BBPR

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Plaque in front of the Monastery of San Simpliciano, the BBPR office in Milan

BBPR was an Italian group of architects founded in 1932. The name was formed from the initials of its founding members:

Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti and Rogers were graduates of the Polytechnic in Milan and are among the most important representatives of Italian rationalism of the 1930s. BBPR is considered to be one of the first architects' offices to act as a collective and to prioritize joint creative work over emphasis on individual contributions.

Important plans and buildings

Important early works by the group of architects are:

  • Piano regolatore di Pavia (roughly: land use plan), 1932
  • Piano regolatore della Valle d'Aosta , 1936–1937
  • Sanatorium in Legnano , 1937–1938
  • Piano turistico dell ' Isola d'Elba (tourism concept), 1939
  • Restoration and reconstruction of the San Simpliciano monastery in Milan, 1939–1940
  • Post office building (Palazzo delle poste) in Viale Beethoven in EUR , Rome, 1939–1941
  • Housing estate in Via Alcuino in Milan, 1945

The turmoil of the Second World War forced Rogers to flee to Switzerland. Banfi and di Belgiojoso worked in the resistance and were sent to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, where Banfi died shortly before the end of the war on April 10, 1945.

Rogers became one of the most important theorists and architecture journalists in Italy in the post-war period. He had already published articles for the magazine Quadrante in the 1930s before he worked as publisher and editor for the renowned architecture magazine domus from 1946–47 . In the period of the 1950s, which was important for the further development of Italy, Rogers finally took over as editor-in-chief of the internationally renowned architecture magazine Casabella-Continuità (1953–1964). With numerous publications he campaigned for the moderate rationalism implemented by BBPR, which elevates the “preesistenze ambientali”, the historical and contextual references of a place, to the basis of contemporary building.

After the war, Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso in particular devoted himself to the design of memorial sites in memory of the experiences in the concentration camp and of his comrade Banfi who died there. Outstanding works are:

In addition, the following important projects of BBPR in the post-war period include:

Torre Velasca residential and office building in Milan, 1954–1958

After 1969, BBPR barely succeeded in realizing projects that were recognized beyond the national borders; rather, the office community was shaken by the death of the only sixty-year-old Ernesto Nathan Rogers on November 7, 1969.

The Torre Velasca residential and office building in the center of Milan became one of the most important works of the BBPR group (1958). This high-rise, the silhouette of which is reminiscent of a medieval defense tower, was presented and heatedly discussed by Ernesto Nathan Rogers at the CIAM XI Congress in Otterlo in 1959 . The architectural language of the Torre Velasca, which was derived entirely in the spirit of BBPR from the urban context and the history of the location, was sharply criticized in particular by the advocates of dogmatic modernism such as Reyner Banham and Jacob Bakema .

As an outstanding architect, Di Belgiojoso was also a member of the Royal Society of Arts , London, and the American Institute of Architects .

literature

  • Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso: Notte, Nebbia - Racconto di Gusen. Ugo Guanda, Milan 1996, ISBN 88-7746-936-6 .
  • Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso: Frammenti di una vita. Archinto, Milan 1999.
  • Teo Ducci: Opere di architetti italiani - In Memoria della deportazione. Edizioni Gabriele Mazzotta, Milan 1997, ISBN 88-202-1224-2 .
  • Eckhard Leuschner: 'Man' as a theme in art and architecture in the interwar period: Schlemmer, Le Corbusier, Melotti and BBPR In: Eckhard Leuschner (Ed.): Figura Umana. Standard concepts of human representation in Italian art 1919-1939. Michael Imhof Verlag, Petersberg 2012, pp. 213–246, ISBN 978-3865687777 .
  • Serena Maffioletti (Ed.): BBPR. Zanichelli Editore, Bologna 1994.
  • Ibio Paolucci: Salvato dalla cultura dopo l'inferno del lager. In: Triangolo Rosso - Giornale a cura dell´Associazione nazionale ex deportati politici, No. 1, January 2000, pp. 44–45.

Web links

Commons : Studio BBPR  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Stefano Guidarini and Luca Molinari: The BBPR studio and Milan. OrdineArchitetti.mi.it (accessed August 1, 2016).
  2. ^ Project Torre Valesca ( Memento from November 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). HousingPrototype.org, accessed January 27, 2015.