortoiseshel!, the loggias and arcades, with its myriad colors, now Linoleum used to imitate briar or Persian carpets, and luminous and bright, now somber, lusterless and the plasters that were careful!y contrived and treated restrained, setting off other facade materials such as to imitate stone. marble, natural or artificial stone, high- fired tile or The various defenders of the faith lost no time in glass brick. pumping up the myth of the new materials, and the For this material, created in reality over forty years improbable virtues often attributed to them, so much earlier in Germany, Aristide Sironi shrewdly retained so that a number of designers, including Figini and the original name (which was also maintained after Pollini, felt the need to defend themselves from what the manufacturer's recent acquisition by Weber & they cal!ed «Another rhetoric, the most recent, the Broutin, though in this case the motives were entirely rhetoric of new materials» (Figini, Pol!ini 1932, 2-3). different: to underscore -by using the same name as Alongside the modernistic ideology, another theme wel! as by other means- a sense of a continuing that was widely viewed as essential in those years, tradition). For Sironi, the intention was to promote the deeply felt and vigorously promulgated, and which is product as a new, innovative, modern and -why not? closely linked to the use of new materials and the rational and economical (the two terms were almost Rationalists' categorizing efforts, is the theme of 966 E. Garda Figure 2 Terranova Pavilion at the 1932 Milano Triennial. (Weber & Broutin archives) .l'>,rlin,),.n Hairett!~¡cti ~atenf¡\lltt. Figure 1 Patent certificate of 1896. conserved at the Weber & Broutin offices in Vienna and reading. «This trade name was entered on March 12, 1896 as No. 14702 (Class 37) in the registry 01' trademarks on the basis of the Imv of Mav 12, 1894 governing trademark proteclion following an application filed on November 19, 1895 by Terrano\'a 1ndustrie Freihung, Messrs. Kapferer ... and ... Sectors in which the trade name «TERRANOVA 1NDUSTRJE» will be used: Terranova plaster, imitation facing brick, imitalion stone, ornamental surfaces. Serlin, March 12, 1896 1mperial Patent Office». (Weber & Broutin archives) Figure 3 Visit by the King of Italy to the Terranova pavilion during the 1932 Milano Triennial. (Weber & Broutin archives) ambient hygiene. At the typologicallevel, the desire for hygiene -seen as the road to healthfulness- was responsible for sweeping renovations: horizontaJ were marble, granite or their more economical windows, fiat roofs that could be used as gymnasiums relati ves, the «smooth, hard, strong, clean, perfect» or gardens, etc.. When selecting materials, ir led to a plasters, as Gaetano Minnucci defined the various preference for those that were smooth and washable, types of Terranova (Minnucci 1930), preferences for would not harbor bacteria, and were free from cracks interior finishes ran to washable material s such as and joinrs. While the favored materials for exteriors Lincruster; above all, however, ir was glass (in ever- «Smooth, hard, clean, perl"ect» Terranova, history 01"a modern plaster 967 more sophisticated forms such as Saint Gobain glass I"ound in all of ltaly's squares, they will be seen to be bricks, Opaline glass, Desagnat flexible glass, Civer blackcned under the arms, between the legs, anywhere, in tiles) which was preferred for its characteristic short, where rainwater does not pass. Under the nose, I"or transparency and ability to reflect light.2 instance, even il" the personage represented is not moustached, the statue will have a pair 01"black whiskers, For building exteriors in particular, hygiene because dust builds up under the projections and the changed from being a functional requirement to an surface will look clean only wherc water tlows oVer it. aesthetic concem, a guarantee of the smooth, perfect Trivial as they may seem, such considerations are and incorruptible surfaces that were necessary to an cxtremely important in architecture. (Sartoris 1989). architecture that relied heavily on simple geometrical elements. Particularly interesting in this connection Domenico Morelli, on the other hand, sees the use are the opinions of two protagonists of the of new materials whose value has not yet been proved architectural experimentation of those years: Alberto by experience (he is speaking specifically ofthe «new Sartoris and Domenico Morelli. plasters» Pietranova, Terranova, Silexore, etc.,), Alberto Sartoris goes so far as to say that the together with the extreme simplification of forms and simplification of architectural form is not a volumes, as perhaps the most critical aspect of compositional issue but is rigorously functional in Rationalist experimentation: nature, as self-cleaning forms are an answer to the problem of material s that rapidly become obsolete: 1 bclieve that one of the causes 01" the decay of Rationalist architecture lies precisel y in the fact that the We have arrived at this type 01"simplification al"ter a closc material s have not held up to the architects' intentions. scrutiny 01" public mouuments. Observing the nudes The architecture that preceded this period (the Twenties TIPI DI INTONACO (L(l. JobSf""'S¡';,!l,¡) 1217 -Intonaco lisciato a fratazzo. 1218.lntonaco 9 raffíato. 1217 1218 1219-lntonaco spruzzato. 1220 -Intonaco 9 raffiato con lama. 1219 1220 Figure 4 Examplcs of surl"acetreatments: tloat-smoothed plaster. tcxtured plaster. sprayed plaster. sgraffito. Griffini, Enrico Agostino. 1934.La costruzione razionale del/a casa. Milano:Hoepli,437-438. 968 E. Garda and Thirties) was based on decorations such as carved decorative functions, almost as an attempt to foliage and moldings, and was enriched with statues, counterbalance formal simplification. frescoes and so forth. As the years go by, these It is chiet1y in finish material s, whether they be decorations become dirty, obsolete, but they nevertheless noble marbles and mirror-bright crystal, or humbler retain a character of their own, something that time material s such as Terranova plasters, Buxus, cannot take away . By contrast, modern architecture is Lincruster or Linoleum that we can descry, often based on clean, precise surfaces whose only ornamentation is the rhythm established by the window under the banner of hygiene, a decorative intent. openings. Sadly, this type of architecture, even if Frequently, this intent is pursued through a reliance finished with special plasters, plasters that are a bit out of on the chromatic qualities of natural materials and the the ordinary, solider than before, has not slOod the test of intense, pure colors of artificiaJ materials,3 time and has bctrayed the expectations of its designers The Rationalist architects, in fact, made extensive (Morelli 1989). use of color. We must not be deceived by the black and white photographs we find in the magazine s and As Gaetano Minnucci wrote in Architettura ed arti journals of the time, and the washed-out, anemic decorative in 1930: image they give us: «the Rationalist house is cheerful, luminous, colorfu!» (De Guttry, Maino 1988). These Trends in plasters have taken two directions, one colors are generally pure tones combined in graded or concentrating on the plaster's surface form: while in past contrasting shades, as masterfuJIy described by years especially, we have seen a true flowering of Giacomo Polin: textures, with surfaces streaked, scraped, hammered, combed, and in short, roughened in every imaginable . at the beginning, colors have the names of things: way, today's preference is for the smooth, hard surface. yellow is lemon, red is coral, white is ice or ivory. Later, The other trend, which is some senses closely connected these colors, lively bccause natural, rational as are lemons 10 the first, regards the plaster's composition, and how to or coral, shade away into the infinity of the chromatic color it in various long-Iasting shades, The introduction spectrum, like the malachite green that the numberless of cement, the use of li vely colors for exterior as well as veins of the stone prevent us ever from reaching . interior plasters, the modern spirit to which anything that (Polin, Selvafolta 1982).