040 Milan

In Meditazioni sulla felicità (“Meditations on Happiness”), published in Milan in 1763, Pietro Verri writes, “A wise man’s happiness begins from within and then extends to the objects he creates,” and continues by saying,  “The happiness of each of us is achieved in public happiness.”

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I have always felt that this thought was particularly relevant to our profession. Along with Pietro Verri, we can say that our objective is public happiness. The culture of a number of early-20 th -century Milanese architects is rooted in that very period of history. From the start and over time, that culture grew far beyond every type of functionalism so in vogue in European architectural circles at the time. 

Have you ever wondered why it is impossible to consider the work of Franco Albini or Giuseppe Pagano functionalist? What is the additional element in their forms? What is the aim of their forms? Franco Albini, my first maestro, taught us to apply the identity of each thing in a simple form, to allow each thing to be what it is. 

Not only Albini, but also other Milanese architects in that period adhered to this commitment to knowing the nature of each thing, and they went beyond all forms of functionalism. Ignazio Gardella had a strong attachment to Milan. He claimed it was in his blood. He breathed its air, he said, and therefore it was part of him. That’s a very special way to speak of a city: a relation linked to sensations, an instinctive relation that turns into a feeling of belonging. 

In Milan, Gardella found what he needed to be an architect – not so much in forms, which he took from elsewhere, but in the way he approached the relation with reality. Among other things, Gardella built three beautiful apartment buildings. The “Casa al Parco” in Milan (1948), the tenement for Borsalino workers in Alessandria, in the Piedmont region (1949-56), and the complex on Via Marchiondi in Milan.