Innovations from Expo to Expo (1906–2015) Mattia Granata Smart Milan Innovations from Expo to Expo (1906-2015) Mattia Granata

Smart Milan Innovations from Expo to Expo (1906–2015) Mattia Granata Smart Milan Innovations from Expo to Expo (1906-2015) Mattia Granata

Smart Milan Innovations from Expo to Expo (1906-2015)

123 Mattia Granata University of Milan, Italy

ISBN 978-3-319-17262-0 ISBN 978-3-319-17263-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-17263-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015939037

Translation by Frances Anne Luscher

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illus- trations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover layout: Studio Calamar, Berlin, Germany Cover image: ©saveriolafr Graphic design and typesetting: Valentina Greco, Mediglia (MI), Italy

Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Index

Foreword VII

INTRODUCTION Milan, History of a Smart City IX

Prologue 1

CHAPTER 1 The Capital of Modernity 41

CHAPTER 2 Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Modernity 81

CHAPTER 3 The Capital of the Miracle 129

CHAPTER 4 The Capital of Innovation 185

Acknoledgements 227

Bibliography 229 Foreword

ilan, a city of a thousand hues, multiple possibilities, variable iden- Mtities. Milan, a city that sometimes appears to sparkle; but more often hides itself. Milan, key player of the Risorgimento, engine of innovation, centre of the economic miracle, capital of business and labour, lynch pin of internationalisation. There seems to be a common thread among the various possible identities: Milan, the intelligent city, capable of anticipating and carrying out the changes and looking to the future even during the most difficult times. Milan, the intelligent city thanks to its economic fabric, its social relationships, its cultural vitality; but also thanks to its centres of study and research and its institutions of higher education. It is as if, silently, the vitality brought by the tens of thousand of students and the thousands of professors and researchers permeated its fabric and made it sensitive and attentive to the innovations. This openness and search for the new, this speed in absorbing changes, has inevitably made it impressionable and reactive at times of crisis and during the difficult years of its history. The Politecnico of Milano was created specifically by the desire of a few intellectuals to emphasize intelligence as an economic factor on a par with capital, the workforce, the infrastructures, and, by the awareness of some entrepreneurial groups, to consider technical-scientific education as one of the principal “sources of progress” capable of contributing to the development of the country. The Politecnico’s relationship with the territory, with the manufacturing industry, and with the public administrations is close, pursued with perseverance and attention, also through the initiative of creating structures and centres dedicated to cooperation with the outside world, VIII SMART MILAN

among which the establishment of a Foundation together with the businesses and the institutions, was particularly innovative. And it is precisely from the desire to contribute to development that this work began, while dedicated to Expo 2015, an opportunity to focus attention on a subject of growing significance, to compete in the international arena, and to make the true soul of Milan better known also through its history.

Giovanni Azzone Giampio Bracchi Rector President Politenico di Milano Fondazione Politecnico di Milano INTRODUCTION Milan, History of a Smart City

ant’Ambrogio, patron saint of Milan towards the end of the IV cen- Stury A.D., was appointed Bishop of the city against his will by accla- mation of the Milanese people, and during the time he was in office, among other things, he had several important churches built, including the Romanesque basilica which today houses his remains. The importance of this saint for Milan is also confirmed by the fact that the city has historically been called “Ambrosian” and that his image is in fact depicted in the banner of the Municipality which is kept in the Hall of Honour of Palazzo Marino, historic seat of the city government. These facts also indicate that the relationship in Milan between public and religious institutions developed over time in a particular way, through a type of constant dialectic, and remained very secular in the mutual separation of the spheres of influence, which during some periods even formed a powerful element of development in the life of the city. Sant’Ambrogio Day, 7 December, consequently represents every year a significant moment in Milanese life. The Catholic citizens gather in the churches and in particular in the Basilica of the Saint, where the current successor of the patron saint celebrates his memory. In a less spiritual way, but no less ceremonial, the ruling classes of the city, and the country, traditionally parade in their most elegant clothes in the foyer of the La Scala Theatre where, on the most important social occasion of the year, the opera season opens. Traditionally, in recent decades, it has similarly become a habit that this display of luxury and power be protested in the plaza in front by angry citizens. X SMART MILAN

Most Milanese, however, at least since the middle of the XIX century, on this day crowd into the traditional markets of the “o bej o bej”, originally located right in front of the Basilica, and in the cold December weather they enjoy a day off and start to buy the first Christmas presents. This book on Milan should start right from here because of some combinations that cannot be ignored. In fact, on this day, last December during the homily in the Basilica dedicated to the saint, always crowded by the faithful and representatives of the civilian, military and religious institutions, the Archbishop of Milan, pausing to speak of the imminent World Exposition and the role that this could have for the city, in a controversial passage of the speech urged Milan to “find its soul again”. Since, apparently, this authoritative statement implied a crisis in the city that was not only spiritual, shortly afterwards the Mayor responded stating that “Milan does have a soul, it has many”. Also in light of this dialogue, which renewed the historic dialectic relationship between the civilian and religious institutions of the city, and the underlying comparison of views, a book must unfold on the history of Milan during the period between the 1906 Expo and the upcoming Exposition in mid-2015, which therefore does not intend to ignore the point of arrival of this long path, in other words the Milan of today, our Milan. These two authoritative views, between those who say that Milan no longer has a soul and who on the contrary maintain that it has many, apparently irreconcilable views, in reality have a common point: in other words that Milan, no matter how good things are, apparently does not have a single, unanimously shared soul. This is a starting point, if nothing else, connected in any case to the twenty year old scientific and public debate; namely, when was a centuries-old history interrupt- ed in Milan, as if short-circuited, which opened a long and controversial transition phase, full of lights and shadows which not everyone, obviously, agrees has ended with a secure and safe landing place? It must be specified that there is no one who does not maintain, with good reason, that Milan has excellent qualities and is, in and of itself, an excellent city. During its history, the city has always been the capital “of something”, with the exception of an administrative capital. During the nineteenth century, during the period of conflicts with the other nations which led to the Unification of the country, Milan earned the title of capital of the Risorgimento. Afterwards, it became the “moral capital” for its role as leader during the development which it managed to assume vis-a-vis the country, and then the “modern capital”, during the first two decades of the century, as was also obvious MILAN, HISTORY OF A SMART CITY XI from the impression made on the world during the 1906 Expo. Later the city, after two decades of dictatorship which afflicted the country, earned through the bombing and in the field the title of “Capital of Anti-Fascism”, before retaking the lead in the process of economic reconstruction of the country and afterwards driving the golden age during the period of the “economic miracle”. The true distinctive trait, which deeply identified the city and its citizens, in any case, the common thread throughout the century running from the first processes of industrialisation to the second half of the nineteenth century on, was as “capital of business and labour”. Milan truly built its own self-identity on the presence of the large factories, the entrepreneurs and workers together, albeit in the obvious dialectic of the industrial companies, on the value of work and effort which supported and promoted the economic and civil development of the communities. In Milan, no one would ever have denied in the city of work par excellence, “se sta’ mai coi man in man” [we never stay idle]. It was therefore perhaps natural that the end of this specific development model of the industrialised companies would also here, as was happening in other world cities, cause a collapse also of identity, a great “disorder”, the start of processes of economic and social reorganisation with a result which could not be taken for granted and certainly not guaranteed. This is precisely what happened during the last two decades, after the city had reached its lowest point at the beginning of the Nineties. The great initial trauma, in fact, did not prevent even during these processes, disagreements, full of light and shadow, that the city would evolve, develop, be renewed even in an amazing way. In fact, in some sectors of the manufacturing and social life, this is precisely what happened. To simplify, it can be stated that the trauma of the end of the “old world” shattered the single identity of the city, which contained and summarised everything, that identified and reassured everyone, and that it fragmented, or rather became a kaleidoscope of many details and changing identities: of localized identities assumed and internalised by individual portions of the city. Basically, having cracked the shell of the “economic capital”, which contained everything, multiple localized identities leaked out which, over the past years, evolved and found their place not only in the city, but in the international excellence in the world. The point lies in understanding whether this breakdown in the processes has reached its maturity, its highest phase, and whether it is now possible, or rather whether there exists within this process the conditions for a synthesis XII SMART MILAN

of this multiform state, in which all of Milan feels welcome. Moreover, it has always been obvious to everyone that it is cohesion that creates strength. This seems to be at the heart of the recent confrontation between the Mayor and the Archbishop, between the civil and religious authority, between those who see many souls and those who do not see any, rightly (at the spiritual level) searching for a single one. And it is at this point that the worthy efforts being made within the Municipality to facilitate the safe landing of these phenomena appears to have arrived, supporting them also through a long and reasoned creation of a “Milan brand” which contributes to joining that which has been scattered. Within the context of this process which has involved intellectuals, politicians, and protagonists of the social, economic and public life of the city past and present, analyses have also been carried out which contribute to understanding how the city is perceived both by its citizens, or the city visitors, and by outside observers, in Italy and abroad. As proof of how the ongoing processes have obviously become common opinion, this scientific opinion research produces the perceived image of a city that has become “complex and plural”, which, if at the social level it remains welcoming to the extent that it has become a “melting pot”, it has become localized without having yet managed to compose itself into a single and unique logic. The end of industrial Milan, but not the “industrious” one, and the now definitively completed transformation of the economic and social fabric, have allowed the city to dominate in various sectors recognised not only by those operating within or near them, but also abroad. Milan has thus confirmed a role, for example, as capital of fashion, design, finance, healthcare, the third sector, university and research, and so forth, without managing yet however, at least obviously, to lead all these aspects back to ad unum: hence the many souls, hence the absence of one soul; two views, both true. But if these processes have reached completion, or are close to the resolution, which now appears in many ways evident, is it then true that Milan has not managed to find an identity or maybe, because everything is happening under our eyes and is still in motion, is it difficult to see the final effect? To understand what Milan is today, maybe the most representative image is the night-time photograph taken from the NASA satellite which shows the brightest areas of the entire European continent. Milan is the luminous heart of one of the two or three densest areas of MILAN, HISTORY OF A SMART CITY XIII the continent, in a brilliant zone now much wider than just the Lom- bardy region. This large area represents an exceptional interconnection of tangible and intangible streams, of knowledge, merchandise, people, on infrastructure platforms of transport, and of information which are among the densest in the world and by no coincidence, recently the term macro-region was coined to describe its borders that cross the administrative ones of the twentieth-century institutions, which the President of the Politecnico of Milano was one of the first to use. Basically, Milan today is this: it has been defined as an “infinite city”, in other words that spreads seamlessly over a very vast territory; or a “gateway” of the country towards the world, through which everything passes at the crossroads between Europe, the Mediterranean and Eastern markets; but what is certain is that the old city, progressively crossing its borders, propagating and expanding has spread over a very vast territory of which it has confirmed, and renewed, its role as coordinating epicentre. That is why, in the “century of the city”, this area has found itself again, because of the sum and contribution of many of the characteristics cited, as one of the principal metropolitan players in the world. Not bad for a city without a precise awareness of itself, which a good psychologist would obviously recommend to stop thinking about itself and let itself go, trusting more in its own abilities and in instinct. It is in light of the current conditions which have emerged from these transformations that Milan in recent years, by following a road opened by many other cities of the world also smaller ones and equipped with fewer resources, has started the process to develop a strategy that would improve the aspects of “smart city”. It is realizing, moreover, that over the years and without awareness, it has achieved many results in this context, for example in the field of energy savings, waste management, traffic management and environmental pollution. In this sense, the city and its industries little by little came to life, drawing in the Municipality and the Chamber of Commerce, universities, already active in this field, research centres, multinational and territorial companies, associations, and players of various kinds. The involvement of all these entities made it possible to identify strategies which, in the various contexts, emphasize the initiatives also in relation to the parameters identified internationally in this field. In relation to the other cities, moreover, Milan has become part of the international circuit and, in Italy, has forged relationships and shared objectives with the most active cities in the sector, in other XIV SMART MILAN

words Genoa and Turin. These three cities of Northern Italy have therefore made cooperation agreements by virtue of which those which for decades were the three points of the “industrial triangle” of Northern Italy, have significantly and maybe unconsciously created a sort of “smart triangle”. This concept of a “smart city” in recent years has spread until it has become a type of fashion, an effective brand which, like all effective brands, sometimes risk prevailing over their content. In this case, however, it would be a shame to get tired of the word before having become familiar with it and appreciated its concept, thereby tossing the baby out with the bath water. Because in effect, given that the involvement which urban density in recent decades acquired in economic and social life worldwide, to the detriment of more traditional institutions which had marked the evolution of the industrial societies and national governments, the concept of smartness cannot be ignored. This concept, which has spread rather recently, was initially mainly interpreted in the technological sense. From this perspective cities were defined as smart that were equipped or super-equipped with technologies of various kinds, directed at energy savings, efficiency safety, and so forth. This aspect, certainly significant, was however widely influenced by the views of the technologists and, in no less degree, by those of the multinationals of the sector, often interested in selling products on a large scale, or simply not directly capable, because of the prevalent cultures, to develop other less immediate and direct aspects of the concept of smartness. This last, however, due to the progressive participation of more “humanistic” sensitivities also incorporated requirements other than pure efficiency. Therefore the technology, while remaining an essential aspect, was progressively from end to middle, being interpreted, as it effectively is, as one of the instruments for reaching, for example, better performance in the economic, social, institutional, transport, and environmental fields and quality of life, etc. In this broader and more realistic sense, the intelligence of a city is considered as its capacity not to be “stupid”, in other words, in brief, to know how to transform itself in a balanced manner, both in terms of production, politics and institutions, by adopting the solutions as progress makes them available. But the solutions that emerge with the passage of time make available, if one considers the concept of smart city in its broadest sense, in MILAN, HISTORY OF A SMART CITY XV other words not relative just to technological evolution, are the “innovations” that in every context the city can adopt, incorporating them and placing them at the service of the citizens continually modernize. In this way “a smart city connects the past through the present with the future.” This last statement, probably uttered to reiterate the concept that a smart city designed on the drawing board by adopting all the existing technological solutions does not necessarily produce a liveable city but the realization of an Orwellian dystopia, in reality achieves a more useful purpose, in my opinion, in other words that of “historicizing” the concept of smart city. To reintroduce, that is, not only the factor of time, to some extent already present in the need to plan the smart city for the future, but also in the sense of the past in the evolutionary flow of a city, in its history. By doing so, therefore, one implicitly assumes that the concept of smart city, by its nature progressive because functional to the improvement of the vital contexts such as the communities of people, can also change over time, obviously as the environmental conditions change. A smart city in the twenty first century, which adopts the innovations available today to improve itself and the life of the citizens, is certainly different than a city at the end of the nineteenth century. But if this last was able in turn to adopt all the innovations of the era available, was it maybe not a smart city as well? Milan today, criss-crossed under its streets by 375,000 km of fibre optics, is certainly a smart city. And wasn’t the city which in 1883 was establishing the largest European electric power plant also one? And if “social innovation” today makes it possible to face in a modern way the most deep-rooted social problems, wasn’t the first Maria Montessori kindergarten tested by the city welfare associations at the beginning of the twentieth century or, also, the first public housing district of the Umanitaria which provided a dignified life to the less affluent classes, maybe social innovation? The innovation in the field of design of products and services is certainly an important parameter in a smart city and makes Milan avant- garde because of the state of progress reached today by the cultural innovation in these sectors; cultural innovation which, moreover, made the city avant-garde internationally even in the past, thanks to the constant state of progress were created by these sectors. In the same way, isn’t the emergence noted recently of an exceptional vitality in all the phenomena connected to the so-called “sharing economy”, in the field of production and sharing of public and private XVI SMART MILAN

goods and services, which has also found a premature desire for stimulus and accompaniment of these fertile ecosystems by public institutions, maybe an element of proposing again and renewing a traditional innovative role in the constant transformation of the productive fabric? Beyond the shifting positions in the always debatable international rankings, in which Milan recently demonstrated its vitality, the point is that all the parameters with which one observes the city confirm that

Earth at night seen from the NASA satellite MILAN, HISTORY OF A SMART CITY XVII the rate of promotion and absorption of the innovations available has always been the true distinctive trait of Milan. It resides in the individual sectors, sometimes even regardless of the painful, indirect consequences that this historically caused, and it exists at the level of the city overall. And if in the past there was also a constancy, a persistence through the various eras during which Milan was “capital of something”, this was certainly relative to the capacity to welcome, internalize and adopt XVIII SMART MILAN

the elements of innovation in every setting: from the commercial ones to the social ones, even the spiritual, both positive and negative. If, therefore, the concept of smart city is a concept that can be histo- ricized and is consequently evolving, Milan is certainly one of the world cities which are “historically” smart cities; and if the capacity to renew itself can be the distinctive trait of a city, Milan has certainly always been a “capital of innovation.” This book attempts to travel through the last century and a half of the history of Milan from this specific point of view: looking backward, and taking a backward path. The goal is not to communicate to the Milanese, but to all those from other parts of the world who will look at this city during Expo 2015, and not recount the history of Milan but some of the salient aspects of its past. A city, in fact, is a complex organ- ism, too complex to be understood, told and explained in a few pages which would perforce be recapitulatory and sometimes simplified. However, the person who wants to understand what lies behind the Expo, behind the capital of fashion and design, behind the city of business and the stock exchange, behind the shopping and luxury streets, may be able to catch a whisper here of the spirit of Milan. And someone observing this city, which is always working and always has “its heart in its hand”, from a greater distance than the Milanese of today, may be able possibly to contribute to identifying the soul that everyone is looking for, and come and tell us.

M.G. 25 December 2014 Prologue

The moral capital

Over a century ago, in 1906, Milan hosted an International Exposition which, over several months, attracted economic firms, representatives of international institutions, Italians and foreign tourists to its attractions. For the first time, it showed the world what development processes were taking place in the country and especially in Milan: a modern city. The tourists who, without ever having been there before, arrived in the city by train passing through the old Central Station, by their own admission must have had the impression of finding themselves “on the edge of a stormy lake”, overwhelmed by the coming and going of trams, carriages, the first cars, and the stream of people which was in constant motion. Italy, at the beginning of the twentieth century was still a pre- dominantly agricultural country, in which there were few large scale urban centres and, among these, maybe only Milan had characteristics in common with the other major European cities. Or, at least that is what the Milanese believed and, in fact, that is how the city decided to portray itself in the eyes of those coming to visit the Expo. Not only did the ruling classes and the organizers of the event identify this aspect as the characteristic trait of the city, but the tourist guides of the era, introducing it to the visitors, emphasized the evolution of its metropolitan dynamism: “It does not offer” - they wrote about Milan - “a large number of monuments valued for their art and antiquity: many smaller cities in Italy surpass it from this point of view. But the foreign- 2 SMART MILAN

ers coming to Milan can admire the bustle of the streets, the luxury and elegance of the shops, the number and prosperity of the public meeting areas, and the good organisation of certain public services, such as tramways and electric lighting“. Moreover, in fact, compared to the art cities such as Venice and Florence, Milan could certainly claim a far smaller quantity and quality of monuments, the legacy of a sumptuous and distant past. Then compared to cities such as Rome, Turin and Naples, the capital of Lombardy, in previous eras might have had less importance at the administrative level, in terms of size or political influence. What is certain is that at the beginning of the century, and the Expo made it obvious, the city had already brought its own role into focus, the result of the processes of a transformation which had taken place in the preceding decades: in 1906, Milan, looking in the mirror, could see the future. The opportunity to organize an event of the kind, and the capacity to make it successful, was already in and of itself representative of the potential that this city was able to express at that time and the role assumed in relation to the other Italian and international cities. Compared to the other cities, Milan had already affirmed a specificity that derived from having managed to emphasize its own characteristics and energies. After the construction of the new Italian state, during the second half of the nineteenth century, the major processes of economic and social transformation had visibly concentrated in the northern part of the country, and especially around this urban area more than elsewhere. Here there was a progressive and intense industrialisation on the model of the most advanced European countries. So, at the economic level, the strong industrial development had spread factories and plants everywhere and these had become an integral part of the urban and suburban fabric. Then the expansion of the new production systems had strongly affected the urban and social transformation. First of all, the economic development had produced a great influx of people from the rural areas of Lombardy, and a concentration of new inhabitants in the Mil- anese suburbs, contributing to a profound change in the characteristics of the city. This urban redefinition was paired with the emergence of new social classes, such as the industrial working class, and the contradictions that, everywhere in the past, had accompanied the processes of transformation connected with the industrial revolution. Milan, therefore, in the Italian landscape had become the most sizeable social and political “laboratory” where, along with the positive PROLOGUE 3 features of these phenomena, the more negative and contradictory aspects had also appeared: social conflicts through which new relations were forged within the community. Here, shortly before, during a demonstration in Monza in the summer of 1900, Umberto I, King of Italy, had been killed by a pistol bullet during an anarchistic attack. And also here, in September 1904, sponsored by the Chamber of Labour of Milan, the first general strike ever in Italy was held, which lasted five days and spread rapidly throughout the country. On the other hand, fortunately, Milan, in its role as economic and social laboratory, also shone due to its capacity to channel into social and political processes the tensions released by these rapid transformations. It was here that the principal Italian labour union was born, and the greatest development occurred in Italian reformist socialism. At the political and social level, its spread had allowed the working class to become part of public life, feeding social tensions, but also providing a necessary form of representation for the new manufacturing classes, which often achieved control of the major municipalities and were capable of contributing to the modernization of the country. Straddling the two centuries, not by chance, the major political families and the different cultural trends could be said to have contributed significantly to the civic public administration, which constituted a model of pluralism which made it possible to manage even the most traumatic and controversial processes of economic and social transformation. In summary, in the landscape of the Italian cities, Milan was able to become the main interpreter of the “new world”, concentrating ideas and ideals, artistic expressions, realizations and experiments which characterized the moral and material climate of the beginning of the last century. So, on these solid foundations, Milan had built the well-propor- tioned ambition of regaining a strong international dimension which had always been part of the tradition of the city. This occurred in connection with the development of the manufacturing industry, which had attracted important foreign investors interested in the capacity of the market and the manufacturing conditions; but also on the cultural level, since at the beginning of the century artistic and intellectual groups flourished, which, in harmony with the European cultural climate of the period, played a primary role in the renewal of Italian culture. 4 SMART MILAN

The Milan International Exposition of 1906, consequently, had to serve as a showcase for all these changes and developments and, at the same time, strongly confirm and reiterate the city’s role as leader of the country and its capacity, or at least its ambition, to get involved and possibly place itself on a par with the major capitals of the most advanced Western nations. Naturally, the Italy of 1906, and Milan in particular, had no doubt changed compared to those of the previous decades and radically compared to 1861, when the Unification of Italy had its founding moment.

At the time of the Unification, in fact, Milan had just under 200,000 inhabitants and, among the large Italian urban centres, it ranked after Naples with 440,000, Rome with 244,000 and before Turin, Genoa and Bologna. The boundaries at the time were marked by the so-called “walls” of the Spanish period which encircled the city centre like a rink, composed at the time of about 832 hectares. The territory surrounding this area was completely independent at the administrative level and formed the municipality of the “Corpi Santi (Holy Bodies)” eight times larger than the other (6382 hectares), composed of small villages closely connected to the capital but also competing with it. At the time, about 50,000 people lived in this neighbouring territory. Around the middle of the XIX century, the plan of the city was rather simple. The city centre was enclosed by the circle of waterways, a series of navigable canals crossed by bridges which, while several of the old waterways had already been covered over, made Milan look like a city of water and were used to move merchandise and equipment. Routes traversed this tight cir- cumference, in turn, like spokes connecting the city with the surrounding territory. Each of the main city boulevards branched out in the various directions starting from the centre, and passed through the ten gates called Tenaglia, Comasi- na, Nuova, Orientale, Tosa, Romana, Vigentina, PROLOGUE 5

Ludovica, Ticinese, Vercellina. These gates still exist today, albeit with different names, and split the Spanish city walls. Obviously, the economic heart of city life in that period was in the centre, within the canals, where in a very small area there were buildings, residences, places of work, production and trade. Later, during the incessant process of development of the city, while commercial and productive activities connected to urban life remained in the centre, larger factories and warehouses progressively moved into suburbia, outside the walls.

Milan, trams circulation in Piazza del Duomo and adjacent streets, early 1900’s (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 6 SMART MILAN

It was at this time, around the middle of the century, that the businesses could also start to rely on a railway system which made it possible to connect to the major lines of transport towards Venice to the east, Turin to the west, and Piacenza to the south. These lines left from the Central Station, which had been inaugurated in 1864 and was located in the northern section of the city, at that time next to the walls connecting Porta Venezia and Porta Nuova. The area immediately outside the urban setting was varied and not homogeneous. The northern area, in fact, which from Milan extended towards the lakes, was one of the earliest industrialised areas of the entire Lombardy region made up of small urban areas but which gathered, and later would beckon, population flow and economic activities. Still outside the city, but in the southern area, conversely, due to the characteristics of the territory, the settlements were more widely spaced, and the presence of farmsteads and later agricultural companies was widespread, as well as smaller urban centres which in history had become places for trade and commerce. This entire area which descended towards the Po plain was historically distinguished for its great fertility and a specialisation in agricultural and agribusiness activities, a characteristic maintained virtually up to the present day. The City of Milan and its surrounding areas, in any case, were com- plementary and interconnected both in terms of flow of people, who daily poured into the capital to go to work while living in the outer areas, where the cost of living was lower, and in terms of the flow of merchandise and economic activities. These characteristics, in other words the division between city and the territory, and the differences in specialisation between the North and the South, remained constant even during the subsequent development of the Milanese urban area. This initial snapshot, all things considered, certainly described a city not too different from what it could have been during previous periods, and represented a situation which after the Unification and in a rather short period of time, was destined to change radically. In particular, it was during the period between 1871 and the first decade of the next century that, after the expansion by decree of the city borders, there was an intense growth in the population which, in the span of about thirty years, took the number of residents of Milan and the neighbouring municipalities to over 400,000. In fact, during this period there was a real “demographic fever” which saturated the centre within the walls and then, progressively, PROLOGUE 7 overflowed into the outer area and towards the periphery, in particular the northern suburbs, where in the meantime the industrial facilities had started to become denser and the network of urban and suburban public transportation was developing.

The pioneers of Milanese industry

The size Milan, around the middle of the XIX century was therefore comparable to that of other Italian cities, but during the period following the Unification of the country, changes took place which led the city to taking a leading role in the Italian landscape. A series of conditions were concentrated here that made it possible for the ongoing economic and social processes to find an environment that was particularly fertile for generating the benefits of the modernization. One of these first conditions was certainly a characteristic openness of the city. During the nineteenth century, a type of myth spread that the city was a place of opportunities, where foreigners willing to take a challenge and a risk, if brimming with ideas, initiative and desire to work, could invest their resources and, by gambling, possibly emerge winners. Milan was a “bourgeois” city and, therefore, the values of economic initiative, work and social mobility were certainly widely shared. Another significant aspect in promoting this development of Milan was obviously due to the presence in the city of personalities capable of interpreting the spirit of the times and to acting on transforming the situation around them, while spreading ideas and innovative practices. One of these central personalities in the life of the city in the second half of the nineteenth century, who is entitled to a place of honour, is certainly Giuseppe Colombo. He was born in 1836 to a lower middle class family of the city and graduated very young from the ancient and prestigious University of Pavia, where wealthy youth of the capital studied at the time. While he was there, he was the favourite student of Francesco Brioschi, Dean of the University as well as both an important mathematician and politician, and afterwards he became Professor of Industrial Mechanics and Machine Design at the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and Crafts of Milan. In addition to having participated in the nationalist wars, fighting with the troops of Garibaldi, Colombo was in particular an important entrepreneur who had the capacity, before anyone else, to under- 8 SMART MILAN

stand the importance of electricity and to find the way to introduce it to Italy thus contributing to the birth of the Italian electric industry. At the time of the “International Exposition of Electricity” held in Paris in 1881, in fact, he obtained from the company founded by Thomas Alva Edison the exclusive Italian license for the system being promoted. The following year, he visited the founder of that company, participating in New York in the inauguration of the first electric build in Milan a large plant to produce electricity. It was based on this that, on 28 June 1883, in via Santa Radegonda near the Cathedral, the first electric power plant of continental Europe was inaugurated. The real turning point, the christening of electricity in the city, however was realized a few months later when on the evening of Saint Ste- phen in 1883, during the opening evening of the La Scala opera season, thanks to the new power plant, the majestic chandelier hanging in the centre of the Theatre, the symbol of the city, lit up for the first time.

Edizioni Broggi, Milan, Duomo, Santa Radegonda, first power plant of Continental Europe, with view, 1882-1890 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) PROLOGUE 9

The lighting of 2,450 electric bulbs before the eyes of the entire well- to-do class of Milan gathered in their festive finery for the most elegant event of the year, finally gave the symbolic depiction of what modernity could produce, to the extent that the newspapers of the day described the enthusiasm and the wonder that this light display had produced: “the success of La Scala has given us more confidence” - wrote Colombo later; adding as proof of the speed with which progress was pressing - “and now we are quickly wiring at least 100 more lamps”. Soon afterwards, in fact, the power station of Milan started to produce “hydroelectric power”, in other words the energy to light the city centre, the first tram network encircling the Cathedral and the nearby manufacturing activities. Thus the first electric plants started to become widespread. Spurred on by these successes, in addition to becoming in the following years the Chairman of the Edison Electric Company, which assumed the task of promoting the development of the Lombard electrical system, the liberal Colombo also continued a successful political career which took him from the Town Council of Milan to the National Parlia- ment and important positions in the conservative governments in office in Rome between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition to his entrepreneurial and political activity, however, Colombo’s real passion was in the field of research and education. Colombo, for example, ran for a long time the journal “L’Industriale” and wrote, then around the end of the Seventies, the first Manual of the Engineer, published by Hoepli, a cultural reference point for the middle class of the city during that period. But, especially, his commitment was devoted to educating directly at least one generation of the city and national management class. Starting in 1865 and for decades, he was in fact the chair of Mechanics and Industrial Engineering of the Technical College of Milan, the school of higher education that would then become the Politecnico di Milano. In fact, it was with the competition at the foundation of this important Milan institution that his activity made it possible to achieve an additional indirect factor of modernisation for the city, in other words the early existence of a university capable of supporting the ongoing general manufacturing transformation, by conveying information, knowledge and values capable of accompanying the processes then under development. The oldest university of Milan, Il Politecnico, was in fact founded in the aftermath of the Unification of the country, in 1863, through the impetus of the Society for Encouragement of Arts and Crafts with the 10 SMART MILAN

cooperation of the local institutions, the Chamber of Commerce, the Cassa di Risparmio delle Province Lombarde, and various cultural and business associations. Fundamental to the birth of the Institute was obviously the action of the person who became its first Rector, Franc- esco Brioschi. He held this position until 1897 when he was replaced until 1921 by Giuseppe Colombo, who had always believed along with him in the operation and made every effort to make it successful. The reason for the creation of this new Institute, which started its educational activity with 36 students, obviously resided in the ability to understand that the changes in the economy and manufacturing, which were in plain view, required the training of new professionals with modern skills and solid common values. It was the vision of the founders to create a close connection between science and technology, and a constant integration between theoretical disciplines and the teaching of applications to produce new engineers adapted to the times. Unlike the other Italian engineering schools, in fact, the Milanese institute soon introduced courses for industrial engineers, in addition to those already traditionally widespread for civil engineering, as well as special tracks for architects and teachers of mathematical and natural sciences. Il Politecnico immediately distinguished itself for its close interwoven bond with the city, because it was created at a time of transformation and represented the changes that were occurring in the country, transformations that Milan was leading. Right from the beginning, in fact, the participation of the local, municipal and provincial institutions was active not only in terms of financial support but also of support for the closest coordination possible between the various subjects operating in the field of advanced training in the city. In 1875, for example, in order to achieve maximum efficiency in the sector, a Consortium of the institutes of higher education of Milan was formed which brought together, in addition to the Technical Institute, the Agricultural Institute, the Vet- erinary Institute, the Astronomical Observatory, the Botanical Garden, the Academy of Brera, the Civil Museum of Natural History, the Society for Encouragement, as well as the Literary Scientific Academy and the Lombard Institute of Arts and Sciences. It was these institutions that trained the privileged youth not only of Milan, but increasingly of the entire region, who besides becoming the future “captains of industry”, or the managers of the companies that were becoming sizeable in the period and ambitious projects, were destined to become the ruling class of Milan and the entire country. PROLOGUE 11

The symbiosis existing between the evolution of the Milan Politec- nico and the processes of transformation under way during that period in some ways are obvious when observing the changes in the training courses offered by the Institute. In the aftermath of the Unification of the country, the local manufacturing systems were rather underdevel- oped and there was a strong demand for public works such as railways, roads, bridges, irrigating canals, buildings etc., fundamental to the integration of the national territory, improving the transport networks and creating markets as large as possible and thereby promoting the distribution of merchandise and people over the national territory. Consequently, during the first years of activity, most of the students of the Politecnico, despite the innovations introduced into the training courses, were still graduating in civil engineering, the faculty of which in a dozen years churned out over 400 engineers. The connection between the Politecnico and the local system of Milan, however, was obvious from the progressive increase in industrial engineers over civil engineers. At ten years after its foundation, there was a ratio of one to five. Over the following decade it became one to two and on the eve of the twentieth century the ratio was reversed with an increasingly greater majority comprising the first kind. This proved the growing interest and the increasing demand for professions connected to the creation and management of companies, in accordance with a trend that Giuseppe Colombo had glimpsed previously and in which he had always believed. Along with the traditional training activity of the engineer, a significant role was progressively contributed by the School of Architecture which, emerging in 1865, was distinguished in the landscape of the Italian schools of the industry for its support of the requirements of the new industrial society and for the direct influence on the trends of civil engineering. According to the philosophy of the Politecnico, scientific and technical teaching was interwoven with the artistic and fine arts, and soon names such as Camillo Boito, Luca Beltrami and Gaetano Moretti emerged who contributed significantly to the training of a new type of architect capable of combining “Italian elegance” with “practical rationality”, artistic creativity and the capacity to use the most recent technical scientific discovered in equipment and materials. Surrounding the Politecnico and Colombo’s intuition, over the years, the principal evidence of this new era of Milan were converging and towards the end of the nineteenth century dozens of factories had been started or were being managed by graduates of the Politecnico. All the workshops, factories, foundries, ironworks, cotton mills, chemical com- 12 SMART MILAN

panies i.e. the manufacturing sectors, were being led by young graduates of the Politecnico who provided a breath of “vitality and energy” to the success of the industry. Nevertheless, an equally important facet of the vision of the bourgeois ruling classes of the era concerned the conviction that education should spread not only in the wealthy classes but also to the working people. Naturally, this point of view could be interpreted in a an errone- ous way as an element of paternalism, but there actually was the conviction that the new technical and scientific skills necessary for improving the production processes should spread to all levels and not just the highest echelons of the ruling class. Colombo first of all and then his best students taught evening courses for many years and, through the Society for Encouragement of Arts and Crafts, were committed to promoting the industrial culture in the workforce. From this, cultural initiatives were organised with the goal of stimulating the partnership spirit of the workers; public conferences, free lessons and courses were promoted to boost the skills of the workforce and contribute to training the new type of the specialized worker which the evolution of the industry increasingly required. So, the Politecnico became a very fertile ground at the cultural level and a central place for the spread of the culture and values of technical progress. Very soon, moreover, it became one of the principal points of connection between Milan and international experts, scholars, technicians and intellectuals. Basically, with the success of the Politecnico, Milan had a prominent city institution, in which to convey technical skills as well as expand the climate of the period, the bond between knowing and knowing how to, the Ambrosian pragmatism of knowledge of how to transform the company, the cult of work and production. With this city in the background, and the culture represented in a quintessential manner by Giuseppe Colombo and the Politecnico, the key players of the first Italian industrialisation and the captains of industry were operating who in the city or its surroundings had found the ideal playing field to bring to focus their talents and resources. Certainly among the major industrialists of Milan, as proof of the Milanese capacity to welcome, enhance and make foreign talent their own, there were many who were not born in the city. Giovan Battista Pirelli, for example, was from Como, Ernesto De Angeli from Varese, Ernesto Breda arrived from the neighbouring region of Veneto, and Carlo Erba from Vigevano, Nicola Romeo came from near Naples. Then PROLOGUE 13 there were foreigners such as Giulio Richard, Giorgio Enrico Falck, Enrico Mylius, and so forth. The fact that the Lombard capital attracted entrepreneurial talent from the rest of Italy and abroad demonstrates that there was fertile soil here and a social, economic and cultural environment that produced one of the greater places of economic tumult of the era. Without exaggerating the scope of the concept of social mobility, furthermore, it is undeniable that in Milan more opportunities existed than in other places for those who recognized and could seize them, to change one’s status and one’s place in society. In fact, even in the entrepreneurial class of the era, not all came from rich or even noble families. Ambrogio Binda and Ercole Marelli, for example, came from working class families; the food entrepreneurs, Branca and Ramazzotti, in turn, started as small craftsmen; Colombo, himself, was the son of a goldsmith. In other words, the rich and industrious Milan that included noble and bourgeois families not necessarily devoted to economic activities, made a stage available to those from the provinces, foreigners, not necessarily rich and famous, who wanted to test themselves in financial activities with their own ideas and skills. The broader city, furthermore, appeared well disposed to welcoming and hosting those making their fortune and, somehow, let them increase their social recognition and reach a higher status, making available to them sumptuous palazzos and luxurious bourgeois habitats that contributed to defining its prestigious image. When around the end of the nineteenth century Eugenio Cantoni, textile industrialist of the northern province, at the peak of his success, decided to live in Milan, he purchased in the Brera neighbourhood a palazzo of seventy rooms that provided for him a splendid image of bourgeois respectability and made him one of the most visible men in the city. Without exaggerating the intensity of the economic growth processes which while constant were hardly lightening quick, it is undeniable moreover that the urban and economic fabric of Milan demonstrated early, compared to others, its predisposition to receive and promote industries and commerce. In Milan, during the 1870s, there were over 500 plants, both actual factories and large craftsmen’s shops, which gave work to over 14,000 workers, and in the area of the “holy bodies” there were another 200 factories with an additional 6,000 workers. Most of them worked in companies of the typographic industry, weaving companies, passemen- 14 SMART MILAN

terie shops, mechanical businesses, in the silk industry and fully 1,400 were employed in the large tobacco plant. As demonstrated by the rapid transformation which occurred during that period, just ten years later the national census indicated that in Milan about 110,000 people were employed in all the sectors, of which 15,000 defined as “bosses” and 95,000 “workers” or “employees”. And, even though most of them were still employed in a multitude of small and very small businesses, and only a few in the larger companies which concentrated a large number of people especially in the area to the north of the city hinterland, certainly the increase in the numbers described the ongoing trend during those years. It was, in fact, during those years, that the large factory, product of industrial capitalism, which had already existed for a century in the urban landscapes of the major cities of the Western advanced nations, was becoming also in Milan a presence that was no longer episodic but rather continuously spreading. In 1892, a survey by Leopoldo Sabbatini, the future Rector of the Bocconi University, described how in the Milan area there were over 1,500 factories with a total of 50,000 workers, with an average of about 30 workers per company, and how over 28,000 of them were concentrated in less than 300 companies. Such an intense and territorially concentrated process of industrial distribution, even though intermittent, naturally, besides an accommo- dating environment, a culture of support, and institutions capable of promoting and supporting these processes, had also found a series of representative figures who, in fact, became part of history as fathers of the transformation of those years and, in some way, the development of the city. One personality, who certainly represented the captain of industry of the era well, founder of a veritable industrial empire which started in Milan, was Giovanni Battista Pirelli. He was born on the shores of Lake Como, at Varenna in 1848, the son of a baker and grew up in a modest family. After participating at a very young age in Garibaldi’s endeav- ours, an experience that united many of the members of the ruling class of the period, he graduated from the Politecnico with a degree in engineering and was encouraged by his professor, Giuseppe Colombo, from whom he even received a loan to start his own business, to become interested in the new rubber industry. In 1872, he founded the G.B. Pirelli Company, which in the span of one year started its business producing “plates, seals and other items for industrial applications”, and soon he started to sell haberdashery and healthcare items, telegraph, PROLOGUE 15 electrical, and telephone wires and, finally starting in the ‘90s, bicycle tyres and then automobile tyres. Demonstrating the irresistible growth of this industry, the company which when it was founded had about 40 workers in a small factory in the city, in 1913 at “Bicocca” in the large factory in the northern suburb of Milan, it employed almost 4,000 and

Giuseppe Colombo (Archivio Politecnico di Milano, Milano) 16 SMART MILAN

sold more than half of its production abroad where it had established branches in Spain, Argentina and the United States. During those few decades, G.B. Pirelli, starting from a baker’s shop on the shores of the lake to head his own company, became one of the most influential people of the country, was appointed senator of the Kingdom, and became a symbol of the Italian, as well as Milanese, industrial bourgeoisie. In addition, he became the symbol of an industrialist completely dedicated to a veritable “religion of work” and to a symbiosis between family and company that would always mark Italian capitalism. Less triumphant, but no less significant, were the affairs of Giorgio Enrico Falck, who like Pirelli, was born on Lake Como in 1866, even though on the opposite shore. The heir of a family of technicians and managers of the iron and steel industry, after studying abroad and following the footprints as manager in companies of the industry, he soon revealed his own ambitious entrepreneurial plans. At the dawn of the new century, in fact, with the support of Banca Commerciale, one of the most important banks in the country, he founded the Lombardy Steelworks and Foundries taking over various plants in Lom- bardy and in a short time producing a significant share of the national production of steel. However, in particular, the company arranged the construction of a large factory, equipped for the first time in Italy with equipment technologically in line with the leading manufacturing countries. It was located in Sesto San Giovanni, north of Milan, near the busiest railway junction of the country where the workforce of the Como and Lecco area was concentrated, and that had always been experts in the processing of metals. Naturally, the spirit of innovation evident in Colombo, Pirelli and Falck was shared in more or less obvious forms also by other Milanese entrepreneurs of the era. Ambrogio Binda, for example, born in 1811, during the Post-Unification Period, was already a successful businessman with various paper and button plants, located both in the city and outside. In addition to having introduced to his companies, which employed over 600 workers, an advanced distribution of the work, Binda was also famous for his efforts in favour of the workers inspired by the so-called industrial “paternalism”. In return, it appears he wanted to be called “darling father” by his employees who even sang long hymns of praise to him which ended with the words “bless the worker who gives him bread and work!”. PROLOGUE 17

During the Post-Unification Period, the factory of Giulio Richard was already active in Milan. He was from the Piedmont and had moved to Milan in the 1840s. He had acquired a porcelain factory along the Grande waterway in the southern area of the city, and during the following years he had enlarged and improved it with new and perfected machines developing the production of ceramics and low cost crockery common throughout the Lombard market. Richard’s fame was also widespread for his work in favour of his 300 workers for whom he developed support initiatives of a paternalistic nature, building around the company grounds housing and daycare centres, and promoting the establishment of mutual funds in favour of the workers, dowries for their daughters and so forth. The case of Ernesto De Angeli, son of a carpenter born in 1848, is that of an entrepreneur adopted by Milan who was able to expand innovative production such as the printing of cotton fabrics, production of which in Italy during the nineteenth century was seriously underde- veloped. In fact, in 1878, with the support of Eugenio Cantoni, another pre-eminent textile entrepreneur, he took over the factory that at thirty-one years of age he was already managing near Porta Vercellina, and converted it into the new modern facility which in just a few years marked his financial success and entrepreneurial fame, sanctioned also by election as senator of the Kingdom. Lastly, the business of Ernesto Breda must be mentioned, who in 1886 purchased an old mechanical company, the Elvetica, and decided to dedicate himself mainly to the construction of locomotives, a product which up until then was the exclusive prerogative of foreign companies. Inspired by the new experimental industrial production methods in the United States, after less than twenty years Breda had made a place for himself on the national market and had produced over 500 locomotives becoming one of the major Italian mechanical industries. Far removed from the businessman type, but important in the landscape of Milanese innovators of the late nineteenth century, there was another student of Giuseppe Colombo, namely Enrico Forlanini. He was born in Milan in the year of the five days of insurrection against the Austrian domination, 1848, and at a very young age had entered the military college and distinguished himself for his ability in science. It is in this military environment, using the workshops that were made available to him for his tireless studies, that Forlanini conducted his first experiments on propellers and their characteristics, managing to make a model helicopter fly which was operated by a rubber band. 18 SMART MILAN

Driven by these interests, in the 1870s he attended the Politecnico where he met Colombo who was very interested in his brainchild in the field of aeronautical studies, and graduated with a degree in industrial engineering, later teaching, for a short period of time, mechanics courses. Later, returning to the army, Forlanini resumed his experiments on helicopters producing a metal model equipped with a steam engine. It was with this prototype, the first in the world of its kind, that the young Giovanni Forlanini in 1877 aroused great interest in Milan. In July of that year, in fact, he organized a flight demonstration in the hall of the public gardens where in front of a stupefied crowd, including his teacher Colombo, the helicopter weighing more than 3 kilos rose up to 13 metres remaining aloft for twenty long seconds then returning to earth slowly. After this moment of popularity, following which the legend also became widespread according to which the demonstration had taken place at La Scala instead, Forlanini continued to study flying machines, devoting himself assiduously to dirigibles. Despite all his interest in aeronautics, however, his most long-lasting invention involved navigation since the machine on which he started to work towards the end of the century, namely the hydrofoil, became a successful modern means of navigation. In fact, a machine completed by him in 1910 for a long time was continued to be used in the Lombard lakes. During those years, on that same vessel, Forlanini had the honour of transporting the American inventor of the telephone, Alexander G. Bell who, interested in the product, agreed with him on distributing these vessels also in the United States. The list of these “captains of industry” could go on for a long time because, truly, Milan during the last decades of the nineteenth century was the birthplace of businessmen and individuals who managed to interpret the spirit of the times and the winds of change that traversed the manufacturing world. This brief and symbolic overview of the people and the individual paths, however, should not give the impression that a homogeneous social class was being created composed of modern, open-minded entrepreneurs simply dedicated to financial risk crowned by success. What unified these individual achievements, the common thread among these entrepreneurs, was instead the processing and sharing of a particular system of values which was being created during those years in Milan more than elsewhere. This was based on the certain faith PROLOGUE 19 in work, in moderation of habits and in political moderation which represented the founding values of Milanese pragmatism of which these individuals were the best examples. “My whole life” - wrote he businessman, Giulio Richard before he died - “was devoted to work and the development of my industry, always with the goal of offering work and an honest wage to the greatest number of people that I could afford. Having always thought that a good example and honest, regular work are the best way to be useful improving oneself and others.” Naturally, this vision whether sincere or only flaunted, also had some consequences that are less easy to share or, at least, understand today, such as for example in the relations with the world of labour. Moreover, in all countries the manufacturing modernisation processes obviously entailed deep and painful social wounds which were certainly demonstrated in the Italy of the end of the nineteenth century, and in Milan since it was the first society being industrialized, and often in a traumatic manner. Beyond some measures of a paternalistic nature towards the workers, relations with the employees of the first “captains of industry” often were anything but inspired by consideration and good relations; and, in fact, they sometimes revealed a particular harshness. The industrialists were certainly careful to spread an image of being “good family men”, but the methods for imposing a strict factory discipline in the Milan of those times, often contrasted with this idyllic vision. Studies on the world of labour of the period, conducted by historians such as Franco Della Peruta, who more recently reconstructed the characteristics of nineteenth century Milan, in fact brought to light completely different aspects. At Pirelli, for example, the “head workers”, in other words the supervisors of most of the workforce, all had in common a low education and high capacity for being obeyed: they were all former policemen or carabinieri in fact, while at Breda there was actually a former prison warden, proof that the good trade union relations were still long in coming. Pirelli had the habit of lowering wages as the workers aged, often firing them when they were old to replace them with younger workers. In other words, the cult of labour did not prevent, during the spread of industrialization, in Milan any more than elsewhere due to the extent of the processes that were happening there, all the social and political contradictions from happening which had marked these phases in the rest of Europe. 20 SMART MILAN

Milan on display: the Exposition of 1871

In the midst of these changes, the initial moment when Milan was able to start to represent itself to the country, but especially to pause to reflect on its own peculiarities and on the change in its identity, occurred exactly one decade after the Unification of Italy, in 1871, when the Italian Industrial Exposition was held. The Milan that hosted the exposition was the mirror of the transformations under way in the Italian economy and society and, especially, the processes through which the city was about to win a new role in the country. Or rather, how it was updating the role that it had had up until then as modern city, capable of guiding the change in the panorama of the Italian cities. Milan, in 1871, was no longer the capital of the Risorgimento and had not yet completely brought its new identity into focus: it was on the right road, however, and this path was certainly sufficient for the event being organised that year. The world expos, during the nineteenth century, were a sort of arena of “global comparison”, a playing field in which the major developed nations competed and sized each other up, exhibiting their best works. On those occasions, the nations made themselves known, imitated each other, promoted their work, appreciated the mutual qualities, possibly envied each other, socialized their discoveries and communicated with each other. During the first phase of the expositions, at the end of the eighteenth century, France was the major participant of the sector, a source of inspiration for the other advanced countries. For its part, from the middle of the next century, Great Britain, with the Great Exhibition of Industry of all Nations, inaugurated in London in May 1851, radically changed the nature of these expositions. For the first time an exhibition of this type was open to international participation, and in addition to the over seven thousand English exhibitors there were as many from other countries. The promotional capacity moreover of the initiative was multiplied by the ability demonstrated by the organisers to demonstrate technical progress in the form of a performance. The Crystal Palace, which housed merchandise and products, had in fact become a sort of symbol of these events both in the eyes of the simple visitor and of the technical and commercial delegations coming from every corner of the world. Consequently, the expositions, in addition to having an undeniable economic significance, had cultural, political and social importance, PROLOGUE 21 because they had the goal of stimulating the economies and industries by spreading ideas, projects, and technologies. The race to innovation, during a period of great technological changes and the spread of new manufacturing methods, moreover, was based on this implicit competition to resolve theoretical and material problems and to share the solutions at the global level. These fairs made it possible to start competitive races of emulation among the countries that contributed to spreading industry on a continent that was still mainly agricultural. They were in fact not directly solely at the financial operators involved in promoting business, but combined through the visits to the exhibit pavilions, many social components: curiousity about the innovations of the era, interest in the new phenomena or simply the resultant diversion and entertainment. On these occasions, wherever they were held, the number of visitors reached very large numbers and a type of tourism developed around these events, because the movement of people that followed the world expos, obviously in relation to the norms of the period, was actually significant. Besides, the attraction was strong. On those occasions, modern architectural structures and set designs were built, official ceremonies were held, public performances were organised and there were a large number of collateral events: a multitude of conventions, publications, conferences, entertainment events which made every national and international exposition a “peaceful race of nations”. Obviously, only the major urban areas, the largest and most important cities of the more advanced nations, were capable, had the resources, ideas and strength necessary to promote initiatives of the kind, by attracting and managing to host a large quantity of people. In Italy as well, especially during the periods and in the areas in which there wasn’t the urgency of facing more pressing problems such as wars or economic depressions, the attraction and the interest in these events was high. The Italian population of the period watched with interest the modernity of the more advanced nations. The establishments in turn wanted to attain political influence in those countries; the manufacturing classes, obviously, focused on becoming included at the highest level in the international competition and to suceed by reaching the level of development of the foreign industries. Therefore, here in Italy as well, there were many experiments of that kind. In 1861, for example, to celebrate the unification of the country, 22 SMART MILAN

so longed for and finally achieved, even if not yet complete, a world expo was organised in Florence, then the capital of the Kingdom. The event, held in the train station of the former rail yard of the Leopolda on the Florence-Livorno line, which had been abandoned and had become a large disused area, was not very industrial however. Its worth was largely symbolic, almost a political gesture which, besides, had absorbed enormous government financing both before, to promote it, and afterwards, to pay off the deficit created by the event. This event, in fact, was not crowned a great success and, rather, the limitations that it had shown served to measure the great gap that still existed between Italy’s actual potential and that conveyed by other major developed countries. A world expo in Italy during those years was a mirage, a kind of utopia: an event of that kind, realistically, appeared to be possible and then supported to its ultimate success only by the most advanced industrialised countries, the so-called first comers, who were already able to convey in the eyes of the world an accomplished economic and manufacturing modernity. So, in light of past experience, in Milan the idea in some ways could also seem risky. Moreover, despite the interest which these events created, twenty years after the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations of London, in the financial world a serpentine controversy had already spread concerning the mania of world expositions and industrial shows. Naturally, at the industrial and technological level, the flow and comparison of ideas and manufacturing processes were considered central to the promotion of the products and the improvement of the economic activities of a nation that wanted to compete with the other large industrial countries. On the other hand, given the desire to excel when compared, the world expos had progressively started to go over- board in the organisation of celebratory moments, using large amounts of resources to increase the splendour of the staging, and thus giving the impression of losing sight of the principal objective. For this reason, in the Milanese industrial middle class sector, which was distinguished by a traditional pragmatism, a certain intolerance had been expressed on several occasions towards events of a general nature, which seemed in some ways not to immediately produce concrete economic results. Nevertheless, in the Milanese technical and manufacturing sector, already the spearhead of the nation, the need was felt strongly to actually discuss the prospects for the development of Italy. The ruling class PROLOGUE 23 of the city certainly intended to contribute, with its own resources and its own influential power, to designing the Italian development without inferiority complexes relative to the large industrial countries. In summary, it was necessary to get onto the playing field, with the other competitors, and learn to compete on a par with them. The industrial exposition, consequently, was considered one of the most appropriate instruments, among other things, to conduct a census of the resources of the country, its manufacturing potential, the strong and weak points, and to give the economy a boost. Because of this, the ruling class of the city actively began organising an exposition that would serve as a first showcase nationally, but which would also allow the entire country to be part of the showcase before other nations who were interested in seeing it. The spark that triggered the organisation process of the event was ignited, not by chance, by the Italian Industrial Association (IIA/AII). The Association had been started in Milan in 1867 and included Luigi Luz- zatti as one of its sponsors, the important economist who would become Head of State, and its purpose was to promote in Italy what it could “spread throughout the working class well-being and the love of work, social security and education, in particular by establishing benefit associations, cooperative banks, cooperative production and consumer companies”. The Association, politically moderate, supported the principle that economic associations and class cooperation should be apolitical. Consistent with these ideas, it had proposed the exhibition, imagining it “not as useless parade of luxury, but a continuing means of study and comparison”. Unlike many other events, moreover, it began directly with the initiative of private individuals, as an entrepreneurial activity and, in fact, was financed through a public offering to which were added the earnings from the sale of the entrance tickets and subscriptions. This first Italian Industrial Exposition was inaugurated in Septem- ber 1871 and remained open one month, during which around ninety thousand people visited it, attracted by the products presented by 1190 exhibitors. These visitors came mainly from northern Italy, and in particular Lombardy. It was held in the Public Gardens in the “Salone del Piermarini”, which had been restored a little earlier, in 1869, by the architect Giuseppe Balzaretti, and also in an annex. Like most of the preceding events, the Milanese exposition also brought in many paying visitors to the city, who were drawn by the arrangement of “popular” attractions which for the occasion had been placed along the boulevards and among the trees of the public gardens 24 SMART MILAN

of Porta Venezia: here, in addition to visiting the stands, the citizens could stroll among the food stalls, participate in games and admire the various “marvels” which gave this economic event an air of a “country fair” and which remained a characteristic element of the expositions held in this city in subsequent years. To understand what this first exposition consisted of, we must stroll through the stands accompanied by the commentators of the period who were the first to describe the types of products present and the nature of the event. In particular there was Ignazio Cantù, Liberal Catholic, teacher, and freelance journalist, brother of the more famous Cesare, scholar and Lombard politician, who wrote an Album of the Ital-

Edizioni Broggi, Milan, Piazza della Scala, Monument to Leonardo Da Vinci, 1882-1898 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) PROLOGUE 25 ian Industrial Exposition (Album dell’esposizione industriale italiana). He obviously viewed it with great enthusiasm and considered that “it would be a considerable event” but it was even more so after the Uni- fication of Italy because it represented “intelligence” and “art” of the entire country before the world. This first Milanese exhibition was dedicated to the so-called “customary arts” and to construction and exhibited a miscellaneous combination of merchandise which, in truth, only partly demonstrated the commitment to technological and manufacturing innovation. Overall they represented also the efforts made to that point to modernize the Italian economy. The central exhibit, in fact, symbol of the heart of production, housed the porcelain and ceramic products which therefore occupied the position of greatest prestige and visibility within the Exposition. This vouched for the state of progress and the characteristics of Italian industry during that phase. The place of honour in the showcase of the Milanese exhibition was in fact given to a production which could be defined as industrial only by some stretch of the imagination because in reality it represented the great tradition of the Italian artistic industry, rather than a sector symbolising the most recent technological innovations or manufacturing systems which at that time were already widespread in the rest of Europe. Obviously, however, Italy and in particular Milan, could count among its principal exhibitors the Richard and Ginori manufacturing companies which had entirely admirable factories close to the city and which, a few decades later, would merge forming a significant industrial group in the field of these products. The exposition continued allowing the visitor to admire elements central to the industrialisation of those years, in other words the steam machines, which already in Northern Italy were produced in some companies such as Stigler, Suffert or Elvetica. In fact, these companies were included and exhibited horizontal engines, locomobile engines, atmospheric engines, steam boilers, bleeding machines, etc. Significant space was reserved also for the products of the arms industry, and so revolvers, projectiles, cartridges, sabres, bayonets, and guns of all kinds could be admired, from weapons for war to hunting weapons, as well as light pistols which especially attracted the attention of the visitors because they were dedicated to the “gentlemen”. Among the various products, from the horse railway to the billiard table, it was actually the modern products of the industry that most interested the public. Even King Vittorio Emanuele paused for a long 26 SMART MILAN

time in front of the hydraulic pump of the Bosisio & C., observing it, studying it for several minutes, getting information in detail on its operation from the manufacturers and then watching it in action. And in the same way, the machines and iron applications offered the possibility of observing “the artistic instinct of the Italians” which had already been identified as the characteristic factor of the local industry and one of its greatest potentials for the future. The products and the descriptions that were written by the chroniclers of this event basically gave the impression of a transformation in progress in the manufacturing methods and techniques, which in fact were starting to arouse the curiosity of the observers; they also maintained the persistence of the characteristic elements of the Italian tradition which on meeting the new technologies were starting to display an original “style”. While there still did not exist a national specificity in production, a real “Made in Italy”, in the field of industrial arts, during the phase of the passage from craftsmanship to industry, a specificity was starting to be outlined which, obviously, did not escape the alert eye when observing the products of the furniture, jewellery, porcelain industries. Conversely, perhaps, during that phase Italian style in the fashion industry must have been very immature, since continuing his descriptive route and passing by the products of the leather, clothing, suitcases, and shoe departments, the element that most struck Ignazio Cantù were the legs of the wooden female mannequins which wore the hose being exhibited, and disturbed his thoughts. Another section of particular significance, that made it possible to understand the state of progress of a sector which in the history of Milan would have great importance in terms of the economy and Italian society overall, was the one reserved for the typographic and publishing industry. Among the exhibiting music publishers were the Ricordi, who intrigued the public by offering manuscripts of Verdi, Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti; and, for the publishing sector in general, the presence of a company was noted which was “recent, but with illustrious intentions”, created by Emilio Treves who within the span of a few years would become the largest in the country, alongside those of Vallardi, Zanichelli and Sonzogno, still present and important today. The Milan Exposition of 1871 certainly did not achieve the dimensions of events organised in other countries; it was however the first in a series of industrial expositions that the city afterwards promoted continuously over thirty five years, until the national and city triumph of the Interna- tional Exposition of 1906. In fact, this last was preceded by three other PROLOGUE 27 events: the national exhibition of 1881, the sector-based one dedicated to planning of 1887 and lastly by the joint Expositions of 1892. The first event of 1871, however, while smaller but thanks to the success that it nevertheless achieved, to its credit captured and depicted a transition phase, exhibiting the city as it was at that moment. Just for a start, with this event Milan had positioned itself relative to the other Italian cities, where the exhibitions had had mediocre results; secondly it had reiterated its candidacy as avant-garde city on the economic and manufacturing level, exhibiting companies that even though they had possibly not reached the size of the foreign companies, were already serving as national points of reference. The expositions attested to a cult of innovation and progress, thanks to the industrial applications of the new scientific and technical knowledge, and Milan had demonstrated that it wanted to compete at this level, even relative to markets that were certainly more advanced. Also because of this experience, we were convinced that there existed a sort of Milanese vocation to use expositions, not only as a means for promoting trade but also as instruments for promoting an industrialist project, during a phase when it was not a given that the country intended to pursue this path. Especially, however, it was here that we started to hone and convey a precise and fundamental aspect of Milan’s identity which in that period just after the Unification of Italy was being clarified and later would mature. Milan brought to its participation in the competitions of nations a conviction and a faith deeply rooted in the value of work, understood as industriousness, effort and desire. Work, as an instrument of personal enrichment and social promotion of the individual, in addition to well- being and collective interest, in the Milanese mentality was associated with the virtues of moderation, commitment, savings and strength of will. In the second half of the nineteenth century, this aspect became very significant both in the mentality of the ruling, commercial, financial, and industrial classes and in the general spirit of the city which was beginning to represent and inscribe itself on this foundation. Symbolically, besides the relative success of the initiative, the balance sheet of the Exposition closed with a significant profit. Unlike other cities which in addition to asking for public money had to also record losses, the organisers and the observers considered the success to be the result of the initiative, management skills and expertise of the Milanese manufacturing class and a success, more in general, for all the Milanese citizens who had supported it making it possible with their work or also, simply, by visiting the exhibition. 28 SMART MILAN

Italy on display: the National Exposition of 1881 The event at the beginning of the 1870s had served Milan also to measure its own possibilities and resources; but it was the Exposition that was held in the city in 1881 that marked a definite turning point in its identity and image, and legitimised its ability to represent all of Italy, at least from the economic point of view. Thanks to this event, following the exhibition which compared to this one assumed a more “home- made” aspect, Milan, in just ten years, managed to convey the idea of the speed with which the ongoing processes were occurring and how much it managed to interpret the changes under way, becoming in the public’s eyes the industrial city par excellence. Moreover, during the ten years that had elapsed, the continuous expansion of the railway system, which had led to the opening of the St. Gotthard Tunnel, was proof of the deep and substantial transformations that the economic system had undergone. Many of these, also on the symbolic level, had taken place in the city under the eyes of the citizens, often generating wonder for the obvious revolutionary scope of the innovations and the technological discoveries. In 1876, for example, the first horse-drawn tram service on tracks was launched, which connected the city to the municipality of Monza in the hinterland to the north every day; and the next year, the Milanese watched another incredible innovation when, meeting in the Piazza del Duomo, at midnight on 18 March 1877, they saw the first experiment of electric lighting with a powerful lamp placed on top of a tower specifically erected in front of the cathedral. During the same months, the Gerosa brothers, returning along with Colombo from the recent Phila- delphia Exposition where Bell’s telephone had been introduced, had in turn started production of telephones. Around the end of the year, this new system had allowed a trial telephone call to be made between the Guard House of the Firefighters of Palazzo Marino, the headquarters of the Municipal Administration, and a municipal fire station a few kilometres away. And since the experiment was brilliantly successful, the next day the Mayor of Milan, Giulio Belinzaghi, making the first official telephone call of Italy, had been able to convey his wishes for a Happy New Year to his colleagues, the leading citizens of Gallarate and Varese. Moreover, besides the application of the most recent technological discoveries, during that brief period in Milan, initiatives emerged that demonstrated the vitality of the economic environment as well as its PROLOGUE 29 habits. In 1871, after the success achieved with the first shop in Italy that sold ready-made clothes, the Bocconi Brothers inaugurated the “Aux Villes d’Italie”, the first department store in Italy inspired by the Paris example. And soon afterwards, as proof of the fact that innovation was starting to involve habits and lifestyles, the entrepreneur Massimiliano Chiari launched the first tour operator business, organising for the Mil- anese tourist trips which would take them to visit the World Exposition of Paris, scheduled for 1878. It was in this atmosphere of enthusiasm and economic vitality that the ruling class of the city gathered around the Chamber of Commerce began to plan the idea of convening once again the Italian industrialists in a new larger exhibition, and to raise the bar compared to the event a decade earlier. The intent, first of all, was to provide the right visibility to the excellent products of the country’s industry, and to describe the state of progress reached by the Italian artisans, technicians and engineers.

Giulio Rossi, Milan, National Exposition, Gallery of Carriages, 1881 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 30 SMART MILAN

The proposal, included in a manifesto written by the Mayor, Count Belinzaghi, who was also a banker, and Luigi Maccia, a silk industrialist, was issued in February 1880, and the idea was immediately supported by the local establishments gaining the favour both of the “elite citizens” and by the City of Milan which thus accepted this new challenge. That the initiative raised considerable interest in the citizens, moreover, was obvious from the moment the collection of funds was launched, which led to exceptional results. The newspapers, reinforcing this positive inclination, talked of an “enthusiasm that inflamed all the classes” and a “crowd” that queued up at the counters of the Chamber of Com- merce to give money. Beyond the enthusiasm, however, was the fact that the Great National Lottery called to finance the event sold about 2 million tickets, and contributed decisively to financing the project. Beyond the usual desire to represent the state of progress of the various manufacturing and economic sectors, in any case, as proof that this even represented a substantial moment of importance in the deﬁnition of the Milanese identity, this decision was also inspired by a more mature and strategic plan. In the report drafted by the commission appointed by the Chamber of Commerce to report on the possibility of organising the industrial exposition, in fact, a central point of view was expressed to enhance understanding the Milanese climate of the time. The report explicitly declared that the fragility of the Italian economy, which forced thousands of individuals searching for their fortune to emigrate to other countries, could not be resolved solely by the agricultural economy; and therefore, it was necessary that the entire country participate in instill- ing a drive for progress focused on the Italian businesses. The industrial option, according to this vision at the onset of the decision to convene a new Exposition, represented the only real path of development of the country and in this light Milan was a real industrial city with thousands of workers and small and medium-sized sized factories driven by steam machines, operating in the principal manufacturing sectors. The Exposition of 1881, therefore, was designed to relaunch the economy of the country and, furthermore, present the City of Milan as the “economic capital” of the Kingdom of Italy. After less than a year of work by the commissions convened by the Chamber of Commerce, on 05 May 1881, with King Umberto I and Queen Margherita who arrived specifically from Rome and the leading representatives of the national government, the Mayor inaugurated the Milan Exposition. In addition to the solemn ceremony enlivened by PROLOGUE 31 the presence of the authorities, however, on this occasion, also with the intention of presence of making it an inauguration for the people, things were done on a grand scale with the obvious intent of making people talk as much as possible about an event which was starting with great ambitions. For the first Saturday evening following the solemn celebrations, in fact, the organising committee, repeating the light performance still shining in the memory of the Milanese, organised a “magnificent, fantastic lighting” in other words a spectacle of light that was so successful that it was repeated at City Hall’s expense also on the following Saturdays. The electric lighting of the tallest spire of the Cathedral was added to this public performance for seven consecutive evenings, undertaken because even in the surrounding areas this was a confirmation of the extraordinary event that was happening in Milan. Furthermore, for the event the city started a transport service based on the “horse trail”, in other words a horse-drawn tram line which connected various points of the Spanish walls with the Cathedral. The service, as proof of the curiosity that it had generated, during the time when the exposition was open actually sold four million tickets. Moreover, even the Vittorio Emanuele Gallery, normally lit by gas, was equipped with 25 Siemens arc lamps producing a marvellous and appealing spectacle, even if costly and still imperfect since the light power was not constant and every eight hours the lamps had to be changed. As before, the headquarters, after long discussions to identify the most suitable locations which would make it possible to expand “ad infinitum”, the Exposition was placed among the trees of the public gardens of Porta Venezia, and this time it extended also to the surrounding areas. The buildings that housed companies and products, arose directly behind the main facade built in the Neo-Renaissance style and designed by the official architect of the exposition, Giovanni Ceruti, a professional trained at the Politecnico di Milano, student of Francesco Brioschi and Camillo Boito, who had created the Hotel Bellagio on Lake Como and soon would design the Neo-Romantic Civic Museum of Natural His- tory of Milan, which is still located in those gardens. The Exposition included all the “copses” from the Via Senato to Via Palestro, the Public Garden between Via Palestro and Porta Venezia, and the Public Palazzo of Via Senato housed the Fine Arts Exhibition. So, in total, the Exposition covered a total area of 162,000 square metres, of which over one third was covered. Entering from the Via Senato, located 32 SMART MILAN

in the first section of the copses of the Garden, there were the galleries exhibiting railway equipment, equipment for the tramways, and sailing and agricultural machines. In the atrium of the Palazzo there were the main galleries, filled with five hundred textile industries divided into cotton, silk, wool and linen companies. Besides the galleries dedicated to work, charity, social services and education, obviously, the places of greatest interest involved the galleries of the machines and the products of general and specialized mechanics in which over three hundred exhibitors were concentrated. Usually, the public, standing in front of the stands, was amazed at the state of progress of Italian industry. It paused before the Pirelli enclosure to watch the manufacturing processes of rubber; it admired the gigantic pavilion of the Elvetica Company which produced locomotives and large machine tools; and that of Ansaldo, the Fratelli Orlandi and the Fonderia Pignone. As proof of the educational effect of this type of event, often the visitors learned for the first time that steam locomotives, railway cars, turbines, and surgical irons were produced in Italy and that one of the largest European factories of buttons was in Milan. Basically, all the Italian excellence of the moment was present in the vast exposition area of the gardens, including food and wine companies, and the producers of spirits which would become typical Italian brands known around the world such as Branca, Campari, Cinzano, Martini & Rossi, or the brewers Poretti and Wurher, alongside the confectionary products of the Sapori and Melegatti companies. In addition to seeing a vast sampling of hundreds of mining industries, in the metallurgical, mineral and mineral water field, the scientific instruments for astronomy, geology, engineering, physics, watch making and surgery could be viewed in special galleries. In a chalet prepared in characteristic style, furthermore, a special commission had concentrated the many objects relative to mountaineering, a “new gymnastic exercise that […] strengthening the limbs raised the minds of men to the serene spheres of nature”. The Italian Alpine Club exhibited here, founded in Turin in 1863 at the initiative of Quintino Sella, scientist and historian, Minister of Finance after the Unification, which exhibited mountaineering equipment, clothing items, topographi- cal maps, photographs, collections of herbs and minerals of the Alpine habitat, and various objects that showed the progress in this subject. Lastly, in a separate, special gallery the products of 35 prison factories were collected, presented by the Minister of the Interior, which more than displaying mechanical or industrial ability, were intended to give PROLOGUE 33 an idea of the organisation of work in the prisons and “to provide suitable elements for the study of this serious question, which includes the problem of moral rehabilitation of the guilty, with those of free competition and the financial conditions of the State, which requires that the burden resulting from maintaining the prisoners be somehow reduced”. The exposition remained open for six months, until the beginning of November, and was enthusiastically enjoyed by the city: cultural and social events came one after the other during the entire opening week and the following months. The entire exposition was designed to attract visitors: bars, restaurants and wide swathes for resting in the green spaces of the public garden were set up, to the extent that the entire park was strewn with kiosks and small commercial buildings. As proof of the great conviction with which it was decided to make this event a real happening for the city in order to achieve the maximum level of visibility possible, for this occasion the sponsor committee, also to exploit the “progress of the printing industry taken to an extraordinary limit of speed and economy”, had established a special “publicity” office the purpose of which was to increase as much as possible the information around the event. In the same way, alongside this office, an “entertainment commission” was established, installed already one year before the Exposition with the purpose of “calling to Milan a larger number of foreigners to judge the progress made by Italy in the various industrial branches after a period of twenty years of political existence”. It had been given a substantial budget which over the course of the six months had created initiatives of all kinds. In addition to the “fantastic lighting”, in fact, the organisation composed of a few of the most visible entrepreneurs of the city had organised horse races, performances of various kinds at the Civic Arena, social events at La Scala and the Manzoni Theatre, sports, shooting, and chess competitions, as well as parties and regattas on the Lombard lakes at Como and Varese. The Milan Expo of 1881, also for these reasons, was an extraordinary event for the Italy of that period which, also to measure the extent of the difference with the preceding event, attracted over 7000 exhibitors from all over the country, remained open for 180 days, from 6 May to 1 November, and was visited by over one and half million people, with an average of almost nine thousand visitors per day. For the entire duration of the event, even in the national press, the Milanese events echoed far and wide, definitely confirming that Milan was assuming, which then became a tradition, the title of “economic 34 SMART MILAN

capital” of Italy. Moreover, the Exposition precisely because of the level of development achieved by the major Italian companies, even if not due to their rate of distribution, showed how the country’s entrance into the circle of the more developed nations of Europe was possible. With this exposition, in fact, Italy demonstrated that it was approaching the level of other countries and, at the same time, Milan was confirming its role in relation to the other Italian cities. The comparison of the data with the Florentine exposition of twenty years earlier was almost cruel during the final evaluation of the results of the event held by the organisers. The Milanese supremacy was so obvious that, not by chance, this initiative shelved the idea, at the time latent, of holding a national exposition also in Rome, up to that moment considered by many still premature for a recently formed nation. Also during the evaluation of the results, despite “the chorus of praise” raised around the Milan Expo, the organisers asked for a clear analysis which did not encourage “fatal illusions” among the Italians. If in relation to the national context, in fact, the exposition had highlighted a strong Lombard presence, in the same way it had allowed the experts to understand how great a distance still needed to be covered to reach the level other advanced nations such as France, England, Prus- sia and the United States of America. What was evident, in any case, and which the exposition amply confirmed, was that the project that had inspired the event, had taken a decisive step forward. The exhibition, even though it did not have a “mass” impact, according to the current standards, having confirmed the Milanese supremacy in economic circles, as highlighted by Vittorio Spinazzola, had shown the main path which had to be followed for the country to develop, and proved useful in confirming the need for innovation without fear, to capture the interest of public opinion by convincing it of the importance of industrialisation. Milan, moral capital and modern city, in antithesis to Rome, political and administrative capital, could be the trailblazer of this longing given that it had now demonstrated, as if it needed to, that it could shoulder this role. When on 23 October, in the Piazza d’Armi the conclusion of the 1881 Exposition was being celebrated with a “magnificent fireworks display”, a show created by the most famous pyrotechnicians of Naples, everyone judged it “very beautiful” even though an evening rain fell hard on the city. The Exposition was closing but, under the motto “labor omnia vincit”, Milan had definitively confirmed its vocation for exertion, work and progress. PROLOGUE 35

Milan: contradictions in the mirror

Naturally, the fact that Milan around the end of the nineteenth century was a city with the characteristics just described, it did not preclude the fact that it found itself dropped into a country that was still considerably backward economically and socially. Towards the end of the century, for example, after a series of decreasing harvests and a sharp crisis in the agricultural sector, the living conditions of the most disadvantaged social classes were truly barely sustainable. In this situation, the continuous increase in food prices and, especially, that of bread, at the time the staple of the poorer classes, created in most of the country the so-called “protest of the stomach”. Even Milan, although the situation was definitely better from the economic point of view, as time went on suffered from the conditions of the rest of Italy. In addition, the fact must not be ignored that, in the albeit advanced and prosperous industrial city, the working conditions in the factories were certainly not easy and most of the wages, on average three quarters, was spent on food.

Luca Comerio, Milan, Uprisings of 1898, Porta Venezia, Barricades with Derailed Trams, 1898 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 36 SMART MILAN

Here as well, it was in particular the price of bread that, especially in the working-class neighbourhoods where the concentration of industries and residences was higher, weighed heavily on the meagre household budgets of the working class families where, across the country, an average worker earned about 2 lire per day and, from 1897, in the span of one year had seen the price of a kilo of bread increase from less than 40 cents to almost 50. According to Vilfredo Pareto, internationally renowned economist, the duty on wheat which caused the price increases was “a tax on the hunger of the people” that was used to finance military costs and the colonial activities of the national governments led at the time by Franc- esco Crispi. During that period, this discontent of the urban proletariat was obviously represented by the more popular political forces, such as the Socialist party and the Radical Party which, already during the preceding years, had organised strikes by the poorest classes with the goal of achieving improvements in their quality of life. On the other hand, the moderate Milanese, representing the middle-class and industrial classes, were terrified by the demonstrations of force of those parties and the worker associations, which highlighted the existence of a “social problem”. The moment of explosion of all the elements combined appeared ready to take place on Sunday, 1 May 1898, for Labour Day. Unlike all the previous years, when the demonstrations were held in a generally orderly fashion, this time an army of thousands of soldiers was alerted, in addition to police and carabinieri, ready to suppress with force any street riots. That day, however, also thanks to the executives of the Socialist Party, which in Milan had in its front rank the important member, Filippo Turati, no disorder occurred and the day passed calmly while, conversely, in other cities serious disorder occurred. In a climate that was so on the edge and tense, just a small spark was needed to ignite the powder, which in fact soon occurred. On the afternoon of 6 May, in front of the Pirelli factories, the intervention of the police who had come to prevent a distribution of pamphlets, and the arrest of a young worker, triggered a demonstration of that company’s workers which marched through the streets of Milan swelled with the arrival of workers from other city factories. Thus began a day when, while industrialists such as Pirelli and political leaders such as Turati, cooperating together, were trying in vain to maintain calm, on the one hand the authorities and on the other hand the agitated peo- PROLOGUE 37 ple, progressively made the tension rise. In this context, a clash between soldiers armed with bayonets and demonstrators throwing rocks caused numerous injuries and two deaths: a guard and a Pirelli worker. Then in the evening as a storm raged over the city, the Galleria in Duomo, guarded by the real army, consequently became the meeting point of a crowd that sang the hymn of the workers and the Republican hymn. The precarious equilibrium of this tense situation, however, exploded the next day, on 7 May, when again starting from Pirelli, a strike was called which already in early morning involved 4,000 workers. This event shut down the trams and paralysed the city and, to prevent the cavalry from moving in, improvised barricades were erected which blocked the streets to Porta Venezia, in Via Torino, the canals in Corso Ticinese, at Porta Vittoria, Porta Garibaldi, and so forth. Obviously these were spontaneous acts by citizens without arms of any kind, but the authorities thought a real revolution was under way, demonstrating that they had lost all perspective in the analysis of what was happening and further increased the presence of the military in the city. It was in this context that the general, Fiorenzo Bava Beccaris, who had taken command of the operations, first shut down all the newspapers considered “subversive” (including “Il Secolo”, “Italia del Popolo” and the Socialist paper “Critica Sociale”), and then on Sunday 8 May, he had cannons fire all day long in various parts of the city, causing a great number of injuries and dozens of deaths. In the following days, after calm had been restored and the shedding of blood had been stopped, arrests and trials began for political representatives, journalists and simple citizens: it seemed incredible, but industrial Milan, the most advanced city in the country, which just a few years earlier had hosted the national Exposition, remained in a “state of siege” under the super- vision of the army for months, until the following September. General Bava Beccaris, who during the period of siege of the Lom- bard capital had machine guns fired against the starving crowd, even though rewarded by the King, went down in history as the symbol of a fierce militarism, serving a ruling class terrified because of the social crisis and the riots in which they saw revolutionary risk and not the malaise due to the economic problems. The events in the Milan of 1898 left as legacy a popular song that described the situation well: “Alle grida strazianti e dolenti/ di una folla che pan domandava/ il feroce monarchico Bava/ gli affamati col piombo sfamò” [“To the agonising and painful cries/ of a crowd demanding bread / the fierce Monarchist Bava/ fed the starving with lead”]. 38 SMART MILAN

This, on the eve of the new century, was the other face of the medal of excellent Milan, of Milan, economic and moral hub. As in the largest capitals of the developed world, the advent of industrialisation had brought with it also social contradictions and, obviously, an immediate distribution of wealth did not always correspond to the increase in innovations. The image that best described this mosaic of conditions was the painting “Il quarto stato [The Fourth Estate]” by Giuseppe Pelizza da Volpedo,

Giuseppe Pelizza da Volpedo, Il Quarto Stato (The Fourth Estate), 1901 PROLOGUE 39 finished in 1901, but the preliminary draft of which was precisely from 1898. In it, a “human river” of the starving, led by two workers and a barefoot woman holding a newborn, depicted the needs of a society in rapid but disorderly transformation. The painting, which then became a symbol of the affirmation of the proletariat and the twentieth century, was bought a few years later by the municipality of Milan and, after touring the world, it is still exhibited today in the Museo del Novecento in Piazza del Duomo. CHAPTER 1 The Capital of Modernity

ilan approached the new century with the thrust that it derived Mfrom the acceleration of the modernisation processes during the previous decades and which, at the dawn of 1900, were obviously displaying their results. Moreover, it did not seem as though the city and its citizens had any intention of slowing down or squandering the opportunities offered by these phenomena. To understand how much the face of the city had changed over the years, just think of the increase in the number of inhabitants, which at the beginning of the century, increasing at a rate of 26% per year, and through constant growth, had reached 540,00 in the city. During the previous years the city had been expanded with the inclusion of the “holy bodies”, to which were added the almost 300,000 of the district, bringing the number of citizens in the Milan that region to over 800,000. The St. Gotthard Tunnel, at the time the longest railway tunnel in the world, completed in 1882 after a decade of work, had made Milan the main railway junction for connections between Italy and the rest of Europe, and in particular Switzerland and Germany which, with France, were the most important end markets. During the period between the 1890s and the First World War, furthermore, Milan was decisively consolidating its dominance of the Italian economy. Apart from the economic events, this supremacy was based on the strengthening of the entire production sector, relative to the production of the so-called “second industrial revolution” which, from the beginning of the century, was making a surprising surge forward. Milan’s confirmation as the major industrial centre was determined by a combination of concurrent positive factors. One of these was obvi- 42 SMART MILAN

ously the great supply of low cost labour, the availability of capital from the divestiture in agriculture and that was made available by the creation of large banks, such as the Banca Commerciale Italiana, new access to low cost energy resources, such as electricity and, lastly, the improvement in the transport infrastructures to which were added the customs protection established at the end of the century. All these factors, greater in Milan than anywhere else in Italy, made it possible for

Giulio Galimberti, Milan, Corso Vercelli, the Steam Tram to Magenta (Il Gamba de legn), Thirties/Forties (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 43 this area to become increasingly more efficient and interconnected to the flow of merchandise and people. Obviously, during this phase processes were occurring, which in other countries that had developed earlier had taken place much soon- er, in other words the creation of businesses with a high intensity of capital rather than labour. Thus businesses based on the large factories were gaining ground on a larger scale which strengthened the sectors that had emerged previously such as the engineering, electrical, and electrochemi- cal industries and, at the same time, the more traditional manufacturers such as clothing, textile, and wood processing were decreasing. In 1911, there were over 150,000 employees in Milanese companies, including approximately 130,000 factory workers and 14,000 working in cottage industry. In fact, at that time, within Milan’s borders there were about 8,000 companies, approximately 2,000 of which had more than ten employees which alone employed 112,000 people. Of the total, the mechanical industry employed more than 40,000, a number which for the first time exceeded domestic services by 10,000. There were 6,500 employees in the chemical industry, 5,500 in the motive power, water, light and heat industries, and 13,000 people in the transport industry. In Milan, 800 people produced steel in the Falck companies, and over 4,000 people worked in the new Breda factory of Sesto S. Giovanni, a veritable manufacturing city which would exemplify the history of Milanese industry and labour throughout the century. Furthermore, during these years companies which later became historic, and brands famous around the world, were also consolidating their positions. In the 44 SMART MILAN

automobile industry, Isotta Fraschini, which began in 1904, had built a factory in Via Monte Rosa, and represented the “vigorous and modern affirmation of the industrial class” with a workforce of 600 employees and an annual production of 500 chassis. Bianchi, based in the eastern part of the city, which previously produced bicycles, in 1905 started to build over 800 cars per year, one for every employee. Moreover, in the first decade of the century, the Italian jewel, Alfa Romeo, was already in business and establishing the bases for its expansion. The brand origi- nated from the establishment in Naples of the Darracq Company, manufacturer of French cars. At the end of 1906, it moved to Milan and established itself in a factory constructed in the western part of the city, in the area called Portello. After a few hardships, in 1910 the company was taken over by some Lombardy entrepreneurs who changed its name to Alfa (“Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili (Lombardy Automobile Factory Public Company)”) and launched the first car model, the 24 Hp, which was fairly successful on the market and was therefore followed by other models. With approximately 200 employees, before Italy entered the First World War, in 1914, Alfa sales reached about 300 cars a year before it was taken over by the Neapolitan mechanical engineer, Nicola Romeo because of the crisis caused by the war. As Director of the Portello factory, he converted production to military equipment, such as munitions and aircraft engines, temporarily stopping the production of cars. How- ever, once the war ended, the engineer returned the company to its original production and bestowed its definitive name of “Alfa Romeo”. The network of mechanical businesses, furthermore, could count on a thriving electromechanical industry supported by the innovations in the electrical industry. The most significant case, in this regard, was that of Ercole Marelli, which was named for its founder. A simple apprentice at the beginning of the century, he had opened a small workshop for the production of appliances for physics and other scientific laboratories. In a short period of time, taking advantage of the rapid expansion of the sector, the company expanded to 200 employees and, after also moving to Sesto San Giovanni, in 1911 had 1,500 workers who, through a modern organisation of the work process, produced fans, electric motors, electric parts for cars, etc. Naturally, this economic growth of Milan based on the industrial factory system was boosted by the rapid technological innovation that had accompanied the advent of mechanisation, machine tools, automatic production, etc. These transformations, furthermore, produced THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 45 a change also within the so-called “working class”. The origin of the industrialisation was broadly based on the concept of “trade”, which assumed that not only the entrepreneur had technical ability and expertise but also the producer, and determined the rise of the so-called “working class aristocracy”. The advent of automatic production and its spread throughout the industrial fabric, conversely, in some ways entailed the draining of the traditional professional qualifications and the levelling of specialisation, since the worker increasingly became an accessory to the production machine. Filippo Turati, Milanese Socialist political leader, gave a mental pic- ture of these phenomena that had marked the advent of the factory system in all the industrialised countries, as follows: “what is demanded today by industry […] is not so much ability as speed of work […] the time is long gone when the mechanic conceived and created his piece, studied it to improve it by all possible expedients, and therefore was part of the aristocracy of workers”. Indirectly, then, these phenomena connected to the modernisation of the production processes entailed considerable consequences also of a social nature and had impact on the city. The Milanese economy had

Manifesto-24-hp-1910 Alfa Romeo 46 SMART MILAN

the effect of bringing back to the city a large number of immigrants looking for work, and in fact they averaged 10,000/12,000 per year between people from Piedmont, Venice, Emilia and Tuscany, and this reverberated directly on the strong urban growth of the period. The changing economic and social processes were consequently accompanied from the end of the nineteenth century by changes in the city, its spaces, its style, and its functions. In the Milanese context, in fact, the debate was flourishing on the “Architecture of the New Italy” which expressed the awareness that it was necessary to identify a precise style and use it rationally in urban design and in architecture to develop a future and guide the destiny of the city. Previously, during the Napoleonic era, an urban programme had become established inspired by neoclassical concepts which was then abandoned during the nineteenth century when there had not been any predominant style in either public or private projects. The economic changes of the Post-Unification period, however, had spread the need to every level for a city project that rationally organised what modernity was turning upside down, in other words the distribution of factories, homes and jobs in order to accompany the development that was taking place incessantly under everyone’s eyes. This vision had found, for example, in the Neo-Romanesque style of “brick and iron architecture”, a culmination and the expressive instruments for imagining from the historical, symbolic, functional and aesthetic point of view, a city of the future that was becoming the present little by little. One of the major players of Milanese architecture during that period was Camillo Boito, who taught for a long time at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera and the Politecnico training generations of Milanese professionals and, in the 80s, noted that architecture was also “in transition” in symbiosis with the changes in the historical period and the surrounding society. His work was inspired by the requirement that society was becoming modernised by holding together jobs and social classes, merging the past and the present. It was precisely this vision, however, that went into crisis because of the speed with which the industrial system heavily affected the urban fabric and the vertiginous growth in inhabitants directed its form and substance. These phenomena caused a physiological disorder, an acceleration in the renewal that was also hard to manage and orient because, since the end of the fifties to 1889, Milan grew without any plan or precise development policy. THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 47

Lastly, it was in that year that the Plan prepared by the municipal engineer, Cesare Beruto, who it was subsequently named after, was introduced. The provision was a simple and pragmatic attempt to manage what was happening but which could not fully foresee its scope. Consequently, the Plan, with the intention of providing a little order to the economic, residential and construction growth and, at the same time, assure a minimum of decorum to the city, approved the “spider web” diagram which had until that moment accompanied the urban growth. Based on this system, which anticipated that radiating spokes would radiate from the centre towards the periphery, broken up by plazas intended as nodes of the grid, the subsequent structural transformation project of the city was also to be created. Promoted by the city middle class, it anticipated the progressive concentration in the central areas of the tertiary sector, the banks, Stock Exchange, insurance companies and the high bourgeoisie residences. Inevitably it pushed the factories and the working class homes to the peripheral and suburban areas. Through this prescription, moreover shared by the major European capitals of the period, Milanese architects and engineers worked between the nineteenth and twentieth century. In light of the Beruto Plan, during the following period the future town structure of Milan was established which was affirmed during the first two decades of the century. At the same time, the demolition of the sixteenth century Spanish walls surrounding the city and which the city had burst through, was completed, and so the fragile aesthetic barrier which seemed to oppose the growth of the modern metropolis was erased. The town plan, furthermore, anticipated a massive intervention directed at the reorganisation of the city centre, confirmed as the true urban heart. The central element of the new urban organisation was the axis of streets between Piazza del Duomo, Via Dante, Piazza Cordu- sio and Corso Sempione, destined to be the administrative and financial lynch pin of the city. In this way, the large projects carried out during the previous years around the Piazza del Duomo, now the “centre of the centre” found a meaning. This plaza, which from the last century to the present day has remained virtually unchanged except for its being made totally pedes- trian, assumed its current form in the last decades of the nineteenth century, when it was conceived as an “Italian-style” plaza highlighting the great city cathedral, from which it takes its name. 48 SMART MILAN

The construction of the Duomo, the symbol of Milan, was started around the end of 1300 at the instigation of the Visconti, at the time the masters of Milan. The work, from that time, continued for about five centuries and finally produced an almost 12,000 m2 Late Gothic style church. The white Candoglia marble, day after day and for centuries was transported by barges along the Milanese canals which in the past reached the square where the “Duomo factory” was located. Over time, given the duration of the works, the phrase “Duomo factory”, in Milan, became a phrase to indicate an unfinished work, something that never ends. At the conclusion of the project, the top of the church, was covered by the traditional spires and 3,159 marble statues, each one different, and at the very top of the highest spire, at over 108 metres, the “Madonnina” was placed in 1774. This was a statue in gilded copper by the artist, Giuseppe Perego. Beyond its religious significance, it became parhaps the greatest symbol of the city and it is said that it protects the residents of Milan who when they leave, or return, can see her shiny profile in the city sky. The arrangement of the centremost plaza of Milan was started in 1865 when a competition was launched that received 176 different proposals. The winner was a Bologna architect, Giuseppe Mengoni, who during the subsequent years the initial work of the plaza which had demolished all the buildings constructed during previous eras, including residences, theatres, religious buildings, located in the area surrounding the Duomo. The last of these blocks, called “Rebecchino”, was a working-class district of houses and shops, which was located where the plaza of the Cathedral is today, and which was demolished in 1875 when the plaza had already been developed with its palazzi around it, more or less as it appears today. In addition to the façade of the Cathedral, the Archbishop’s Place, the Royal Palace, the porticos and especially the “Salotto di Milano (Living Room of Milan)”, that is the “Galleria”, looked onto the square plaza. The construction of this integral part of the winning project for the redevelopment of the plaza had already been started in the 1865 and was made possible through English capital and the technical cooperation of French companies which, in fact, assembled parts of its iron framework in Paris. The Galleria was conceived as a long building crossed by an arm, with a large octagonal “hall” in the centre: the roof of this hall included an iron framework and glass. Around the perimeter of the cupola, furthermore, there was a crown of small gas flames sitting close to each other, THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 49 periodically lit by a device on a spring, which the Milanese called the “topolino (little mouse)”, which travelling fast lit the burners leaving a luminous trail behind it and illuminating the entire “octagon” below. The two main entrances, those of the longest arm, furthermore consisted in two large triumphal arches. When he was inspecting the arch over the exit towards the Duomo the architect, Mengoni, creator of the Galleria, died on 30 December 1877 by falling from the cupola during an inspection, just a few days before the monument was completed. A few weeks before, moreover, the lighting of the great beacon was tested in the plaza, introducing the innovation of electric light to the Milanese which, a few years later, would permanently light the centre, definitively replacing the gas street lights. From the day of the inauguration, the Galleria became the meeting place and living room of the Milanese, and its two hundred metre route, where there were shops, book stores, bars such as the Biffi, the Campari, the Camparino or the Savini, became meeting places for all the citizens and in particular Milanese artists, musicians and intellectuals. The monument dedicated to Vittorio Emanuele II was placed in the Duomo Square in 1896, following the completion of the Galleria

Milan, Piazza del Duomo, Demolition of the Ancient Block of the Rebecchino, 1872 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 50 SMART MILAN

and can still be seen today. Known as the “Gentleman King”, he died in ‘77 shortly before the inauguration of the building, and is credited with launching, after the Unification, the process of developing the Piazza, financed among other things by a national lottery of two million tickets. On the opposite side of the Galleria, the Piazza opened onto Palazzo Marino, a XVI building restored at that time by the architect, Beltrami, and which would become the seat of the Milanese municipality as well as the largest Theatre of Milan: La Scala. This building was constructed in the second half of 1700 at the request of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria on the design of the famous architect, Giuseppe Piermarini. Through here passed, during the following decades and through out the dominations that Milan experienced, the rulers, nobles and entire Milanese culture during the Austrian, the Napoleonic and again the Austrian. In 1816, Stendhal justifiably wrote: “My goodness, La Scala is the leading theatre in the world”. In fact, shortly before Gioachino Rossini, later the author of the Barber of Seville, had made his debut, followed by Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti and, starting in the forties, Giuseppe Verdi the most famous Italian composer of all times. His debut in the Milanese theatre with Nabucco in front of the Savoia family, following the Unification, was watched by Napoleon sitting in the box of honour. La Scala was, symbolically, right from the start the meeting place of the Milanese ruling classes, the authorities and the noblest families who, among other things, owned the boxes, decorated to their taste, imagination and personal vanity, and passed them down through the generations: the Scala boxes were, in reality, a sort of condominium of the Milanese aristocracy. From the end of 1898, after a period when it was closed due to the City of Milan’s lack of resources and overwhelmed by the social emergencies, the Theatre reopened thanks to the generosity of Guido Visconti di Modrone, a politician and textile entrepreneur, under the artistic management of Arturo Toscanini. It was in fact Toscanini who, after the Theatre had been lit electrically following the exposition organised by Giuseppe Colombo, ordered as one of the first measures that during the performances the lights would be dimmed creating a suffused atmosphere: Milan’s modernity was not to be an obstacle to the romanticism of the opera. Completing the city design of the centre of Milan, from the other end of this new axis, just before the Arco della Pace, started in 1807 in THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 51 honour of Napoleon and completed in 1838, was the vast green lung of the Sempione Park, designed by the architect Emilio Alemagna, during the last decade of the century In the middle of this route was the Sforza Castle, just as it does today, another of the principal symbols of Milan and its history. Its construction, at the time one of the principal military citadels of the continent, was started by the Duke of Milan, Francesco Sforza, in the XV century, and in the subsequent centuries had undergone considerable transformations. Under the dominion of Ludovico il Moro, for example, the Castle became the site of one of the most sumptuous courts of Europe, where artists and scientists of the calibre of Bramante and Leonardo da Vinci, who in fact frescoed several of its halls gathered. Around the end of the nineteenth century, the very existence of the building was questioned by a segment of public opinion that suggested it be demolished because it was a symbol of oppression. Eventually, during the redefinition of the centre of Milan, the Castle was restored to historical authenticity by the architect, Luca Beltrami, who had the Filarete Tower rebuilt, the highest tower at the entrance of the Castle, and completed his work in 1905, enhancing the imposing building from the artistic point of view and emphasising its treasures preserved in museums, collections, libraries and other civic and cultural institutions that have since been based there. It was in this turmoil of public works that was changing the face of hundreds of years of history, mixing palaces of Medieval and modern Milan with very innovative projects. Between the end of the previous century and the beginning of the twentieth century a generation of architects was becoming established that has since gone down in history. Professionals such as Gadola, Luigi Broggi, Carlo Formenti, Giuseppe Pirovano, Antonio Tagliaferri, Giovanni Giachi, Gaetano Moretti, Sebastiano Locati, Giuseppe Sommaruga, Alfredo Campanini, united by the “mature eclecticism” style, were involved in veritable competitions to redesign radical transformations of the fabric of the centre of Milan, as during the opening of Via Dante, Cordusio and the Foro Bonaparte. The visible luxury of these projects was matched from the beginning of the century by widespread “citizen liberty”, which characterised many buildings with a slight bourgeois or even working class nature, which allowed Italian modernism to parallel the European trends by introducing into Milanese architecture a breath of renewal which would be evident when this style was adopted as the official one for the 1906 Expo. 52 SMART MILAN

The 1906 Expo

The idea of an exposition in Milan had begun to float around in the minds of the most ambitious soon after the previous event of 1881; and, even more so after the grandiose result of the Paris event of 1900, it appeared as a logical step which would allow the entire region clustered around the Milan metropolis to highlight the development achieved and demonstrate that it was ready to definitely become one of the European economic powers. Already at the beginning of the century, at the initiative of certain private city institutions, including the Naval League of Milan, the Tour-

Milan, International Exposition,1906 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 53 ing Club and the Famiglia Artistica (Artistic Family), the project began to develop to promote a large event dedicated to transport and the fine arts, to celebrate the inauguration of the Simplon Tunnel which when it opened, after many years of design and work, connected Lom- bardy to Switzerland and the heart of Europe. The challenge of the Alpine passes had animated the political debate in the second half of the nineteenth century, and after the previous stages of the construction of the Fréjus and Gotthard Tunnels, had led to the realisation, during the section ten years of excavation, of the last gallery of the Simplon which with its twenty kilometres of length became the longest railway tunnel in the world. Consistent with the original idea, therefore, initially the Exposition was dedicated to transport which, as the symbol of the rapid stride of progress and the ability to transform nature to facilitate modern human activity, seemed to be the correct argument for supporting the inspiration which was the basis of the Milanese project. With the Simplon opening, scheduled during June while the event was being held, Milan anticipated finding itself “at Italy’s gates on the route between the oceans and the large plain of Europe” and to see its potential, fame and personal wealth multiplied. Initially, therefore, the Exposition program anticipated, in addition to the Fine Arts section, only the installations of a section dedicated to land, sea and air transport and one dedicated to work and social security. Soon, however, in order to provide prestige to all the sectors developed at that time in the industrial field, the themes expanded to include chemical and pharmaceutical products, food products and then, further, by launching a competition to exhibit the results of the progress of those years. 54 SMART MILAN

As before, the spark that started the design process and then the definition of the event, came from the will of the private forces of the city, and soon expanded to the city authorities, increasingly more actively and decisively involved. The organizing committee was, in fact, chaired by C. Mangili of Banca d’Italia and the Gondrand Transport Company, and the best names of the Milanese elite were members such as C. Crivelli-Serbelloni and L. V. Bertarelli, F. Lepetit, L. Pontiggia, A. Riva and A. Richard, for the industrial world, A. Salmoiraghi, founder of the company at the forefront of the optical field, C. Della Torre, R. Falcheri and V. Pisa for the banking world, in addition to the major institutions of Milan in the field of higher education such as the Politecnico, Bocconi University, Brera Academy and the University of Pavia, and in the cultural and social field, such as the La Scala Theatre and the Società Umanitaria. In this committee, and more in general for the success of the initiative, therefore, even though at a time in history that highlighted also strong social differences such as those described previously, the elite of the city of all persuasions had embraced each other regardless of politics or class. Alongside the bankers and the industrialists, in fact, personalities active in the social institutions, such as the important socialist reformists, Ales- sandro Schiavi and Augusto Osimo, also had a significant role. And, moreover, while large working class contingents walked the avenues of the Expo, precisely during the months when the exposition was being held, the Confederazione Generale del Lavoro (CGdL, General Labour Confederation) was being established, the largest trade union of Italian workers. The Organizing Committee, besides defining the guidelines for creating the large international exhibition, had entrusted to Giuseppe Giacosa, important playwright of the period, the task of directing the opening performance of the event. Through this new exposition, Milan intended to present itself as an avant-garde city, similar to the other large capitals that had hosted world events and spared no expense in succeeding in this ambitious goal. Tourists, official delegations, industrialists and workers who arrived at the central station would have seen a modern Milan ready for the substantial impact of the many visitors for whom it had prepared and modernized hotels and built hundreds of additional rooms. The exposition was inaugurated twice: the first time on 28 April 1906, in the Simplon Park, and two days later in the Piazza d’Armi, where the ceremony was repeated but in front of the King and Queen, Cardinal THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 55

Ferrari, present for the first time as representative of the Church at a civilian event, and the Mayor, Ettore Ponti, renowned representative of the City’s bourgeoisie, as well as Senator of the Kingdom. During the six months, however, a third partial inauguration would take place, given that on 3 August the “terrible disaster” occurred. A fire caused by a short circuit destroyed the Decorative Arts Palace, the architecture exhibits, the “Cairo District” and some pavilions including the Hungarian one, which housed furniture, mosaics, ceramics etc., and this section was only partially rebuilt and inaugurated again. This time, the exposition spread over almost one million square metres which included the Arena, the Castle, the Piazza d’Armi and the Simplon Arch, with an elevated electric railway to join the various points of the exposition. The design of the complex which, following the French example, was designed mainly in the Rococo style, was assigned to the architect Sebastiano Locati of the Politecnico di Milano, previously an assistant to G. Ceruti during the 1881 Exposition, and included 200,000 m2 of covered space divided into several buildings. To access the exhibition spaces, one of the entrances reproduced the entrance of the Simplon railroad tunnel, for which the exposition was named. Lastly, there was an area occupied by the reconstruction of a district of the Egyptian capital, the so-called “Cairo in Milan”, where there was a bazaar, camels and Egyptian shops perfectly recreated. The exposition included 225 new buildings in Liberty style, all large but built of plaster and paper-mache, a detail which gave the buildings a dirty white colour that contributed to defining a characteristic feature of the event. The electric lighting, which ran the length of the avenues and the pavilions, in fact, lit every evening from nine to midnight and made the entire area sparkle with a blinding and surreal whiteness. Because of this, the small city complex of the exposition soon came to be called the “white city”. This curious image was reproduced by the magazines of the era and, furthermore, was widely circulated for the first time through a massive use of photography, souvenir postcards and water- colours which spread in large quantities throughout Italy and beyond. Of the 24 countries that officially participated, naturally included are were the major industrial nations Germany, Austria and France. France, for example, had built a pavilion of around 10,000 m2 dedicated specially to fashion, fabrics and dressmaking, and perfumes. Other countries such as Switzerland, Belgium and Hungary concentrated primarily on exhibiting decorative arts. Also present were England, Latin American 56 SMART MILAN

countries, all gathered in a single pavilion, and from the East and Far East there were Japan and China. In the exposition, the railway exhibits were a significant aspect in terms of size and impact. Spread out along the sides and the paths of the Piazza d’Armi were over 20 kilometres of track used continuously by the locomotives of the largest European companies, especially German, while the Italian Breda and Om also occupied a large space. In addition, the French transport and rail networks and the striking Swiss lines exhibits were popular, as well as the work done to recreate the magnificent engineering feat of the original tunnel, which had been completed at the cost of several lives lost on the job and commemorated by a monument to the workers and miners lost. Most of the 40,000 m2 of the railway exhibit, in any case, was taken by the Italian gallery which, arranged in the centre of the building designed by Orsino Bongi in the Piazza d’Armi area, had over one hundred exhibitors, almost half of which were based in the Lombardy capital. The Electric Transport Division itself had 35 Italian exhibitors, among which the Milanese Edison and Stigler stood out. The public showed great interest in seeing the innovative technical demonstrations of the aeronautical field which, rapidly evolving at the time, made it possible to see the flight of balloons, an amazing sight to the visitors. Furthermore, in the Motoring and Cycling Pavilion, the results achieved by a production sector in great development and obviously capable in the future of changing the life and customs of the advanced societies were exhibited. German companies such as Daimler, Benz and Mercedes and the French, Renault, exhibited in the automobile section. For the first time, the major Italian industries, such as Fiat and the Milanese Isotta Fraschini and Bianchi, as well as Pirelli, then one of the major producers of tyres along with Michelin, exhibited alongside the best known European manufacturers. To further exalt the innovations of the sector, a stage race had also been organized during the exposition. This rally crossed all of Italy and ended in Milan with an Italian company winning, driven by the entrepreneur Vincenzo Florio. The naval sector, which represented the original nucleus of the exposition, housed the largest shipbuilding companies and the most important navigation operators, as well as the latest products of civilian and military technology, such as cannons, weapons and radio equipment. Lastly, one of the most admired pavilions was the one that housed the so-called “gallery of work”, in other words the exposition of vari- THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 57 ous types of industries where, alongside the textile, ceramic, wood and metal products, the public’s attention was drawn by the large linotypes of the English and German businesses which could print over one thousand copies an hour of the many periodicals published by the Milanese publishing firms such as Sonzogno, which published magazines such as “La Moda Illustrata”, “Il secolo illustrato”, “Gli sport”, or for the Milan- ese newspapers such as “Il Secolo” or the “Corriere della Sera”. The key player of this Expo, however, was electricity which, this time not as an experiment but used on a wide scale and in the individual exhibits of the sectors, was shown in many of its potential applications. The raised electric traction railway that connected directly, like a modern light rail system, the two sites of the Exposition, and the evening lighting of the “white city” seemed to make the very idea of progress concrete, indicating at the same time a future city model, to which Milan wanted to adhere. Not all the technical discoveries and industrial production however conveyed a feeling of trust and peace of mind for the future. In this panorama of innovation, curiosity and futuristic technologies, in fact, certainly from the industrial and technological point of view, the German exhibit had fuelled a great interest and distinct impression. However, the exhibit of the state of progress also from the point of view of military power did not go unnoticed and maybe the exhibitors didn’t want it to be. The presentation of the colossal Krupp cannons, in fact, certainly caused a sensation and, for some, had stoked an uneasy premonition of a totally other kind. Conversely, the French exposition, which had not ignored the industrial and manufacturing aspects, had concentrated on artistic aspects, attracting interest with its products inspired by Art Nouveau. This large national pavilion which, for the entire exposition, concentrated on sophistication, elegance, fashionable parties and a dense amount of political, commercial and social relationships. In the autumn of 1906, after six months of an exposition which had fostered great national and international interest, as had occurred previously, the ruling classes of the city concentrated on evaluating the results of the great effort made. The Expo events were widely reported in the periodicals of the entire country, along with the distribution of striking and fashionable images, and were marked by amusements, twists such as the summer fire, unrest because of the German cannons and especially a widespread awareness of the steps forward that Italy had made. Realistically it seemed clear, at that moment, that compared 58 SMART MILAN

to the German industrial power and French luxury, the Italian economy was not yet in a position to compete on a par with them. But, nevertheless, the Milan Expo had demonstrated that Italy was certainly now established in the sectors which twenty years earlier were the weakest: mechanics, iron and steel, and chemical and had, in fact, made definite strides forward. The automobile, radio and photography sectors had also reached interesting levels and demonstrated definite long-term potential. Lastly, the country had attracted attention also in the artistic field thanks to the high level of expression achieved by Italian painters such as Giovanni Segantini, Telemaco Signorini and Cesare Laurenti. A central aspect, ignored in the subsequent assessment, was the section of the exposition dedicated to the state of progress of “social security”, a term which at the time indicated overall what we would define today as “social economics”. In this field the pavilion, also thanks to the use of modern statistical science, which had obviously not excited the souls of the visitors like the recent technological discoveries, had in fact managed to demonstrate how the fabric of social organisations was active and interconnected and in particular in certain areas of the country, especially Milan, that it had reached levels of international excellence. The activities could be seen in this Exposition of over 800 organizations operating in welfare work, in other words in the field of cooperation, mutualism, social security, education and training and the activity of powerful organisations was shown. In addition, actively participating in the organisation of the Expo were the Chamber of Labour of Milan and that of Emilia, and organisations such as Legacoop (Lega Nazionale delle Cooperative e Mutue), which had been started in the city in 1886 at the initiative of similar international organisations, and institutes of social promotion such as the Umanitaria. As proof of the importance of this event for understanding the state of progress of a sector which during this phase was making gigantic strides to keep up with the economic growth of the more advanced countries, contributing to tempering the distortions and promoting the inclusion in the citizenry of classes most exposed to their negative consequences, remember that Milan was establishing itself in the leadership of these phenomena by organising and hosting, in the aftermath of the end of the Expo, the first world convention on unemployment. This convention brought together in the city for the first time all the European and overseas social reformers. The good results achieved, furthermore, were proven by the French Commission which, in the final report, judged the Milan exposition “an immense effort […] followed by a very honourable result” thus estab- THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 59

The establishing committee of the Milan Trade Union, 1906 (Archivio del Lavoro, Sesto San Giovanni, Milano)

lishing that Milan had gained a place among the European economies basing itself on the comparative results of the recent events held in cities such as Chicago, Paris and Dusseldorf. But, outwardly, what actually appeared to remain of the great organisational effort of the World Exposition was only a modern city aquarium, still located today near the Parco Sempione in Via Gadio. In fact, this was the only permanent building designed as as gift to the city and built to a design of the architect, Sebastiano Locati. While the entire “white city” was dismantled, the Aquarium which had been inaugurated with the Expo, in fact remained standing, becoming the third oldest of its kind in Europe and proving in the following decades the stylistic value of Milanese Liberty. Two years after its inauguration, in 1908, the Aquarium was further complemented with the establishment of an applied biology station, making it possible to view Italian aquatic and marine environments. 60 SMART MILAN

But basically, and much more significantly, the 1906 Expo also turned out to be another challenge met by Milan in its path to establish itself as advanced Italian city. In fact the event, unlike the previous ones, had an undeniable international, or even global, nature. The more than seven million paying visitors and the successful outcome of the event, therefore, were proof that Milan was not only the “industrial capital” but now a complex metropolis, which combined the industrial aspect with the agricultural, commercial, financial and, especially, social ones. This time the exposition had integrated the interest in technological, industrial, general economic aspects with attention to the mounting social questions and the consequences of industrialisation, that became widespread during that period in the rest of Europe. Focusing attention on the quality of manual labour but also on charity, assistance, education, professional education, cooperation and mutualism, and social security appeared to be an implicit response to the issues raised during the previous occasion and a demonstration of how progress had to hold together and balance the two sides of its coin. If, with the event of 1881, Milan had ratified the value of the industrialist path, at that time proposed by the city ruling classes, at this last event it had been able, directly or indirectly, to give a more complex image of the city and the capability that it possessed to grow but also to temper the imperfections of its growth, and to thus become a modern city.

Charitable and Forward-looking Milan

The originality of the commitment made by Milan in the field of social initiatives, which later would characterise its identity until it was declared the capital of the third sector, naturally was not mainly based on its having endowed itself with completely original services but more on the capacity to have known how to coordinate the existing initiatives in order to create an efficient system aimed at the protection of the humbler classes. From the beginning of the twentieth century, in fact, in this entire context a process of modernisation had been launched which had gone hand in hand with the economic development of the city, and basically established the foundations of a territorial welfare model of great originality in the Italian landscape. In Milan, as in all of Italy, the traditional sector of “charity” had been historically led by the great activism of the church and the social forces of a religious matrix. At the beginning of the century, these environments had provided a new thrust with THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 61 a flourishing of initiatives of a social nature and with the development of establishments for the elderly, the disabled and handicapped increasingly necessary in a city undergoing industrial and urban transformation. An example of this was the foundation of the Ospizio Sacra Famiglia (Sacred Family Hospice) project for the terminally ill, located in Cesano Boscone in the southern region of the city, in addition to a series of initiatives started during the same period. The dynamism of the Milanese environment, nevertheless, was demonstrated in many private initiatives that had the purpose of improving, integrating, and filling the gaps of institutional charity. In fact, in this context, many initiatives of a secular and socialist nature were being developed to meet the large number of needs of the “deprived” classes, also through social and working class solidarity and professional education. Significant interventions involved both cultural promotion, such as the People’s University, and aid in the strict sense, through the establishment of day care centres, homeless shelters, food kitchens and recreation centres for youth. In the field of child assistance, Milan had inherited and continued a noble and long secular tradition. In the first decades of the XVI century, for example, Duke Francesco II had promoted the initiative of sheltering Milanese male orphans in the Oratory of San Martino, in a palazzo in the present day Via Manzoni. From the name of the church near which this first orphanage had been started and which after several moves over the centuries returned here during the nineteenth century during the Napoleonic era, the Milanese orphans were afterwards called the “Martinitt”, a veritable institution of the city. Also during the 1500s, another historic Milanese institute was founded which, corresponding to the male orphanages, instead housed female orphans. They took the name of “Stelline (Little Stars)” from the name of the convent of the Benedictine nuns of Santa Maria della Stella which during the XVII century Cardinal Federico Borromeo had indicated as seat of the institute, and which remained in the Corso Magenta location in front of the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie until the 1970s. Alongside these historic city institutions, at the beginning of the century, there was also the Asilo Mariuccia, an institute founded in 1902 at the initiative of the important representative of the Italian emancipation movement, Ersilia Majno, wife of Luigi Majno, famous Milanese jurist, who was among other things Dean of the Bocconi University and Socialist political representative close to Filippo Turati. 62 SMART MILAN

This organisation, inaugurated by the poet Ada Negri was inspired by the final wishes of Majno’s daughter, Mariuccia, who died early from diphtheria, in order to “train the Milanese girls for emancipation”. The Asilo Mariuccia was in fact supported in its activity by the National Women’s Union, a socialist emancipationist association, founded in 1899 by Majno, which combined the various working class organisations in order to promote the rights of women, both in the social field and in the work environments. Among the various initiatives of this association, for example, was the establishment in 1901 of the Milanese section of the Committee against White Slave Trade, which was fighting prosti- tution, and the creation of a shelter to house without religious distinction or nationality, the young girls who lived in “morally unhealthy” environments, searching for ways to assimilate them into a working and social life, unlike other institutions of a philanthropic or religious nature which only intervened in an emergency. In addition to the activities focused on childhood, there were also institutions that had been operating in Milan for a long time created to handle other types of problems, such as those related to ageing. Among these, the most important organisation was certainly the Pio Albergo Trivulzio which was founded in the centre of Milan, in the second half of the eighteenth century, thanks to the inheritance of the Milanese nobleman and philanthropist, Prince Antonio T. Trivulzio. This ancient institution, at the beginning of the century, when the radical progressive Giuseppe Mussi was mayor, launched the first project for a new, modern headquarters which, in the the subsequent years, was created in the south west part of the city, in the district located on the road to Baggio, and was therefore commonly called by the Milanese as the “Baggina”, an expression that by definition still today indicates a home for the elderly. In addition to the initiatives of various kinds directed at childhood, old age, or other categories which were vulnerable at the time such as women, in the assistance sector of the period, however, a fundamental and in some ways emblematic role of the transformations that were occurring during that time and emanating from Milan, was certainly the Congregazione di Carità (Congregation of Charity). This organisation was founded in 1862 in implementation of a national law issued a few years earlier. It operated in the important fields of assistance and charity which in the Milanese area had deeply rooted traditions and focused on meeting the needs of the poor population groups. This institution, “one of the richest and most important - if not the most important - of the THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 63 entire Kingdom”, had immediately assumed, in line with its preceding historic course, a central role within the local welfare policies, in which it virtually represented the point of reference. In fact, especially after 1890 when the national government led by Francesco Crispi had placed the entire sector under the direct control of public authorities, it was appointed to run the various institutions operating in the sector which in Milan and its province included various associations including the “Luoghi Pii Elemosinieri”, the Pie Case d’Industria, the Pia Casa degli Incurabili di Abbiategrasso, the Ricovero di Mendicità, and so forth. The focus of this large organisation was destined to change in the first decades of the century, and in particular after 1914 when the municipality of Milan elected the progressive forces led by the first Socialist mayor of the city, the lawyer Emilio Caldara who, on winning the elections, had caused concern to the conservatives who feared the arrival of “Barbarossa in Palazzo Marino”. During the six years following this event, in fact, in Milan a “municipal economic government” model was tested, theorised by the Social- ists who wanted to bring to the administrations the drive to modernity which came from the consent of the working classes. According to this perspective, the Municipality had to assimilate the role of the central- state, and became a “gestor[e] dei pubblici servizi (manager of public services)” since it was the “first organisation to which the oppressed and exploited turned” spurred by the new needs stemming from the industrial development and that of the “class struggle”. The local administra- tors, therefore, had to carry out their role by coordinating all the tools available to protect worker and public assistance, and education and public services in order to support the “oppressed classes”. Therefore the socialists in the institutions had a choice of using public policy as an instrument for projecting on the administrative level the weight of the social struggles. Moreover, they were not only attempting to meet the multiple problems raised by the rapid and impressive development of the most advanced industrial city in the country but, soon, they were also forced to face the dramatic consequences that the First World War had on a large part of society. Through the government of Palazzo Marino, therefore, the Social- ists were focusing on building an administrative machine which, with the “City Hall, Manager of Public Services” at the top, according to the teaching of the famous economist and public administrator, Giovanni Montemartini, extended to the various sectors and had a strong role in their coordination. 64 SMART MILAN

The Congregation of Charity in fact was the intervention tool in the field of assistance and charity by the City administration. It was like the mosaic tile in a broader administrative drawing, operating in close synergistic rapport with the other contiguous institutions operating in the trade union, cooperative and mutualistic associationism to cover the needs of broad sectors of the population that the development of the industrial city tended to marginalize and the war oppressed. This political strategy therefore tried to provide solutions to the most urgent problems, and to extend to society overall the conditions of well-being that had been up until then the benefit of a small circle of citizens. As proof of this desire to coordinate the actions of many subjects, the Chairman of the Congregation of Charity at the time, the Socialist Luigi Minguzzi, who was very close to Mayor Caldara, was also Director of the Itinerant Chair of Agriculture for the province, in charge of social security services and, later, director of the Hospital Institutes of Milan. He described the Milanese panorama of the period, as seen from the window of the Congregation that helped the “vanquished of every species”: “Mothers with starving children, abandoned by the husband or their spouse in prison, in the hospital or unemployed, […] poor wretches just out of hospital, syphilis hospital, mental institutions, prisons, without a home and broke […] individuals with tuberculosis who [went] to the Congregation with a fever, spitting blood […] die-hard layabouts, bullies, lazy individuals, unbalanced souls, strays, homeless, eternal residents of night shelters […] entire families […] lastly the aged abandoned by the cruelty or desperation of their children in the most squalid and extreme poverty: […] all this [is the] army of misery that, daily, with the insistence created by not having eaten for a long time, asks, wants a piece of bread. No place has seen so much pain, so many tears, or heard so much imprecation as the waiting room of the Congregation”. It was faced with this city landscape that the Congregation reformed its activity by tackling, first of all, the need to pursue a “courageous secular policy”. In the past, in fact, most of the resources available to the Asso- ciation had been managed directly by the clergy, and to change this habit, over the course of several years, the Congregation was able to attract the management of most of the charities and the resources available. Furthermore, one of the activities that it set up was the establishment of a type of “database for all the city charities” so there would not be any duplication of services, a series of initiatives set up with the City and the Società Umanitaria in favour of the unemployed, and the THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 65 disbursement of aid for the payment of rent to the needy both Milanese and those not living in Milan. With Italy’s entry into the war, in 1915, moreover, the duties of the Congregation expanded further and it had to coordinate the interventions in a situation of great emergency. Alongside the activities historically carried out by the Association, and the management of the subordinate institutes, therefore, during the war experimental entrepreneurial initiatives were also launched to provide a price control action on the prices of consumer goods. With the participation of the Congregation, in fact, in addition to that of the City of Milan, the Consortium of Consumer Cooperatives, and another sixty eight charity organizations, the Consumer Consortium Company was started, a type of city ancestor of modern supermarkets. In this last initiative as well, similar to all the major activities carried out in the social and economic setting during those years, the already

Public housing of the Società Umanitaria (Humanitarian Society) (Archivio Storico Società Umanitaria, Milano) 66 SMART MILAN

cited Società Umanitaria had held a central role. In fact, it was one of the most original experiments started between the nineteenth and new centuries, and was a national point of excellence for the activities that were being carried out during that period in the Milanese social laboratory. The Società Umanitaria had been started at the initiative of Prospero Moisè Loria, an international progressive entrepreneur of Jewish heritage who around the end of the nineteenth century, after moving to Milan, before dying decided to will his considerable estate so that an Organization could be established which, together with the Municipal- ity of Milan, would promote by all means the ability of the workers to improve their personal and financial situations through education, professional training, an cooperative formats, according to a Mazzini- type model. This new philanthropic institution, right from the beginning, attracted the interest and cooperation of the most important Reform- ist and Progressive politicians and intellectuals such as Filippo Turati, Luigi Majno, Emilio Caldara, Giovanni Montemartini, Ugo Pisa, women involved in the promotion of rights and equity, such as Alessandrina Ravizza and Maria Montessori. The entire progressive Milanese and national milieu, in summary, unlike the Conservatives who were not always enthusiastic about the Reformist intentions of the organization, gathered around the first Secretary of the institute, Osvaldo Gnocchi Viani, who was also the sponsor of the first Chamber of Labour of Milan, started in 1891 in the premises of the Sforza Castle. From the beginning of the activity, in 1902, the Umanitaria was for more than twenty years an important experiment in Italian social and political life, guided by directors elected at public meetings, who combined assistance, job training, social commitment, emancipation and culture in order to transform “simple charity into productive, con- structive assistance”. The initiatives of this institution, which among other things was to become a fundamental operational tool for both local and national institutions, provided an essential contribution to the creation of an associative framework both for the defence of work and for the promotion of social businesses. For example, in 1904, the Umanitaria made available an initial large amount of capital and promoted the foundation of the Credit Institute for Cooperatives, which would become a financial arm of the development of the Italian cooperative movement and, in particular, of the labour cooperatives active in the artisan, industrial and agricultural field. In its ordinary activity, the Umanitaria established both day and night professional courses, THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 67 promoted the creation in various Italian cities of placement offices, art schools applied to industry, networks of public libraries, agrarian offices and offices supporting Italian who had emigrated abroad, as well as regularly studies and research on every aspect of work, unemployment, health conditions, conditions of workers and the lowest classes, etc. Among the projects of greatest importance and scope, however, were those which during the first years of the century and under the leadership of Majno and Luigi Della Torre, politician and banker in addition to future chairman of the organization and after 1919 first Chair- man of the Italian Banking Association, which created the first districts of working class construction of Milan. In fact, between 1905 and 1908, at the urging of the Società Umani- taria, two model districts were created in two peripheral areas of Milan: the first “working class district of the Società Umanitaria” was built in the south west area of the city, in Via Solari, while the second was built in the northern area, in the current Via Lombardia. Both of these projects were the creation of the young architect, Giovanni Broglio who, after graduating from the Politecnico di Milano, had conducted for the Chamber of Labour in 1901 a study on the living conditions of the Mil- anese working class which showed the tragic situation due to the miserable living conditions which were very widespread at the time. Based on this, the Umanitaria had launched the realization of the two projects, the first of which was be completed and was inaugurated in 1906 on the eve of the Expo, in which it had been part of the organization. The first thousand inhabitants moved into the district that occupied a rectangular area of 12 buildings all connected together with a large courtyard in the middle, with plants and small garden to promote the social life of the resident families. The most innovative characteristic of these working class houses, for the time, was obviously the existence in every flat of a small bathroom, sink and column for waste removal. Still for a long time, in fact, the Milanese public houses, which were traditionally called tenements with “communal balconies”, because every level had at its interior a long walkway with railing onto which all the flat entrances opened, were usually provided with a single Turkish bathroom with sink, located on every floor and which was shared by several flats. Furthermore, inside these districts, in 1908 with Maria Montessori, educator of world renown as well as the first woman to graduate in medicine in Italy, present, the Umanitaria inaugurated the first Casa dei Bambini (Children’s Home) of Milan, and launched a unique experiment in the history of services devoted to childhood. 68 SMART MILAN

Maria Montessori (Archivio Storico Società Umanitaria, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 69

The construction of the innovative public neighbourhoods of the Umanitaria launched in Milan a significant tradition in the field of construction of residential districts destined for the less affluent classes, with projects that were complemented by numerous public and private initiatives, from both religious and secular institutions. In this, as in other sectors, one of the principal entities active in the Milan area was a bank, the Cassa di Risparmio delle Province Lombarde, which must be remembered here for its central role, among its other activities, which it held in supporting over time the principal institutions operating in the field of assistance and charity. The Cariplo was started in 1823 and in 1870 established its base in what would become its historic seat, known by the Milanese as the “Ca’ de Sass” (House of Stone), built in Via Monte di Pietà, on a design of the architect Giuseppe Balzaretto inspired by the appearance of the large Florentine banks of the Renaissance. The Cassa, established by the Milanese Central Commission on Charity, was warmly welcomed by the public and during the century took care of the needs of the major manufacturing sectors of the Milanese area, as for example the silk segment of the textile industry, or the spread of electric power plants. In addition, the bank had progressively assumed a central role in the support of social projects aimed at the city of Milan. From 1883, for example, it had established a Disbursement Fund in charity and public utility projects which, from the beginning of the new century, expanded to support also programs of intervention in the field of assistance and education. In addition to the sector of social housing, that the institute had long supported together with the local institutions, the Cariplo, in particular during the first decades of the twentieth century, was one of the entities which contributed the most to the social and economic growth of the area through support to assistance, education, health and culture. Lastly, the institutions, associations, public and private organizations described up to this point, together with many other subjects with long traditions or recently established, formed a precise mosaic of operators who in Milan had identified, in the same way as the players in the manufacturing economic field, fertile ground for the development of their activities. This thriving of activities had created a framework of national and international excellence which by its own functioning made it possible to temper the inequalities created by an acceler- ated process of economic growth and, at the same time, to handle the emergencies caused by the consequences of the First World War. It was 70 SMART MILAN

during this period of war that Milan, up to that moment involved in pursuing its own industrialist design, had learned to include among its more advanced sectors also a branch without which no metropolis could justifiably define itself as modern. A sector so innovative, basically, that while the more capable and fortunate citizens were involved in chasing after the challenges of progress, it took care of those who risked being excluded from that progress.

Cultural Milan and Social Life

In all the major capitals of the more advanced world, the progress in the economic sectors and in the field of assistance, there had obviously been progress in culture and social life. These processes were taking place, in the same way, in Milan at the beginning of the century. Already at the time of the Unification, there were around forty newspapers and periodicals being printed in Milan, in other words about one tenth of what were being distributed in the entire country, in a city in which one hundredth of the Italian population lived. Milan, from that moment, because the centre of the production of books and newspapers and this, obviously, entailed a parallel development of the typographic and publishing industry. On the eve of the Great War, the number of Milanese newspapers had increased tenfold, reaching 400, demonstrating that here the periodical press was a widespread instrument for the circulation of ideas comparable to most of the European capitals. In the city, during the Post-Unification period, numerous periodicals had appeared, including “La Gazzetta di Milano”, “La Lombardia”, “La Perseveranza”, and “La Sera”, but the first large Milanese newspaper was the democratic “Il Secolo” which came out thanks to the publisher, Edoardo Sonzogno since 1866 and initially directed by the Garibaldi follower, Ernesto Teodoro Moneta. He was also the founder of the magazine “La Vita Internazionale” and through these periodicals had spread his ideas of nationalism in a pacifist tone. Moneta, in 1887, had furthermore created the Lombardy Union for Peace and International Arbitration and from 1895 was the Italian representative to the Inter- national Peace Bureau Commission. He had had, among other things, a fundamental role in setting up the Pavilion of Peace in the 1906 Expo, wanted by the Union for the Exposition and where, in an educational manner, the horrors of war, the futility of militarism and the progressive THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 71 progress of affirmation of the movement for peace had been displayed. During the same period in the city, the fifteenth International Confer- ence on Peace had been held, chaired by Moneta who, in fact, in 1907 was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. After the significant figure of Moneta, the “Secolo” was published by the radical, Carlo Romussi, and had assumed an important role for Milan. Consider that in 1884 the newspaper had a circulation of 125,000 copies and consequently that in the city during that period people used “un secolo (a century)” to mean “a newspaper”. Furthermore, from 1876 another newspaper was published in the city, this one with a moderate tone, in other words the “Corriere della sera” which, led by Eugenio Torelli-Viollier, also a former Garibaldi follower originally from Naples, had a circulation in those years of around 20,000 copies per day. With the new century, moreover, periodicals also appeared like the Catholic “Avvenire” from 1912 and the Socialist “Avanti!” which had started in Rome in the nineties. From 1911 the latter moved to the city and was on several occasions directed by the important representative of Italian Socialism, Leonida Bissolati. Along with the printing of news and information, furthermore, the Milanese of the time could choose and leaf through humorous periodicals such as for example the “Guerin meschino”, which came out in 1882, and a large number of entertainment and recreation papers. The illustrated periodicals, some published by one of the leading Italian publishing companies, those of Emilio Treves, in fact came out in large quantities inspired by similar foreign products. The principal one was “L’Illustrazione italiana”, along with “Illus- trazione popolare”. These were products of diversion and communication of information that told in a simple way about the succession of industrial expositions, the family affairs of the sovereigns, the innovations in military and religious life but were becoming progressively also powerful instruments for the affirmation and direction of customs. A turning point in the history of Italian, besides Milanese, publishing was the crisis at the end of the century and, in particular, the symbolic 1898. In fact, in that year, the “Secolo” closed and the “Corriere” was forced to change director, hiring from 1900 Luigi Albertini, who later also became a Senator of the Kingdom. Under his leadership, the “Cor- riere”, newspaper of the industrial and moderate Milanese middle class, was significantly restored. First of all, soon it included the very popular illustrated insert “The domenica del Corriere”, with covers that later went down in history for their originality, designed by the painter, 72 SMART MILAN

Achille Beltrame. But, especially, the newspaper little by little managed to represent the spirit of the times and over the years outdid every com- petitor until, in 1920, its circulation reached 750,000 copies per day: the top Milanese newspaper had become the top newspaper of Italy, the only one capable of competing with the most famous European examples such as the Times of London or the Matin of Paris. Alongside these periodicals of information and entertainment, straddling the new century, appeared also periodicals which could seem to be entertaining but which to their readers were in reality incredibly serious: sports newspapers. The first daily sports paper, started in 1892 as spin-off of the “Corriere della sera”, was the illustrated paper “Corriere dello sport”. Alongside it, a few years later, the second paper appeared resulting from an initiative of the “Secolo”, in other words the “Gazzet- ta dello sport”. It came out for the first time on green paper, in 1896, and three years later it changed the characteristic colour to pink and soon became the leading periodical of the sector reporting the story, even in a literary manner, of Italian sports down to the present day.

Milan, in fact, was also an extremely active city in this field, and here were based sports groups of every discipline, from gymnastics, to fencing, to fishing. In particular, in any case, the strongest bond of the city at the beginning of the century was to cycling. Cycling’s pioneers came from Milan. The first velocipede race, entitled the “tour of the bastions”, in other words the Spanish walls, was held in 1870 when the first Italian cycling club was started here. Therefore, the new century had started with a certain tradition behind it and the cult of the bicycle, despite the fact that in 1898 Bava Beccaris, to avoid fast communication between the rioters, had banned the use of bicycles. THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 73

It was emphasizing this widespread practice and the great interest surrounding it that the “Gazzetta dello sport” soon started to organize and promote respected cycling races which, progressively, emerged from the interest of the highest classes and spread among the common people in the working classes, which little by little became passionate about the competitions and created a sort of “cult of sports”. Symbolic, in this sense, was the start of the “Giro d’Italia (Tour of Italy)”, in 1903, the first race of a national nature and the second in the world in terms of prestige after the Tour de France which in the fol-

Alessandro Perelli, Milan, Skating at the Arena, 1889-1990 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 74 SMART MILAN

lowing decades and to the present day, renewed every year a “working class novel” capable of attracting and thrilling the entire country with the heroic exploits of the cyclists. The first of these tours started from Milan on a May night in 1909 and from the roundabout of Piazzale Loreto headed towards Monza, returning to the city after more than two thousand kilometres of legs. Traditionally, in Milan, during the “Giro” a multitude of citizens gathered in the Galleria where the daily newspapers hung the news sent via telegraph by the reporters of the Gazzetta, who toured the country following the race, while the very few who already owned a telephone could hear the news directly from the local switchboard of the telephone company. In the meantime, in 1899, after football had disembarked in the ports of Genoa, Livorno and Palermo on the heels of the English sailors, a sports company in this discipline was started in Milan, namely the “Milan cricket and football club” with Alfred Edwards as chairman, wearing red and black shirts and with the devil as its symbol. The first registered office of the company was located in the “Tuscan wine shop” of Via Berchet and the first playing field at the Trotter, not far from the Central Station. In 1901, this company won its first Italian championship against the more prominent “Genoa” team. Alongside Milan, a few years later, a second city team was started, which throughout the century developed a traditional rivalry and antagonism. This occurred in 1908 when, after a dispute within the company due to the hiring of foreign players, a split was decided and certified in a room of “L’Orologio” Restaurant, located in Piazza del Duomo. Here, the “Football Club Internazionale” was born, later called “Inter”, a team that wore shorts with the black and blue company colours. From that moment, a fierce rivalry started which still today separates the two “cousin” teams which met for the first time on the Swiss field of Chiasso in distant 1908. Just two years later in Milan, the national team of Italian football made its debut which, in the Napoleonic Arena in Parco Sempione, beat the French team 6 to 2, starting another historic and fierce rivalry between two nations, also “cousins”. Besides the popular culture, which was expressed through sports, Milan at the beginning of the century retained, and with some initiatives modernised, also a prolific system of cultural promotion developed in the past and now ready to develop in the new century. The principal and oldest institution of the city, in this environment, was certainly the THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 75

Ambrosiana Library, which was named for St. Ambrogio, patron saint of the city and had been founded by Cardinal Federico Borromeo at the beginning of the XVII century. At the time of its inauguration, it already contained 15,000 manuscripts and 30,000 printed works, and it boasted exceptional holdings greater than both those of the Vatican Library and the other major institutions in existence at the time, for example Oxford, which had inspired its foundation. At that time, the success of the initiative in fact had been echoed around the European cultural world, to the extent that some of those who had sent their works included Galileo Galilei who had declared his “somma grazia (highest grace)” that these be preserved in the Milanese library. Later, the Braidense Library became established as a major institution in the cultural sector and the conservation of books, this time of secular origin, which was started during the prolific cultural climate of Austrian Milan under the Empress Maria Theresa. It was inaugurated around the end of the 1700s in a religious College taken over by the Imperial authorities after the dissolution of the Jesuits. Over time, all the past and present archives of the State started to be concentrated here, in addition to books from private collections and, subsequently, every printed work produced in Lombardy. It was later given he status of National Library in Italy. During the first decades of the nineteenth century schools, physics and chemical laboratories, the botanical garden, the astronomical observatory, the Patriotic Society for the Promotion of Sciences, Agri- culture and Manufacturing, as well as a Fine Arts Academy which, with some of these institutions, is still active today as a prestigious university of the artistic sector were established around the library. In the meantime, from the end of the century, the Milanese cultural panorama had seen other more specialised or smaller but no less important institutions appear. From the Forties, a Natural History Library had opened, connected to the Civic Museum of the sector, and then a library at the Milanese Ospedale Maggiore, one of the oldest medical institutions. To these was then added the Library of the Lombardy Historical Society and the Library of the Risorgimento Museum, founded by the municipality of Milan in 1884. Between the nineteenth and twentieth century, a debate started in Milan, incited also by the city press and the cultural world that had supported the creation of “public libraries”, in other words, institutions that supported the culture of the less prosperous classes. The debate called for the creation of a “civic library” to support the cultural development of all 76 SMART MILAN

the citizenry. This project became real starting in 1913 when the Socialist Administration set up a plan of cultural reorganization that anticipated the establishment if a library to support the city schools and the creation of an institute for the education of the people. The first location of the newly established Civic Library was in the Sforza Castle. In other words, the first years of the twentieth century, also from the Milan perspective, both from the point of view of the more popular culture, and from the “higher” or elite one, was a period of acceleration that accompanied the contextual changes occurring in other sectors of society. The Italy of the beginning of the ninetenth century was a backward country overall in which a veritable “industrial culture” had appeared, and strong pushes for innovation existedside by side with resistance to the processes of modernization, conservative nostalgia and defence of the traditional models, both social and cultural. These phenomena were also occurring elsewhere in Europe where in the second half of the nineteenth century the so-called “tradition of the new” had spread into various cultural settings. Milan, as also in the past because of its international openness, had played a significant role in anticipating the cultural turmoil connected to the political and social transformations. Less than fifty year earlier, for example, the so-called “Scapigliatura” movement was born. At the beginning of the 1860s, in fact, the climate of generational dissatisfac- tion and unrest had been captured by Cletto Arrighi (whose real name was Carlo Righetti). He had set his novel entitled La scapigliatura e il 6 febbraio (The Scapigliatura and February 6) on the background of a Milan marked by Mazzinian insurrections and the battle of the Risorgi- mento. This book in particular had outlined the collective portrait of a group of young Bohemians incapable of adapting to the boredom of daily life and enemies of conformism and moralism. The main character, accompanied by his group, in the end, died fighting in the streets of Milan while around him the revolt burned against foreign oppression. This book, at the time, founded the term “Scapigliatura” and connected it directly to the Bohemian phenomenon, describing the traits of a generation of agitated, troubled and undisciplined youth with a spirit of opposition to established order. Half a century later, also the Milan of the “Belle Epoque”, from this point of view, precisely because it was the stage for the transformation processes described, had a significant role at the cultural level and, in fact, here Futurism was born, a movement that decisively affirmed the THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 77 rejection of the past and indicated the need for a jump, in fact, into the future: “we young and strong futurists don’t want to know anything about the past”. Brilliant, innovators and rebels, but also later support- ers of Fascism, the futurists founded their movement with a literary text, the Manifesto published at the beginning of 1909 and present in Milan by its author, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: “We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt” - recited the Manifesto - “we will sing to the multi-coloured and polyphonic surf of revolutions in the modern capitals; we will sing of the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons. the gluttonous railway stations, devouring smoking serpents”. Soon afterwards, the artists Carlo Carrà, Umberto Boccioni and Luigi Russolo joined Marinetti and signed with him Uccidiamo il chiaro di Luna! (Kill the Moonlight!) the new manifesto published in the Milan- ese journal “Poesia” which preempted the Manifesto dei pittori futuristi (Manifesto of Futurist Painters), presented in Milan in a futurist reading at the Teatro Lirico, and also the Manifesto della musica futurista (Mani- festo of Futurist Music). This city was the centre of the Futurists activity, and here they exhibited their works right from the start. Already in 1911, at Ricordi, a large Mostra di arte libera (Exhibit of Free Art) was inaugurated where anyone could exhibit their artistic works alongside those of the founders. Milan, moreover, was the stage for episodes of news stories that reflected the hyper climate of the period also on the social and political level and inspired the most famous works of those artists such as I funerali dell’anarchico Galli (The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli) (1910-’11) by Carrà, now exhibited at the Muse- um of Modern Art of New York, which depicted the agitated funeral procession of Angelo Galli, killed during the general strikes of 1904: “I who found myself unwillingly at the centre of the melee” - wrote Carrà later, who attended the Milanese anarchist milieu - “saw before me the coffin covered in red carnations waving menacingly on the shoulders of the bearers; I saw the horses getting excited, the sticks and the lances clashing, so that it seemed to me that the corpse would fall at any moment and that the horses would trample it. Extremely upset, as soon as I got home I did a drawing of what I had seen. From this drawing I later drew inspiration for the painting I funerali dell’anarchico Galli which was later exhibited at the Futurist shows of Paris, London and Berlin in the spring of 1912”. The painting by Boccioni Rissa in Galleria (Brawl in the Galleria) (1910), was instead a Pre-Futurist work, painted with a still divisionist 78 SMART MILAN

technique that represented the disorder following a demonstration in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, in front of the Savini Restaurant, at the time the meeting place of artists and Futurists. The Futurist group exhibited in public, between the years 1911 and 1915 in many Italian and foreign cities such as Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Monaco, Berlin and Moscow. In particular, the “conquest” of Paris, which took place with an exhibit in 1912, represented the recognition on the world scene of this group that normally led evenings of readings often destined to end in general brawls which stoked the fame of the group. In the meantime, Futurism, expanded to almost all artistic fields, intervened more and more often in political life taking positions already stated in the first Manifesto and marked by aggressiveness, nationalism, and a cult of war. From 1914, this violent attitude, up to that moment more aesthetic than political, with the explosion of the war found an outlet and mobilized to involve public opinion in favour of Italy’s participation in the conflict. War “the only sanitation of the world” became a reality and, as with a large part of the European culture of those years, the Futurists with the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, were among the first to applaud and publicize the reasons for the terrible Great War. In Milan, in fact, during the first interventionist demonstration, the Futurists were all arrested and afterwards continued the battle using their works of art and “advertising” techniques which they had already tests. Besides “bringing the spectator to the centre of the painting”, as Boccioni stated, they invested new artistic solutions, mixed words and images to support conflicting ideological content shared with the Italian conservative middle classes. During the “radiant days”, in other words the period when Italy had entered the conflict, the Futurists were among the first to enrol as volunteers and in fact the death of some of them, including Boccioni, closed the most prolific and interesting phase of this school. It was in fact the figurative arts, and the work of Boccioni, that best represented the innovation of this current. In its paintings, the movement and the speed expressed a “concept of the world that was completely new and independent compared to the traditions of art” and a capacity to represent the “dynamism” of modern life: mechanical and industrial. For these reasons, Milan was the ideal laboratory for these artistic experiments. Here these new phenomena appeared clearly, unlike in the more backward context of the country, and here they opened in all dimensions the powerful contradiction between the past and the future. In the painting, the Città che sale (The City Rises), for example, Boccioni THE CAPITAL OF MODERNITY 79 painting the Milan that he saw from the balcony of his house, had captured the modern image of the city and progress, the industrial leap and dynamism which was engulfing everything like a vortex. Besides these figurative works, the most obvious aspect of this movement was represented by the “shouted” ideas in particular by the leader Marinetti, who picked up the key concepts of the work of Boccioni, applied them to literature and reiterated subjects that would lead to the “industrial war” and afterwards Fascism. Marinetti also romanticize the modern, the new, the mechanical created not by the world invested by the imagination of the artists but by the technological revolution that was becoming established. In his works, the abolition of syntax and the rational order of the subject created “free words” and expressed the rejection of the traditional reality.

Milan, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Twenties, (Traffic flow on the left) (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 80 SMART MILAN

With this language, new forms of communication were becoming established and the potential for reaching a vast public thanks to the information channels specific to mass communication. In an era when the means that we know well today had still to definitively make their appearance, the Futurists by directly meeting with the public and their inventions, grasped powerful ways for disclosing and increasing the circulation of ideas. On the other hand, the “Futurist Revolution” with its ambiguity and ideological distortion represented in an obvious way the contradictions that marked society during that historic phase. Not by chance, this cultural avant-garde was confused with the war and, soon afterwards, harmonised with the budding Fascist movement which was in fact also hatched in that laboratory of contradictions which was Milan in the early twentieth century. CHAPTER 2 Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Modernity

fter the hardships faced during the war and those no less harsh Aduring the difficult post-war period, during the 1920s, as throughout Italy, Milan also began to slide down the unstoppable path which would lead it to about twenty years of Fascist dictatorship. After the rapid expansion at the beginning of the century, after 1911 the demographic development of the city continued at a slower pace. However, with the constant increase in residents, the population of the urban area rose to 1.2 million and a decade later to about 1.5 million. During the same period, in the entire Lombardy region, the inhabitants had risen from five to almost six million. Furthermore, during this period after the incorporation of the “Holy Bodies” which took place in 1873 for tax and economic management reasons of the city, there were additional alterations on the administrative limits. In fact, in 1923 it was decided to enlarge the territory again by including some of the sites that had developed in the adjacent areas of the city, thereby creating an urban continuity between zones that were by now closely integrated. Besides, during this decade a process started which continued through the entire post-war period, when the number of inhabitants of the external area progressively increased at much faster rates than those of Milan which, in particular, caused a constant redistribution of the functions within the metropolitan areas, with increasingly tense relations between the inner and outer parts of the city and an expansion of the metropolis that spread like wildfire. In this context, right after the end of the First World War, in 1918, the urban area of Milan like the major advanced cities such as Turin and 82 SMART MILAN

Genoa, also had to manage the explosion of social tensions caused by the distress of the poorest classes and the working class. Among the consequences of the war, in fact, as had happened moreover in all the countries involved, there had been a frightening increase in unemployment with a drastic impact on the living conditions of the urban populations. Because in Milan this situation, managed by the Socialist administrations also through the initiatives already described, caused long and repeated strikes so that, because of their frequency and force, the 1919-1920 period came to be known as the “red two-year period”. The continuous social unrest, the apparent political force of the people’s parties which were winning the elections hands down everywhere, and the echo of what was happening at the time in Russia, had contributed to spreading, especially in the ruling classes and in the more moderate sectors of the Italian industrial and agrarian middle class, the fear that there was the risk of a Communist revolution here as well. The Fascist movement which, in fact, had started shortly before in this city, took advantage of this situation in addition to the dramatic consequences that the war had had on a recently industrialised city such as Milan. In 1919, in fact, in the hall of the Industrial and Commercial Alliance located in Piazza San Sepolcro, in the centre of the city, the constituent meeting of the “Fasci di Combattimento (Italian Fasci of Combat)” was held. The meeting was organised by Benito Mussolini, a former Social- ist, expelled from the party when a few years earlier, as director of the newspaper “Avanti!” he had declared that he was in favour of Italy entering the First World War. Afterwards, he had founded the Milanese newspaper “Il Popolo d’Italia”, which was known for nationalistic and reactionary positions, and from that moment he prepared himself to become the leader of the Fascist movement. Starting in Milan, in fact, during the following two years, the Fascist Party spread throughout the rest of the country with aggression and abuses of power to the detriment of the Socialist forces, and in 1922, with the “March on Rome”, it symbolically entered the capital, winning the elections and then, in the following years, turning into the dictatorship that would lead Italy for the next twenty years. During this entire period, Milan had a sort of rearguard position of Fascism and, even though initially there remained some points of encounter, after 1925, when following the murder of the Socialist leader in Parliament, Giacomo Matteotti, the government established the dictatorship, the city could definitely describe itself as “Fascisized”. FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 83

From that moment, in fact, the Democratic administrative experience ended with the fall of the last mayor, the physician Luigi Mangia- galli, and an administrative authoritariansim was established with the imposition of a junta formed solely by Fascists and led by a figure now defined “Podestà Mayore”. Milan’s relationship with Fascism, even during the darkest days of the dictatorship, was controversial. Certain patrician dwellings in the centre continued to be places for “confidential” meetings, however, useful to maintain the survival of a Liberal and Catholic component in the Anti-Fascism and, later in the Resistance. Certainly, however, the Milanese aristocracy supplied Fascism a ruling class capable of managing the city for this entire period. Both the political and industrial elite’s attitude of compliance with the dictatorship was widespread even among the leading representatives of the financial world who, for many years, and even though with varying conviction, supported the dictatorship of Mussolini. A significant moment, in this regard, and proof of how the leading classes of the city were bending to the new regime, was the removal of the historic director of the “Corriere della Sera”, Luigi Albertini, who had revealed both the arrogance of Fascism and the will of the leading industrial citizens, owners of the newspaper, to support the new political season. Milanese society, overall, however, as to some extent many Italian circles, always maintained a certain degree of ambivalence towards the dictatorship, which allowed some individuals to conceal their Anti- Fascism within the major institutions, banks and businesses. Even the Milanese church, moreover, after formally joining, always maintained its independence, never missing the opportunity to engage in confrontations with the authorities to protect its freedom of movement. In particular, Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, Archibishop of Milan for twenty five years, several times had open confrontations with Mussolini in person, in particular during the Thirties when the the regime was promulgating racial laws, was dragging Italy into the Italian alliance with Germany and, especially, was leading it into war alongside Nazism. However, even during the worst moments of the dictatorship, Milan always clandestinely maintained an embryo of active anti-fascist movement. Here the leading anti-fascists of all political persuasions lived, and when possible acted: Communists, Socialists, such as Carlo Rosselli and Pietro Nenni, or of other political tendencies such as Riccardo Bauer, Ferruccio Parri, Ugo La Malfa and so forth. 84 SMART MILAN

Many of them, in the Thirties, were forced into exile, in particular to France, or even imprisoned. But it was around these political forces that in the Forties, in Milan, a resistance movement against Nazi-Fascism was organised which contributed in a fundamental way to the military and moral redemption of Italy from the dictatorship. From the beginning of the Twenties, in any case, the project was becoming established in the city strongly supported by Mussolini himself of creating the “Greater Milan”. According to this vision, the city basically was to expand both from the territorial point of view and in terms of structures and infrastructure, assuming the characteristics of the major modern European capitals. This project progressed over time erratically especially due to the lack of financial resources but the first act accomplished, following the example of what had been done a few decades earlier, was certainly the integration of the eleven municipalities of the hinterland adjacent to the borders of the city. During Mayor Mangiagalli’s last mandate, furthermore, a series of important points included in his program were accomplished. In fact, a new, long awaited, public University was created, the blueprint of a “city of studies” was completed, the public transport company was reorganised and the establishment of an Underground was hypothesized, the water and sewer network and the city trash service was reorganised, the replacement of the gas public lighting with electric lighting continued, and lastly the development of building activity and public housing was stimulated. In the following years, also due to the stimulus of these achievements, the city also underwent changes from a city planning point of view. During the Post-War period, the building recovery was enormous, in particular in the north and north east due to the annexations of new municipalities and the increase in the population. It was also because of this that it soon became obvious that a new city plan had to be drafted which would update the one written over thirty years earlier in a city that had not yet undergone the radical changes described. It was to meet this goal that in 1926 a national public competition was announced which collected representative projects of the culture of the architects and engineers, in truth mainly Milanese, applied to the urban phenomenon and the design of the future of Milan. The first prize was awarded to the project created by Piero Porta- luppi, a famous professional who among other things, starting in 1939, was the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture of the Politecnico, and by the engineer, Marco Semenza, a specialist in the transport industry up- FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 85 to-date on the most advanced technology in the world. A large aggre- gate of Milanese architects came in second, who a few years earlier had founded the “Club of Milanese Town Planners”, which included Ambrogio Gadola, Giovanni Muzio, Gio Ponti and others. The winning plan, obviously, given also the culture of its writers, proposed a balanced urban development both at the quantitative and

Vincenzo Aragozzini, Milan, Stock Exchange, facade, 1934 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 86 SMART MILAN

qualitative levels and the planning of a modern city that would incorporate the best experiences of the major international capitals on the subject, for example, of green space and public transport. The ideas proposed in the projects of the competition, in any case, only formed the starting point for a subsequent plan which, instead, was realised within the municipal offices and ordered in 1933. This one hypothesized constant urban expansion beyond the limits reached during those years and anticipated a dense building of the entire city territory and reconstruction of buildings on areas already built to be demolished. During the Twenties, and then for the entire subsequent decade, large areas were gutted and rebuilt one after the other as happened for example for the opening of Piazza Diaz, near the Duomo, Piazza degli Affari, Via Larga, or for the construction of the new Palazzo di Giustizia (Justice Building) built during the Thirties by the Fascist architect, Mar- cello Piacentini. Between 1931 and 1937, as a result, over 12,000 rooms were demolished and 2,000 families a year were expelled from the centre of the city to the outskirts. This coincided with a developmental idea of Fascism that identified the city with its bourgeois meaning as the executive and residential centre for the ruling classes and, to preserve this model, in fact, through government and municipal measures tried to counteract the urbanisation of those trying to move into the city from the country. During that same period, moreover, also to show off the growing modernity of the metropolis, a large number of public buildings were built which were intended to show the greatness of Milan. One of the interventions of greatest interest from this point of view, for example, was the constructions of the new headquarters of the Milan Stock Exchange. The Stock Exchange had begun in the city in 1808, during the Napoleonic period, and was initially located first near the Palazzo del Monte di Pietà, and then in the sixteenth century Palazzo dei Giurecon- sulti, near the mediaeval Piazza dei Mercanti, today the headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce, where it remained for almost a century. From the beginning of the twentieth century, the expansion of stock exchanges recommended that the Stock Exchange be moved to Piazza Cordusio to a building design by Luigi Broggi, where the Italian Postal Service is based today. The Milan Stock Exchange, however, as the city grew and was establishing itself internationally, was destined to become the largest market of the country where the major national industries, such as Edison, Fiat, Pirelli, Ras and Assicurazioni Generali were listed, which is why around the end of the Twenties, it was decided to move FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 87 again. This time, however, the needs of the exchange accompanied the ambitions of grandeur of Fascism and, as a result, it was decided to entrust to the architect, Paolo Mezzanotte, representative of Milanese Liberty and Neo-Classicism, the design of a very modern and imposing building that would represent the role that the Milanese market was assuming in the Italian financial world. Palazzo Mezzanotte, located in the plaza which came to be called “degli affari (business)”, inaugurated in 1932 was an extremely avant-garde building among those existing at the time. It was the first designed for simultaneous calls of the lifts, was equipped with an air conditioning system, and housed the largest electric display in Italy which made it possible to follow directly the quotations of the Milanese stocks. Inside the palazzo was the noisy hall where the negotiations took place, called the “shouting room”, and this was covered by a recreation of the night sky and its constellations. In addition to the investment in the modern sector of finance, however, in the framework of the renewal of the most important city palaces, city planning also got involved in the symbolic sector of labour. In fact, in 1929, a competition was announced to design the new palace of the Fascist industry trade unions, to be built a few hundred metres from where the court would also be built in Corso di Porta Vittoria, a new avenue created in the heart of the city after the gutting as a result of renovation of the city. This was to be a new and centralised headquarters capable of representing the power of the industrial workers who from the middle of the Twenties to the early Thirties, and moreover without any democratic freedom, had multiplied trade union enrolment. Lastly, this building, inaugurated in 1933, was the monumental self-representation of Fascism, in pure functional Fascist style, but marked by touches of Art Deco and the Milanese twentieth century, with a central tower which represented the “temple to the sanctity of work”. After housing during the dictatorship the Fascist trade unions, the employment office and the workers’ mutual aid societies, during the following decades and down to the present day, the palace became the headquarters of the largest European Labour Union, that of the CGIL of Milan, the largest Italian trade union. Another intervention in the field of public construction, fundamental for providing the city with modern structures proportionate to its evolving needs, was the necessary integration of the structures of the largest hospital of the city. The oldest and largest hospital of Milan, in fact, for years was in a profound state of logistical and organisational renovation. Initially it was located in “Ca’ Grande” a historic building 88 SMART MILAN

near the Duomo, in Via Francesco Sforza, designed by the Florentine architect, Filarete, and built in the second half of the fifteenth century, at the behest of the Sforza, who were at the time the masters of Milan, and who wanted to concentrate in a single place all the sick who before had been spread throughout various smaller city institutes.

Milan, Ospedale Maggiore, (City Hospital), 1939 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 89

At the beginning of the century, the hospital which had obviously been modernised had already moved from its traditional seat inaugurating nearby some of the first pavilions of the “University General Hos- pital”, which however did not meet the requirements of a city in rapid expansion. The urgency, which could no longer be postponed during the post-war period, led the city administration to identify a vast area that was expanding and was easily accessible in the Niguarda area, in the northern part of Milan, to build the large hospital that Milan needed. So, during the Thirties, the design and construction of a hospital to house 1,500 patients was started, based on the most modern hospitalisation criteria and containment of management costs. The new public “Niguarda Ca’ Granda Hospital” designed according to a Fascist-inspired rationalist architecture, typical of those years, and protected today by the Fine Arts Organisation, with medical features that were unique for the period, was inaugurated in 1939. The Fascist interventions on the city, however, besides involving the public interest sectors such as services and institutions, also involved the sports sector since during that period one of the largest football stadiums in the world, and certainly the country, was built, namely the San Siro Stadium, the “Temple of Football”. The construction of this installation began in December 1925 thanks to the support of Piero Pirelli, at the time the Chairman of the Milan team, and was inaugurated the following year with a Derby between the two city teams. While being owned by the red-black team, since Inter, which had been forced by Fascism to change its name to “Ambro- siana Inter”, was still playing in the Civic Area, the stadium which included four galleries that could hold up to 35,000 people, was taken over by the Municipality of Milan in 1935. Even during the twenty years of the dictatorship, basically, the city did not stop growing and changing, shaped by the solemn advance of 90 SMART MILAN

modernity mixed with the ideals of Fascism. Many schools, universities, bank and insurance headquarters, the new Stock Exchange, municipal and government offices, the headquarters of the Fascist labour unions, the Central Station, the Ospedale Maggiore, the Planetarium, the neighbourhood markets, the Triennale, the Fiera, the public swimming pools and the velodrome, new churches and military building, were all nodes of the new city in constant evolution. The predominance of the aesthetic canons of Fascism, in any case, did not prevent Milan from also displaying radical innovations that introduced elements of great importance in the aesthetic field. A central step, from this point of view, is generally given as 1922 when the “Twentieth Century” style of architecture had its precise beginning, with the inauguration of a residential complex, which still exists today, between Via Moscova and Via Turati, in front of the United States Embassy. This was a turning point in Milanese architecture and of the very culture of the city. It was an expression, on the one hand, of the architects’ opposition to the forcing of avant-garde and in particular Futurism and, on the other, a recall that they felt towards the Italian tradition of classicism and the need to reinterpret it according to contemporary style and modernity. This need to be considered modern and, at the same time, to maintain the ties with tradition, produced the first work of the architect, Giovanni Muzio, which he himself considered a manifest work of the architecture of twentieth century Milan. On the other hand, the house, even though it has been considered since then an aesthetic Manifesto because of the extravagant use of classical elements, did not completely suit the taste of the Milanese citizens who, in fact since then have nicknamed it: the “Ca’ Brutta” (Ugly House). These architectural experiments, obviously located in the most aristocratic areas of the city and in the middle class residences, went along with the need, constant and in fact urgent, of developing the public city. The urban renovation phenomena, above all, had accentuated the problem requiring that houses be found for all the families that would be pushed to the outskirts by this transformation and for those who, in spite of everything, continued to find it necessary to concentrate in the urban area of Milan. Milan, in this regard, had in the past developed the excellent tradition started by the Società Umanitaria. Moreover, in 1908, at the initiative of the Municipality, the Monte di Pietà, and some Milanese banks, including the Bank for Credit and Cooperation arising out of the FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 91

Umanitaria, the Institute for Public and Economic House of Milan had also been founded which, during the Post-War period, under the Social- ist Administration, had built a large number of dwellings to alleviate the drastic conditions of the population. These districts, inspired by the Anglo-Saxon culture which had promoted the “garden city” movement, were composed of two-floor, reinforced concrete, and single-family houses in areas where, furthermore, there was conversely still a significant lack of services. The problem during the twenty year period, however, became the practical one of producing in a short period of time large quantities of residences. In this context, in fact, the concept was drafted of the complexes of “self-catering apartments” in the outskirts of the city and in the hinterland. These were settlements which, even though they attempted to relieve the problems of health and maintenance, were in a standardised style, produced with very cheap material and in areas that were not very urbanized and poorly served. Starting in the Twen- ties, moreover, the construction of public housing contributed considerably to the expansion of the city with the building of entire districts of new construction and city assets that went from little more than 1,200 rooms, at the beginning of the Twenties, to 80,000 rooms capable of housing 90,000 people in 1939. These processes of urban evolution, due to the need of the Milanese administrations to urgently update the city infrastructures with large scale interventions, also accompanied the completion of a network of public services in less visible but fundamental sectors for the life of the city such as education, culture, physical recreation and assistance. The significant increase in the school-age population, the result of the expansion of the metropolis, connected to the need to train the youth in the activities created by industry, the services sector and public employment, stimulated the construction of schools of every kind and level. In fact, from 1920 to 1940, 170 classrooms were built for nursery schools, over 100 for middle schools, and 1,000 classrooms for the elementary schools, in particular in the urban area outside the centre, where most of the middle class population was establishing their residence. Then, outside this zone, mainly rural schools were built while upper schools were concentrated in the centre of city obviously serving the needs of the more prosperous families. In the city kindergartens were multiplying, including the “children’s houses” inspired by the Montessori Method, and the first nursery schools, as evidence of the Municipality’s support of the working classes. The 92 SMART MILAN

greatest commitment of the municipality was to the elementary schools. In 1930, there were 269 managed directly, with almost 60,000 students. The new buildings constructed during this phase correspondended to a projects of standardised “typical schools”of 30-35 classrooms, which besides providing essential services and high-level sanitary standards, had kitchens and dining halls, gyms for physical activity and, in individual cases, even cinemas and swimming pools. While the school reform plan of the regime focused on upgrading education to the needs of a modern country, by creating a model of a “working class” school, in the centre of the city work was being done on top quality higher education, by improving the structures of prestigious institutes such as the Parini High School specialising in the classics, the Virgilio High School specialising in education and the Carlo Cattaneo Technical Institute, where accountants were trained and generations of the city ruling class were educated. Great attention, also for the propaganda purposes of Fascism’s ideology of discipline, duty and physical effort, was devoted to the system of mass cultivation of sports both amateur and competitive which, in some ways, had also positive consequences on the development of the city. Because of this, in fact, even the administration of Milan devoted itself to the construction of sizeable sports institutions, concentrated in the outlying areas, and the distribution in the territory of small installations and equipment for sport. “Bathing installations” summing to around 4,000 m2 both covered and open, which could host up to 1,500 people, in fact, were built in the following years in Milan, in addition to football, athletic and tennis sports fields. In addition, in 1934 the “Roberto Cozzi” covered and heated pool opened, qualified for international competitions and was considered one of the leading swimming pools in Europe. It compared the largest city installation, the “Lido of Milan” which spread over 12,000 m2, and in addition to swimming pools in which a mechanical device reproduced ocean waves, it had a beach area with sports fields, bocce, Luna Park, skating rinks and so forth, and soon became the Milan public sports centre. Besides the problems relative to the public and private buildings and services, large urban restoration interventions were carried out during those years, of which the work on the Navigli was certainly the largest. The Navigli formed a system of navigable irrigation canals which crossed Milan and surrounded it placing it in communication with the principal natural water basins of Lombardy, such as Lake Maggiore, Lake Como, the Ticino River and so forth. The construction of this FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 93

Milan, Bridge in Corso di Porta Romana, Twenties/Thirties (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 94 SMART MILAN

complex and ingenious system, which among other things made the Po Valley an exceptionally fertile and productive agricultural area, was started in ancient times. The work lasted from the XII to the XIX century and had a fundamental moment during the XV century when Leonardo Da Vinci, who at the time was living and working Milan, perfected the system providing a fundamental contribution. The focal point of this engineering work was the Circle of Navigli of Milan which forms the city intersection point and allowed the system to work overall. From the end of the nineteenth century, when the city was growing and changing, this large network of canals started to be perceived as an obstacle to the urban development. The town plan of 1884, in fact, was already considering the possibility of covering these canals to make moving and maintaining the city easier. Then, from the end of the Twenties, the process of covering the “inner pit” that surrounded the centre of the city began. Obviously, the decision was motivated by the new sanitary and traffic needs due to the increase in cars, and created a new ring of streets that was called Circle of the Navigli, precisely because it followed the perimeter along which the water flowed previously. Naturally, with this radical intervention, the city was modernised from the urban and traffic points of view, but its physiognomy was changed completely and lost the appearance of a “city of water”. Besides a few sections which remained open until after the war, two long canals were kept open in the southern part of the city, the Naviglio Grande and the Naviglio Pavese, which still meet today in the Darsena, once the port of the city of Milan. This area, still today, is one of the most attractive of the city and is mentioned for example by all those who over the years supported the need to once again change the appearance of the city, by changing its urban planning in order to relieve congestion and, thus, propose again opening up the waterways that still existed. This radical work on the appearance of the city, conversely, had the effect of improving its road access and commuting which, among other things, were also facilitated by the network of public transport that was an excellent feature of the city and was always being modernised. Milan, capital of the Kingdom of Italy, was the first city of the Italian states during the pre-Unification era to see the need to organise a public transport service, since it was a centre of commercial trade, as it was one of the most populated cities and also most used by non-inhabitants. The first public transport service for people was established following the Paris example back in 1801 with the use of nine, horse-drawn car- FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 95 riages which, guided by two coachmen, could take four people at a time from the centre of the city to the neighbouring areas. This embryonic service, which grew in terms of number and distribution, went through another stage during the Forties when the carriages were replaced by brand new Omnibus with eight seats drawn by just one horse, which initially connected Porta Nuova to Piazza del Duomo, before spreading to other city streets. In 1848, during the Anti-Austrian Revolt, these vehicles were overturned in the middle of the street, they were turned into barricades, and the horses were used for messaging between the insurrectionary committees. The omnibus, in any case, first with fourteen and then sixteen seats, remained the favourite vehicle also when, in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the establishment of a transport company, it was decided to expand public services. Milan’s shape, in fact, with wide radial streets that converged into a network of dense, narrow streets in the centre, made these the most suitable vehicles for moving around a restricted street system. Then, in 1875, the first iron track between Milan and Monza was installed for the horse-drawn tram to run, as in other foreign cities. In the following years, these means of transport spread also in the steam version, and were in any case remembered for their extreme slowness. These lines were created both to connect Milan to the middle sized cities beyond its province and, progressively, within the city with the decision to “envelop Milan in a network of horse- drawn trams on iron tracks”. Towards the end of the century, already 100 km of tracks traversed Milan with around 200 vehicles drawn by 1,200 horses and, among other things, an agency had been created specialised in mobile advertising to be exhibited on public vehicles In the meantime, electricity, which had illuminated the centre, the Galleria, the theatres, and the most luxurious shops, had launched the Belle Epoque in Milan as well. Since the Nineties, the first electric trams began running which rode along the Arco della Pace to the Duomo track, at that time the terminus of all the lines leaving Milan. In 1900, an agreement between the Edison Company of Colombo and the Municipality of Milan to electrify also the line from Milan to Monza definitively shelved the era of the horse-drawn tram and inaugurated modernity. The agreement, while granting the management to a private company, gave the Municipality ownership of the tracks, as well as the design of the number of lines, the routes, rates and schedules. Curiously, in 1907 a special line was inaugurated for funeral services which ran along the ring road and reached the two Milanese cemeteries 96 SMART MILAN

to transport both the deceased and those attending the funeral. That same year, furthermore, a vehicle drove around the city used for washing the streets which, when moving, spread water to both sides, giving it the nickname the “whiskered seal” because of the sprays of water that it spread as its passed. To expand the service, in 1910 the numbering of the trams was added which, during the First World War, because of the lack of male labour involved on the front, were also driven for the first time by female drivers. After the Municipality of Milan decided to manage directly the public tram service in 1917, taking it away from Edison, during the Twenties,

Milan Chamber of Labour (Archivio del Lavoro, Sesto San Giovanni, Milano) FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 97 there was an overall redesign of the tracks. They all stopped crossing in front of the Duomo turning the plaza into a large terminus of vehicles and, after the introduction of the automatic switch, there came the addition of new “Series 500” vehicles which, with few aesthetic modifi- cations remained in service even until the present day. The same modernization needs of the city, which had stimulated the constant growth of the urban public transport, were also a crucial element in the reorganisation of the railway transport and, especially, in the creation of a new station adequate for Milan’s size. Even though the Milanese infrastructure junction was certainly the most advanced in the country, the lack of railway installations in the city, in relation to its rate of growth, had revealed itself right from the dawn of the new century and had stimulated the drafting of a project of reform, the effects of which would produce the above ground railway infrastructure which still crosses Milan today. The first stone of the new station was actually laid by King Victor Emanuel during the 1906 Expo, but the path of its construction, also because of the war and its financial consequences, extended intermittently over the following twenty years. At the urging of Mayor Mangia- galli, finally, its construction, inspired by the major stations of Leipzig and Stuttgart, started again in 1924. After seven years of work, finally, the station which rose a few hundred metres north of the old station located in the current Piazza della Repubblica, and could handle over 600 trains a day, was inaugurated in July 1931. In any case, the problem with transportation, between the two wars and especially during the Fascist period, was tackled also from other points of view and, even though the rate of motorisation of the country, and also that of Lombardy, was still quite modest, the first motorways in Europe were built here. In fact, in 1922, since the conviction was still shared that Italy would experience a rapid economic growth, which obviously was slowed by subsequent events, the “Società Auto- strade (Motorway Company)” was established with the intervention of the government which started the construction of the Milan-Lakes, Milan-Bergamo-Brescia and the Milan-Turin arterial roads that were all completed in the Thirties. Another important step was the construction of a modern and efficient airport for a city which up until then had used only the runways of the two aviation companies active in the area, in other words Breda which had a factory in Bresso, and Caproni which had built in Taliedo in 1913 the first cement landing strip in the world. 98 SMART MILAN

In this context, in 1932 the Podestà (Mayor) Marcello Visconti di Modrone proposed the construction of a new, modern airport to the Aviation Minister, Italo Balbo. It began to rise to the East of Milan during the following years to occupy an area of 3 million square metres on the land of various municipalities of the hinterland. The Civil Airport of Linate was finally completed in 1937 and became one of the largest installations in Europe. Moreover, during the preceding years, a type of “seaplane base” had arisen nearby which, in the designs going back to the Twenties, in fact, when the seaplane was a valid air service on long distance routes, was to serve as base for these types of equipment. Later, despite the fact that the obsolescence of this type of transport had virtually made the project useless, the large lagoon inaugurated in 1930 was converted into a centre for the sports activities of the city, such as swimming and rowing and, over time, became a symbolic location for the citizens to meet during times of leisure to the extend that it came to be called, with a little irony: “the sea of the Milanese”.

Vincenzo Aragozzini, Milan, Città degli Studi, Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci, Politecnico di Milano, 1934 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 99

The origins of the University City

During the twenty years of Fascism, in order to complete the processes started in the preceding decades, Milan completed its educational offering with the improvement of the institutes that already existed and, also, with the creation of new organizations that the city had been awaiting for a long time. First of all, during the Twenties, the fulfilment was accelerating of a project that had been sketched out in 1913 when an agreement had been stipulated between the State, the Municipality and the Chamber of Commerce of Milan, with the involvement of Cariplo, in order to decen- tralize and concentrate in a single place in the city many of the establishments of higher education spread around the territory. The choice of location, at the time, had fallen on an area which was peripheral at the time called “Cascine Doppie”, which was to become the “city of studies”. After the first stone was laid, however, the process had continued intermittently because of the problems that the city was going through, and the cultural centre only became operational in 1927 when the new Politecnico opened in the square named for Leonardo Da Vinci. This university, during the preceding two decades, had confirmed its guiding role of Milanese technical culture. The technological evolutions, widespread since the end of the nineteenth century, moreover, had increased the importance of industrial studies more and more and, besides increasing considerably the number of graduates in industrial engineering, had progressed to add specializations in mechanics and electrical engineering. Milanese engineers, for these reasons, were much sought after because of the flexibil- ity that allowed the students of the Politecnico to become established in various sectors of the profession. The Politecnico had carefully watched the main European polytechnics and had tried to favour sector-based analyses and, at the same time, avoid excessive specialization given the relative backwardness of the Italian economy. From the first decade of the new century, in any case, the chemical engineering specialization had 100 SMART MILAN

become established, and was assigned to teachers of great prestige such as Luigi Gabba and Angelo Pavesi. With the expansion of the research fields and the degree courses, there was also that of the subjects taught, centred on the study of technologies, heat engines, steam turbines, internal combustion engines, and construction sciences, which now included the study of reinforced concrete, electro-chemistry, etc. After 1909, furthermore, in the wake of the successes of the former student Forlanini, aviation subjects had also been added. One of the reasons for the Politecnico’s success, furthermore, was the increasingly close ties both from the point of view of research and that of education, with the Lombard manufacturing system. This was evident from the progressive consolidation of the experimental equipment which occurred also thanks to the contributions made available by the businesses in the various industries to support research of economic and application interest. Already between eight and nine hundred laboratories had been started, for example, in applied mechanics, research on paper, applied geology, construction materials, and then the laboratory schools for the oil and grease industry, and one in the textile fibre field. Then, in 1902, cooperation was started with the Society of Encourage- ment and the Società Umanitaria, an electrical engineering laboratory school, directed specially at the workers, in order to raise their skills in the industry. Basically, with the Italian industry taking off, the types of integration and cooperation between the Politecnico and the manufacturing world of the area increased even more, and the research organizations and the schools increased their role in the training proportionately, and also in the field of consulting, services to the industries, experimental checking, and research destined to increase technological innovations. It was no coincidence that during this period, world famous technologists and scientists such as Riccardo Arnò in the electro-technical field, Max Abraham for mechanics, and Ettore Molinari and Giuseppe Bruni for chemistry came to this establishment. Starting in 1929, town planning started to be taught as an independent discipline, a fact which fostered the increasing involvement of architects in the planning and management of cities and territory. In 1933, moreover, the independent faculty of architecture opened and combined the civil architects of the engineering course and the course for architects held at the Brera Academy. Alongside the now usual figure of the Politecnico, during the Twen- ties another public university appeared, the University of Milan, which was functionally replacing the ancient University of Pavia which, found- FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 101

Milan, Ospedale Maggiore, facade, later site of the University of Milan, 1870 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano)

ed in the XIV century, had traditionally served as education centre par excellence for the city of Milan. The direct antecedent of this new university was the scientific- literary Academy which started like the Politecnico in the middle of the nineteenth century. Then, in 1870, another institution was launched which would merge with the University, in other words the Upper School of Agriculture, which in addition to educational purposes, had the objective of promoting the progress of agriculture through experimental research. At the same time, at the beginning of the new century, the so-called Clinical Institutes of Specialization began for young doctors, which had been promoted by the physician and future mayor of Milan, Luigi Mangiagalli. During the first two decades of the century, he had worked tirelessly to promote the establishment of a large public institute which would allow Milan to have an educational system at the level of a modern city, thanks to the development of the medical sciences and the integration of a post-graduate system extended beyond what was available at that time in the city. A fundamental passage in that direction occurred with the “Gentile Reform” of public education of 1923 after which the Milanese clinical institutes joined with the scientific-literary Academy creating a new independent and public university. The new Dean, in fact Mangiagalli, 102 SMART MILAN

who more than anyone else had believed in this project, right from the beginning worked on expanding the faculties existing at the time, in other words Arts and Philosophy and Medicine, expanding the areas of expertise of the new University. Naturally contributing to this in a positive manner was the fact that the Dean, in the meantime, had become the mayor of Milan and, therefore, managed even more easily to involve local organizations and institutions of the city in a project that, furthermore, attracted great interest in the city Thanks to this push, which involved the Municipality in the forefront and many forces of the territory, therefore, in 1924 at the Prefecture of Milan, the University of Milan was started, composed of the four Faculties of Law, Arts and Philosophy, Medicine, Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences. The new university, precisely because it stemmed from established institutions, could boast at once of a very prestigious teaching body. In the context of its range of courses the Faculty of Law, initially chaired by the renowned jurist Angelo Sraffa, one of the founding fathers of modern commercial law, immediately qualified itself as one of the most important in the country. Having started the first academic year with almost 1,500 registered students, furthermore, the University in short order reached 2000 students, placing itself among the leading universities of the country after the ancient establishments of Naples, Rome and Padua. Along with this new important public city establishment, another University had opened a few years earlier, which would participate in the education of the Milanese and Italian ruling classes. The embryonic plan of a Catholic university had already come up around the end of the nineteenth century, supported by representatives of all the Catholic cultural tendencies and represented by Giuseppe Toniolo, an important economist and sociologist and representative of the Italian Catholic movement who had bequeathed to Father Agostino Gemelli and his partners the task of creating a Catholic-inspired university. Father Gemelli, who was born into a prosperous Milanese family, was also a leading figure in the Italian confessional movement, very influential politically and culturally, and, besides belonging to a Francis- can order, he was a respected doctor and psychologist. In 1919, with the cooperation of other important figures of Italian Catholiciscm he had founded the Institute of Higher Education named for Toniolo, which would soon afterwards, thanks to the approval of the Minister of Education, Benedetto Croce and Pope Benedict XV, be turned into a university, inaugurated by the Milanese Cardinal, Achille Ratti, who shortly afterwards would become Pope Pius XI. FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 103

This University, during its first years of life started the Faculties of Philosophy and Social Sciences, and Arts and Law and, among other things, was distinguished for its strong vocation to produce graduates capable of influencing the surrounding society according to the Chris- tian values imparted by the University. It excelled, among other things, for the ability to establish a strong connection between the Milanese culture of the era and the applied culture of industry and labour with the intention of educating ruling classes equal to the ongoing modernisation. Gemelli, for example, launched right from the beginning of the University, in the Faculty of Philosophy, a laboratory of experimental psychology and psychotechnics. In a far-sighted manner on both the scientific and the operational level, it had the goal of building a bridge between the world of studies and that of production. In fact, it was a forerunner in focusing attention on the evolution of labour in relation to the technological development and the factory system, and it studied the new professional workers and their problems, with the objective of creating advances in the field of the “Science of Labour”. Following approval also by the Italian Government of the Articles of Association of the University, and the resulting legal acknowledgement of the degrees, after 1926, the independent faculty of Political, Econom- ic and Commercial Sciences was born out of the Faculty of Law, followed a few years later by the Teacher’s Training College. Finally, in 1932, after the renovation of the buildings overseen by Giovanni Muzio, the University moved to the historic Benedictine monastery of the Cathedral of Sant’Ambrogio distinguished by the striking cloisters designed by Bramante in the XV century which, besides having become the symbol of this University, have remained its headquarters to the present day. The same effort to connect the world of studies to the advanced Mil- anese economic and social context, obviously, was taking place in the private Bocconi University, already very prestigious and site of economic studies par excellence. This University had been created in 1902 by Ferdinando Bocconi, founder and owner of the Bocconi stores, the first large Italian department stores which, created on the model of similar experiments in Paris and London, and located in Piazza del Duomo in Milan, but with branches in Genoa, Turin, Trieste and Rome, at the beginning of the century had already become the largest Italian company in the sector, a prime example of change and promotion of new habits in the field of consumer goods and fashion. The department stores, later destroyed by a fire, in 1917 had been taken over by the Milanese entrepreneur, Senatore Borletti 104 SMART MILAN

who, also thanks to the support of the poet, Gabriele D’Annunzio, had rebuilt the business founding the new “Rinascente” brand. After the death of his son, Luigi Bocconi, who died in 1896 in the Battle of Adua during one of the senseless colonial campaigns waged during that period by the governments of Francesco Crispi, Ferdinando Bocconi who was from a humble family had become one of the most important and innovative Italian entrepreneurs, and decided to name an institute of higher education after him. Bocconi, in fact, according to a belief widespread among the Milanese middle class of the period, was convinced that the need for the cultural and professional education of the entrepreneurial class, together with the increase in the technical skills of the working classes, was the central element for the stimulation of economic development. For these reasons, looking at the Milanese landscape, Bocconi had focused on the establishment of a Graduate School of Commerce which he imagined would be integrated with the Politecnico di Milano to contribute to educating engineers equipped with a solid economic and commercial culture, on the other hand, to socially educate the accountants who, at least in the higher classes, were being trained in Milan especially at the technical institute named for Carlo Cattaneo, already active during the nineteenth century. First President and Dean of the University, who would become one of the most famous in Milan and known around the whole world, was the lawyer Leopoldo Sabbatini. He was an expert on economic matters, besides being one of the main sponsors of the establishment of a network of Italian Chambers of Commerce, and had planned with Bocconi the cultural lines of the new university directing the new institute to a balance between economic culture and entrepreneurial practice as foundation of the growth of the country. In 1920, the Institute of Economics was founded at this University, initially chaired by Ulisse Gobbi, economist and mathematician who would also be Dean of the University, and later it was entrusted to the guidance of Luigi Einaudi, world famous economist who in the future would be one of the founding fathers of the Italian Republic, as well as Head of State. In this prestigious Institute, which during its first years launched the publication of the “Annali di Economia (Annals of Economics)”, in the following years a series of Italian intellectuals gathered who would, in various ways, have great significance in the history of Italy, including Carlo Rosselli, Paolo Vita Finzi, Raffaele Mattioli, Gino Zappa, Giorgio Mortara, Ugo Caprara, Pasquale Saraceno, Giordano Dell’Amore, and Giovanni Demaria among others. FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 105

Around the end of the Twenties, when the University was still located in its original location in the centre of Milan, the work began for the construction of a new and more modern site. The building which rose in an area to the south of the city, built on a design of the architect, Giuseppe Pagano, represented one of the most symbolic examples of the Milanese “rationalist” style. It was inaugurated in 1941 and housed the University during its period of greatest development and until just a few years ago.

Milan, Piazza del Duomo, houses on the left side of the Cathedral with view of the Bocconi Department Store, late 1800’s (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 106 SMART MILAN

Culture and Industry: the Triennale di Milano

A single action which, during this phase of intense urban transformation, affected the city both from the point of view of architectural innovation, and the innovations of a cultural nature displayed for example by the academic development of these years, was certainly the establishment of the Triennale of Milan which, during the following decades would represented in the eyes of the world a point of excellence in the field of applied arts. Since the early Thirties, it had been located in the Palazzo dell’Arte, on what is now Viale Vincenzo Aragozzini, Emilio Alemagna, which was completed by the Milan, Palazzo architect, Giovanni Muzio, in 1933 and immedi- della Triennale, ately became a “monument” of contemporary outside view, Milanese “Twentieth Century” architecture. night lighting, 1934 The building, created thanks to the bequest of (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Senator Antonio Bernocchi, was immersed in Milano) the green space of Parco Sempione, and had been designed to complete the monumental complex composed of the Sforza Castle, the Arco della Pace, and other buildings in the area such as the Aquarium and the Branca Tower. The Tower, a 108 metre Dalmine steel pipe building, was designed by Cesare Chiodi and Gio Ponti and inaugurated that same year, with the name “Torre Littoria”, but the Milanese called it “Tower of the Park”. Shortly after, a transmitting system would be installed marking the birth of radio television. The Triennale, besides being a building specifically designed for expositions and closely connected to the green space of the Park, included service areas, halls and corridors for temporary exhibits, a library, a 1,200 person theatre, a restaurants with concert hall connected to the garden terrace, a coffee shop, and some atelier to be leased to the artists. Its roots went back over a decade earlier, to May 1922, when intellectuals, politicians, artists, entrepreneurs and institutions had met FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 107 in the Sforza Castle of Milan to find a way to forestall Italian industrial products faced with the competition on the European markets from declining. The state of progress and the characteristics of the Italian economy drove to the need to reflect, first of all from the cultural point of view, on the relations between the growing industry and the Italian artistic and stylistic tradition, and on the utility that this last could bring to the success of the national product abroad. It was natural, moreover, that 108 SMART MILAN

the need to establish also a conceptual and strategic balance between the artistic and the industrial, the traditional and the modern, should arise with clarity right in the city where industry was more avant-garde, and where institutions like the Politecnico, the Brera Academy and the other universities had inevitably evolved by interweaving with the manufacturing companies of the region. Here the tradition of expositions, which had reached its peak in 1906 and was evolving during that period through the recent events of the Fair, had also created an environment favourable to reflections of this type. Based on this reasoning, consequently, in 1923 the International Biennial of Figurative Arts was held for the first time near Milan. It was in fact presented as a laboratory with the goal of protecting and affirming the Italian applied art products from the invading influence of foreign models. The choice of location, near the Villa Reale of Monza, designed in the eighteenth century for the Hapsburgs by Piermarini, was also motivated by the fact that the regions north of Milan, which had industrialised early, had for some time been characterised as a manufacturing basin of great importance where handcrafted furniture had had its tradition back to the seventeenth century and, progressively had evolved to the artisanal and industrial phase. Here, starting that year, three exhibitions were held every two years during which, broken down by region and also with the participation of various foreign manufacturers, products, furniture and avant-garde objects symbolic of the quest for a “modern”style in harmony with the new spirit of the times were exhibited. A symbolic example was provided by a project presented during the 1930 exhibition by the “Gruppo 7”, which had its debut previously in Monza, and which was one of the most important contributions provided by the event to the development of a debate on the modern movement. In fact, during that occasion, in the garden of the Villa Reale, a full scale “holiday house”, designed by Gio Ponti, an “after-work house” designed by Luisa Lovarini, and in particular the “electric house” were set up. The “electric house” represented the desire which at that moment was spreading among Italians to live in a house furnished with electric appliances which would make daily life easier. Designed by the architects, Figini and Pollini, and sponsored by the Edison electric company, there were household appliances for the kitchen, for preserving food, for washing and ironing clothes, for cleaning the rooms and so forth produced by AEG and Siemens among others. FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 109

In the wake of these innovative experiences, after being registered since 1929 in the Bureau International des Expositions of Paris, the very agency that coordinated exhibitions worldwide, in 1931 the event, redesigned to occur every three years, was organized into an independent organisation and changed its name to “Esposizione triennale internazionale delle arti decorative ed industriali moderne e dell’architettura moderna (Three-year international exposition of modern decorative and industrial arts and modern architecture)”, “Triennale for short”. The first Triennale Exposition, fifth of the series with the previous ones, was held in May 1933 in the new appealing location inserted into the green space of the Milanese park. So, from a provincial location, the event was integrated into the heart of Milan, also as proof of how in little more than a decade not only had its success been proclaimed but also how it had confirmed itself as a useful tool for the evolution of the artistic discussion and economic development, in line with the ongoing trends. By welcoming the technological and official innovations that were progressively appearing, in the following years, the Triennale increasingly assumed a role as booster of the innovative Italian environment, stimulating the comparison between the evolving cultural trends. The first exhibition met under the motto “Style and Civilisation”, coined by Giò Ponti, and sought to inspire the “Unità delle arti (Unity of the Arts)” with a manifesto and a symbol of the exposition designed by Mario Sironi. The innovative role of the exposition was immediately revealed thanks also to the participation of artists such as Giorgio Di Chirico, Mario Sironi, Mas- simo Campigli and Carlo Carrà who exhibited their work. The objective of the Triennale of Milan was to be the mirror of contemporary civilisation, and relative to the preceding exhibitions, the new programme was enhanced by two specific sections: an exhibition of modern residential buildings and an international exhibition of architecture. All the projects had to subscribe to the rules of “modernity”, “originality”, “technical perfection”, and “efficiency of production”, demonstrating the manufacturer’s capacity to meet the demands of the market. The expositions set up during this first Triennale, in which ten foreign countries participated, including Great Britain, Germany, Austria and France, consisted of exhibits of decorative art, architecture, mural painting, and modern residence. So, at the beginning of the Thirties, already at its foundation, the Triennale had established itself as the recognized place of comparison between formal research, production, and social dimension of the subjects that it promoted. Despite the fact that this era was not favourable 110 SMART MILAN

for commercial or even cultural exchanges, the Triennale managed to present itself, also by being widely open to the world experiences, as an opportunity to integrate among the greatest ongoing trends in the sector: a real international laboratory. This role was certainly reiterated during the subsequent editions even though constrained in a country subject to an increasingly suffocating dictatorship. The subsequent VI Edition of the Triennale, in fact, boasted an organising committee which included among others the architect, Giuseppe Pagano, in addition to Mario Sironi, and resonated the rationalist ideology by proposing through educational exhibits the results of the modern movement. Architecture and industry had by now become the complete focus of the exposition which promoted shows aimed at making the public aware of the new essential elements of contemporary life. The international climate of the operators of the sector, despite even the cultural restrictions imposed by the regime, focused on emphasising the synthesis between architecture and the figurative arts, aspiring to a “new European Renaissance”, desirable and culturally shared albeit, unfortunately, not at the right time, given that soon the continent would be immersed in war: obviously a logical contradiction to a Renaissance. The VII Triennale held in April 1940, in fact, was inaugurated a few months before Italy entered the Second World War. Within the context of the exposition, which as proof of the fame now reached and despite the difficult historical time, hosted foreign nations such as France, Ger- many, Romania and Sweden, there was an architectural area in which aspects of modern life were exhibited, reviewed, updated and perfected within the context of hotel, office and ship furnishings. As proof of the cultural fervour of these events, moreover, during this edition, at the Palazzo del’Arte in the Park, the young director, drama- tist and future father of Italian comedy, Luigi Comencini, and Alberto Lattuada, organised a cinema exhibit in which films were screened, while not released in Italy, such as the recent The Grand Illusion by Jean Renoir. This staging, the intent of which was to analyse the origins of cinema in the context of the historical trends of the first decades of the century up to that moment, among other things constituted a very innovative element both nationally and internationally, also because of the difficult political and cultural climate that the country was in. No less innovative and stimulating at the cultural and economic level was the exhibit dedicated to radio appliances, at that time the corner- stone of public communication. Designed by the architects Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Livio and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, both the radio devices, FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 111 and the furniture and decorating accessories related to them were exhibited. The examples aspired to reaching a modern and typical form of radio and, in addition to the household devices, “special”, portable and small radios powered by “small batteries” were exhibited which could work “while the holder was strolling”, as well as military radios, those for professionals and radio enthusiasts, plus others. Among the companies involved in varying capacities in the preparations were the major brands of the period such as Phonola, Magnadyne, Irradio and Geloso. Above all others, the section of the VII Triennale with the greatest innovation, if not technological certainly cultural and aesthetic, however, was the “International Exhibit of Mass Production” set up by the architect, Pagano. It constituted a type of collective exhibit since it organized a series of other previous initiatives, and stemmed from a profound theoretical and disciplinary reflection conducted by Pagano, who wanted to outline an Italian panorama of all the designs and “mass” productions of the Thirties. Consequently, it described this overview through a selection of various types of products, including household tools, interior design, engine design, technological objects and typewriters. This exhibit therefore constituted a central moment of comparison between designers and industrialists and between business culture and design culture which was becoming confirmed as a type of founding moment, both symbolic and material, of Italian design. The advent of the dramatic events which soon would turn the country upside down, in any case, if they had the effect of interrupting for a few years the course of the Triennale, fortunately did not project their consequences on the continuity of these reflections which, in fact, in the aftermath of the war were reconnected to the torn threads of the results achieved during the decade in spite of everything.

The New Expositions: the Milan Fair

After the World Exposition of 1906, Milan had not abandoned its vocation to pursue a leading role in international economic and commercial relations. From the first years of the new century, however, despite various exhibits being held, even successful ones such as London in 1908 and Brussels in 1910, the era of world expositions as they had been organized in the past, appeared to be coming to an end. Besides having reached a customary excess of ostentation which was pushing the public 112 SMART MILAN

opinion of the various countries to question whether the limit of the waste of resources had been reached, the Great War obviously had had a significant effect in making this type of initiative obsolete.

1920 official manifesto Trade Fair of Milan (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 113

This certainly did not mean that the reasons no longer existed for the exhibitions, but it was necessary to find new forms and methods which would take into account the manufacturing specializations, the different cultures, the advent of mass communication, such as radio and cinema and, especially, a new relationship between production and consumption. In this context, the so-called “trade fairs” such as those of Frankfurt, Berlin, and Lyon were gaining ground where new specialized, national and international, events were being held which had an almost exclu- sively economic nature, and which were held over the span of a few weeks, annually, in special permanent structures. During these events, the companies could present their entire production, not just the “masterpiece” or the prototypes, and the consumers, together with the operators of the sector could evaluate and choose their purchases and establish commercial relationships. The “fairs” basically reconnected to the function that the “market” had had in the past, albeit on a large scale and emphasizing the most recent experiences of the nineteenth century world expositions. The first designs relative to the possible organization of a fair of this kind in Milan, had been proposed in 1916, one decade exactly after the closing of the Expo and right in the middle of the war. During that period, besides some public conferences on that subject, meetings were held in the city in which the leading political figures, industrialists, companies, associations, banks and the press of the city participated. In this regard, a committee was also established charged with studying a design for the realization of a “trade fair”, chaired by Mangiagalli and, afterwards, by the Commander Luigi Bizzozzero, which had already had practical experience in the sector by organizing and chairing various industrial expositions abroad. In fact, after living for several years in Peru, he was responsible for organizing the Latin American pavilion at the 1906 Expo and, a few years later, became the first chairman of the Milanese fair. Obviously, the duration of the war did not allow the realization in the immediate future of the ideas floating around at that time, but the greatest merit of the people involved this first committee was to manage to imagine a future beyond the ruins of the present, and to plan an event that would represent the society of labour, in which the new industrial productions were side by side with the craftsmanship of quality and luxury and fed the new consumer economy. Based on these first designs, in fact, near the end of 1919, with few means made available not by the State but by the local entrepreneurs 114 SMART MILAN

Pirelli booth, Trade Fair of Milan, 1921(Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano)

involved, such as Falck, Borletti and Pirelli, the organization of the future event was launched in the shaken and disoriented climate of the immediate post-war period, in a city among other things terrified by the epidemic of the Spanish fever. The starting point was obvious: unemployment was spreading rapidly in the country; the entire economic systems seemed paralysed, it was necessary to reconvert the manufacturing structures and, in particular, give momentum and trust back to trade to put the economy back in motion by reconnecting the domestic markets with the foreign ones. The project of a fair seemed appropriate and adequate and, for this reason, the city became covered by advertising posters which, representing a hand with a pen writing a telegram addressed to retailers and industrialists, urged the manufacturing categories to participate in the imminent event which would facilitate the success of their businesses. The first “Trade Fair of Milan” was held in the second half of April 1920 in an area of 15,000 square meters which ran from the bastions of Porta Venezia to Porta Garibaldi. The area had been set up to house FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 115 the exhibitors with dozens of prefabricated wooden buildings. For the occasion, to optimize resources, these buildings were recycled structures which, a few years earlier, had been used to house refugees coming from the war zones after the disastrous battle of Caporetto. The most prestigious stands, then, were housed in the surrounding historic palaces as for example in the luxurious Hotel Diana where the exposition of the gold craftsmen was set up. Furthermore, other exhibitions stood out for their originality, as for example that of the Arduino company, which had reconstructed an entire bar with counter and shelves for the bottles, lamps, mirrors, and Liberty chandeliers to emphasize the exhibition of modern coffee machines. While serving an experimental version of the Fair, and ocurring in addition during a moment of great tension for the city of Milan and all of Italy, the organization certainly had a certain success given that over 1200 exhibitors participated, more than two hundred of which were from foreign countries. Moreover, as much as the limitations of the war on the circulation of certain products, such as wool and jewellery were still in effect, the Fair positively asserted itself and the exchanges between manufacturers and commercial companies confirmed the climate of industriousness and economic rebirth which characterized post-war Milan. Already in the spirit expressed by the organizers, moreover, the event was to place commercial exchanges before the interest of the visitors, and be characterized for efficiency and commercial utility: “the fairs of today”- stated the Chairman of the Fair, Bizzozzero, when inaugurating the fair - “are the exhibition reduced to homeopathic dose of today’s production; […] Their length must be short. Dear Sirs, time is pulsing at a very fast rate”. After this debut, during the following two editions, the Fair was decisively enlarged to the surrounding areas to the extent that it covered an area of 8 km2 hosting 2,000 exhibitors, almost a third of which were foreign. The visitors soon reached 600,000 per year and were composed of a varied crowd of Milanese and foreigners, not just retailers and industrialists. In April 1921, for example, “Domenica del Corriere”, the illustrated periodical most widely circulated in Milan, displayed on the cover a table illustrated by the painter, Beltrame, which depicted visitors of every age and social class, milling around the entrance of the Fair under the flags of all the countries of the world, elegant people with fashionable hats and children playing in the midst of the crowd. Then, in 1922 by Royal Decree of King Victor Emmanuel III, the “Ente autonomo fiera campionaria internazionale (Independent International 116 SMART MILAN

Trade Fair Organization)”was established with a new corporate for- mat and name which fully represented the desire and intention of the organizers to focus higher than just the interest of the local businesses, enhancing the international nature of the event. While the demand of the Italian and foreign exhibitors increased, in fact, also in an attempt to become one of the major events of the sector, besides meeting the growing need for space, the State acquired the land of the old Piazza d’Armi, at the time still in the suburban area behind the Sforza Castle, used until then for military purposes, to install the new permanent facility there definitively. Here, starting in 1923, two Liberty buildings were built which still exist today, and a “Palazzo dello sport (Sports Palace)”. This latter consisted in a rationalist structure designed by the architect and engineer, Paolo Vietti Violi, was inaugurated in April 1923 at the time of the Auto Show, and represents the only surviving building of the former fair centre of Milan. It was composed of an elliptical hall of 15,000 m2, with stands several metres high, surmount- ed by a 32 metre high glass cupola, and had a wooden track which could be dismantled where bicycle, motorcycle, dog and horse races were held. With an intelligent policy of program- ming, useful for involving over the long term even the exhibiting companies, the new Fair Organization launched a programme that was intended to replace all the old wooden building with brick buildings also through the contribution of the exhibitors which, in fact, willingly accepted the invitation made to them. Thus the first permanent pavilions were built destined for trade shows, as well as some pavilions of the Italian regions and the foreign countries. During this phase, inside the fair area, FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 117 furthermore, a railway line was also constructed which, coming from the Simplon rail yard, entered the city and reached the Fair making it easier to transport merchandise.

The 500 of the sky, passenger monoplane AS.1 Fiat, Trade Fair of Milan, 1929 (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) 118 SMART MILAN

In just a few years, through the realization of this project, the pavilions of various countries including Belgium, Germany, Holland, Argen- tina, Japan and Switzerland were built to which was added in 1926 the first corporate pavilion dedicated to Montecatini, the mining business which began at the end of the nineteenth century and which after the First World War became one of the most important chemical companies of the world. In just a few years, in addition to the Automobile Show, an event of great importance, a pavilion was dedicated to fashion, where fashion shows, film projections and live concerts were held, one to textiles and one to the wines of Italy, in addition to a livestock fair, near which an equestrian field was built, a pavilion dedicated to furniture and one to mechanics, demonstrating the specializations that the economy of the region had already attracted. The wide expanse of the Fair was accessed through various entrances, some of which were realized as real wrought iron sculptures which bore all the symbols of labour and industry, and had been created in 1923 by the master of the Liberty style, Alessandro Mazzucottelli. In the same, the pavilions were also configured as examples of the architecture of those years, and had been conceived by the greatest Italian architects such as Gio Ponti and Emilio Lancia, or, in the case of the once dedicated to Mechanics, by the architect Piero Palumbo who had created it in the Neo-Romantic style. Overall, when in 1928 the Fair celebrated the ten year anniversary of the end of the First World War by organising a specific event, the total area of the exposition rose from 28,000 m2 in 1923 to about 90,000. From that moment, the role of the Chairman was held by Piero Puricelli, an aristocratic Milanese engineer who, besides being one of the principal founders of the Neurological Institute of Milan, where the famous clinician, Carlo Besta, had worked since the end of the war, was a real expert in the sector. Puricelli, among other things, was the founder of the Road School of the Politecnico and creator of the first Italian Motorway, which connected Milan to Varese and Como, and their lakes. The new Chairman of the Fair, furthermore, had been the site engineer for the construction of the Monza National Racetrack, completed in one hundred days during 1922. Among the top three circuits in the world, it was an international track located within the Monza Park which, from its foundation hosted almost without inter- FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 119 ruption to the present day the Formula 1 Grand Prize of Italy which, in those years, saw the cars produced by Fiat, Alfa Romeo and Bugatti vie for the title. The connection of the Milan Fair with the growing automobile world, moreover, was obvious right from the creation of the stadium the full name of which was “Automobile and Sports Palace”. The Fair, right from the first edition, had hosted an Automobile Fair, and in the following years the event - which became the “Automobile Show”- had progressively attracted increasingly broader interest. Since 1928, in particular, the Fair acquired international importance, due to the participation in an official capacity at the exposition of almost all the best foreign brands. In the Sports Palace, during the various editions of this Fair, which complemented another exposition already being held in Milan for the motorcycle industry, a very large audience for the era could admire the best Italian and foreign brands, the latest models, and the constant progress in the technical and aesthetic field and the

View of the exposition area, Trade Fair of Milan, 1927 (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) 120 SMART MILAN

accessories. In addition, the Automobile Fair held an important role in spreading the progress in the industry and spreading the passion for cars, contributing to expanding a market which was fundamental not only for the development of the economy but also for the evolutions of customs and consumption. In addition to the historic companies such as Bianchi, Alfa Romeo, and Isotta Fraschini, the Italian panorama of the industry had expanded greatly in recent years. The mechanical and car industry included many small operators the integration of whose output contributed to the construction of the finished product. Among the many companies that arose, and which in many cases shut down quickly, there were small companies that built vehicles with electric engines for city use, like the Sive, active at the beginning of the new century, and the Blanc e Trezza, started in 1923 which built small electric vehicles for use as taxis and which had a range of more than 100 kilometres. During the Thirties, the Milan Fair, after the start-up phase, became firmly established with the construction of the monumental entrance from Piazza Giulio Cesare and, in fact, with its million and a half visitors per year and 3600 exhibitors it was third largest in the world, after those of Leipzig and Paris. Certainly, however, this international prominence was soon set aside because of the general context of the country. Fascism, in fact, consoli- dated into the dictatorship phase. Its ambition of total self-sufficiency had obligated Italy to so-called “autarchy”, in other words an economic closing to the international markets to meet the economic sanctions imposed by the democratic countries. In this situation, the Milan Fair, while subjected to the oppressive orders of the Regime and instead of closing itself into autarchic isolation, tried to find a way to maintain relations with the world of inventions, of entrepreneurial forces, and with the design imagination that the country was in any case able to express. While no longer being the place of exchange between vendors and buyers from all over the world, the Fair became involved in developing a role as a showcase of excellence for the national manufacturers and as one of the few places to engage with the foreign market thanks to the relations established during the preceding years. With 100,000 metres of exhibition space and visitors which in 1935 numbered more than two million, the Trade Fair was becoming the place where technological discoveries and scientific progress were presented as well as where economic exchanges between industry operators were conducted. FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 121

Here, in 1932, at the Automobile Show, Fiat Balilla presented the first real Italian utilitarian car, the dream car of all Italians: “small, perfect, agile, modern and inexpensive”. This first car with hydraulic brakes, which could accelerate up to 85 kmh, and was put together on an assembly line, was later produced also abroad. More than 100,000 were manufactured at a time when, in all of Italy, there were only 180,000 cars built. Then, in 1935, the Fair’s offering expanded with the organization of the first International Air Show. Indeed, for some time, also in the wake of the paranoia of the regime, air exhibits had been held which exhibited civilian and military vehicles. The success had led to bringing to Milan engineers and builders from all over the world in order to stimulate the comparison between new models and which brought global success to the initiative. In addition to the progress in technology, the Milan Fair mirrored new trends in terms of life style and customs. Here for example the first “tourism exchange” was held, a fair dedicated to travel itineraries and the solutions for lodging, which fed the need for freedom of the Italians and tended, albeit at that difficult time both from the economic and the social level, to stimulating dreams of consumerism and well-being. In the difficult framework of the country, hemmed in between colonial missions in Africa and later economic crisis, the Fair also became a place of recreation, expanding the expositions of fashion, toys and accessories, which besides expressing a need for seriousness and lightness far from the warlike mania of the regime, characterized it as a place of peace and optimism. The Fair celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 1939, right on the eve of the war and Italy’s subsequent entry into the conflict that would entail its forced suspension. Moreover with food rationed, production and exchange reduced to a minimum, the economy converted again to war needs and a population that was sliding into worse living conditions, the country was about to experience a very hard period In this scenario, but the Trade Fair tried to survive despite the reduction in exhibitors and products to exhibit. Instead, the public even though the exposition involved more and more military equipment in all sectors, until the last edition of 1942, continued to remain faithful reaching two million visitors. The imminent arrival of the war and the tragic bombardments also in Milan, however, made that the last edition because for the next three years, Italy as well as Milan, unfortunately had other things to think about. 122 SMART MILAN

Milan, Capital of Anti-Fascism

Milan, precisely because it was a modern and economically advanced city, had to atone very harshly for having been the place where Fascism was born and the area behind the battle front where it had chosen to die. The most obvious mark that the Second World War left on the city of Milan was the destruction from the bombing. The use of air attacks against the major urban centres was the most obvious strategy of the total war that involved the civilian population of the period. The air attacks had one goal which went way beyond the military and industrial strategic objectives, since they had the real objective of disseminating death and terror to weaken the enemy’s capacity to fight. England and Germany were the countries most involved in this type of combat, but Italy was also a target right from the beginning of the bombing, since the Fascist dictatorship had involved it in the absurd alliance with Nazi Germany. Among the objectives of the British and American air forces, Milan was in first place precisely because of its economic and “moral” importance. So in 1940, Milan was considered by the English the most important military objective, since it was the most developed industrial city of Italy and one of the most important in Europe located, with Turin and Genoa, within the so-called “industrial triangle”. So, already in June that year, immediately after the declaration of war, Milan was reached several times during the year by the enemy planes. However the first raids caused only minor damage and were, in particular, limited virtually to the principal military objectives, in other words the companies such as Caproni and Breda involved in war production. The English industrial intelligence service, even before the start of the war, had detailed information and maps of all the principal manufacturing companies of Milan and province, among which Alfa Romeo, Bianchi, Officine Galileo, Magneti Marelli, Pirelli, Isotta Fra- schini, Ansaldo, and the Officine Borletti and, last but not least, the Falk steelworks stood out. The city was also considered one of the main railway junctions of the country, with its 21 lines, one of the largest stations in Europe and important merchandise rail yards, such as Lambrate and Farini, vital junctions for the industries of the region. The reports compiled when the war had started listed 1,100,000 inhabitants in the city, which these same studies described as divided into concentric circles, the innermost one of which, in other words the FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 123 historic centre in the circle of canals, was also the most vulnerable in case of air attack, both because it was densely inhabited and because the buildings were so close together. In case of a bombardment, consequently, fire was anticipated to spread due to the incendiary fragmen- tation bombs. The bombing during the first months of the war, however, mainly affected the public spirit of the city which witnessed the inadequacy of the defence systems, the danger of the raids and, in particular, the pointlessness of the dramatic conflict. Milan, for the entire war, in addition to the widespread mistrust towards the Fascists, had also assumed the bad reputation as an anti- German city, and the continuous exposure to air attacks accentuated the aversion and hostility towards the hated “ally”. Then, obviously, as the war dragged on, the life in a metropolis such as Milan became increasingly hard and unsustainable. Mistrust and hostility were fed in particular by the rapid rise in the cost of living not compensated in any way by salaries and wages, and by the disappearance from the market of basic consumer goods, which soon only existed on the black market of speculation. The “black bag”, present in Milan from the first months of the war, after 1943 became for the urban population the only effective channel for purchasing the basic essentials, even food. The aversion to Fascism and the Germans, consequently, soon became the essential characteristic of the city in which signs of discontent and intolerance of Germany were spreading. Partly serious and partly facetious, but the risks are understood of such an action in times of war and under a dictatorship, it is worth remembering that in October 1941, on the base of the statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi in Largo Cairoli a message had appeared which later would become a mythical motto of the Milanese desire for resistance: the message in Milanese dialect “Pepin, vegn giò che i en anca mò chi” [Giuseppe, come down because I am still here] appealing for new intervention by the leader of the Risorgimento, this time to fight the German invader. The first three years of war, in fact, were experienced by the city in a crescendo of fear and passivity in which the population in terrible living conditions tried to survive waiting for better times to return, even though at that moment it appeared hopeless. Besides the city bourgeoisie and the middle classes, a separate subject involved the working class which in Milan in the industrialised suburbs included at the time about 300,000 employees, with their families, distributed throughout all the manufacturing sectors. They had concentrated in particular in the war 124 SMART MILAN

production sectors and, since 1942, also because of the dismissals, they started to shown strong signs of uneasiness. The condition of the wage- earner after a long period of war, in fact, made it hard to maintain levels of life that were tolerable for themselves and their relatives, due to the problems in getting food and basic essentials. In the meantime, as the war economy continued, even the pace of work became hard to maintain, with work schedules of 48 hours per week and a military style discipline in the factory. The first signs of unrest by the working classes, more strongly rooted more than in any other place of the country, appeared in small factories or in the departments of the large companies like Alfa Romeo, all things considered for lesser claims such as cafeteria or salary. However, in the first months of 1943, while the anti-Fascist political forces were reorganizing in secret, after twenty years underground or actually in exile, the labour world also started to raise its head. The episode with the greatest effect, in this regard, were the strikes that in March 1943 exploded in the largest Milanese companies and spread also into the province reactivating, after decades of dictatorship, social conflict. These events marked in some ways the beginning of the end of the Fascist dictatorship, since they were taking place while at the same time within Fascism itself conspiracies were being organized to weaken Mussolini who a few months later in July 1943 was deposed and taken to prison. The disaster that the city of Milan had to undergo during the war did not end here and, in fact, the worst times were still to come. The intense celebrations when the dictator was deposed, in fact, were followed by repression and violence. In particular, however, it was the new and systematic bombing that weakened Milan’s capacity and that of its citizens to resist. There were harsh raids, for example, already during October 1942, when repeated bombardments had caused hundreds of deaths and the destruction of homes and civilian places. The attacks were then repeated during the first months of 1943 when the defenceless city was hit so hard the people started to evacuate to the surrounding province. It had become impossible to live in Milan and, certainly, extremely dangerous. After the humiliation of the dictatorship and the absurdity of the alliance with Nazi Germany, however, the delays in defining the terms of the Armistice after the removal of Mussolini led in the summer of 1943 to another atrocious conclusion. From the 8th of that month and for the FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 125 following ten days, in fact, Milan as symbol of the Italy that had to sur- render, suffered an intense firestorm from an enormous deployment of planes which, after passing over, had left a throughly crippled city. The historic centre, the principal monuments, the Scala Theatre, the Cathedral of Santa Maria delle Grazie with Leonardo’s Last Supper, the Sforza Castle, the Basilica of S. Ambrogio, as well as thousands of civilian houses and entire districts were destroyed. The symbol of all this devastation was probably the Galleria of Piazza del Duomo, shattered so that from thee ground through a wide gash one could see the sky above Milan.

Dotti & Bernini, Milan, Galleria Vittorio Emanuele after the bombing, 13 August 1943 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano) 126 SMART MILAN

At the end of the bombing, the Archbishop of the city justifiably entitled his pastoral “After the destruction of Milan”, and the poet, Sal- vatore Quasimodo, future Nobel Laureate for Literature, with the poem Milan, August 1943, described the disaster around him:

In vain circles among the dust, poor hand, the city is dead. It is dead: we have heard the last rumble on the heart of the Canal: and the nightingale has fallen from the antenna, high on the convent, where it sang before the sunset. Don’t dig wells in the courtyards: the living are no longer thirsty. Don’t touch the dead, so red, so swollen: leave them in the earth of their homes: the city is dead, is dead.

The summer of 1943, consequently, was certainly the turning point because most of the physical damage ascertained at the end of the war had been caused during these raids. If this was the most traumatic moment on the material level, however, the most painful one would take place a little more than a year later when, in October 1944, during an air raid a nursery school on the periphery of Milan, in the Gorla district, was bombed by mistake causing the death of 184 children who are still remembered today. In any case, the 1943 bombing opened a critical period for Milan. Two thirds of the residents left the city by now completely worn out and terrorized by the air attacks. In addition, a phase of great conflict was starting. From the August of the bombings in fact, the large factories of Milan and province became the stage for repeated strikes against Fascism, against the war and against the difficult living conditions. The unrest of the Milanese working class at Falck, Pirelli, Breda, Alfa Romeo, etc. became the vehicle with which the entire population expressed its unease with the now unsustainable situation. In the city, in fact, during this period, the German troops and com- mands were stationed which, to the end, would transform Milan into the rearguard of the occupation of Italy. And here, by reaction on the field, the heart of the partisan resistance fight against Nazism and Fascism would develop, which in the last dramatic phase of the war expressed all its violent, bloodthirsty spirit. FASCISM, ANTI-FASCISM AND MODERNITY 127

Gabinetto Fotografico Nazionale, Milan, S. Maria delle Grazie Church, cloister and refectory after the bombing, 12-15 August 1943 (Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano)

From the strikes of 1943 to those of 1944, Milan became the capital of anti-Fascism. Here a vast alliance was established of all the forces that had resisted, in various ways and in the shadows, the dictatorship during the previous twenty years. The parties, the church, the civilian society, and the important areas of the ruling class, each in its way in these two years acted to destroy the dominance of the oppressor. While the citizens were by now living in desperate conditions and the local economy was at its last gasp, the city became the scene of conflict of the end of Fascism. Not by chance, it was here that Mussolini made his last public appearance, with a gloomy speech at the Lyric Theatre in November 1944. It was here that the teams of patriotic action, the city partisans who had their clandestine bases in the large local companies, brought their hard blows with attacks and military actions. It was here, when during 1944, Italy was liberated starting from the south, that attacks, arrests, torture, reprisals, executions and deportations took place. 128 SMART MILAN

It was here. from “Track 21” of the Central Station, today a Museum to its memory, that the Horror of the Shoah took place since from Milan between 1943 and 1945, trains left Milan full of deported Jews headed for the Nazi extermination camps. It was here, following a partisan action, that the German killed as reprisal fifteen innocent people taken at random from among the anti-Fascists being held in the San Vittore prison. The “fifteen martyrs” were left for an entire day exhibited in Piazzale Loreto, without anyone being allowed to remove their bodies, so that the Milanese citizens would know, if they yet needed to, the extent of Nazi violence. It was here, still in Piazzale Loreto, that the body of Mussolini was exhibited, as terrible symbol of the end of everything. And still here, lastly, on 25 April that year, after all of Italy had been liberated by the new allies and thanks to the contribution of the Partisan Resistance, Milan, Gold Medal city of the Resistance and capital of the war of Lib- eration, was free once again. CHAPTER 3 The Capital of the Miracle

The Rapid Reconstruction

Milan came out of the Second World War hit hard by the bombardments, tested morally because of the privations suffered by the population, and paralysed economically. From this last point of view, however, the assessment of the damages revealed an industrial system immobi- lised more by the lack of raw materials than the actual material damage. In the days following the Liberation, when the partisans and the allies were marching through the streets of the city, the National Libera- tion Committee designated Antonio Greppi as Mayor. In fact, he would go down in history as the beloved “Mayor of the Liberation”. Then, during the first free elections of 1946, he was elected by the citizens and guiding the municipal council that met in the Castle because Palazzo Marino had been seriously damaged, he remained in office until the beginning of the Fifties. Greppi was a famous lawyer passionate about the theatre. In fact, he was also a playwright, Reformist Socialist and disciple of Turati, whose house he visited as a young man under the porticos of Piazza del Duomo. During the dictatorship, he had withdrawn from political life, even though secretly he had retained how own ideals until, with the fall of Fascism, he had participated in the Resistance and, among other things, had lost his son, Mario, killed unarmed by the Nazi-Fascists in the city in 1944. Among his first acts after this nomination, the Mayor had hung on the walls of the city a manifesto directed to the Milanese in which, while celebrating the rebirth of the free municipality of Milan, had appealed to the values of the citizens to focus all their energy on the reconstruc- 130 SMART MILAN

tion. “Let every word of yours be a warning, let every action of yours be an example. The martyrs are watching us and inspiring us”. Milan, however, right after the Liberation appeared to be a ghost city, since along the circle of canals and in the centre the ruins were piled on top of each other. In Corso Vittorio Emanuele, at the foot of the Duomo, few buildings had remained intact. The flames had destroyed the major palaces, including Palazzo Reale and the shops of the Rinascente. The Galleria was ravaged and burned. La Scala had been hit, and Palazzo Marino, the former Hospital of Cà Granda, and the Castle had suffered serious damage as well as the Triennale and the principal museums of the city. The homeless were everywhere and lived in shacks that the municipality had tried to set up around the city, especially in the peripheral areas. However, starting from these conditions the city was trying to rebuild, finally freed from the weight of the dictatorship and the war. Despite everything, in fact, in the Milanese history of the summer following the Liberation, there also remains the memory of the parties improvised in the courtyards of the housing projects full of rubble, where the notes of American music could be heard which had been banned up to then. In addition, in the city, the first public bars and the cinemas were reopening, about forty at that time, where Laurel and Hardy films and “The Great Dictator” with Charlie Chaplin played. In this context, twice a week and with just four pages without photographs, newspapers started to be printed again, some heirs of the past and others new. Among the largest newspapers were the “Quotidiano lombardo (Lombardy Daily)”, organ of the Allied Military Forces, the “Corriere lombardo (Lombard Courrier)” with the famous writer and journalist Dino Buzzati among its contributors, “Milano Sera (Milan Evening)”, progressive paper, and the financial periodicals “Il Sole” and soon the “24 Ore”, which later would merge creating the largest Italian economic and financial newspaper. Besides these there was also “L’Avanti!”, the socialist paper, “L’Italia”, daily paper of the Curia, the “Corriere d’informazione”, in other words the “Corriere della sera” which, because of having been compromised during the past regime had to change its name. The poet, Alfonso Gatto who, during that period was writing a poem dedicated to the rest of the country that was waiting for the “North Wind”of change from Milan, symbol of the city’s desire for rebirth, partnered with the Communist paper, “Unità”, for a while managed by the author, Ettore Vittorini: THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 131

“Milan is sending you its heart, the wind of the plains, its white snows of so many dead, so many houses, the long winter when it waited for the time and cry of the counter-attack.

She sends you her red flag, the April sky, the factories defected one by one, the joy that inundated it that it was alive and free in the world.

Milan is sending you its heart, comrades.

And this heart beats on Europe, beats on Italy: wakes the dead, wakes the living under the April sky”.

One of the first cultural events of the city that was waking up, was represented in the summer of 1945 by a friendship party between Italy and France organised by the young critic, Paolo Grassi and by some Milanese artists who would later become very famous, and inspired by of the Mayor. At the time of the celebrations for the Storming of the Bastille, on 14 July, in fact, in the Sempione Park a great initiative was held crowded with Milanese attracted by music, entertainment, and circus animals, over which three large balloons flew with the wording “Liberty”, “Equality” and “Fraternity”. Faced with a city that had been obliterated, in fact, Mayor Greppi understood the importance of awakening the Milanese first of all morally, besides physically, and consequently had also chosen symbolically his objective. He therefore decided that the first essential act in this sense had to be the reopening of the La Scala Theatre, the artistic and moral symbol of Milan. He entrusted this difficult task of rebuilding the Theatre to Arturo Ghiringhelli, entrepreneur and his personal friend who, nominated Special Commissioner, remained at the head of the Theatre also during the following decades. In any case, making music never stopped in the Lyric Theatre and in the Sports Palace, as well as in the theatres of 132 SMART MILAN

Como and Bergamo, while the rebuilding work on La Scala was carried out quickly. It was decided to rebuild the theatre exactly where and as it was previously, despite the fact that the bombing had destroyed its ceiling, part of the galleries, box seats and stage. And, especially,it was decided to turn the building site into a symbol of Milan’s desire for a quick and prompt rebirth. The image of La Scala, above all, had over time and in the memory of the citizens been tied to another figure, that of Arturo Toscanini, who had lived now for several years abroad. In fact, in 1931, at the peak of the dictatorship, during a performance at the Bologna Theatre, he had refused to perform Fascist songs before important representatives of the government and for this reason had been harshly attacked by Fascism, which he had a sworn aversion to. Afterwards, breaking all relationships for the same reason also with the theatres of Germany and Austria, the maestro retired to the United States where he directed charity concerts for the Armed Forces and the Red Cross. Because of those courageous stands, even in Italy his memory was associated with the fight against the dictatorship and, in fact, already during the Resistance, on the walls of La Scala various signs had appeared, “Viva Toscanini” and “Toscanini come back”, which evoked his memory and invoked his return.

11 May 1946, La Scala reopens. Toscanini returns to La Scala THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 133

For these reasons, Arturo Toscanini was invited to direct the opening concert of La Scala which, rebuilt in record time, on the evening of 11 May 1946 could inaugurate its new activity in a liberated Italy. The “Reconstruction Concert” was truly a historic event for all of Milan exactly as Greppi had planned. The crowd of citizens, alongside a theatre with every kind of seat filled, had gathered in Piazza del Duomo and listened emotionally to the concert broadcast over the loudspeakers and via radio throughout Italy and, abroad in Switzerland in England, France and the United States. During the years after this event, moreover, La Scala’s life was marked among other things by the antagonism between the diva, Maria Callas, who lived in Milan, and the soprano, Renata Tebaldi, as well as the débuts of personages such as Herbert von Karajan who directed here as conductor, the Marriage of Figaro. During the following period, in addition to the most important theatre, the activities of other major city sites were starting up again such as the Odeon, the Olimpia Theatre, the Mediolanum, the New and the Lyric. At some of these, lighter genres were staged such as the “revue”, and artists would perform who would be all the rage in the post-war period, such as Wanda Osiris, Ernesto Calindri, Walter Chiari, Gino Bramieri, Ugo Tognazzi, Franca Rame, Sandra Mondaini, etc. From the beginning of 1947, furthermore, also at the will of City Hall, in a former cinema in Via Rovello, in the centre of Milan, the Pic- colo Teatro of Milan began. It was the first organisation of its kind that represented a concept of theatre as public service in close connection with the regional and the urban community: “not a theatre in the city, but for the city”. Thanks to the activity, for example, of personalities such as Paolo Grassi, Giorgio Strehler, and Mario Apollonio, who enlivened the Italian cultural life not only in this sector for the entire post- war period, the new organisation was inaugurated in May 1947 staging the “Hotel of the Poor” by Gorky. The “Piccolo”, right from the start, was an artistic institution open to all, which wanted to involve a new public of students, workers, employees, and with an international rep- ertory tied to Italian traditions. From the year of its founding, Strehler, the main entertainer of the Piccolo, staged and then took around the world, Arlecchino servitore di due padroni (Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters), a comedy by Carlo Goldoni which became its best known play. Besides the theatre environment, in any case, during that period the cultural life of the city was being reborn overall and new points of reference were becoming established which would become traditional, as 134 SMART MILAN

in the case of painters for whom the new general district would be the Brera area where they would converge on two locations in particular, the tobacco shop of Via Fiori Chiari and the Jamaica Bar which, founded in 1911, would go down in history as the “café of artists”. Despite these fundamental surges, and a manufacturing system that was starting up again as energy and raw materials became available, leading relatively quickly to the reactivation of the national economy, Milan during the immediate post-war period was however a city that was suffering deeply. The transport systems had suffered enormous damage. Hundreds of trams had been destroyed during the occupation. Out of 8,000 trees planted in the city, only 3,000 had survived. Out of 23,000 public lighting fixtures, 18,000 were out of use. The bombing had destroyed, in particular, 1,400 buildings including kindergartens, schools and homes. The situation in which most of the citizens were living was one of discomfort and poverty, difficulty in obtaining the basic essentials and, especially, houses hardly worthy of being called homes. As a result of this situation, for a few years “rebuilding” was the most widespread word used in every conversation, not only political, of the Milanese. The removal of the ruins had created such a mass of rubble which accumulated near San Siro, where the ruins of the destroyed buildings were dumped, created a hill dozens of metres high which was covered by lawns and trees, surrounded by a park and called “Monte Stella (Star Hill)”, in honour of the wife of the architect Piero Bottoni, who had conceived of it, and was usually called by the Milanese: “Montag- netta di San Siro (San Siro Hill)”. The dramatic situation of the Milanese suburbs during those years served also as a source of inspiration for directors and men of culture sensitive social subjects, that contributed to providing visibility to the critical social phenomena. The director, Vittorio De Sica, for example, inspired by the writing of Cesare Zavattini, set his famous film in a district of shacks in the most abysmal suburb of Milan. Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan), the original title of which was I poveri disturbano (The Poor Disturb), shown for the first time at the Odeon Cinema in February 1951, had been filmed the previous year and depicted the dramatic poverty and miserable conditions in which a homeless community lived at that time. The only light in the tragic real- ism of this film was provided by its aspect as a fable which, in the end, gave a little hope to the poor downtrodden in their abject poverty: the hope was represented in the final scene by the homeless who, to escape THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 135 the police had left the camp in which they lived next to the railway in the suburb of Ortica, took off from Piazza del Duomo riding the brooms of the street sweepers and fled to a new kingdom of happiness. The film, which has become famous all over the world, poorly received by the critics and the political forces because it described the Italy of the time too realistically, was appreciated by the Mayor of Milan who instead in the title had glimpsed “the allegory of a dear, electrify- ing truth”, in other words the commitment through which in just a few years Milan, despite everything, had managed to face to major problems caused by the war. Palazzo Marino, in fact, faced with this panorama, was attempting to tackle the problems existing in a modern city and, even though brought to its knees, was concentrating on the need to quickly restart economic and social development. Right from the beginning, attempts were made to provide lodgings for the veterans, subsidies for needy families, and during the worst periods and the coldest winters, even wood for heating the less affluent. In this scenario, one of the leading protagonists of Milan was certainly the Municipal Assistance Entity (ECA) which, while having changed its name during the Fascist years, was the heir of the powerful Congregation of Charity of the past. The leading figure of Milanese assistance at the time, leading the institution until the end of the Fif- ties, was Ezio Vigorelli, Socialist lawyer connected to Mayor Greppi. Anti-Fascist during the Resistance, he had held an important role in the so-called “Partisan Republic” the Ossola Valley, and had lost two sons, Bruno and Fofi Vigorelli. In addition, in the subsequent years, he would become Minister of Labour and, from the National parliament, promote the first Parliamentary inquiry on extreme poverty in Italy. Around this individual and this Entity, which managed the distribution of the Allied aid in the territory, a type of political and social laboratory was established during the reconstruction years, also because it was from here that the National Association of Aid Entities which guided all aid in the country from Milan. From ECA’s point of view, all the catastrophes could be seen that afflicted post-war Milan and which accompanied the reconstruction, and then the social problems of the subsequent development period. From here a modern territorial “welfare state” proposal was tested and formulated that crossed and integrated the visions of the Catholic world during the same period, developed by individuals such as Lodovico Montini, Catholic politician and brother of the future pope, Paul VI. 136 SMART MILAN

Learning also from the experiences stemming from the English Bev- eridge Plan, Milan then launched an “offensive against the misery” which proposed an overall reorganization of the agencies and individuals in the field of aid to prepare a public social safety plan to protect the most fragile classes. The basis of this imitation was the action developed against city poverty whereby resources were being disbursed to support the many families, the unemployed, and the disabled. Public soup kitchen services and public housing were created, and along with the “generic aid” public programs were being created for widows, veterans, ex-deportees, ex-partisans, families of those missing in Russia, and so forth. Then, at the same time the accommodation centres were being renovated having been, in some cases, seriously damaged, such as the Institute for the Disabled, the Institute for Aid to Minors and shelters for the homeless and people in difficulty. After this difficult phase, ECA in the subsequent years had to help the weaker citizens to face the discomfort tied to the growth of the Fif- ties, with supports for employment, aid to over twenty thousand family centres assisted annually, and experimental initiatives, such as the opening around the middle of the decade of a structure known as the “City of Hope”, in other words a new institute which joined the existing ones and was named for Vigorelli’s partisan son slaughtered by the Fascists: the “Bruno and Fofi Vigorelli Institute”, worked on finding work for the youth released from the tuberculosis institutes by training them for a profession. Regardless how intensely ECA and its people, besides City Hall, tried to find a solution, all the problems could not be resolved no matter what was spent in terms of commitment and resources, and in fact continued to spread in the subsequent years as an inevitable indirect cause and effect of Milan’s exceptional development. In fact, even though the reconstruction phase had ended quickly, and precisely because of the rapid economic take-off of the country was under way in this city, throughout the Fifties there was a massive influx of people moving from the poorest regions which caused an unbearable demographic problem and affected the city in an pressing manner. To get an idea of the extent of this phenomenon, just consider that from 1951 to 1961 the population went from 1.2 million inhabitants to 1.5 million, as at least 300,000 people moved to Milan looking for work. And from 1958 to 1963, during the years of the economic boom, immigration reached a peak: in the span of 15 years, the city grew by 400,000 people, in other words by 30%. Still during that decade, fur- THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 137 thermore, the resident population in the province increased from 2.4 to 3.2 million, later reaching almost 4 million in 1971. The extent of the phenomenon can be seen by the comparison with the following phase, between 1971 and 1981, when the population of the area increased by less than 150,000. If this phenomenon was pronounced in the city, just think that in some suburbs and in the hinterland in particular to the North, where the largest industries were concentrated, some areas and municipalities had seen their population increase fivefold due to the influx of new arrivals: San Donato Milanese, in the South-East suburbs, for example, had grown in just a few years by 160%. The first problem that had to be tackled during the Fifties, consequently, was certainly that of housing, since this influx of people getting off every day at the Central Station, with the famous “cardboard suitcase” full of their meagre possessions, created great tension in the property market. The situation was aggravated by the fact that many of these migrants came from poorly developed areas of the country, with a very low level of education and no professional training, and disadvantaged in the search for work as well as accommodations. Therefore, very often, they lived in cellars or improvised houses in suburban areas in the hinterland areas, and among factories of the large companies. In the shadow of the public housing, veritable shanty towns of brick, metal sheets and various materials rose up, which were commonly called “coree”, where under terrible conditions a growing number of immigrants was settling who threw every attempt to match the immigration flows with public housing projects into crisis. These were the problems that the city was tackling and, through direct interventions, with public building projects, both national and municipal, the Administration did everything possible to provide housing for the homeless, trying to eliminate the shanty towns which were often torn down only to reappear immediately elsewhere. The immigrants for years came to the “large modern city” where they strove for a city standard of living and yearned for a job to satisfy the consumer values which were spreading during that period. The difficult situation of these years, caused at the social level by the conditions in which the immigrants had to live, entered the imagination of the city, traditionally welcoming and today inhabited by the generations that came after that flow of new citizens. As in the past, these phenomena inspired symbolic films such as, in this case, the famous masterpiece Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and his brothers) directed in 1960 by Luchi- 138 SMART MILAN

Sardinian immigrant in front of the Pirelli Skyscraper of Milan, 1968 (Photo Uliano Lucas) THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 139 no Visconti and inspired by the novel Il ponte della Ghisolfa (The Bridge if Ghisolfa) by Giovanni Testori. As a result of these phenomena, the city’s reaction, fostered also by the process of rapid economic growth that it was experiencing, was determined and focused on welcoming and absorbing new citizens, even though rife with the inevitable contradictions and social tensions. During the Fifties and then more so in the following decade, entire districts were constructed with many thousands of working class houses, created by the Milanese Institute, the Cooperative Movement, and private individuals. Over time, public lighting was introduced and progressively services, social centres, and libraries, expanded the urban perimeter of the city and, as much as possible and reacting to the emergency, also the city suburbs: during the Sixties, Milanese school meals reached over 70,000 per day, becoming “the largest Milanese restaurant”. In addition to the interventions specifically directed at the problem of housing, moreover, private and public, lay and religious entities, driven by the emergencies of the period fine tuned the Milanese traditional assistance model, modernizing it further. During these years, for example, the aid and educational methods of historic institutes such as the Martinitt and Stelline, or the management of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio, which were supported by initiatives created for charity, were updated. Aid to the elderly, in fact, was also developing considerably as a result of the constant evolution of the social fabric which, with the progressive increase in female employment, in a city like Milan before anywhere else led to the breakup of the family and the isolation of the elderly. During the Sixties, in fact, both the number of those hospitalised and home-assistance services of various kind increased considerably At the medical level, the Ospedale Maggiore and the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli became feathers in the cap of the city from the medical and scientific point of view. They benefited from a constant and decisive increase in the reimbursements of hospitalisation costs for minors, adults and the elderly. Then, in specific sectors, excellent city institutions of the city were evolving such as the Institute for the Deaf- Mute and the historic Institute for the Blind of Milan. This last, an entity strongly rooted in the city charity system since the nineteenth century, the largest and most important nationally, during the post- war period was modernised becoming an international point of excellence for the assistance, training and integration of the blind into the labour market. 140 SMART MILAN

Alongside the traditional lay assistance, which also through the city associationism had spread for example the practice of support for the daily needs of women and families, promoting crèches, nursery schools and after-school centres, the Ambrosian church also increased significantly its direct interventions in society, especially in the field of youth, family and the disabled. In this framework of vitality, there was also the activism of the municipal administration which during the post-war period directed enormous resources, far greater than in the major cities of the peninsula to sectors such as healthcare and education. In particular, however, the municipality showed a capacity to represent and coordinate effi- ciently multiple interventions that breathed life into a “citizen social ethic” which, exceeding the national trends and on a par with the most advanced systems of the world, amounted up to the present day to the exceptional experience of the Milanese third sector.

The Theatre of the Miracle

The city that was emerging from the reconstruction was redeveloping its economy and was launching a rapid take-off towards the “economic miracle”, which exploded in particular between 1958 and 1963. Fortu- nately, it did not have negative consequences only and, in fact, managed to tackle and resolve these aspects precisely because of the energy that it managed to release on the economic level and in innovation. While Milan grew at the pace described, in 1953 a town plan was launched which modified the one approved during the Fascist period and, in fact, abandoned the attempts to rationalise the growth of the city proposed right after the war, and along the line of the interventions of the Thirties, in fact limited itself to supporting its spontaneous development. The only requirement somehow expressed appeared to be the one of relieving the historic centre of part of the managerial functions which were growing fast, to locate them in areas outside the circle of canals. This idea was however soon disregarded also because the development of the public sector contributed to concentrating the major functions in the centre. During these years, also to make room for new buildings, usually located in the suburbs, a vast plan to demolish buildings was carried out which went from just 178 spaces demolished in 1951, to over 2,000 in ‘55, 3,000 in ‘56 and 4,000 in ‘58. Along with the urban changes, the THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 141 number of residents within the circle of the walls dropped, going from 225,000 in ‘31, to less than 160,000 in ‘61 and, later, to 120,000 in 1971. Despite a development of the city that continued to take place most- ly outside the control of the plan, by following the emergency or the private initiative, there was, even strong, urban development during this period capable of demonstrating the changes which the economy

Torre Velasca 142 SMART MILAN

and society were undergoing. In 1950, for example, Gio Ponti launched the design of the “Pirelli skyscraper” which in 1953 became part of the design of a large executive centre being considered by the town plan. The building was erected to house the office of the Italian tyre company in the area where there were some factories of the group had been destroyed previously by the aerial bombardments. Built starting in 1956 and inaugurated in 1960, the 31 floor, 127 metre high building was an architectural project that exemplified Italian rationalism and held the record as the tallest building in Europe until 1966. Precisely because of its height and, since Milanese tradition prevented the construction of buildings taller than the Duomo, when the building was completed, as sign of respect, a copy of the Madonnina was placed on the top of the building. During the same period, another futuristic building was designed, this time near the Duomo, namely the Velasca Tower which took its name from the plaza on which it was being constructured, named for the Spanish Governor of Milan, Juan Fernández de Velasco The tower was designed by the famous studio, BBPR, composed in 1932 by some of leading Italian architects, Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgio- joso, Enrico Peressuti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers. They had enlivened the debate even under Fascism, had joined anti-Fascism after the racial laws of 1938 paying also in person for their courageous choices. In fact, in 1945, Banfi lost his life in a Nazi concentration camp. The Tower, finished finally in 1957 in less than three hundred days of work, changed the panorama of the city centre and became one of the best known symbols of Milan, since as soon as it was finished it aroused conflicting opinions both in Italy and abroad, for its innovative design which made it look like a mushroom. The writer, Luciano Bianciardi in 1962, in the novel La vita agra (It’s a Hard Life), when he was describing the contradictions of the Milan of that era, became one its first critics calling it a “large tower of glass and cement”. During the same years, not far from the Pirelli building, another skyscraper owned by a private company was erected, and later taken over by the Banca Popolare di Milano, which had to be located in the planned executive centre. The Galfa Tower, located between the Galvani and Fara streets, from which it took its name, designed in the International Style of architecture, was built in three years starting in 1956 and reached 109 metres with 31 floors. A few years later, also in this area, another building rose original to the landscape of the period, specifically a 90 metre, 24 floor skyscraper, designed by the architects Renato Bazzoni, Luigi Fratino, Vittorio Gan- THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 143 dolfi and Aldo Putelli, which formed a central element of the executive centre of the area. It housed the offices of the Milan administration and had the peculiarity of a building that crossed the underlying Via Melchiorre Gioia by bridge in which one of the canals flowed, the Martesana, covered at that time to make room for the buildings and to improve city traffic. Between the Fifties and Sixties, therefore, as proof of the transformations that were encompassing the city, anyone entering the city from the northern suburbs across Viale Zara, would have seen an area of new skyscrapers developing, a “small” Manhattan, which was changing the urban landscape. The scaffolds of the Pirelli and Galfa Towers rose close to the old districts of balustrade houses, near which, having dismantled the old Porta Nuova Station, the new Garibaldi Station was built which served as a terminal between the office district of Milan and the connections with the northern municipalities. However, these were not the only large interventions in the city. In 1956, for example, a match between Italy and Brazil won 3 to 0 by the hosts, inaugurated the new San Siro Stadium. The construction of its new terraces had made it possible to expand its capacity to ninety thousand seats. Still in that same area, during the same period, a Sports Palace was built near the Lido to host boxing matches, volley ball and basketball games, completing the so-called sports zone. Besides the construction, during the Fifties the cultural role of the city was reviving also thanks to the Municipal intervention. In fact, in 1952 the municipality had restarted its tradition of support to the museums and city culture, and had purchased the marble masterpiece by Michelangelo called the “Pietà Rondanini” put on the market by a family of Roman aristocrats and destined for the sculpture museum of the Sforza Castle. While the museums were being rebuilt inside the Castle, at the beginning of the decade the new seat of the large civic library in Palazzo Sormani, once the home of an aristocratic Milanese family then donated to the citizens, could finally be inaugurated. But it was on the plane of visible modernity that Milan demonstrated its changes as day after day the city became unrecognisable compared to the piles of rubble just a few years earlier. New buildings rose, the transport system after being restarted was state-of-the-art, there were no longer any ruins and the excavations were starting for the first underground, the per capita income of the Milanese was ris- ing, and food was improving, as well as production and consumption. The Milan where in 1954 the first national television transmission was 144 SMART MILAN

broadcast, was assuming the appearance of a technological and modern city, symbol of the broader imminent Italian miracle. Since the Twenties, lighted advertising signs has been installed on the Carminati Palace, right in front of the Duomo, a coloured wall that had become a symbol of twentieth century Milan in continuous motion. Those lights moved intermittently and created a Piccadilly Circus or Times Square atmosphere in miniature. Along with the advertising of Sarti, Coca Cola, Cinzano, Riello, Bulova, Candy, and Longines, two human figures moved with jerky movements: a little man, advertising shoe polish, and a typist advertising the Kores office products. Describ- ing the feeling of modernity and life that Milan was imparting during that period, the famous poet and writer Umberto Saba, who lived in the city during those years, observing those lighted signs wrote a poem entitled “Words”.

Among your stones and your fogs I am on holiday. I rest in Piazza del Duomo. Instead of stars every evening the words light up.

Nothing rests of life like life.

On these foundations of modernity, maybe without even realizing it, Milan was assuming the role of driver of the economic boom based on the work and the factories, on the spread of the new means of transport, like the Fiat 600, the first widespread, popular model and the Lambretta. This was a scooter manufactured since 1947 by Innocenti in the Lambrate district, from which the name “Lambretta” came, and where since the Thirties the largest factory of steel pipes of the country has established itself. During the war, the factory had been bombed and afterwards it was rebuilt and converted into civilian production of vehicles of mass transport, anticipating the new motorisation needs of the population. The design of the scooter, called Lambretta by the artist, Daniele Oppi, was entrusted to the aeronautical engineers Pier Luigi Torre and Cesare Pallavicino, Technical Director first of Breda and then of Caproni. After the enormous national success, the Lambretta during 25 years of production also spread to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, India and Spain. THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 145

In the meantime, the spread of these new popular means of transport fostered the habit of weekend trips for the more affluent classes, and Sunday outings for the poorer ones. The constant increase in mobility had created the need to construct the first large arterial road which crossed the entire country, in other words the Autostrada del Sole (Motorway of the Sun) which ran from Milan to Naples. Its first section to Parma was inaugurated in 1958. Moreover, the city in order to connect to this large traffic artery started to design the bypasses which in subsequent years would surround it and connect it to the motorways of which Milan would soon form the fundamental junction. Also because of these interventions and the increase in car traffic, and given that the 1961 census enumerated 1.5 million inhabitants in the city and 3.2 million in the hinterland, Milan from the beginning of the Sixties was starting to face the new phenomenon of traffic, of limited parking and fines in the narrow streets of the city centre which made a traffic plan and the creation of above and below ground parking places necessary. In particular the city, traditionally famous for its fog which surrounded it during the winter, soon became the capital of smog which along with the fog would become one of the symbols of the city in the eyes of the rest of the country. So, at the beginning of the Sixties, Milan was decisively transformed and from the top floor of the Pirelli skyscraper, the highest and most beautiful modern building of Europe, one could see the landscape of the new “city region”, a developed area which went considerably beyond the administrative boundaries and was connected and integrated with the surrounding provinces. In the second half of the Fifties, air traffic to Milan had quadrupled both in the numbers of passengers and quantity of merchandise. At Malpensa Airport, inaugurated in 1948 and which since 1955 also served Milan, around 220,000 people landed in 1960. During the decade the number of bank branches, the number of joint-stock companies, and the number of businesses had increased. Between 1951 and 1961 they had grown 20% reaching 130,000. At the beginning of the decade, there were 2 million unemployed in Italy and in Milan the unemployment, which was around 8% in 1960, had dropped below 3%, practically disappearing. In this context, income also increased, often not so much because of the increase in wages, obviously, but due to the increase in the number of workers in the same nuclear family. So consumption, including food, had risen and improved with an increase in the consumption of meat and other products typical of afflu- 146 SMART MILAN

Central Station, 1965 (Fondo fotografico de L’Unità, Archivio del Lavoro - Sesto San Giovanni, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 147 148 SMART MILAN

ence. In 1925 there were fewer than 20,000 telephone subscribers, while in 1960, 500,000 users were being celebrated. The number of cars had quintupled in a decade, going from fewer than 50,000 to over 220,000. Then, starting in 1957 the Milanese daily papers at the time of the summer holidays recorded the new “Ferragosto (August 15) exodus” phenomenon. In addition, that same year the first modern supermarkets had opened in Milan, created by a joint company between the American entrepreneur, Nelson Rockefeller, and some Milanese partners including Bernardo Caprotti. The first point of sale of “Supermercati Italiani (Italian Supermarkets)” was based in a former workshop of Viale Regina Giovanna and the sign was characterised by an elongated “S” which inspired the trademark “Esselunga (Long S)”. Competing with this business to supply the new assortment of large-scale retailers, a rooted system of consumer cooperatives was also developing which, later, around the end of the Eighties, under the “Coop” trademark would build in the city one of the first Italian shopping centres. In addition, the economic growth during the Sixties made the spread of certain comforts common, such as domestic appliances which became even a part of the homes of the working classes, and television was also progressively spreading. At the beginning of the decade, in the city there were 150,000 televisions which were increasing at the rate of 30,000 per year. Therefore, practically everyone could watch the television broadcasts which represented the true turning points of social customs. Symbolic of this time, for example, was “Lascia o raddoppia (Leave It or Double It)”, a game show in which gold tokens were won, presented by the Italo-American, Mike Bongiorno. Thurs- day evening, when the broadcast went on the air from the Teatro della Fiera, the Milanese would meet in the homes of those fortunate enough to have televisions, or in the courtyards, at the bar, in the cinemas and theatres which, in order not to suffer from the competition, soon also began broadcasting the program. In the area of consumption and new life styles, Milan was taking itself to an “American” level. Milan was leading the Italian economy and the Italian miracle was mainly the Milanese miracle. Naturally, this growth had many faces and many points of view. Every morning 40,000 commuters out of the 250,000, who came to work in Milan, arrived every day on the “sleeping trains”, as Luciano Bianciardi called them, getting off at the Central Station. The sociological research on all these phenomena, already at the time explained that many of THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 149 them, in order to arrive at the company at 7:00 a.m., had to get up at dawn and would not get home before 8:00 p.m. In 1961 it was calculated that every day around two and half hours was lost on average in travel. The writer, Italo Calvino, in one of his heart-wrenching novels of the era, imagines the life of a young couple who every day meet at home crossing paths for just a few minutes, since Elide worked in a factory during the day and Arturo, instead, worked on the night shift: “Elide went to bed, turned of the light. From her side, lying down, she would slide her foot towards her husband’s side, to try to feel his warmth but every time she realised that where she was sleeping was warmer, a sign that Arturo had slept there, and she felt great tenderness for him.” And, on the other hand, despite the great contradictions, this rapid and intense process of development brought with it also the modernisation of the country which in Milan was very evident. The 1960 inauguration of La Scala, when on the evening of S. Ambrogio Verdi’s Don Carlos was performed, was the symbol of a great high society event in a Milan at its peak, since so many jewels, so much elegance and such luxurious clothes had never been seen. This supremacy could also be seen in football, a sport in which Milan excelled. In 1961, the Milan team of the young Giovanni Rivera, Giovanni Trapat- toni and Cesare Maldini won its eighth championship, followed by the “great Inter”, of Giacinto Facchetti which the following year took its revenge with the team trained by the “magician” Helenio Herrera. During the Sixties, in any case, a significant change in the habits and free time of the Milanese was also seen. In just a short time, the cinemas multiplied, numbering more than 120, while for example the old ball- rooms where the orchestras played were disappearing and the dance halls, nightclubs and “whiskey a gogo” where the young met to dance to new records and rhythms coming from the Angle-Saxon countries were spreading. Milan was also becoming the capital of “light” culture, in particular musical, since it was the centre of the record industry. A decisive event occurred, in this regard, in 1965 with the first and only Italian concert of the Beatles, at the Vigorelli velodrome, where the four boys from Liverpool performed in a delirium of fainting, giving life to one of the first international concerts of the city. Besides many of the most famous musicians of the period moving to Milan, some of the principal artists such as Tony Dallara, Betty Curtis and Mina became established here. Among these, for example, was Giorgio Gaber, the singer-songwriter, who performed in the “Santa Tecla” club, 150 SMART MILAN

and in many of his songs he described the decline of the old Milan and the rise of the new and modern one; and Adriano Celentano. Adriano Celentano, born to a large family of immigrants residing in the Milanese northern suburbs, maybe interpreted better than anyone else the new musical spirit of the times and became a national star. His song “The Boy from Gluck Street”, dedicated to the working class street a stone’s throw from the Central Station where he was born and raised, was also a mirror of the Milan in transformation: “Where there was grass now there is/a city” - sang Celentano - “and that house in the middle of the green space/where is it now”. In this ebullient city, besides the music, there was a new fashion: the “cabaret”, an artistic genre in which musicians and actors addressed the audience dining in front of them, in clubs like “Cab 64”, the “Neb- bia Club” and, in particular, the historic “Derby” Club, animated by the guitarist, Enrico Intra and where, after an already long career, Enzo Jannacci, singer-songwriter and founder of Italian cabaret, performed who made Milan, its suburbs and its characters the backdrop for his most important works. The Golden Age of the Sixties, however, while confirming irrevers- ible processes of modernisation, was not eternal. And in fact, towards the end of the decade, once the reconstruction phase of the city and the promotion of the national economy had ended, even the economic miracle had exhausted its driving force opening a period of stagnation and economic crisis connected with the cycles of the international economy and Italy lagging in relation to the other countries. In this context, Milan appeared to stop as if to think about its role. With the tradition of notable Socialist mayors of the post-war period ending, the doctors Virginio Ferrari and Bucalossi and the Dean of the Politecnico, Gino Cassinis, even the experience of the Centre-Left, which in Milan had tested in the administration a political shift to the left, which was then transferred to the national level, seemed to require revision since, in 1968, Aldo Aniasi became mayor. Graduating as a surveyor from the Cattaneo Institute, he was a partisan in the nearby Piedmont Valley of Ossola with the nom de guerre “Iso”, and then after the war he had held the position of Secretary of the ECA of Vigorelli, before becoming Councillor for Public Services and Works. He was also a Socialist but above all, unlike the previous mayors, he was considered an “average man” even called “grey” by some, who in the working class manner gave himself the objective of interpreting the difficult phase than Milan was entering. THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 151

Demonstration in Via Dante for International Women’s Day, 8 March 1968 (Archivio del Lavoro - Sesto San Giovanni, Milano, photo Silvestre Loconsolo) 152 SMART MILAN

From the second half of the Sixties, in fact, and then more decisively during the Seventies, the entire country went through dramatic and destabilising phenomena. On the one hand, also as a result of international events, the economy went through a long and complex negative phase; however, on the other hand, the country underwent exceptional social tension. Besides the widespread criticism of the youth in the second half of the Sixties, which in and of itself focused on a renewal of society and was a result, in many ways positive, of the preceding economic development, in fact in Italy there were phenomena of quite another nature. The domestic social tension, even because of the role that the country held in the world geopolitical landscape, was multiplying and becoming explosive, spreading terrorism both to the right and to the left capable of destabilising the republic.

Falk Union strike, 1968 (Archivio del Lavoro - Sesto San Giovanni, Milano, photo Silvestre Loconsolo) THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 153

Milan, in this framework, represented the epicentre of phenomena of transformation which were however at the time decidedly terrible. The most exceptional and tragic of these events certainly took place on 12 December 1969, when in the National Bank of Agriculture of Piazza Fon- tana, a stone’s throw from the Duomo, a bomb exploded killing 17 and injuring 88. This dramatic attack, through decades of investigation finally attributed to Neo-Fascist extremists, launched the so-called “strategy of tension”, in other words a period of attacks carried out by armed groups of the far right, far left, and corrupt branches of the military forces, which had the goal of destabilising the Italian democratic institutions. After this event, a long trail of blood shed in vain began. The first victim was Pino Pinelli, an anarchic railway employee who, unjustly suspected of the attack, died falling out of the window of the Milan police head- 154 SMART MILAN

quarters. The second victim of the trail of blood which started in Piazza Fontana occurred in 1972 with the murder of Luigi Calabresi, a police officer at the time of Pinelli’s death. The signature of the Red Brigades terrorist group furthermore made its appearance in 1970 with incendiary attacks at the Siemens company. This group began to promote and develop the armed revolutionary fight for Communism which, after having injured and killed many victims in the following years, even managed to assassinate in 1978 the former President of the Council, Aldo Moro. For the entire decade, Milan was the scene of the conflict between opposite factions of the right and left, and both battling with the police force, in a delirium of violence which caused the death of innocent people in all sectors and for reasons that were not purely political. Among those that died, in different situations and for different reasons, Milan mourned the student Roberto Franceschi who died in 1973 in a clash between police and students; the judge, Emilio Alessandrini, killed in 1979; Guido Galli, magistrate and professor of criminology struck down at the Government University in 1980, and Walter Tobagi, journalist of the “Corriere della Sera”, killed that same year. On a completely different note, during that same period, Milan was also becoming the field of action of bands of organised criminals led by terrible film-like figures such as Francis Turatello, “Angel Face”, Renato Vallanzasca “Handsome Renè” and Angelo Epaminonda, all specialised in armed robbery, drug trafficking, night clubs, racketing, and gambling: in some ways, and seen from afar, the Milan of the Seventies was like Chicago in the Twenties. In a country marked by events of intense economic, social and moral crisis, and in this city which once again was the scene of all the dramatic contemporary contradictions, Aldo Aniasi became the “mayor of the protest”, trying to manage a situation of strong, widespread social tension. The former partisan maintained permanently open relations with society, and the solid association, political, and civilian expressions of the Milanese community, trying in every way not to exacerbate the social conflicts by further compressing the areas of expression of the discontent. Even contrary to the view of a part of the city in favour of order and respect for the rules, for example, the Mayor understood the spirit of the constant parades and demonstrations, and did not incite additional tension, for example by limiting the removal of the considerable number of squatters in vacant houses. His political orientation, moreover, leaned decisively to the left and, in fact, during the period of government of the “new Barbarossa”, there was an opening towards THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 155 the Communist Party which for the first time became part of the government of the city giving rise in 1975 to the “red juntas”, which in the subsequent period ran the city administration. Besides managing the extraordinary problems of that phase, however, during the Seventies City Hall tried to respond to the issues raised by the preceding urban development such as, for example, pollution or the necessary expansion of public green spaces. For example, during this period, in order to keep “Milan a modern, humane city”, some of the major city green areas were designed and created, such as the Forlanini Park, the largest in the city, the Trenno and the Lambro Park. In fact, at this point, after the 1971 census had counted over 1.7 million inhabitants in the city, and those of the hinterland at almost 4 million, it was obvious to everyone that Milan was not limited to its own administrative boundaries, but extended over the surrounding “one hundred municipalities”, in a new institutional relationship with the new Lom- bardy Region Authority, directed by the first President, Piero Bassetti. To restore the city’s leading role, from the beginning of the decade Mayor Aniasi met at the Trade Fair with the top mayors of the world, with the goal of sharing common solutions to the major problems of all the large metropolises, and became President of the International Association that represented them. As proof of the conviction in the role as leader that the city had been able to maintain during this difficult period, and also the spirit of openness that had inspired its work, in 1976 when leaving Palazzo Marino, Aniasi declared: “Milan is not ill. It was during these years a point of political and moral reference […] it is the expression of a modern and mature organisation. A culture that is renewed because it came out of the ghet- toes of privilege to be finally immersed in the working class reality.”

The International Showcases

At the end of the war, after the last event had been held in 1942. the buildings of the Milan Fair, like other parts of the city, were reduced to a pile of rubble, to the extent that to reopen the exhibits it was necessary to start almost from zero. Despite the fact that the fair district was still partially occupied by the British and American troops who had used it as base camp, and despite the lack of financial resources, with the spirit which at that time was widespread in Milan, the new directors of the Authority revealed the ambitious objective 156 SMART MILAN

of organising as soon as possible a new edition which would serve as an example of the reconstruction. The first edition of the new Fair in liberated Italy was therefore held in September 1946, over a much smaller area, under improvised conditions and with just 2,500 exhibitors, but it managed to attract over one million visitors and to test, also, a new system of interior streets and exhibit stands.

The Trade Fair of Milan, 1950 (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 157

However, in the next two years there were more than 2.5 million visitors for the first time, and then a record attendance of three million was achieved. By 1950, the entire fair district had been reactivated; the reconstruction of the major buildings such as the Palace of Nations and the main entrance of Piazza Giulio Cesare were started; the Fair started being held again in the usual period of April, so that in just a few years the Fair was once again the principal national event and an international point of reference as “proof of the will and possibility of the Italian people to win its deserved place among the national searching for peace in work”, according to the words of its President. The Fair achieved the intention of showing the state of progress of Italian innovations, creating a vast exhibit of televisions and radios which made it possible during those years to follow the evolution of the technology in those prime areas of interest for public opinion which, here, could see all the new discoveries. Already in 1957, in fact, in the Palace of Nations building, during the celebrations for the patent of the wireless telegraph by Guglielmo Marconi, an international exhibition was organised on the development of electronics, among other things, inaugurated by the President of the Council, Alcide de Gasperi. This attracted companies from all over the world and exhibited the main technologies of the sector, which in the subsequent decades would gradually evolve and be perfected, such as radio bridges, radar, FM radio, televisions, etc. For the occasion, RAI, Italian Public Radio and Tel- evision, also created a direct connection to the performances on the stage at La Scala which were watched on the screens of the Fair. There had already been similar experiences, moreover, in Milan when in 1939 Francesco Vecchiacchi, Professor of 158 SMART MILAN

Electrical Communications at the Politecnico di Milano, and also Direc- tor of the Radio Laboratory of the Magneti Marelli Company, using the tower of the Park, had realized the first complete television transmission of Italy, broadcasting a dance performance during the Trade Fair. In addition to exhibiting the new and most advance machines, there were also times during the Fair for discussion among the experts of the industry to outline the technical characteristics which Italian television should have that, in fact, would start soon after. The new national television Production Centre, moreover, was located in Corso Sempione, a few steps from the Exposition and, in 1952, still experimentally but as a general test of the imminent début, broadcast numerous transmissions of film, documentaries and a daily newscast with filmed shots of current events, as well as the first urbi et orbi televised benediction by the Pope. In the national television landscape, Milan had a leading role at the time and, after the official introduction of Italian television, in January 1954, most of the programs were produced and broadcast right in the studios of Corso Sempione and the new ones created within the Fair. From here quiz shows, variety shows and TV shows in instalments were broadcast which went down in history and in the memory of all Italians. During this phase, however, the Fair was also the stage for other innovations that fascinated the visitors. In 1949, in fact, in the city of Forlanini, a helicopter landed for the first time in Europe on the roof of a building, the Palace of Nations, where shortly afterwards the first civilian heliport of the city would be inaugurated, named for Leonardo Da Vinci. The decade of the Fifties, once the buildings destroyed during the previous period were rebuilt and under increasingly stable economic conditions, was a period of strong growth for the Fair which demonstrated the symbiosis between the Milanese and the Italian economy. The Fair area underwent constant development, with the construction of new pavilions which made it possible to increase the number of countries exhibiting up to fifty. The visitors passed along the network of roads inside the large 200,000 m2 large area, through the Avenue of Labour, the Avenue of Mechanics, the Avenue of Technique, the House of Milk, the House of Chemistry the House of Textiles and Perfumes, and the House of Agricultural Machines, and could see the products being exhibited by almost 12,000 companies. Starting in 1952, the Soviet Union was one of the participating nations. After the war, it had resumed commercial relations with the West, and had joined the Trade Fair as well during the following years, during the Cold War. THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 159

While work was going on to increase the number of visitors, which starting in 1954 exceeding four million, “business days” were also established on which access to the Fair was reserved for the operators to promote commercial exchange and entrepreneurial relations. In the meantime, in the fair, escalators had been assembled and in the Textile Palace the largest goods lift in the world had been installed. Here it was apparent that the distance between the state of development achieved by the Italian companies and that of the foreign companies had finally been reduced to the point of disappearing and, in some industries in fact, the excellence of the country and the progressive rise in some fundamental sectors of a real “Made in Italy” were demonstrated. In fact, during the industrial development a national “style”was being developed which combined creativity and manufacturing capacity. With- out any raw materials, Italy specialised in productions in which design capability made it possible to compete and sometimes surpass other countries. Companies such as Alfa Romeo, Pirelli, Fiat, Piaggio, Alemagna, Buitoni and Campari proved this in industries that established the bases of the “Italy System”. The Fair served as a stage for this process, to exhibit in an international showcase the product of the country and weave the commercial ties necessary to promote it in the world. Here the large scientific and technological achievements in sectors such as the petrochemical industry, medicine, energy and aerospace technology were exhibited. In 1953, for example, the show entitled “The Era of Plastics” was held devoted to raw materials, machines and products of this innovative industry. For that event, the major companies partnered to build the “House of Plastic”, produced in fact only with plastics, where the applications of this material were exhibited in the field of home furnishings and supplies. This initiative represented the first time that the citizens could see the practical uses of the discoveries that had been made in recent years, coming into contact also with products that soon would fill their daily life. An important moment for this sector was the “Days of Chemistry”, dedicated to the use of “Moplen” invented in the Milanese Politecnico laboratories by Giulio Natta, produced by the Snia Company, and adver- tised in the country by the Milanese comedian, Gino Bramieri, in the television broadcast, Carosello, which with the new advertising spots was a cult hit in Italy during the period. In the same way, in 1958, after the launch of the first two orbital satellites, a new exhibit was organised of great interest to the public on the “first steps in space”. Besides recreating scientific discoveries and 160 SMART MILAN

Montecatini Pavilion, ACNA booth, Trade Fair of Milan, 1950 (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 161 162 SMART MILAN

technologies of the past, it explained the results of the space research and future developments. In addition to the various documentary, scientific and explanatory aspects, the visitors could see, visit and enter for the first time the full scale compartment of a space ship. Then the following year, the Fair organised an exhibit on the applications of nuclear energy, highly studied at the time, with an exposition that was unique in the world involving over fifty exhibitors from the major advanced countries and showed all the potentiality in the peaceful and civilian use of the new source of energy. With models, images and scientific equipment, the visitors observed the operating mechanisms of the nuclear reactors and the applications of that energy in the medical and industrial field. During this exposition, the pilot plant for the production of uranium of Ispra, near Varese, was represented which had recently been started by the National Committee for Nuclear Research. The role established during the Fifties, while the Italian economy was rebuilding and growing, was definitively confirmed in the Sixties, when the economic miracle placed Italy among the major economies. Dur- ing this period, the Fair became cemented as an international meeting place for economic operators. In 1961, for example, the International Trade Centre was established here, which consisted of a series of furnished offices for foreign countries, through which the Fair provided the countries that did not have commercial representative offices with the opportunity to develop relations with economic partners. Already during the first year of activity, the CIS hosted over twenty national delegations from Africa and Asia, which was proof of the expansion of the entity’s activity beyond the traditional Western markets. In this regard, there was quite a sensation when, towards the middle of the decade, some individuals sent by Fidel Castro went to a nautical products booth to purchase some motorboats for the leader of the island of Cuba which, in 1967, attended with an entire booth dedicated to rum. Furthermore, during these years the Fair evolved as a “market” of new products and services through the organisation, around the main event of the traditional Trade Fair, of specialised industry fairs, organised by the various economic categories, which were held throughout the year and made the best use of the structures. Events had already been held previously dedicated to the bicycle and the motorcycle, household electrical appliances, tools, the textile and clothing industry and, during the decade, the number of these events increased with the “Furniture Show”, the “Office Machine Show” and so forth. THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 163

One of the principal events in this regard, however, was the creation of the International Film and Documentary Market (MIFED) with which Milan became the capital of film distribution and which focused on attracting international trade of a widely distributed product such as films, gathering over 100 foreign operators from about thirty countries. In the area of the renovation of the structures, new pavilions of mechanics, agriculture and constructions were being built, and some pavilions were being created which were particularly significant from the point of view of style such as those of the Montecatini Company designed by the architect, Franco Albini, and by Gio Ponti. In 1972, the Fair celebrated its fiftieth anniversary by rebuilding for the occasion the wooden booths in which it had held the first pioneering event. It had reached maturity and was the site of commercial exchanges, exhibiting the major industrial and technological products and the most advanced manufacturing techniques. Every year it was the organiser and site for over seventy specialised events, which gathered over 40,000 exhibitors and which, together with the Trade Fair, formed a uninterrupted cycle integrated with avant-garde services, including the use of computer facilities, to support the activities of the fair. The consolidation of this “fair system” allowed Milan, also during the subsequent decade of stagnation and economic crisis, to remain one of the points of reference in the world for consumers, manufacturers and observers interested in understanding the international trading trends. Interwoven with that of the Fair, because it was also fundamental to consolidating the international position of the city, was the role of the Milan Triennale during the same period which had a decisive task in defining the title of capital of Italian design and the importance of the “Made in Milan” trademark. In this city, in the past, the first partnerships had been forged between architecture, art and industry during the nascent phase, and a tradition of design of objects both from the technical and technological and the aesthetic and functional point of view was established early on. Afterwards, on these foundations, the first locations were developed where these subjects could be expressed and evolve in a tangible manner, through shows and expositions, and at the theoretical level, thanks to the main industry journals. The first of these was obviously “Domus”which, coming out since 1928, had defined its position in “architecture and furnishings for the modern home in the city and in the country”. Right from the start, it had focused on renewing the disciplines by also promoting the importance of aesthetics and style 164 SMART MILAN

in the field of industrial production. Its founder, moreover, was Gio Ponti, a designer who was very active in Milan, the driving force of the Monza biennial shows and then one of the principal protagonists of the Milanese Triennale, as well as being Professor of Architecture at the Politecnico for twenty five years. The journal came out during the entire Fascist period managed by the principal professionals of the period and, after the war, was led by Ernesto Nathan Rogers and Ponti, opening up to the new cultural trends and multidisciplinary fields. This magazine was certainly one of the main places in which the debate leading to the maturity of the sector of architecture, art and design evolved both in Italy and internationally. For example it was in this magazine that, in 1952, the manifesto of industrial design was published, a significant moment for the promotion of the new style. The magazine “Casabella” started in Milan in 1928 and for a long time published by the same “Edizioni Domus” held a similar role in terms of importance in this sector. Run during the Thirties by Pagano, who would continue to guide it until the Second World War when he was deported to a German concentration camp, after the second world war this magazine also became a meeting point for the operators of the industry. It was directed by some of the major protagonists such as Nathan Rogers and during the Sixties under the influence of the so-called “radical design”, by Alessandro Mendini and then by prominent individuals such s Tomas Maldonado and Vittorio Gregotti. Also in Milan, furthermore, certain central moments took place during these years in terms of the drafting of a theoretical statute of these disciplines based on the integration between the various sectors of architecture, sculpture, painting and industry, as, for example, the “Move- THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 165 ment for Concrete Art” founded in 1948 by people such as Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari, Gianni Monnet and Atanasio Soldati. Here, besides the integration of institutions such as the Fair, the Fur- niture Show which after 1961 became the showcase for Italian interior design, the Triennale and the Rinascente, other initiatives were also

The RAI booth, Trade Fair of Milan, 1966 (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) 166 SMART MILAN

started such as the Association for Industrial Design (ADI) which, created in 1956, as the first and only one in the world in the industry, to bring together designers, artists, industrialist and operators with the goal of promoting, emphasizing and defending Italian and international design. The activity of this association, furthermore, included also the “Gold- en Compass Award”which, established in 1954 on an idea of Ponti, and initially supported by the Rinascente, had the goal of emphasizing with a prestigious international award, objects and ideas in the field of design and which, for example, in its first edition had celebrated inventors such as Bruno Munari, Gino Sarfatti and Marcello Niz- zoli, designer of the famous “Letter 22” Olivetti typewriter. In this fertile context, which it contributed to generating, therefore, immediately after the war, the Triennale restarted its activity. After suffering, in 1943, the Nazi occupation which had used the Restaurant of the building as a recreation centre for the top German officials and had placed on the terrace of the Palazzo delle Arti an anti-aircraft gun, in 1947 the Triennale had come back to life ready to host the shows that were already being planned. For the first initiative in liberated Italy, it was decided to evoke the great challenge of the moment, the principal of reconstruction at the social level, in other words the house. With the event entitled “Reconstruction as Social Problem”, therefore, the Triennale decided to take on that question in a tangible manner, launching an innovative test in the suburbs of the city through the design and creation of a district built ex novo. The Qt8, in other words the neighbourhood of the eighth Triennale, was to offer the possibility of solving, in the field and from all THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 167 points of view, the problem of the new home: starting from the urban choice, the architectural design, the creation of the buildings, and the interior design, also for the less prosperous segments of the population that were not well off.

Olivetti booth, Trade Fair of Milan, 1960 (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) 168 SMART MILAN

Under the direction of the architect, Piero Bottoni, educated at Brera and the Politecnico and one of the major representatives of Italian rationalism, appointed Special Commissioner of the Triennale after the war, the entity faced this difficult challenge even under conditions of limited resources and cultural and physical disorder. Naturally the operation was launched with a competition by the city administration, the Institute of Public Housing, as well as the Roman Ministries. The neighbourhood was to be built at the foot of Monte Stella, the man-made hill built in the north-west part of the city with the rubble from the war, and already during 1946 the foundations of the buildings had been laid, which via designs, drawings, and objects, the Triennale exhibited in the Palazzo during the specialized show. The experiment, never definitively completed, left as legacy to the city the new neighbourhood in evolution as proof of the laboratory started during the reconstruction. Much attention was paid to green spaces, both with the creation of the first playing fields for children, and with condominium green spaces, and lastly through the creation of a vast park, as legacy of a design that produced a neighbourhood model of urban liveability. The subsequent Triennales carried out during the Fifties continued this experimental theme, aimed at following the principal topical themes in the debate of the sector and to produce forums for meeting and reflection at the international level. At the beginning of the decade, first of all, a festival organised by Lodovico Barbiano di Belgioioso and Enrico Peressuti was launched centred on the “form of usefulness” during which the subject of assembly line production was addressed. At the centre there were therefore products and merchandise, demonstrating a symbiosis with the evolution in progress at that moment in the surrounding manufacturing system. Continuing along this line, during the 1954 exposition, the Triennale hosted a convention on “industrial design”, the term used here for the first time which, straddling the post-war reconstruction and the start of the great economic miracle, represented an important moment in the culture of the plan in Italy. Here, reflection was stimulated on certain subjects which marked the progress of the sector, such as the relationship between design and industry, the role of the designer, the social use of the products, and in the end to make available to a wider public products of higher form and quality at accessible costs, the importance was highlighted of a close cooperation between the world of creativity and that of industrial production. The principal initiatives, during the THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 169 event, were composed of a Furniture Show, created among others by Franco Albini, and a Show of the Standard, designed by Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Carlo Casati, Ignazio Gardella and Vico Magistretti. Despite the efforts, even theoretical, to not reduce the design product to an elitist and “luxury” concept, the trends of the sector, on the other hand, caused reactions in environments that interpreted the role of the architect and the designer in a more social manner. Even though the subsequent exposition also took into account these different views, the industrial design section included in those of the event, and set up by Gillo Dorfles, Marco Zanuso, Alberto Rosselli and Lenardo Ricci, raised criticism over a presumed excessive compromise with the industry, reject- ed by the more social schools of thought of the world of architecture. Also on the wave of the pressures towards a renewal of the disciplines that would incorporate the subjects of renovation in vogue at the time, the Triennale of the Sixties sought a greater harmony with the surrounding environment focusing on subjects widely distributed in the public debate. Among these, obviously, the subject of home and school remained which, albeit changed compared to the immediate post-war period, due to the demographic pressure being unleashed on the urban areas, remained sensitive. The Italian school, on the other hand, in the early Sixties underwent a significant reform which extended the period of study and made middle school mandatory. The edition inaugurated in the summer of 1960, consequently, wanted to bring into focus these subjects obviously from the point of view of the design, the building and the equipment. This edition highlighted the dramatic Italian situation in the sectors in comparison with the foreign experiences and in relation to the greater levels of development reached in other developed countries in particular in the school construction field. Also afterwards, in any case, the Triennale continued to investigate, from its specific point of view, the subjects of greatest interest for the rapidly evolving Italian situation. The 1968 edition, for example, took place during the full social protest of those years, which moreover in Milan had started early since in 1963, maybe before the rest of the world, the Politecnico students after a long period of unrest carried out the first occupation of the Faculty of Architecture. In May 1968, immediately after the official inauguration, the four- teenth Triennale was also occupied for several days by a group of pro- testers. After these events, the exposition opened almost one month late concentrating on the subject which, introduced by a manifesto 170 SMART MILAN

written among others by Albe Steiner and Marco Zanuso, intended to focus attention on the great process of social, economic and manufacturing transformation of mass society, summarised in the title “the great number”. On this theoretical background the XIV Triennale exhibited avant- garde technological equipment for example in the “Show”devised by Pio Manzù, William Lansing Plumb and Richard Sapper; in addition, tackled the urban and environmental transformations, during the”era of the great number”, both from the aesthetic and from the structural point of view. Lastly, the section entitled “Design and Mass Production”, conceived by George Nelson, investigated the “future of the object” and examined the importance of production in a series in modern industrial societies. Also during that occasion, in summary, designers, architects and town planners from all over the world, developing these thoughts, emphasized the international role achieved by the Triennale during the reconstruction and economic miracle phase. During the following decade, moreover, also as a result of the crisis which the country was experiencing, the central role of the Triennale would undergo a slowdown and a change of mind, in anticipation of relaunching, with the activity of promotion of the cultural and practical comparison, the traditional capacity to anticipate, or at least accompany, the cultural and social changes in the field of applied arts.

Capital of the National Economy

The clear role of Milan as economic capital was confirmed both during the rapid period of reconstruction of the country and, even more so, during the subsequent period of the economic miracle, and then, because of the negative implications, during the phase of the crisis of the Seventies, which hit hard here but also launched processes of reorganisation then able to relaunch the local manufacturing system on other bases. The threads of the Italian economy, from wherever part they were taken, were intertwined with Milan, the “capital of the national economy”, as the Secretary of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, defined it during the post-war period. In the North of the country, there was the so-called industrial triangle, where the most important manufacturing activities were concentrated, but for various reasons the economic and financial processes THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 171 ended up converging on Milan where, in 1957, the percentage of workers on the total professional population was over 40% and the industry employees in the province amounted to almost 640,000. In Turin, Fiat was based, the largest automobile company in the country, which spread to various sectors in Milan and controlled, among others, Magneti Marelli, which produced radios, televisions and electrical parts for cars, and Om, which produced lorries, buses and vans. Then came Genoa, one of the major centres of activity of the national public holding company, IRI, which in Milan controlled many historic companies including Alfa Romeo and Breda. Milan, however, was the base of the Italian Stock Exchange and of the major companies that directed Italian industry and finance. Edison alone, for example, represented 30% of the entire Italian share capital and almost 40% of the industrial capital. This company, besides sup- plying all of Milan with gas, had the exclusive on the supply of energy in Lombardy, and in the neighbouring regions of Liguria, part of Pied- mont, Emilia Romagna and the Veneto, in other words the areas with the highest industrialisation of the country where 13 million people lived. Montecatini, denounced by many as the “octopus of the Italian economy”, controlled directly 10% of the national industrial activity and indirectly 40%, in particular in chemical, mining and pharmaceutical products. In Milan, in addition to the headquarters of the group where there were 2,000 clerical workers, Montecatini had about 5,000 employees. Another large financial and industrial company was Snia Viscosa which controlled companies all over the country in all sectors, including the Rinascente-Upim and especially in the textile industry where it concentrated on the production of 70% of the synthetic fibres. In the province of Milan, at the end of the Fifties, the group employed about 20,000 employees. Pirelli was the symbol of Milanese industry and had become over time a holding company that produced 65% of the Italian rubber goods, 80% of the electric and telephone cables, and was also one of the leading companies in the world in this sector. Besides the factory of Milano Bicocca, where over 14,000 employees worked, which made it the largest factory in the city, it had many smaller plants. The Falck, during this phase, remained one of the principal Italian industrial families and managed many factories in the steelworks and heavy metalworking field. Near Milan, moreover, and specifically in San Donato, the Ente National Idrocarburi (ENI) had its headquarters, the leading public company in the energy field, led by 172 SMART MILAN

the former Catholic partisan commander, Enrico Mattei. In the second half of the Fifties, in the area of the small municipality south-east of the city, Eni built a new modern headquarters and, in particular, created a American-type “company town” composed of an imposing residential and office complex, calling it “Metanopoli”[City of Methane] where 1600 families and 7000 people resided. Still in the Milanese area, many of the major Italian companies in all sectors were active, such as Bassetti, Cantoni, and Crespi, in textiles; Bianchi, in bicycles and motorcycles; Borletti, in the field of sewing machines and auto supplies; Innocenti, in mechanics and auto production; and various food companies, such as Motta. Born in the province, Angelo Motta was a confectioner who at the beginning of the century had moved to Milan and started a bakery to produce sweets and, in particular, the “Panettone”, the typical Milanese sweet. Thanks to a significant success, the company had opened various shops in the city and over the years had become one of the major companies in the confec- tionery field inaugurating, among other things, the “Christmas Night” award and becoming a joint-stock company. At the same time, another important Milanese company had developed its activity in the sector, the Alemagna, founded during the same years by Gioacchino Alemagna who in the Thirties had also opened a famous bar pastry shop in Piazza del Duomo. After the Second World War, the company was enlarged and made its trademark, a Duomo, famous which highlighted the close tie with the city of origin. Both of these companies, later, were acquired by IRI and became controlled by the state. Still in this sector, another company “Le Tre Marie” was operating in Milan which, after a similar history, at the beginning of the Sixties built a factory in the Lambrate area, where it is still based today. A particularly important sector for the city, when expanded its influence obviously throughout the country, was certainly the publishing industry. In fact, the major companies of the sector all had their headquarters here and, of all of them, there was Mondadori, founded by Arnoldo Mondadori who already back in 1907 had launched the publication of popular periodicals and later had established ties with one of the most influential entrepreneurs of the city, the owner of the Rinascente, Senator Borletti, from who he acquired capital and took over the newspaper “Il Secolo”. During the Thirties, among other things, Mondadori signed an agreement with Walt Disney and imported into Italy all the publication of the American company, including Mickey Mouse. Furthermore, in the publishing field, after the publication of the THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 173 works by Gabriele D’Annunzio, the publishing company and published works by the major Italian authors including Luigi Pirandello, Giovanni Verga, Grazia Deledda before creating, during the post-war period, the first Italian chain of bookshops. Then, Rizzoli had a central importance in Milan. Its founder, Angelo, was one of the most influential entrepreneurs of the city with a history that fed the myth of self-made man. He was an orphan in fact who grew up among the Martinitt and had started working as a printmaker at twelve, little by little making room for himself. At twenty, he had started his career as entrepreneur in the publishing field and, right after the war had built a modern factory in the eastern part of the city. Besides magazines, such as “Novella”, in 1949 the publishing company started to publish very successful books and classics at reasonable prices. Then, from the Sixties, Angelo Rizzoli entered the cinema industry producing films by, among others, Federico Fellini, and building a veritable publishing and economic empire. Coming out of the Rizzoli Group, the Rusconi publishing company started in Milan during the post-war period, created by its founder, Edilio, who after having been editor of “Oggi”, had gone out on his own creating quite a large-sized group. Together with these companies, after 1954 there was Feltrinelli, created by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, heir to one of the most influential Italian families whose father, Carlo, had been Chairman of large companies including Edison and Credito Italiano. Besides the publishing company, which became a point of reference for the Italian progressive culture of the post- war period, and an influential publishing production and distribution company, a few years earlier, still in Milan, had started the “Biblioteca G. Feltrinelli” for the study of contemporary history and social movements, transformed later into the current Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation. In addition to the major manufacturing and cultural companies, traditionally the most important banking and financial groups had their headquarters in Milan. Among these, during the period of economic growth, an increasingly significant role was being assumed by “Mediobanca”. It had been established at the end of the war by the Italian banker, Raffael Mattioli, then the Chairman of the Banca Com- merciale Italiana, and by Enrico Cuccia, with the purpose of supporting the financial needs of the companies involved in the reconstruction. Later, this bank little by little assumed significant stock holdings in the major Italian companies including Assicurazioni Generali, Montedison, 174 SMART MILAN

Snia Viscosa, Pirelli, Fiat, and so forth. Mediobanca, and its director Cuccia, who ran it for so many years that he was identified with the company, then became one of the central linchpins on which the Ital- ian economy turned. To have an idea of the extent of the Milanese phenomenon, just think that in 1963 of the 200 largest Italian companies, 101 had their headquarters in Milan and others were controlled from here. The other face of the Italian economic development, and Milan’s role as working- class city par excellence because of the large number of enormous factories which sometimes pulsated like a city within the city, was represented by Milan as site of the economic and financial power, not always and not just, transparent and virtuous. In fact, besides having the headquarters of the major Italian groups, there was a concentration of interwoven interests of the large industrial families, intersections of principal economic subjects and between sectors, ties between private and public companies, relations between the manufacturing, the banking system, and conflicts of interest between politics and companies, which produced an enormous tangle of power and money. In a recently industrialised country like Italy, and in addition without legislation that regulated the transparency of the markets, all this concentration of economic and financial power was also a reason for concern since the major Italian companies often branched their interests into sectors such as information and communication, also exercis- ing great pressure and influence on the political system, in accordance with conduct typical of the large monopolies. This class of captains of industry and financiers, public and private, not by chance, during the years immediately following the economic boom were described as the “Pharaohs of Milan”. From an entirely different aspect, however, Milan’s central role as economic capital, and the presence of many historic companies, exhibited support and fostered strong prolific relationship with the educational resources supporting this development. During the first years following the war, in fact, the Politecnico had also benefited from the support of traditionally sensitive companies which included the major Milanese groups. After the hardships that had damaged the activity and buildings during the war, the University had been able to reinsert itself very quickly into the “splendid competition” of international research, to the extent that at the beginning of the Fif- ties, the work of reorganisation could be considered complete. THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 175

During that period, in the framework of the surrounding economic evolution, the Politecnico reflected on the methods for accompanying the training of the local and national technical-economic classes, in order to intervene directly in the development processes of the economic and surrounding environment. A close operating relationship with industries, private research centres and sector organisations, “in particular with the most powerful”, was a source of pride to the Politecnico. As proof of this operating mode of understanding the culture, consider that during the decade various professors held management roles in the principal city public companies such as the Electric Company and the Rapid Public Transit, and the Dean himself was Councillor and even Mayor of Milan. Within the framework of this policy, as well as on the drive for international research in various disciplinary sectors, during the decade various research centres began which have entered the history of science. First of all, in May 1953, at the Department of Industrial Chem- istry, the “Plastics Tests Laboratory Foundation” was inaugurated. In October 1955, the opening of the “Centre of Numerical Calculations” was held, promoted and directed by Luigi Dadda and equipped with a very modern “electronic calculator” purchased with the funds of the Marshall Plan and a jewel of the University. In addition, in 1957, in the wake of the research in the field of nuclear techniques, a “Centre of Nuclear Studies” was established and named for Enrico Fermi. Also that year, the Institute of Healthcare Engineering was established which, in cooperation with the Municipality, launched research on atmospheric pollution. During the same period, the Faculty of Architecture also achieved brilliant successes, e.g. the competition among all the schools of architecture of the world, held in Sao Paulo in Brazil, and during the organisation of the X Triennale of Milan. This role of international avant-garde was confirmed in particular in 1963 with the historic awarding of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry to Giulio Natta. The high recognition represented the crowning of years of research and also the recognition of the success of a “Politecnico model” of which the scholar had been part since 1938. Even under the pressure of change, in any case, both on the educational and the scientific level, the Politecnico constantly pursued a role as point of reference of the sector and during the subsequent years research was developed, for example in the aerospace field, which served as proof of its pre- eminent international role. In addition to being the headquarters of large private groups and public government companies, local public companies which, by size 176 SMART MILAN

and results assumed national significance, achieved their moment of greatest development in Milan during the second post-war period as well. Often heirs to a long legacy started at the beginning of the twentieth century, they exercised an important role both at the economic, and political and social, level and contributed in a fundamental way to the development of the metropolis and the creation of a Milanese identity. The first of these companies was certainly the Municipal Electric Company (AEM). The sector in which it operated was marked by the so-called “electric problem” which historically, but more acutely in the

Giulio Natta, Nobel Prize for Chemistry, 1963 (Archivio Politecnico di Milano, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 177 immediate post-war period, afflicted Italy. This was constituted by the existence of large private companies which, taking advantage of the monopolistic situations, were guaranteed large profits at the expense of the citizens and the manufacturing activities. The positions of advantage were defended, among other things, thanks to the influence that the businesses could exercise in the creation of consensus, since this sector controlled bodies of information which widely penetrated the systems of the parties and the institutions. Against these private interests were the municipal businesses and wide areas of public opinion and progressive policy, which saw the power of the group of electrical companies as a negative inheritance of the Fascist period. Milan was the largest terrain of this conflict between the public and private sectors: in fact here the largest municipal company in the country, namely AEM, and Edison, a private avant-garde company of electric power in Italy, operated. Moreover, the situation had not been recently created. In fact, to undermine Edison’s electric monopoly, which started in 1883, a broad debate had developed at the beginning of the century in Milan which in just a few years had led to the creation of AEM. It had officially started to work on 1 January 1911, and the municipality had build in Valtellina, a valley between the mountains to the north of the region, a first hydroelectric power plant from which energy flowed to the city. During the Socialist management of the Municipality of Milan, AEM had established itself precisely to break the Edison monopoly, which charged rates 40% higher than in the other large cities and, in short order, made it possible to reduce the city rates by 60%. These two com- petitor companies, obviously, at certain times, had also cooperated for the good of Milan. During the Resistance, for example, they had supported the Valtellina partisans led by the patriot, Ferruccio Parri, and together had defended the plants that guaranteed the supply to the city. Also thanks to these interventions, even though AEM had suffered due to the bombing, the destruction of its headquarters and certain city plants, the supply of energy to the city continued uninterrupted during the war. After the Liberation, the situation had showed managerial difficulties and, in particular, a dramatic insufficiency of supply relative to Milan’s need. From this time, AEM had launched a decisive policy of development, building additional electric power plants in the high mountains: “The sprays fell from all sides onto us, lashing out at our faces”- wrote the Mayor of the Liberation, Greppi, remembering the inauguration of the new plants - “but no-one moved. Never, maybe, 178 SMART MILAN

have we seen a more beautiful sight [...]. Maria Caldara was close to me and her eyes remembered the noble faith of her father, pioneer of the most courageous initiative of the municipalized companies [...]. The water was still thundering down impetuously, onto the rock and, sud- denly, its din blended with the notes of the hymn of Mameli”. AEM, at the beginning of the Fifties was the largest municipalized electric company in the country, generated around 25% of the energy produced by this type of company, gave work to over 2000 employees, and served around 260,000 Milanese customers. The continuous intense growth in demand, however, required a significant adjustment in the production capacity, given that the existing hydroelectric plants appeared to be completely saturated. During this hard situation, Roberto Tremelloni took over the Mil- anese municipalized company. A Socialist politician, during those years Minister of Finance, Professor of Economics at the Politecnico, the new Chairman outlined a twenty-year growth plan, ambitious but necessary. In Milan, in fact, there was an increase in consumption considerably higher than the rest of the country and decisively greater than the increase in the other basic public services. These increases showed the extent of a city in transformation, where the level of consumption, increasingly directed at lighting and electric household appliances, represented the continuous thread of modernisation and where, if on one side the tensions of a capital subject to immigration emerged, on the other, the effort of the citizens to achieve greater well-being was highlighted. This company represented a “workshop of progress” of the Lombard capital, and in the Sixties, Tremelloni left an AEM that had grown by about 120% in turnover. However, in particular, he had connected the corporate strategy to the Milanese development by adapting AEM to the idea of the city emerging at that time. In fact, the need was arising to “reconcile the registry boundaries with the economic boundaries of greater Milan” with the outlining of a district that was wider than the boundaries of the city, which by now only had a “historical significance”. This view required a plan to meet the development of the population in a radius of at least 20 -30 kilometres around the city, and economic policies for a metropolis that was becoming capital of the service industry. Another public company, which over decades of activity became a symbol of the “Hands on Milan” and wanted to offer the citizen progress based on quality of life and not only the economic growth, was THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 179 certainly the Dairy of Milan. The evolution of this company was interwoven with that of the city, and with the evolution of its policies for the citizens. Among Milan’s various records, in fact, during the twentieth century was also that of having promoted a public company leader in the milk and dairy sector with a success that was not only commercial but social and customary. The origins of this company were rooted in the beginning of the century. The Milan area, historically, had held a record in the field of cattle breeding and production of milk and dairy products. In particular in the southern area, around the Po Valley, and in the valleys of the mountain belt, in fact, the largest companies of the country had developed such as the Lombard Polenghi, Galbani, San Giorgio and so forth. At the beginning of the century, however, despite the significant production of milk, the product coming from the countryside of the southern belt towards the city was poor in quality. Or better; the milk was of an excellent quality but was produced and processed under terrible hygienic conditions which threatened the health of humans. Furthermore, when it reached Milan on unsuitable means of transport, it was sold in bulk after having been watered down and adulterated in all possible ways. In the Municipal Council, it was actually reported that during an inspection of a large basin of milk, mixed with water from the Naviglio, a fish was once found swimming. The problem, besides the hygienic one because of the risks that it entailed to public health, during the First World War and just afterwards, became very serious due to the lack of availability of the product and especially because of the price, always at the mercy of the demands of the producers, the carriers and the sellers who, faced with the scarcity of the product, tended to increase as much as possible their profits. To face the serious “question of milk”and regulate this complex system, the city of Milan had attempted several times together with the Umanitaria and the cooperative movement, to intervene in this market promoting better production and distribution of milk. During the first twenty years, the attempts had followed one after the other and had even tried to manage the sector directly by the municipality. A great step forward was achieved when, in 1930, the Fascist Admin- istration had created a dairy where most of the production of the province was concentrated, to then be processed and delivered. It was a model company, the largest in Europe, located in the southern suburbs of the city, and equipped with the most advanced instrumentation and techniques of the period. 180 SMART MILAN

However, also because of the open run-in with the principal companies of the sector, one of the most lucrative in the agricultural field and in which great economic interest was concentrated, after having created the company, the municipality gave its management to the leading private businesses. By doing this, with the goal of guarantee- ing the healthiness of the milk, it had created a very strong monopoly, but it had given it to the private companies which with the trust acquired from the citizens over time, distributed milk increasing consumption which reached almost one million hectolitres in 1940. After having been bombed and destroyed, during the post-war period after the Second World War, the company started its activity again supporting the consumption of a foodstuff which, along with bread, was under those difficult conditions fundamental in particular for the poorest classes. However the economic conflicts were revived which placed the interest of the citizens in confrontation with the largest industrial and agricultural companies of the sector, often interested obviously especially in their profit. For these reasons, evaluating the great public interest in this company, in 1950 the city became an entrepreneur, acquired the company and started to manage it directly, shortly thereafter building a new model factory, inaugurated in 1957. From here the exceptional development of the sector and the consumption of milk and derivative products ensued. These represented both the increase in the residents of the city, and the improvement in the condition of food, since the process of economic growth per- mitted the transformation from the widespread under-nutrition and malnutrition of the Fifties to a quantitative and qualitative rise in the diet of the Italians and the Milanese. Milan, in this sector, was the largest market of the country, besides being one of the major producers, and went from 73 million litres consumer in Milan in 1953 to 88 million in 1964. The Dairy, in summary, represented an excellent example of a municipalized company, as well as a fundamental player for society and the rural and agricultural-industrial economy of Milan and Lom- bardy during an entire century. From generation to generation, it brought milk from a health emergency to a safe and valuable food for the health of the population; a process in which Milan performed a leading role, producing the best Italian and European milk. During the post-war period, moreover, this company introduced the use of Tetra pak, offered milk to the fans sitting in the stands of the San Siro Stadium, and opened a historic bar, the “White Bar” in the Sempione THE CAPITAL OF THE MIRACLE 181

Park and in the public gardens, connecting the company trademark with the actual history of the city. An equally symbolic history was that of the Milanese Transport Company (ATM) which, in the same way, evolved in symbiosis with the city right from its birth. It was started in 1917 when the Municipality of Milan had decided to personally manage the tram lines, up until then run by Edison, entrusting them to a specific Municipal Tram Office which, a few years later, in 1931, had turned into the independent company still in existence today. After the wartime destruction, the company had 21 tram lines on 200 km of city tracks, which had been reactivated thanks also to the exceptional work and attachment of the Milanese tramway workers who had also allowed the trams to be used to remove the rubble and help in the reconstruction of the city. In 1947, the tram network was almost completely reactivated even if the company was the “great patient”of the Municipality, due to a frightening financial deficit. Once the reconstruction of the tram system and the widespread trolley lines was completed, which at the beginning of the Fifties reached 40 km and ran all around the city, an animated and ancient debate started again on the desire to build an underground line. The first organic plans went back to the era of Fascism and, in the post- war period, a municipal delegation had gone to London to study the systems of the local underground. Starting in 1952, the city began to crate the executive design of the first line which would go from Piaz- zale Lotto to Sesto San Giovanni. The project, later approved by the Roman ministers, was exhibited in a plastic model in 1955 at Palazzo Marino and, shortly afterwards, in the headquarters of the ATM which would be entrusted with the management of the lines: the Milanese Underground joint stock company was then established, which had the purpose of creating the systems. Technically and aesthetically, the design drafted for the first line of the Milanese underground, called the “red line” because of the colour chosen in the visual style, was truly excellent, thanks to the contribution of the leading planners and designers of the period. The stations, in fact, were designed by the architectural firm of Franco Albini and Franca Helg, while Bob Noorda had designed its style and signs. This last individual, a Milanese architect and designer of Dutch origin, during the preceding years had handled the advertising campaigns for Pirelli, Rinascente and Olivetti. The Milanese studies were, later, exhibited in museums all over the world, representing a pioneering project of integration of graphics, 182 SMART MILAN

architecture and interior design, then used in may other European, Asian and American undergrounds. As proof of the result achieved during this first occasion, Noorda was in fact hired to design the visual communication of both the New York underground and that of Sao Paulo of Brazil. In particular, with these first projects, the designers were rewarded with the highly recognised title of the Golden Compass. The key position of Chairman of the company during the implementation years of the project was given to Vigorelli, previous head of ECA, who during the early Sixties could take the first test trips under Milan. In January 1963, when due to a record cold snap the dock and the seaplane base were frozen, the Mayor and Cardinal Montini who would soon become the new Pope, made a trial trip with him in the recently completed tunnels. Sunday, 1 January 1964 at 9:00 a.m., after decades of waiting, the celebrations began for the inauguration of the Milanese underground and the crowd of citizens thronged the entrance of the stations, from which RAI had sent down its cameras, journalist and photographers. That morning, accompanying the mayor and the representative of the Tremelloni government, was the widow of Vigorelli. Just a few days before the inauguration, in fact, the former minister had died sud- denly and was buried in the Monumentale Cemetery. On that occasion, the Milanese Socialists had posted a manifesto on the walls of the city bemoaning the “cruel fate” that had “taken him right on eve of the inauguration of the MM, the great project in which Comrade Vigorelli” had believed more than anyone else. After a day of inaugural trips, in any case, in the late afternoon, finally the Milanese could purchase over 200,000 tickets and crowd onto the trains, as they would moreover do every morning for the next 50 years. “New fairy tale of Milan, the longed-for trip began...” wrote Dino Buzzati the next day in the “Corriere della Sera” describing the ceremonies and the enthusiasm of the people. With this line completed, from the mid Sixties the construction of a second underground line began, called “green line” for the colour that distinguished it, which started outside Milan above ground, from the North-East hinterland and then went underground beneath the city forming the longest underground track. After the inauguration in 1969 of the first above ground section, the stops between the Central Sta- tion and Garibaldi Station were also opened in 1971, which coordinated with the red line made it possible for the commuters to move every day towards the city centre. Excavations for the Milan underground in Piazza San Babila. Cover by Walter Molino, “Domenica del Corriere”, 16 April 1961(Archivio storico Fondazione Rizzoli Corriere della Sera, Milano) 184 SMART MILAN

In addition, in 1977 talk began for the first time in the Municipal Council for a third line, the “yellow line” which in the drawings was to cross the city from north, in the Comasina district, to south, to the municipality of San Donato, and transport almost 40,000 passengers per day further speeding up the transport of the metropolis. The construction of these systems began at the beginning of the 1980s and constituted an interesting but controversial chapter in the history of the city. In any case, after a decade of work starting in 1990 the principal sections of this underground began to be inaugurated and to which others would be added later. CHAPTER 4 The Capital of Innovation

uring the Eighties, after an international economic crisis that had Dalso hit Italy particularly hard, a transition began for the City of Milan as well which put into question the firm assurance on which the identity of the city had been built throughout the hundred years described here. This process of transformation, similar to the one faced by the largest metropolis of the other industrialised nations, however, which later would turn out to be controversial and sometimes painful, seemed to be able to be resolved for almost the entire decade simply and painlessly and, in fact, with immediate success. The dark “Years of Lead”, marked by the economic and social crisis, in fact, at least on the surface appeared to be followed by a season of impetuous growth, a sort of “second economic miracle” in which Milan had a leading role representing like no other Italian city the spirit of the times and, in fact, in many way, fuelling hope and aspirations, as well as illusions. This “spirit”, the particular climate that hovered around the city, was expressed and summarised, absolutely symbolically, by the advertising of Amaro Ramazzotti, aperitif in vogue in the city since the first half of the nineteenth century, a claim which is generally still used today, both negatively and positively, even by historians, to describe the Milan of those years. The television commercial began with the image a deserted Piazza del Duomo at night, traversed by the city garbage trucks that crossed it illuminated by the lamps and surrounded by the typical Milan fog. Then, a young woman completely in white and flat lit by the morning light, smiling and energetic, turns off the alarm at 7:45 and starts the 186 SMART MILAN

city’s day. The pigeons rise in flight before the Cathedral, waiters with trays full of glasses cross the Galleria, the city becomes animated with shopkeepers and policemen at work, young people in jogging suits run along the streets; the underground speeds through the crowded stations, a woman jumps into a yellow taxi, the traffic branches off into the streets; workers work on a modern assembly line, and an actress sits at the make-up table in theatre room. The day endes with the image of an elegant couple who, after a romantic candlelit dinner in a luxury THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 187 restaurant, dance at night in the plaza in front of the Scala Theatre. Just before a passing city garbage truck, accompanies the city as it sleeps. All the most familiar symbols of Milan at that time, in other words, were summarised in a brief video, accompanied by the sounds of the metropolis and Birdland, in the Manhattan Transfer version and, even better, summarised by the narrating voice: “Yes, Milan, the city of

Concert of the La Scala Orchestra directed by Claudio Abbado in the dining hall of Innocenti Leyland (Innse), 1975 (Archivio del Lavoro, Sesto San Giovanni, Milano, photo Silvestre Loconsolo) 188 SMART MILAN

Amaro Ramazzotti/ Milan that is reborn every morning/ That pulsates like a heart/ Positive, optimistic, efficient/ The city of Amaro Ramazzotti which was born here 170 years ago/ And still today takes this/ Milan everywhere to be experienced, dreamed, enjoyed, everywhere: This Milan to be sipped”. Milan, after the long century described here, appeared to be positive, optimistic, efficient, it was international and, despite the contradictions it was experiencing, spoke of itself in this way, and appeared finally to have become completely a city to enjoy: to drink. From May 1976, when the climate was anything but peaceful, the Socialist Carlo Tognoli had become mayor who, after having formerly been Commissioner for Assistance, at less than forty years of age was the youngest mayor that the city had ever had, and confirmed the “red junta” which actively involved the Communist Party. Having faced and partly resolved the various emergencies of the previous years, during this period a great investment in the cultural sector started again. Culture, in some ways, was viewed as a possible element of positive reaction to the economic crisis. The country, during that period, was still affected by a spike in inflation which created both economic and social tensions. In this last context, together with phenomena of youthful protest, which had also been expressed with violence in the second half of the Seventies, there continued to also be dramatic phenomena of a terrorism which, moreover, at the beginning of the Eighties was approaching a final defeat. During this period, institutions like the Planetarium, the Pavilion of Contemporary Art of Via Palestro (PAC), the Natural History Museum, and the Pinacoteca of Brera were reviving; historical sites were being renovated such as the Palazzo Reale which would become the place for important exhibits, or the museums of the Sforza Castle. In addition, after the Teatro Dal Verme became public, the work started on the new site of the Piccolo Teatro, finally completed after many years. The overall climate of the city was becoming energetic and positive. At the beginning of the summer of 1980, for example, the San Siro Sta- dium, La Scala of football, hosted the first and only Italian concert of Bob Marley, and was filled beyond every limit by 100,000 young people who had come from all over the country to create a type of Italian Woodstock, a historic concert. A few years later, in 1984, in a less profane manner, the same stadium was filled once again by the same number of people paying hom- age to Mother Theresa of Calcutta who was visiting Italy, as proof of a THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 189 vein of religiousness which the modern metropolis continued to experience. Pope John Paul II, moreover, visited Milan that same year, who, addressing the citizens said: “Here I am once again among you, my dear Milanese. This city is a symbol of modern living, and also an example of Christian living.” Moreover, the progressive spread of a climate of confidence and optimism went along with a renewal of Milan’s role as Economic Capital of the Country and, unlike in the past, the city appeared to also acquire a front row political role, which contributed to giving it prestige and influence. In fact, in 1983, the Milanese, Bettino Craxi, who had been the national leader of the Socialist Party for a few years, for the first time became Head of the Government, inaugurating a period of great power for Milan. Shortly afterwards, in 1985, during his turn as President of the European Union, the Socialist leader welcomed to the Sforza Castle the heads of state and government of the entire continent, including Thatcher and Mitterrand, conveying even symbolically the idea of a city at the peak of its economic and political splendour. As proof of this cultural, social, political and economic turmoil, following the years when the “free radios” had been started during the crusades of the young, the first private television stations began spreading. A Milanese entrepreneur, Silvio Berlusconi, who had previously launched his business in the construction field by building neighbourhoods that seemed like small cities at the gates of Milan, soon entered the communication and information sector and, thanks to considerable financial resources, the legislative changes and the close relationship with the political forces in the government, began to build a veritable empire. In fact, in just a few years, he became the king of commercial television, creating three private broadcasting stations which were the only national competitors of state television. In addition, through his group, he garnered a predominant proportion of advertising expen- ditures, and an important role in the field of show business, with the acquisition of theatres and cinemas such as the Manzoni and the Odeon; in the publishing and information sector, with the acquisition of Mondadori; and, lastly, in sports, with the acquisition in the middle of the decade, of a Milanese football team, the Milan. Milan in the Eighties, in other words, was interpreting from many points of view the spirit of those years of growth in affluence and consumption. The success of the fashion world and its protagonists captured the spotlights of the world and spread the myth of the capital of fashion shows and models. The world of the Stock Exchange and 190 SMART MILAN

The Piccolo Teatro (Piccolo Teatro di Milano, photo Attilio Marasco) THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 191 192 SMART MILAN

finance, interconnected at the international level, confirmed the role of new “ambitious” managers and the values of luxury and money which in Milan appeared more achievable than elsewhere. In fact, Milan was considered the richest city in Italy, in addition to being the most expen- sive, and here luxury shops multiplied, and the image as business and shopping centre spread worldwide Furthermore, the city was quickly becoming an innovative and fertile environment for the professions of architects and designers, advertisers and marketing experts, entrepreneurs and financiers. Everyone seemed at ease in “Milan by night”, and during the decade fashionable clubs, bars, discothèques, the first fast food places, and restaurants prolifer- ated, concentrating in traditional and appealing areas of the city, which now changed their appearance, such as the canals and the Brera district where the young in search of entertainment congregated, a mixture of the many categories at the time on the crest of the wave. The “Milan to drink” publicised in Italy and abroad the optimistic and roaring spirit of that period. It was not a coincidence that, around the middle of the Eighties, Berlusconi’s popular magazine “TV sorrisi e canzoni (TV smiles and songs)” conducted a survey on the cities of the country discovering that in the national imagination Milan was at the top of Italian’s dreams, a euphoric and dynamic city. During the same period, Paolo Pillitteri, who in 1986 became the Socialist mayor of the city, stated: “Milan is still this: a great capacity to never give up, to adapt to the new, the desire to transform itself and change. Milan continues to grow... New York, the “Big Apple”, is the city that is closest to Milan. Milan pulsates with vitality and has the crav- ing to renew itself like the American metropolis.” And in fact, the city definitely had these characteristics, because the successes of those years were obvious and demonstrated the talent and existing energy which found fertile ground here to blossom before the world. But on the other hand, in the shadow of this success, contradictions were smouldering which would soon emerge. From the point of view of the urban transformation and modernisation, which accompanied the climate of generalised euphoria, this decade saw an undeniable goal by political and economic figures, interest in managing these processes, to be the centre of attention. For example, during these years, as in the other major advanced cities, the problem of the real estate no longer used by large companies such as Pirelli, in the Bicocca district, or Alfa Romeo, in the historic Portello location, in the Bovisa district was starting to be faced. Furthermore, in THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 193

May 1990, the first section of the yellow underground was inaugurated in the presence the President of the Republic. This was the third line the costs of which, during a decade of work, had progressively and significantly increased. A great event was also hosted that same year, long awaited by the city, in other words the World Football Championships which would have an exceptional showcase right in Milan. The city had long prepared itself for that moment, cultivating hopes and expectations which were maybe disproportionate. Years before, precisely in view of this appointment, a large renovation of the S. Siro Stadium had been scheduled which, with the construction of a third ring of stands, would become the largest Italian stadium. Along with this, furthermore, there was the construction of a series of projects spread all over the city at a scale proportionate to the magnificent ambitions of those years. The World Championships did not, however, meet the expectations and in many ways were a waste of resources and a promise not kept. The world event, which ended in July with the concert by The Three Tenors, Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras, at the Roman Baths of Cara-

The Yellow Line of the underground (Archivio MM Spa, Milano) 194 SMART MILAN

calla, were supposed to confirm the growth of the preceding period and announce a future of further affluence. Instead, in many ways, it represented the end of an era and, symbolically, officially sanctioned the start of a phase of identity transformation, which behind the screen of the “Milan to Drink”, had already started. So, at the beginning of the Nineties, a period of self-doubt began which, above all, started in the most traumatic way. In fact, previously, signs of scandals had already sporadically appeared, in particular in construction and public works, which the projects for the World Football Championships had fuelled. Then, in 1992, while the political system both nationally and locally had already shown obvious signs of crisis, a director of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio was arrested for kickbacks. Thus began, with an event which all things considered could be considered minor, one of the major Italian scandals, which like an earthquake soon overthrew the political system, eliminating all the parties that had governed the country since the war. The investigations, conducted by the Palace of Justice of Milan, exacerbated an increasingly intolerant public opinion, opened a long and painful period of inquiries and processes which, even in a conten- tious manner, highlighting illegal relationships between parties running the institutions and public and private financial forces, destabilised the Italian institutions down to the foundations, to the point of closing the so-called “First Republic”. In this context, not only was the Court of Milan the centre of attention, in front of which the lights of the cameras of every national television station remained lit, but also the city became the theatre for these permanent proceedings. Milan, moreover, in addition to the inquiries of a local nature, was bound to become involved as major economic centre of the country, site of the large public and private groups and, also, general headquarters of the influential government Socialist Party, led by Bettino Craxi. The city, in this climate, became “Tangen- topolis” (city of kickbacks), from the journalistic name given the inquiry, and soon the “Milan to drink”, with the aspects of optimism and modernisation which it had in any case taken with it, ended up with its values and customs also on the defendant stand. As a result, a phase opened that the writer, Corrado Stajano, summarised with a single effective term: “disorder”. It was no accident that the local institutions were decapitated and the city, for a little while, was actually managed by a Commissioner, as proof of a dramatic period that became a type of collective purifying rite. THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 195

Only after the summer of 1993 with regular elections, and in a scenario that saw most of the leading political players of the past out of the game, could the city have a new government. The political void left by the parties, even nationally, in 1994 was filled by the electoral victory of Silvio Berlusconi, a Milanese closely linked to the history of the preceding decade, who became the head of the government and through whom Milan, in some ways, returned to playing a national role. This role which, in any case, couldn’t manage even remotely to give the city its bearings since it was traumatised but, especially, disoriented and without apparently even a path and guaranteed destiny any more. In reality, in order to understand and attempt to describe the recent Milanese past, which in some ways represented the course of the entire country, we have to go back and observe the areas which the success of the Eighties had not shed light on, in the shadows of the “Milan to drink”. The city, as we saw previously, during its history had acquired an awareness of itself based on its business and work record, and on a type of “morale” and confidence built on these elements which had represented a factor of continuity in its evolution. In Milan, however, already at the beginning of the Eighties, industry was no longer that of the “old captains” since multinationals controlled over 30% of the large companies and one third of the employees were employed in government-held businesses. At that time, the number of employees in industry and in the other sectors was equal and a progressive and significant increase was taking place among those employed in services and a decrease in blue- collar workers. In other words, an increasingly segmented, fluid labour market was becoming established, and in place of the “centrality of the factory”, now waning, there were different organisations such as the 50,000 teachers employed in the schools, or the fact that in the Milan area most of the cultural production of the country was concentrated, with the overwhelming majority of the daily newspapers, weekly publications, publishing and recording companies. In other words, the legacy of the preceding structural crisis and the new technological phenomena which were revolutionizing manufacturing systems everywhere entailed the profound reorganization of big industry which had a presence here and that was fundamental for the entire country. The crisis affected, for example, the national chemical “group”, which had 100,000 employees in Lombardy, in companies such as Montedison, Snia, Acna, Eni, Sir, Liqui- gas etc.; the textile industry as well as the auto industry which employed around 80,000 workers in companies such as Alfa Romeo, Autobianchi, 196 SMART MILAN

Nuova Innocenti; and in companies of the metalworking, chemical and textile sector, such as Magneti Marelli and Borletti. The subsequent intense economic recovery, the significant increase in the GDP and the consumer indexes, which gave them impression of a country finally at the point of turning into an “opulent” society, basically were certainly positive phenomena which however were accompanied by a transformation that was settling into the foundations of society. So, in the Eighties, behind the footlights, the tertiarization of the city was taking place, which changed its face as well as the economic and social structures which for the entire previous century had characterised it and on which Milan had established its identity. While offices and professional firms were spreading, the large factories were closing leaving enormous areas neglected. While new classes, social groups and a renewed fabric of the city were emerging, the “old industrial middle class” was waning and the “working class” was being profoundly reshaped. It must be emphasised that these processes did not cause a decrease in Milan’s role. In fact, the city’s importance remained central also during the most controversial moments. The figures at the end of this twenty year process of reinvention showed that in the early years of 2000, Lombardy, with its over 9 million inhabitants and one fifth of the Italian companies, produced one fifth of the national GDP and the Milan area included almost half of the companies and the regional GDP. Even though during alternate phases, and despite the crisis of the early Nineties, the GDP of this area had exceeded on average that of the nation. In summary, during the twenty year period, industry progressively retreated and the tertiary sector of the economy advanced. While remaining the most industrialised region of Italy, like the processes that characterised all the most advanced countries, the industrial sector was being reshaped and was spreading throughout northern Italian, in particular eastward. Between 1991 and 2001, the manufacturing sector contracted with a reduction in employees of 20% in the Milan area and almost 40% in the city of Milan. And since the unemployment rates remained low and constant, this reduction was matched by an absorption and development of the tertiary whose employees in fact, between 1971 and 2001 increased by more than 80%. Beneath these profound changes, the Milan economic area remained extremely vital and the industrial fabric remained diversified with a traditional presence in the mechanical sector, increasingly concentrated on advanced, electronic productions with almost 15% of the manufacturing, publishing, textile THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 197 clothing companies, with 11% of the companies, and Milan at the being of the twenty first century represented almost 15% of Italian exports and almost half of Lombard exports. The services system, furthermore, was emerging as a key player and was specialising in the support of companies in an area that was much broader than just the Milan territory. While the industrial system was spreading and moving away from the city, concentrating in the entire northern area of the country, Milan was achieving the national leadership in the sector of services to companies, in the planning, consulting, legal services, marketing and advertising, and was becoming a type of head with a body spread over the vast surrounding region. These processes were reflected by the demographic trends. Dur- ing the Nineties, in fact, the relocation of inhabitants from the capital towards the province and the region intensified. Between 1991 and 2001, Milan lost over 8% of its population, going from over 1.3 million to 1.2 million inhabitants spreading out into the surrounding territory which, instead, had not diminished. If this was the consequence, on the one hand, of economic phenomena such as the loss of industrial supremacy, and social phenomena such as the increase in the cost of living, on the other hand, it represented a migration of human capital to an increasingly vast and interconnected territory. The phenomenon of “commuting”, which every day brought 800,000 urban workets to Milan, with ever growing numbers, demonstrated the city’s endurance as place where energies, spread over an increasingly wider area, were concentrated. In summary, during the Eighties, the reorganisation of the manufacturing systems opened a phase of transformation both economic and social in the city, which maybe more than any other was exposed to the pressures of international phenomena. Faced with this situation, on the one hand, the most dynamic sectors ready and able to match the ongoing changes, such as fashion, design and finance, reacted very quickly by capturing all the opportunities that these processes created, and thus turned on thousands of evocative lights in the “Milan to drink”. On the other hand, other manufacturing and social sectors faced with the change remained anything but immobile and inert and, in their opinion, launched processes of renovation which, over the course of a few years would deeply modify all the nervous centres of the city and would modernise it further. It was natural, however, that this historic passage, which closed one era to lead the city onto new tracks, in some ways as had happened 198 SMART MILAN

at the beginning of the industrialisation over a century earlier, would open deep and traumatic contradictions in the social soul of the city: in the Milanese community. This entire period, in fact, was a phase of disorientation, confused identity, and Milan for more than two decades would face a long and difficult path during which it had a hard time finding an anchor and, in particular, a specific and common bond among the various parts of the city. Despite not finding a unifying path, a precise shared vocation, and the fact that even the role of moral capital, besides that of economic capital, sometimes appeared in question, Milan did not stop. The post- industrial transition took place in many ways spontaneously. In place of the large old factories, ateliers, design studios, universities and research centres, a virtually constant number of small and medium-sized businesses of the tertiary and services, were becoming established. And the traditional social classes were being replaced by those characteristic of the societies of knowledge and information, through a process the efficiency of which was proven by an unemployment rate that remained consistently at the lowest levels of the country. During the Nineties, basically, the city found, and maybe without looking, a precise guide and direction of development, managed not only not to slip backwards compared to the Italian cities, but to advance, renewing certain historic vocations, and transforming itself so profoundly that it required, from the first years of the new millennium, an effort to understand the new profile which maybe even today has not completely taken place. For a long time, Milan, used to considering itself capital of industry and labour, found it was now standing in front of the mirror and no longer recognised itself. The city, besides remaining one of the main markets of the country, was becoming a bridge abroad, the “gateway” to the world, renewing a role historically enhanced by its geographic position located at the crossroads of the paths of communication and the international economic and financial flow. In particular, with the development of the processes of globalisation and of certain areas of the world, Milan was finding itself in a favourable position between the West, new Eastern and the Mediterranean markets: a new global middle ground. In particular, with its private and public research centres, universities and international relations, Milan remained a fundamental centre for design and innovation, and thereby managed to reaffirm a role among the largest cities of the advanced nations. Maintaining this front row position, and actually its reaffirmation, however, did not eliminate a THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 199 fundamental question. After the shattering of its image as business and labour capital, imprinted for so long, the Milanese identity became kaleidoscopic, multi-faceted, divided into so many sectors of excellence and, maybe even today, has not managed to find a unifying and reas- suring synthesis, such as it had in the twentieth century.

Fashion and Design Capital

Starting in the Eighties, one of the sectors, that managed with greater innovative energy to emerge among the key players internationally, was certainly that of fashion. The evolution of this area definitely did not begin at that time and had followed the Italian economic development of the second post-war period. Even though there did not exist a system of Italian fashion until the Fifties, and up to that point the world centre was certainly Paris, during that period a series of favourable conditions arose that favoured the birth and development of the industry in Italy as well. The French fashion crisis, due to the damages of the war and the weakening of the sector accompanied by the closing of tailors and historic ateliers, in fact, opened the road also to potential competitors. This favoured Italy which, besides having a textile industry with a long tradition, during that period began to be associated with a particular style, glamorous, elegant but more accessible than the French one. However, the fashion centre in the Fifties was Florence, which best represented abroad the ancient Italian Renaissance style, and where the pioneers of the industry worked. Fashionable Italy was being reborn around the large dressmakers and boutiques and, progressively, as had happened in other sectors during the period of the economic miracle, created a connection between tailors and textile companies that launched an industrial production of the high fashion product. However, over the course of a few years, the ability of the Florence fashion shows to attract customers became progressively weaker to the advantage of Rome which, thanks to its fame and the ability to influence habits also through the cinema, of which it was the capital, soon attracted the high fashion shows, leaving to Florence the boutique and knitwear collections. The fundamental passage in the history of Italian fashion, in any case, took place during the Sixties with the processes of social transformation, revolution in habits and the expansion in the sizes of the markets also as 200 SMART MILAN

a result of the introduction into the field of consumption of an increasingly larger mass of people. With a slight delay compared to Paris and London, where these processes had taken place earlier and with great intensity, in fact, “pret a porter” also made its appearance in Italy. In this context, and in the face of these innovations, the changes in the tastes of the consumers, and therefore of the demand of the market, created a favourable context for Milan’s emergence as city of

Fashion, Milan Fair, 1966 (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 201 fashion excellence. Indeed, it was here that the sector had a long history and was included in a context of highly specialised manufacturing and institutional factors capable of handling all the phases of production and therefore optimal for the subsequent evolution of the industry. As a result, at the beginning of the Seventies, some fashion designers including Albini, Missoni and Krizia decided to move their shows to Milan. So, during these years, the first pret-a-porter fashion shows started to be held in the city and the initiatives organised also with the support of the industrial associations of the clothing and knitwear industries, and figures central to the history of the sector, such as Beppe Modenese, at the time called “Italy’s Prime Minister of Fashion”, were becoming established. In addition, the sector could benefit obviously here from an exhibition system with a long tradition and great penetration in the international markets, such as the Milan Fair which traditionally hosted the fashion shows. Around the end of the decade, by no coincidence, Milan fashion already organised various events which included “Milano Col- lections”, for the presentation of the labels, “Milanovendemoda (Milan- SellsFashion)”, with a commercial character, and “Modit”. As proof of this close bond, in 1986 in order to ratify the duo Fashion and Fair, which right from the first editions had hosted fashion in its pavilions, during the Great Fair of April, the exhibit “Italy, the genius of fashion” was created, to which the major designers brought their most representative models. After this decade of preparation and affirmation, the blossoming of the sector took place during the 202 SMART MILAN

Eighties when, with Milan and its winning image as backdrop, Italian designers such as Krizia, Missoni, Valentino, Versace and Fendi became world stars, on the border between fashion and art, and exhibited their creations even in shows and museums all over the world, gaining recognition as artists in addition to creators of consumer goods. If during the preceding decade the fashion sector had emphasized the relationship between creators and the chain of production, with the industrialisation of the processes, during the Eighties, the role of artistic craftsmanship and manual work emerged again as the foundation of this sector, and the “Made in Italy” product. In this context of strong consumer growth, fashion became the symbol of the creative and brilliant season of Milan, and the city became the stage for the new trends and styles of Italian fashion assuming a role still held to the present day. One of the undisputed key players of that phase, the individual capable of representing the processes under way through his rise, was obviously Giorgio Armani. In April 1982, under the title “Giorgio’s gorgeous style”, he was the first Italian designer to be on the cover of “Time”, and the second in history after Dior who had been on the cover in the Fifties. Armani’s fashion house had started in Milan in 1975, in Corso di Porta Venezia, and in a few years the pre-a-porter collections had made him famous both in Europe and in the United States where the “Gior- gio Armani Corporation” became one of the most important international houses. Following the great success achieved during the Eighties, despite this brand’s achievement in the world, the bond with the city of Milan never decreased. In fact, it was here in 2000 that the Armani shop of Via Manzoni 31, in the “quadrilateral of fashion”, was inaugurated and in 2011 the Armani Hotel. In 2004, furthermore, the designer also became the sponsor of the historic Milanese basketball team, the Olim- pia Milano. Of no less international prestige, with even a longer tradition, was also the Prada trademark. This fashion house began in 1913 as a travel THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 203 accessory shop in the Galleria of Piazza del Duomo, then expanded its fame throughout Europe and, at the end of the Seventies, under the management of the grandson of the founder, became one of the major fashion trademarks in the world. The Trussardi brand also had a long tradition: It was founded in Bergamo during the first years of the century to produce and sell luxury gloves admired everywhere and even sold to the British royal family. Towards the end of the Seventies, Trussardi opened the first boutique in Milan, establishing itself during the Eighties also in the clothing sector and promoting its brand through a strong connection with Milan and its cultural organisations and institutions, such as the Piccolo Teatro, the Sforza Castle, the Sports Palace to which it gave its name, and even organised the first fashion shows open to the public at La Scala and in Piazza del Duomo. In addition, during the same period, the Versace brand also made its first appearance, founded by the Sicilian designer, Gianni, and by his brother who, after the début with a first fashion show held at the Permanente of Milan in 1978, soon spread internationally becoming one of the best known and more esteemed Italian fashion and clothing companies.

The Galleria, “The Living Room of Milan” (Archivio Politecnico di Milano, Milano, photo Gianni Congiu) 204 SMART MILAN

While the artistic and design talent of the Italian designers was certainly unique, and in many ways obviously exceptional, the evolution of the sector also demonstrated an additional touch of originality of the Italian context. In fact, here and in particular around the Milan and Lombardy area, the entire chain was combined in a special way into a single production process: the spinning and weaving of the raw materials, the design, the creation and the distribution to the international market, together demonstrated Milan’s dual role, which managed to emphasize the production organisation and combined to form the elegant showcase of the finished product. Behind the designers established during the Eighties, basically, a complex sector twisted and turned, which combined many skills and abilities, spread throughout the territory, and rooted in the entire Italian peninsula. Obviously during the period following this “golden age” of Italian fashion, there were also moments of stagnation or crisis, such as during the Nineties or the first years of the new millennium when the manufacturing outsourcing and the reorganisations of the industrial and artisan system, in the context of globalisation, sometimes clouded the overall strategy. However, the Italian fashion sector showed that it knew how to regenerate roles and players, as for example with the international success of the Dolce e Gabbana brand. These two designers also made their appearance around the middle of the Eighties during the Milan Fashion Week, and within a few years they opened their first shop and launched the first men’s collection. Then, during the Nineties, the brand established itself worldwide, link- ing up with the image of pop star such as Madonna, and pursuing the opening of points of purchase all over the world, without however ever losing the bond with their city of origin, where the now historic luxurious offices and shops remain. Also through the connection with the historic city brands, worldwide players, starting in 2000, furthermore, with the opening of new markets in the East such as China and Russia, and with the spread of luxury products, the fashion sector proved to be one of the key players of the Italian economy, managing to renew itself and retain its global role. Quality products and the style of Italian design kept Milan as the epicentre of this industry, also in the intense international competition with the major fashion cities such as Paris, London and New York, thanks to fixed showcases which are by now historic. The Milan Fashion Week, organised since the end of the Fifties, in fact, is now firmly entrenched as a point of reference in the fashion calendar of the “Big Four” worldwide. THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 205

Organised in Milan by the National Chamber of Italian Fashion, which includes all the principal brands and operators of the sector, and held in September and February, this showcase hosts, in particular, the major events devoted to women’s fashion. During recent years, also thanks to the coordination between the major public and private institutions of the territory involved in the development of this industry, the events held during this period were often held in the major historic palaces and sites of Milan, such as the Castle, the Palazzo Reale, the aristocratic residences such as Palazzo Morando, or La Scala. In fact, in September 2013, the fashion show week was launched during an evening put together by the Municipality and Conde Nast to celebrate the city of Milan and Made in Italy, held in the “quadrilateral of fashion”. The so-called “quadrilateral” is an area in the city centre bordered by Via Manzoni, Corso Venezia, Via della Spiga and Via Montenapoleone, where over the years historically the major jewellery shops, luxury shops and showrooms in addition to stores and studios of the major fashion brands have been concentrated. The heart of this area is obviously Via Montenapoleone, which since the Fifties has progressively changed its appearance from a street of the “old Milan”, still evident in the prestigious aristocratic palaces, to assume the role as symbol of Milanese luxury, until it became one of the best known and expense shopping streets in the world. It is in this area that today some operators would like to expand even more, including for example the entire area of the centre to the Galleria, the “Living Room of Milan”, in which not only the luxury products valued around the world are concentrated but also the Ital- ian production tradition, which the President of the Chamber of Fashion recently summarised as follows: “Made in Italy” is a story of talent, traditions of taste, culture and elegance, handcrafted mastery, innovative alertness and care in the details, creativity and technical intelligence.” At the same time as the fashion industry as we have seen, Milan was developing over time its own originality and a leading role in the field of design. This industry, traditionally spread over the territory, was nurtured by various important institutions both public and private, as for example the Politecnico, where in fact the first courses of industrial design were offered, and then a specific Faculty of Design, inspired by individuals such as Thomas Maldonado and Cesare Stevan. 206 SMART MILAN

The industry, moreover, was profoundly rooted in the vocations of the production system, and over time gelled around events and initiatives that, more than any others, created the vehicle for spreading Made in Italy around the whole world. Alongside the traditional role of cultural promotion of the Trien- nale, in particular, after the Second World War the involvement of the Milan Fair was becoming established which, through the close coop-

Design at the MACEF, Milan Fair, 1964 (Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 207 eration with the operators and business associations of the industry, formed the point of connection between the country and the international markets. One of the events which had become most important over time was certainly the “Furniture Show”. It had started, also drawing inspiration from similar experiences carried out abroad, at the beginning of the Six- ties, when a group of entrepreneurs established Cosmit, the sponsoring committee of a Fair that was to host the small and medium businesses concentrated in the areas around Milan, and in the rest of the country, active in the furniture and wood industry. The success of the initiative, which over the years became established as a national point of reference, later drove Cosmit to expanding the Fair also to other production segments involving furniture in the broadest sense and, at the end of the decade, given the constantly growing presence of visitors from every country, to transforming it into an international event, open also to foreign exhibitors. Later, the progressive success of Italian production, consistent with the economic evolution of the country and with the progressive and exponential growth of exports, in particular after the Eighties, confirmed this event as one of the most attractive on the international landscape. In fact, during thirty years of activity, the number of exhibitors, the increase in exposition space and visitors, which at the beginning of the Nineties approached 150,000, confirmed the success of the Italian Furniture Show as the leading international event of the industry. Here, for this entire period, the most important products, ideas, and designs of interior design objects were presented. It brought together every two years the largest design and production companies of interior design accessories, household 208 SMART MILAN

electric appliances, materials, technologies as well as the major world designers capable of describing and anticipating the trends of the industry. As proof also of the growing international breadth, from the year 2000 Cosmit was also managing the organisation of shows in foreign capitals such as Moscow and New York, and in Milan, in 2011, it welcomed 180,000 foreigners out of a total of over 320,000 visitors. With its role of commercial as well as cultural promotion, therefore, over the decades the event entered the history of interior décor and design with full recognition, also spreading the image of Milan as the place of excellence of industrial design. As proof also of the role of promotion of this industry in the territory, and the fertility of the Milanese context, alongside this annual event other small successful initiatives flourished. The largest of these was certainly the so-called “Fuorisalone” (Off Salone) or Milan Design Week which, together with the Furniture Show, over time went on to be the most important world event in the field of industrial design and, in particular, home furnishings. This event arose during the animated Milanese context in the Eighties when, at the time of the Fair, expositions and shows began to be organised outside the fair space and in particular in the centre of Milan near the design studios and workshops. The event, which started spontaneously through the commitment and initiative of individual companies and professionals, soon became a real phenomenon of customs, as well as economics, and if initially it attracted operators of the sector, architects and designers, progressively, it increasingly involved foreign visitors, students from all over the world and Milanese citizens more and more interested in the fortunes of this environment. The success of the initiative, from the beginning of the Nineties, made it possible that it become established as an institution, also thanks to the intervention of the magazine “Interni (Interiors)” which started to publish the program of events, and which had become increasingly numerous and spread around the city. In fact, with the passing of time, the Fuorisalone highlighted its international nature and increasingly assumed the feeling of a “design week”, similar to the Fashion Week but more people-oriented, capable of attracting visitors from abroad and involving sponsors, foreign companies, design studies and established architects. In particular, the increasing number of initiatives, performances, shows, cultural events, presen- tations of collections, poured out of the showrooms of the companies and spread, establishing themselves in increasingly creative, evocative locations capable of enlivening the entire city and in particular areas con- THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 209 sidered “cool”. If in the centre of Milan, in addition to historic institutions such as the Triennale or evocative locations, such as the courtyard of the Filarete in the State University, the most traditional streets of the design exhibitors were involved, such as the roads around Piazza S. Babila or Via Turati, soon the events spread out towards the suburbs, into former industrial areas or districts where during the Nineties the redevelopment had brought architectural studios and artisan laboratories. Every year, in fact, during design week, entire districts were literally assaulted day and night by visitors and citizens attracted by parties and events. For example in the Via Tortona area, near Porta Genova, one of the youngest and most alternative areas, or in Lambrate, in recent years an area of great turmoil, or in the Brera district, where ancient and extremely evocative places such as the Botanical Garden, in recent years had attracted the attention of visitors from all over the work, or in the Garibaldi and Corso Como area, site of the “Movida Milanese”, or also in the “Steam Factory”, a neglected industrial area recently reconverted into a small creative citadel, a stone’s throw from the former National Electric Agency. Today, this has been converted into the offices of the Association for Industrial Design and houses the historical collection of the “Compasso d’Oro” award. In other words, also through these events, Milan was demonstrating a widespread, spontaneous, non-institutional capacity to not only produce, but also to promote in innovative and effective ways, the great national and Milanese heritage composed of creativity, competence and work that distinguishes all the Made in Italy production, from artisan to large company.

Sections of the New Identity of Milan

At the beginning of the new millennium, the long processes of transformation of the Milan area reached a phase of maturity. Certainly, the recent and profound crisis affected the world economy and, in this context, Italy even harder, producing consequences which are still not fully understood in their scope. The structural evolution of this area, in any case, from the year 2000 appeared to demonstrate a rather delineated panorama, even if not completely stabilised. Milan and its territory presented an integrated zone of great significance within the international landscape, now dominated by the large cities of the most advanced nations. And while nationally it appeared 210 SMART MILAN

The Madonnina (Archivio Politecnico di Milano, Milano, photo Gianni Congiu) THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 211 as an area of excellence characterised by a high concentration of movements of merchandise and people, Milan in particular was confirming its position as the centre of the principal economic, financial and social flow, and of the large transnational communication networks. This strategic position was obviously strengthened by a transport system composed of very dense road, motorway and railway networks and various airport structures. Just within a radius of 50 km around the city, in fact, there were three airports with over 30 million passengers transiting per year, after the new international terminal “Malpensa 2000” was inaugurated, located in the province of Varese, that complemented the Linate Airport, which had become absorbed over the years in the urban confines. While in the city of Milan during these years, the inhabitants had stabilised at around 1.3 million, Greater Milan, which had now expanded over the entire province, had around 4 million inhabitants and held 40% of the population of Lombardy and 10% of the foreign population in Italy, forming one of the most densely populated and attractive areas of Europe. This territory, while undergoing constant transformation, could ponder the transition of the dense production infrastructure completed with the passage from a manufacturing organisation to a system oriented towards the services sector and the economics of knowledge and information. Here, with almost 300,000 businesses operating in 2008, in other words over 35% of Lombard companies, the province of Milan represented the richest and most economically developed territory of the country which during the same period, in other words at the eve of the world crisis, generated a GDP of more than 153 billion, or about 10% of the national GDP. Also, recently, in ratification of the crowning of the phenomena of transformation of the last decades, a reform path was also completed of the territorial institutions, which as suggested earlier, had been hypothesized at least since the Sixties. In fact, at the end of 2014, a long and controversial legislative path established a new local entity, called “Metropolitan City of Milan” which, replacing the province entity and temporarily flanking the municipalities of the territory, including that of Milan itself, was started to manage the population and direct the strategic and sustainable development of the entire metropolitan territory. The hoped for management of the services, the infrastructures and the communication networks on this wide scale, was proof of another historic passage of integration of the various areas surrounding the 212 SMART MILAN

capital, in a line of continuity with the phenomena of expansion of the metropolis described previously. Naturally, in recent years, the metropolitan territory, besides from the institutional point of view, underwent many changes becoming increasingly integrated with the surrounding territory and also creating contradictions between the city centre and the suburbs, and between the centre and the periphery of the metropolitan area. The housing requirements, for example, also due to the end of policies such as those adopted in the past in areas moreover of different public finance, sometimes constituted a real emergency, because of the tensions in the property market and because of the constant pressure both on the city and on the centres of the outlying areas. On the other hand, the need to face the phenomenon of de-industrialisation, even with the difficulties cited previously, created intense processes of urban transformation, and a progressive re-articulation of the city fabric through renovation projects of vast neglected areas. Therefore, interventions were intended to highlight historical places and create new urban projects, both in the centre and in the suburbs, with the creation of new services, public and private projects, university buildings and meeting places. This phase, though long-lasting and anything but linear, recently brought to fruition an activism which at the least in some areas of the city gave the impression of a “rebirth” and a modernisation of the territory expressed also through grand and ambitious projects, and through the involvement of architects and professionals of world renown. One of the first interventions, as in the past highly symbolic from the cultural point of view, but not insignificant even in terms of the urban consequences, involved the renovation of La Scala. The Theatre, which until the middle of the Eighties had been under the artistic direction of the Maestro, Claudio Abbado, and then for twenty years Mae- stro Riccardo Muti, had long needed radical restoration and renovation. The project was carried out in two years from 2002 and provided the structure with avant-garde systems, restoring the buildings also from the monumental point of view. To cover the period it was closed, furthermore, from the end of the preceding decade, at the initiative of the Municipality, and on a design of the architect, Vittorio Gregotti, a large new building was constructed, the Theatre of the Arcimboldi, located in the old industrial district of Bicocca where the redevelopment of large areas abandoned by companies such as Falck and Breda had been started. THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 213

One of the first interventions, both because it had long been planned and because it was located in the heart of the city, was certainly the one relating to the management of the entire area of the old Milan Fair and the surrounding zones, where large unused spaces had been created following the closing of the vast Alfa Romeo industrial plants. Here, in the historic district of Portello, around 2007, the historic area of the Fair was demolished, and under the project named “Fiera- milanocity”, it was redesigned and turned into an urban exposition centre equipped with the largest convention centre of Europe capable of holding up to 18,000 people. In fact, starting in 2005, the Fair shifted most of its activity to the new Fair centre of Rho-Pero, outside the city and near the current Expo 2015, into the new building designed by the architect, Massimiliano Fuksas. In addition to the construction of a new residential and commercial district, the large demolished historic area gave way to an ambitious urban redevelopment project, still ongoing today, called “Citylife” and designed, following an international competition, by the “archistars” Arata Isozaki, Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid. This project, which had the goal of presenting “Milan as portal to Europe”, in addition to vast public areas, green spaces, and public transport junctions such as the new underground 5, the “Lilac”, which since 2011 launched 6 km of line and 7 stations, included the construction of three towers designed as new symbols of the city, because of the interest that the project had aroused around the world. The first one, the Isozaki Tower, nicknamed Il Dritto (The Straight One), was designed to be over 200 metres high with 50 floors; the second, designed by Hadid and nicknamed lo Storto (The Twisted One) because of its particular shaped, reached 175 metres and forty floors; the Libeskind Tower, nicknamed il Curvo (The Curved One), with its 150 metres was built alongside the two preceding ones completing a vast office, residential and hotel centre. In addition to these impressive buildings, and the design for a park, the initial project also anticipated the construction of a museum building, the redevelopment of the former Liberty Sports Palace of the Fair, and the reactivation of the former Vigorelli velodrome, recently listed for its architectural value. A no less interesting urban project involved the redevelopment of the outlying area called “New Bovisa”. This transformed the historic industrial district of Bovisa, establishing in an area of over 850,000 m2, a centre devoted to research and innovation on the subjects of sustainable mobility, energy, design, and creating a fertile ecosystem com- 214 SMART MILAN

posed of universities and new industrial settlements. One of the major sponsors of the plan, in fact, under way for years and now at a very advanced stage, was the Politecnico of Milano which, together with the institutions and various private partners, created one of the most innovative projects in terms of town planning ever carried out in Milan. Connected to a transportation system established since the Nineties, the “bypass”, in other words a junction of the suburban railway service of Milan, an outlying industrial district where the former gas meters of the city were located, with the establishment of the university campus, recovered. It then became a catalyst of development, a sort of city of science and the young, where the Departments of Engineering, Energy, Mechanics and Design, technological laboratories such as the university

The Politecnico di Milano at Bovisa (Archivio Politecnico di Milano, Milano) THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 215

“Wind Tunnel” (the largest in Europe) as well as incubators of innovative businesses and spin-offs of the University were located. After over a decade of work, a large project of development and redefinition of a vast area north of the centre of Milan, around the Garibaldi Railway Station, to Porta Nuova and Piazza della Repubblica, was also recently completed. Here, a huge project, besides profoundly modifying the urban fabric, completely redesigned the skyline of Milan, inserting new interesting elements which have already entered the image of the city and the imagination of the Milanese. The heart of this operation was the ex novo creation of a very modern raised circular plaza with a diameter of hundred metres, inaugurated in December 2012 and dedicated to the architect and designer, 216 SMART MILAN

Gae Aulenti. The new plaza, besides housing fountains, bookshops and shops of the large fashion houses, is surrounded by skyscrapers including the “Unicredit Tower” which, designed by the Argentine architect Cesar Pelli, is 230 metres high making it the tallest building in Italy. In addition the Plaza is connected on one side with Corso Como towards Corso Garibaldi, in other words the area par excellence of Milan’s clubs, and on the other side with the “Isola” district which, one time extremely popular and separated from the rest of the city by canals and railway bridges, in recent years has been transformed into a district with a lively night-life, typical clubs and designer ateliers. In the middle, Piazza Gae Aulenti is by day a place of work crowded with employees, financiers and merchants, and by night fills with tourists and Milanese responsive to the atmosphere created by the light and reflections of the glass façades of the modern buildings. In addition, from here one can see the panorama of the skyscrapers and palaces of the Lombardy Region, a business centre inaugurated in 2011, the new Diamante Tower, the old Pirelli Skyscraper and all the palaces of the project called “Porta Nuova”. This last, a real estate ven- ture which also caused resistance among the inhabitants, spread over an area of about 340,000 m2, and for several years was the largest building site in Europe, where thousands of workmen and world famous architects worked, and produced over twenty buildings including skyscrapers, office buildings, cultural centres and residential buildings, in addition to public works of various kinds. Among these works, of particular importance was the “Vertical Forest”, designed by Boeri Studio, a complex of two residential towers with the particular feature of being covered by a thick vegetation of hundreds of trees. Recently this project was awarded the International Highrise Award as the most beautiful skyscraper in the world out of 800 buildings on all the continents. It was also through these large projects that Milan, besides completing the redevelopment processes started during the past decades, was getting up-to-date and ready for the appointment with Expo 2015. The transformations completed during this century, however, did not involve only the town planning and real estate aspects relative to the appearance of the city and its sites. In fact, the changes profoundly concerned also the social fabric of the city, its citizens and their way of living. During the last decades, besides the move beyond the borders of the city in particular by young families, which has already been described, the Milanese population has undergone profound changes, first of which is a progressive average ageing of the citizens. This factor, THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 217 together with others, was reflected obviously first of all on the founding characteristics of the Milanese families, which more and more rarely have more than 3 members, in line with the dropping birth rate in Italy. In fact, more and more single people are living here, both young (less than 35 years of age) of which there are 70,000 in the city, and 170,000 between the ages of 35 and 64, and a growing number of single seniors of which there are currently100,000, therefore a total that exceeds 50% of Milanese families. If we consider that the 3-person family represents less than 13% of the total, with a drastic reduction in the span of three decades, it appears that the family units composed of one or two people represent about 680,000 Milanese families. Relative to the dynamics of the family models, furthermore, the foreign population significantly influences the changes which are happening in the city, since about 120,000 families, in other words triple compared to 10 years ago, are families composed only of immigrants. In addition, the figures show that in Milan people are getting married later and later, on average at 36 years of age for women and 40 years of age for men, and are getting married less since weddings, both civil and religious, have decreased drastically since the Nineties, while divorces have increased by more than 20%. Over 23% of marriages, moreover, involve at least one foreign national spouse. In the meantime, Milan has become an increasingly “multicultural” city, since the quota of residents from other countries in the last decade has grown constantly and significantly. Milan and its province, in fact, and for that matter Lombardy, also because of the attractive high employment, have attracted the greatest concentration of immigrants, reaching 450,000 residents. The “foreign” presence is very strong in the city, where the resident immigrants in 2011 were almost 220,000. Coming in particular from the Philippines, North Africa and the South American countries, this flow of people also generated over time social tension and problems with integration, in particular in certain areas of the city with the highest foreign presence, as for example in the historic Chinatown district, located since the Twenties in the very central area of Via Paolo Sarpi. Moreover, the statistics show how the phenomenon had a strong impact on the city. In fact, at the beginning of the Eighties with a population of over 1.7 million inhabitants, Milan had fully 5% foreigners and around 1990 with a population under 1.5 million the percentages did not change much. But by 2000 the proportion already exceeded 10%, coming close to 20% in 2010. In any case, the social and economic fabric 218 SMART MILAN THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 219

Il Bosco Verticale, “International Highrise Award 2014”, the Unicredit Tower and Piazza Gae Aulenti (photo Paolo Rosselli) 220 SMART MILAN

of the city, apart from sporadic moments of suffering, as had happened during the immigration phases described previously, over time in any case evolved so that it integrated and also welcomed a large number of new Milanese. Moreover, multicultural Milan has progressively made the integration a reality significantly changing the composition of the new generations of Lombard children, given that between 2000 and 2008 children born of at least one foreign parent came to almost 25% of the total in Lombardy. Milan’s capacity to welcome, furthermore, was also confirmed recently when an emergency occurred due to the sudden and intense flow of Syrian refugees, who since October 2013 and in less than one year brought around 50,000 refugees to the city. During that difficult phase, the municipality, the volunteer associations, and the historic city accommodation centres, established a public health and humanitarian aid service, which from the Central Station of Milan, for months a sort of permanent first aid centre, welcomed the refugees fleeing a dramatic conflict and housed them in the city buildings. This last emergency also allows us to observe another aspect historically deeply rooted in Milan, which, albeit with some rhetoric, was summarised by a famous saying, “Milan col coeur en man” (Milan with heart in hand), which recaptured the long tradition cited previously relative to the history of the welfare institutes of the past. This tradition, during the second post-war period, and increasingly in the last decades, contributed above all to transforming the city into a type of Italian health capital. In fact, the Milanese healthcare system, in the context of the Lombard one, represented a central point of the territorial system, with international excellence attracting patients from all over the country. In the province, between public and private organisations, in recent years there were over 60 hospitals with a total of around 15,000 beds. Among these, for example were the centres of excellence famous also abroad, such as the European Oncology Insti- tute (IEO), founded at the beginning of the Nineties by the oncologist, Umberto Veronesi. But, in particular, an original and traditionally highly developed element in Milan was the contribution to the welfare system, in the field of healthcare, social and personal services, provided by organizations of the non-profit sector, and by foundations, cooperatives and non- government organisations. Alongside types of paid labour, through non-profit companies, furthermore, the contribution of the volunteer THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 221 associations was historically fundamental. It was recently estimated that in the city and Province of Milan there are over 45,000 volunteers and around 2,000 associations which each year contribute to the community almost 20 million hours of “unpaid labour”. These types of organization, both secular and religious, have historically been strongly promoted in Milan also by the church. Among these, the Caritas Ambrosiana Foundation stood out, established by the Archbishop’s Curia of the Diocese of Milan during the early Sixties to promote and support initiatives and services of a charitable, welfare and healthcare nature. Organisations such as this, furthermore, drew fundamental inspiration from the work of Cardinal Carlo Maria Mar- tini, Archbishop of the city from the end of the Seventies until 2002. Nicknamed the “Cardinal of Dialogue”, in fact, his strongly humanitarian imprint that led him to serving “minestra” to the homeless in the shelter of Fratel Ettore under the bridge of the Central Station, contributed heavily to establishing a special bond with Milan strengthened during the difficult times that Milan experienced in the past decades. His open approach to the city and the dialogue with the secular world, was highlighted when at the end of the Eighties, Cardinal Martini founded the so-called “chair of non-believers” in other words an opportunity to dialogue directed at all the “thinkers” without any distinction of creed. This humanitarian approach was the stimulus for many successful initiatives which arose in the city, like the so-called “street priests”, in other words the priests involved in organisations in direct contact with the lowliest and the needy. Among these was certainly Don Virgilio Col- megna, very close to Martini, who was from the outlying district of Bovi- sa. After having promoted various cooperatives and accommodation centres for psychiatric patients and minors, Don Virgilio because the Director of Caritas Ambrosiana and, since 2002 President of the “Casa della carità” Foundation, one of the central sites of Milanese welfare. Similar stories were those of Don Antonio Mazzi, founder of the Exodus Community for the rehabilitation of young drug addicts, and of Virginio Rigoldi, called Don Gino. He was from the suburban district of Crescenzago, east of Milan, and in the Seventies he became chaplain of the “Beccaria” Juvenile Criminal Institute. Thanks to his efforts in rehabilitating the young prisoners into social life, during the following years the “New Community” was started and then various housing establishments for the homeless, drug addicts, juveniles in difficulty, young foreigners, etc. 222 SMART MILAN

These initiatives, like many other smaller ones or differently inspired ones, over the years contributed to maintaining and reproducing the connective social fabric of the Milanese community. As proof of their strong tie with the city, besides having received awards of various kinds, towards the end of 2014 Don Gino and Don Virginio, together with Don Luigi Ciotti, one of the founders of the Italian League in the Fight against Aids and the “Libera” Association, active in the fight against the Mafia, received the Honoris Causa Degree from the University of Milan. The original and innovative initiatives in the welfare field, intended in the broader sense which is specific to Milan and which traditionally includes assistance, healthcare, education, labour, and so forth, were certainly not only private or religious. In this sense, in the early part of the new century, a new institution arose in the city which represented a model of civic welfare aimed at promoting the social inclusion and cohesion of the community. The Fondazione Welfare Ambrosiano-FWA (Ambrosiano Welfare Foundation), in fact brought together in an original partnership, both public and private, the Municipality, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Milanese Trade Unions of CGIL, CISL and UIL, with the cooperation of the principal banks of the territory and dozens of volunteers, united to provide support to poor segments of citizens, through the micro- credit tool, both “social” and aimed at promoting new businesses. This original institute, above all, contributed to financing medical expenses, debts and the temporary financial problems of Italian and foreign citizens living in the Milan area, also opening paths of financial education and legitimacy. In addition, through the micro-credit tool, the Founda- tion contributed to assimilating into the workforce fragile individuals often on the margins of society. The first of these interventions, symbolically, allowed a young “Latin” man to buy a moped to start a Pony Express business. One of the most vital sectors of these years, which benefited from the transformation of the fabric of the city and drove its vitality, was certainly that of culture, research, education and science. In this field, along with the historic institutions, during the second post-war period, others had been added as for example the Museum of Science and Technology, named for “Leonardo Da Vinci” which, founded in 1953, over the decades became established as a promoter of culture internationally, visited by almost 450,000 people per year. Recently, an unusual event took place which has become historic for Milan, in other words the transfer of the “Enrico Toti” submarine. It THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 223 was the first submarine built in Italy after the Second World War, a high technology product which, after the disarmament , it was decided should be exhibited in the famous Milan museum. The dimensions of the vessel, almost 50 metres, and its weight, 340 tons, however, made the undertaking truly exceptional. Having left Sicily by sea and reaching Cremona, it had to then be brought over land, and through the streets of the city centre, during one week of travel in August 2005, while many Milanese from their holiday places were watching the operations with amusement. The area of education and research demonstrated that it had reached a high level a high progress thanks to the high specialisation accumulated over time by the Milanese establishments, and the historic vocation for welcoming and emphasizing the abilities of the talents summoned by the city. Working Milan, capital of business, fashion and design, in fact, increasingly confirmed that it was also a significant place for the sector of knowledge and research: a veritable “university city”. Here, among the prestigious universities and centres of higher education in widely diverse fields, from fine arts to technology, from design to music, there were now twelve universities, which welcomed almost 200,000 students a year, an increasing number of which came from abroad. This progressively raised the city in the rankings of best university centres of the world. The historic city establishments, over the most recent decades, received a strong push towards development. Starting from the end of the Eighties, for example, the Politecnico became a multi-centre organisation to meet the needs and specialisations of the Lombard manufacturing territory. So university campuses were opened in Como, Lecco, Cremona, Mantua and Piacenza, in addition to courses abroad, as for example in Shanghai. In addition to the historic location of “study city”, moreover, from the end of the Nineties, as already stated, the Politec- nico moved some of its best organisations to the Bovisa district within the framework of the post-industrial redevelopment. During the same period, the State University also expanded its organisation by opening sites located around Lombardy, and created other universities such as the University of the Insubria, in Como and Varese, and the University of Milano Bicocca. This last, started as an offshoot of the State University, and with an independent statute, was located in the Bicocca area, in the large redeveloped district where in the past Pirelli and the major Milanese factories had been based. After a few years of work, the Bicocca University was completed in 1997 and 224 SMART MILAN

in subsequent years expanded becoming one of the major Milanese education centres. The Bocconi University, over time established as one of the leading business schools in the world, also underwent considerable development. In 2008, it inaugurated, with the President of the Republic and the President of the European Commission in attendance, a new majestic building, designed by Grafton Architects, honoured for its style and which has become one of the symbolic elements of the university and the city. In addition to the traditional offerings since 1968 it added the Free University of Languages and Communication (IULM) which, with its large “communication campus”, was the first institution in Italy to specifically handle both business and public communication. More recently, the educational offering of the city was impressively expanded in medical, biomedical, and biotechnological fields, where, alongside the traditional faculties of the State University there were also those of Bicocca, since 1996 the San Raffaele Life and Health University, connected to the

Erasmus Day 2014 (photo E.S.N. Politecnico di Milano) THE CAPITAL OF INNOVATION 225 hospital created in 1970 and since 2014 the Humanitas University, also connected to a prestigious private clinic in the Milan area, all with a strong connection between academic, research and clinical activity, and an explicit international vocation. In the field of the arts, in addition to the Conservatory named for Giuseppe Verdi, the Academy of Brera, and the Civic Schools of Music. Theatre and Cinema, various very famous institutes were based in Milan such as the European Design Institute (IED), the Domus Academy, and the New Academy of Fine Arts (NABA), with specific attention on education in art, design and fashion, and recently part of a circuit which has favoured its international development. Despite this deep-seated presence of institutions and educational offering distributed over all sectors, besides those traditionally strong in the territory, and a presence of students and researchers which forms a significant part of the city social fabric, it is the widespread opinion that Milan has not managed to cultivate an awareness of itself as a “university city” as many much smaller centres in Italy as well have done. In recent years, also pushed by the very institutions of the sector, increasingly convinced of the need for mutual coordination and cooperation, and institutions such as the Municipality, the Chamber of Commerce and more in general the city ruling classes, have set initiatives for themselves in this regard also to rein- force a common strategy of development of the sector. Milan, moreover, is already a type of open air campus in which, among other things, the education offered in all the sectors, from figurative arts to music, from science to humanities, especially at certain times of the years, such as during the many summer schools, brings an increasing number of young people from all nations, interested and attracted also by the social aspects of the city. The trend in international attendance, in fact, precisely during the most recent years has certainly intensified and, if at the beginning of the twenty first-century the percent- 226 SMART MILAN

age of foreigners in the Milanese universities was less than 3%, in 2008 the figure had risen to 6%, and during the last academic year it had more than tripled. As proof of this panorama, moreover, in 2014 Milan was at the top of the Italian rankings for university hospitality and was listed as “Euro- pean Capital of Erasmus”. In addition to its role as an advanced city in the fields which, one by one, we have discussed, basically this last sector, when considering the history of Milan, perhaps represents the most original and unique aspect: that of welcoming everyone and, through commitment and work, like a true smart city, creating for them conditions to express their innovative talent here, or elsewhere. 227

Acknowledgements

In the process of completing this work I have amassed many debts of gratitude. First of all, I wish to thank the Politecnico di Milano, in the person of the Rector Giovanni Azzone, and the Fondazione Politecnico di Milano, in the persons of the President, Giampio Bracchi, and the Director, Eugenio Gatti. Heartfelt thanks to Maria Luisa Sangiorgio, for her support and advice. This book has also drawn inspiration from my work in the Municipality of Milan. I therefore wish to thank the Department of Labour Policies, Economic Development, University and Research, Smart City, Fashion and Design, Cristina Tajani, Fiorella Imprenti, Luca Stanzione, Renato Galliano, Caterina Sarfatti, Salvatore Caschetto, Chiara Daneo, Lucia Scopelliti, Emanuele Polizzi; in the Terri- torial Trade and Marketing Department, Franco D’Alfonso; the Depart- ment of Social Policies Pierfrancesco Majorino, and Cosimo Palazzo. In addition, I wish to thank GianLuca Vago, Rector of the University of Milan; Debora Migliucci and Eleonora Cortese of the Archivio del Lavoro, Sesto San Giovanni, Milano; Mauro Maffeis, Nadia Piccirillo and Giuseppina Simmi, of the Civico Archivio Fotografico, Milano; Andrea Lovati of the Archivio Storico Fondazione Fiera Milano; Claudio Colom- bo of the Archivio Storico Societa Umanitaria, Milano; Cinzia Gelati of MM SpA, Milano; Marianna Gentile of the ESN, Politecnico di Milano; Loredana Sandullo of the Fondazione Politecnico di Milano. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Introduction Aa.vv., Milano, nodo della rete globale, Milano, 2005. Comune di Milano, Linee guida. Milano smart city, Milano 2014 (http://www.milanosmartcity.org/joomla/milanosmart/). Comune di Milano- Triennale di Milano, Brand Milano, Milano, 2014. Comune di Milano, Milano Sharing City. Verso un’economia della condivisione regolata e inclusiva, Milano, 2014 (http://www.milanosmartcity.org/joomla/sharing-economy/). R. Gifﬁnger, C Fertner, H. Kramar, R. Kalasek, N. Pichler Milanovic, E. Meijers, Smart city. Ranking of European medium sized cities, Cen- tre of Regional Science of Vienna, 2007. E. Glaeser, Triumph of the City, Penguin, New York, 2011. C. Landry, The creative city. A toolkit for urban innovators, London, 2000. M. Magatti, L. Gherardi, The City of Flows. Territories, agencies and institutions, Milano, 2010. Sharexpo, Milano città condivisa per Expo 2015. Documento di indirizzo, Milano 2014 (http://www.sharexpo.it/) http://www.smartcityitalia.com/

Prologue Aa.vv., La costruzione della Milano moderna, Milano, 1983. Aa.vv., Il Politecnico di Milano. una scuola nella formazione della società italiana, Milano, 1981 Aa.vv., Il Politecnico di Milano nella storia italiana (1914-1963), Milano- Bari, vol. II. Aa.vv., Il Politecnico di Milano. 1863-1914, Milano, 1981. Aa.vv., Storia dell’industria elettrica in Italia. 1. le origini 1882-1914, Bari, 1992. Aa.vv., Il Politecnico di Milano e la formazione delle classi dirigenti nazi- onali e locali, Milano, 2013. 230 SMART MILAN

L. Aimone, C. Olmo, Le esposizioni universali, 1851-1900. Il progresso in scena, Torino 1990. Historical Dictionary of World’s fairs and expositions, 1851-1988, ed. J.E. Findling, Greenwood Press, New York,1990. A. Baculo, S. Gallo, M. Mangone (a cura di), Le grandi esposizioni nel mondo, 1851-1900. Dall’ediﬁcio città alla città di ediﬁci. Dal Crystal Palace alla White city, Napoli, 1988. G. Fiocca, Borghesi e imprenditori a Milano dall’Unità alla prima guerra mondiale, Roma- Bari, 1984. I. Barzaghi, Tanto lusso e tanta folla: rappresentazione della modernità e modernizzazione popolare, Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana, 2009. C. Carozzi- R. Rozzi, Suolo urbano e popolazione, Milano 1980. V. Castronovo, Grandi e piccoli borghesi. La via italiana al capitalismo, Roma- Bari, 1988. E. Decleva, Milano industriale fra mito e realtà: le esposizioni 1871-1906, in “Museo-scienza”, 3, 1982, pp. 21-32. E. Decleva, L’Esposizione del 1881 e le origini del mito di Milano, in S. Pizzetti (a cura di), Dallo Stato di Milano alla Lombardia contemporanea, Milano 1980, pp. 181-211. F. Della Peruta, Milano. Lavoro e fabbrica 1814- 1915, Milano, 1987. F. FAVA, Milano 1906. Il crogiolo del futuro, in “La Martinella”, 19, 1986, p. 6. V. Hunecke, Classe operaia e rivoluzione industriale a Milano 1859-1892, Bologna, 1982. G. Lacaita, Giuseppe Colombo. Industria e politica nella storia d’Italia. Scritti scelti: 1861-1916, Milano Bari, 1985. C. Lacaita, L’intelligenza produttiva. Imprenditori, tecnici ed operai nella Scuola d’incoraggiamento d’arti e mestieri di Milano (1839- 1988), Milano 1990. Milano industriale e l’Esposizione del 1881, in L’Italia industriale nel 1881: conferenze sulla Esposizione Nazionale di Milano, Banca del Monte di Milano, Milano 1984, p. XXIX. F. Misiano, L’Esposizione del Sempione 1906. Milano in vetrina, in “Di- acronie”, 2, 2014. I. Piazzoni, Milano e le esposizioni universali (1860 – 1900), in E. Decleva, C. G. Lacaita, A. Ventura (a cura di), Innovazione e modernizzazione in Italia fra Otto e Novecento, Franco Angeli, Milano 1995, pp. 529-577. BIBLIOGRAPHY 231

M. Picone Petrusa, M.R. Pessolano, A. Bianco (a cura di), Le grandi esposizioni in Italia, 1861-1911. La competizione culturale con l’Europa a la ricerca dello stile nazionale, Napoli 1988. A. Pirelli, La Pirelli. Vita di un’azienda industriale, Milano, 1946. R. Romano, Le esposizioni industriali italiane: linee di metodologia inter- pretativa, in “Storia e Società”, 7, 1980, pp. 216-228. G. Rosa, Il mito della capitale morale, Milano, 1982. V. Spinazzola, La “capitale morale”. Cultura milanese e mitologia ur- bana, in “Belfagor”, maggio 1981, pp. 317- 327. A. Teruggia, Relazione generale dell’Esposizione di Milano del 1881, Milano, 1883.

Chapter 1 Aa.Vv., Architettura Liberty a Milano. Catalogo della mostra, Milano, 1973. Aa.vv., Avanguardia e neoavanguardia, Milano, 1966. Amministrazione delle istituzioni pubbliche di assistenza e beneﬁcenza (II.PP.A.B.) ex Eca di Milano (a cura di), Milano con i poveri. Dalla Con- gregazione di carità ad oggi, Rimini, 1990. G. Arfè, Storia dell’Avanti!. 1896- 1940, Milano, 1956. G. Ballo, Boccioni, Milano, 1964. L. Barile, Il Secolo, Milano, 1980. M. Bascapè, P.M. Galimberti, S. Rebora (a cura di), Il tesoro dei poveri. Il patrimonio artistico delle Istituzioni pubbliche di assistenza e beneﬁ- cenza (ex Eca) di Milano, Milano, 2001. G. Bellini, La biblioteca comunale di Milano. Palazzo Sormani, Milano, 1961. D. Bigazzi, Il Portello. Operai, tecnici e imprenditori all’Alfa Romeo (1906- 1926), Milano, 1988. C. Boito, Il Duomo di Milano e i disegni della sua facciata, Milano, 1889. M. Bonaccini- R. Casero, La Camera del lavoro di Milano dalle origini al 1906, Milano, 1975. M. Boriani- C. Morandi- A. Rossari, Milano contemporanea. Itinerari di architettura e urbanistica, Milano, 1986. 232 SMART MILAN

G. Brera, Storia critica del calcio italiano, Milano, 1979. E. Bressan, Carità e riforme sociali nella Lombardia moderna e contemporanea. Storia e problemi, Milano, 1998. S. Briosi, Marinetti, Firenze, 1969. M. Casalini, Le istituzioni culturali di Milano, Milano, 1937. V. Castronovo, La stampa italiana dall’unità a fascismo, Bari, 1970. Collegio degli ingegneri e degli architetti, Milano tecnica dal 1859 al 1884, Milano, 1885. M.C. Cristofoli- M. Pozzobon, I tessili milanesi. Le fabbriche, gli industriali, i lavoratori, il sindacato, dall’Ottocento agli anni trenta, Milano, 1981. M. De Micheli, Le avanguardie artistiche del Novecento, Milano, 1966. F. Della Peruta, Milano. Lavoro e fabbrica 1814- 1915, Milano, 1987. A. Ghirelli, Storia del calcio in Italia, Torino, 1972. A. Gigli Marchetti, I tre anelli. Mutualità, resistenza, cooperazione dei tipograﬁ milanesi (1860-1925), Milano, 1983. M. Giordano, La stampa illustrata in Italia, Milano, 1983. M. Granata, La Congregazione di carità come impresa pubblica di assistenza nel governo economico municipale (1914-1923), in “Storia in Lombardia”, N. 1, 2004. M. Grandi- A. Pracchi, Milano. Guida all’architettura moderna, Bologna, 1980. V. Hunecke, Classe operaia e rivoluzione industriale a Milano. 1859- 1892, Bologna, 1982. G. Licata, Storia del Corriere della sera, Milano, 1978. A. Lorenzi, C’era una volta lo sport, Milano 1975. G. Mariani, Storia della scapigliatura, Roma, 1971. M. W. Martin, Futurist Art and Theory, Oxford, 1968. A. Martinucci, Il diritto di leggere. Il comune di Milano e la pubblica let- tura dal 1861 a oggi, Milano 1981. P. Mezzanotte- G. Bascapè, Milano nell’arte e nella storia, Milano, 1948. G. Paletta- G. Perego, Organizzazione operaia e innovazioni tecno- logiche. La lega gasisti di Milano, in “Annali della Fondazione G. Fel- trinelli”, Milano, 1982. A. Paredi, Storia dell’Ambrosiana, Milano, 1981. BIBLIOGRAPHY 233

L. Patetta, l’architettura dell’ecclettismo, Milano, 1975. F. Reggiori, Milano 1880-1943, Milano, 1947. D. Riva, Le arti tra ﬁne ottocento e primo novecento, in F. Della Peruta (a cura di), Storia illustrata di Milano, II, Milano, 1997, pp. 421- 440. L. Sabbatini, Notizie sulle condizioni industriali della provincia di Milano, Milano, 1893. Società Umanitaria – Ufﬁcio del lavoro, Le condizioni generali della classe operaia in Milano, Milano, 1907. E. Sanguineti, Tra Liberty e crepuscolarismo, Milano, 1961. A. Scotti, Brera 1776- 1815. Nascita e sviluppo di una istituzione culturale milanese, Firenze, 1979. R. Tessari, La Scapigliatura. Un’avanguardia artistica nella società prein- dustriale, Torino, 1975.

Chapter 2 Aa.Vv., Annali di storia delle università italiane, 12, Bologna, 2008. Aa. Vv., Milano fra guerra e dopoguerra, Bari, 1989. T. Biagiotti, Storia della università Bocconi, Milano, 1952. G. Bonacina, Obiettivo: Italia. I bombardamenti aerei delle città italiane dal 1940 al 1945, Milano, 1970 M. Cattini, E. Decleva, A. De Maddalena, M.A. Romani (a cura di), Storia di una libera università, Milano, 1992. G. Cosmacini, Gemelli il Macchiavelli di Dio, Milano, 1985. F. W. Deakin, Storia della Repubblica di Salò, Bari, 1963. M. Dezzi Bardeschi, Milano 1918-1940: il progetto del nuovo e l’eredità della storia, in G. Rumi, V. Vercelloni, A Cova (a cura di), Milano durante il fascismo 1922-1945, Milano 1994, pp. 217-252. Fondazione Fiera Milano, La ﬁera di Milano. Lavoro e società nei mani- festi storici 1920-1990, Milano, 2011 L. Ganapini, Una città, la guerra (Milano 1939- 1951), Milano, 1988. Istituto milanese per la storia della resistenza e del movimento operaio, Milano nella resistenza. Bibliograﬁa e cronologia, marzo 1943- maggio 1945, Milano, 1975. L. Lenti, Gli ottant’anni della Bocconi, “Quaderni di nuova antologia”, XXI, 1984. 234 SMART MILAN

A. Malgeri, L’occupazione di Milano e la liberazione, Milano, 1947. F. Ogliari- R. Tammaro, La ﬁera di Milano, Milano, 2008. F. Olgiati, L’Università cattolica del Sacro cuore, vol. I, Milano 1955. P.L. Porta, La cultura economica, in G. Rumi, V. Vercelloni, A Cova A cura di), Milano durante il fascismo 1922-1945, Milano 1994, pp. 429- 446. Università degli studi di Milano, Universitas studiorum mediolanensis 1924- 1994, Milano, 1994. V. Vercelloni, Storia della città e storia dell’idea di città, in G. Rumi, V. Vercelloni, A Cova (a cura di), Milano durante il fascismo 1922-1945, Milano 1994, pp. 181- 216. S. Zaninelli, Una “scienza del lavoro” a Milano: il laboratorio di psicotec- nica dell’Università cattolica negli anni Trenta, in G. Rumi, V. Vercel- loni, A Cova (a cura di), Milano durante il fascismo 1922-1945, Milano 1994, pp. 413- 427.

Chapter 3 Aa.Vv., I milanesi alla Costituente, Milano, 1988. F. Alasia- F. Montaldi, Milano. Corea. Inchiesta sugli immigrati, Milano, 1960. Banca popolare di Milano, La nuova fascia industriale, Milano, 1962. M. G. Bascapè- M. Canella- S. Rebora (a cura di), Luce su luce. L’impegno della solidarietà dalla carità alla scienza. L’istituto dei ciechi di Mi- lano, Milano, 2003. E. Bressan, Carità e riforme sociali nella Lombardia moderna e contemporanea. Storia e problemi, Milano, 1998. E. Bressan, Lo stato sociale a Milano negli anni sessanta, in C.G. Lacaita- M. Punzo (a cura di), Milano, anni sessanta, Manduria, 2008, pp. 287- 304. R. Cairoli, Politiche di welfare. Udi e Cif a Milano negli anni del centro sinistra, in C.G. Lacaita. G. Dorale, Il disegno industriale e la sua estetica, Bologna, 1963. J. Foot, Milano dopo il miracolo. Biograﬁa di una città, Milano, 2001. M. Granata, Municipio e mercato. La Centrale del latte a Milano, Milano, 2005. M. Granata, Roberto Tremelloni. Riformismo e sviluppo economico, Soveria Mannelli, 2010. BIBLIOGRAPHY 235

M. Granata, Politiche e imprese assistenziali nel dopoguerra: Ezio Vig- orelli e l’ente comunale di assistenza di Milano (1945- 1957), in “Bol- lettino per la storia del movimento sociale cattolico in Italia”, 2, 2003, pp. 166- 216. A. Grassi- A. Pansera, L’atlante del design italiano, Milano, 1979. V. Gregotti, Il disegno del prodotto industriale, Milano, 1982. T. Maldonado, La speranza progettuale, Torino, 1971. D. Marchesoni (a cura di), La triennale di Milano e il Palazzo dell’arte, Milano, 1985. A. Pansera, Storia e cronaca della triennale, Milano, 1978. C. Pavese, Un Fiume di Luce. Cento anni di storia della Aem, Milano, 2011. G. Petrillo, La capitale del miracolo, Milano, 1992. I. Pietra, Aldo Aniasi, proposte per cambiare, Milano, 1976. M. Punzo (a cura di), Milano, anni sessanta, Manduria, 2008, pp. 607- 633. G. Rumi, Parole introduttive, in M. G. Bascapè- S. Rebora (a cura di), Il tesoro dei poveri, Milano, 2001. E. Vigorelli, L’offensiva contro la miseria. Idee e esperienze per un piano di sicurezza sociale, Milano ,1948.

Chapter 4 Aa.vv., Milano, nodo della rete globale, Milano, 2005. Aa.vv., La Grande Milano. The greater Milan, Milano, 2009. Aa.vv., L’alchimia del lavoro. I generosi che primi in Milano fecondarono le arti e le scienze, Milano, 2008. Aa.vv., Globus et locus. Dieci anni di idee e pratiche. 1998- 2008, Milano, 2008. G. Amadasi_ S. Salvemini, La città creativa. Una nuova geograﬁa di Mi- lano, EGEA, Milano, 2005. M. Andreoli, Andavamo in piazza Duomo, Milano, 1993. A. Balducci, F. Cognetti, V. Fedeli (a cura di), Milano, la città degli studi. Storia, geograﬁa e politiche delle università milanesi, Milano, 2010. G. Bocca, Metropolis, Milano, 1993. 236 SMART MILAN

V. Castronovo, Storia economica d’Italia, Torino, 1995. P. Colombo (a cura di), Arteﬁci di bellezza. Mestieri d’arte nella moda italiana, Venezia, 2013. Comune di Milano, Le imprese multinazionali nell’area metropolitana milanese, Milano, 2007. Comune di Milano, Miss. Milan International Study Survey, Milano, 2010. Comune di Milano, Piano di sviluppo del welfare della città di Milano 2012- 2014 (https://www.comune.milano.it//) M. Emanuelli, Accadde a Milano. notizie, personaggi e sindaci dal dopoguerra ad oggi, 1945- 2002, Milano 2002. A. Fiorentini Capitani, Moda italiana anni cinquanta e sessanta, Firenze, 1991. S. Gnoli, Un secolo di moda italiana, Roma, 2005. F. Oliva, L’Urbanistica di Milano, Milano, 2002. F. Ogliari- R. Tammaro, La ﬁera di Milano, Milano, 2008. G. Pansa, L’anno dei barbari, Milano, 1993. W. Passerini (a cura di), La città del lavoro. Mestieri e professioni a Mi- lano tra memoria e futuro, Milano, 2007. P. Pillitteri, Cultura a Milano: cinque anni di idee, progetti, realizzazioni, Milano, 1991 Provincia di Milano, Gli anni dell’incertezza, Milano, 2012. M. Sernini, Milano. Una forma di città, Soveria Mannelli, 1997. C. Stajano, Il disordine, Torino, 1993. P.J. Taylor, World City Network, London, 2004.