Ernesto Nathan Rogers

Ernesto N. Rogers (born March 16, 1909 in Trieste , Austria-Hungary , † November 7, 1969 in Gardone Riviera ) was an Italian architect and architectural theorist.

Life

Varese. Villa designed by architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers (Photographer: Paolo Monti )

Ernesto Nathan Rogers was born in 1909 in the then Austrian city of Trieste. His father came from England , his mother from a Jewish-Italian family from Trieste. In 1921 his parents moved with him to Milan , where he attended the Liceo Classico Parini . It was there that he met his future office partners Gian Luigi Banfi and Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso. After graduating from high school, Rogers began studying architecture in 1927 , and in 1932 he graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at the Polytechnic University of Milan .

In the same year, he and three of his former fellow students founded the BBPR architectural association - consisting of Gian Luigi Banfi , Lodovico Barbiano di Belgiojoso , Enrico Peressutti and himself. BBPR accompanied Roger's work as an architect for over thirty years. In addition to the partially public-intensive projects of the group of architects, Ernesto Nathan Rogers was also involved in a more rational architectural theoretical debate and wrote from 1932 to 1936 for the magazines La Fiera Letteraria and Quadrante, among others . Due to anti-Jewish laws in then fascist Italy , Rogers fled to Switzerland in 1939 , where he stayed until the end of the war. In the 1940s he taught first at the Campo Universitario Italiano in Lausanne , then also at the Haute École d'Architecture in Geneva .

After his return to Milan, in addition to his resumed professional activity at BBPR, he again took on an active role in the architectural theoretical discussion and the cultural and building-political new beginning of the post-war years. From 1946 to 1947 he was head of the magazine " Domus " and from 1953 to 1965 editor of " Casabella ". Also in 1947 he became a member of the CIAM ( International Congresses of Modern Architecture ) and had contacts with like-minded representatives of modernism , including Walter Gropius , Le Corbusier , Alvar Aalto and Sven Markelius . With Gropius in particular, he shares an interest in the educational role for architects. He remained a member of the CIAM until its dissolution in 1959.

One of his main writings on architectural theory is the contribution "Le preesistenze ambientali", in which Rogers pleads for a recourse to the history and context of a place. For him, they form an important basis for contemporary building. Roger's critical attitude towards an international style that is developed independently of these parameters was a decisive impetus for the architectural debate in Italy and in particular for the CIAM congress in Otterlo in 1959. The "Torre Velasca" high-rise residential and office building, reminiscent of a medieval defense tower The center of Milan, which Ernesto Nathan Rogers presented in 1959 during the last CIAM congress in Otterlo, is regarded as an exemplary implementation of the "preesistenze ambientali" that he called for.

In 1952 Rogers was given a teaching position, and in 1962 a professorship at the Milan Polytechnic . During this time, Rogers also held visiting professorships at the Architectural Association in London and Harvard University in the United States. He stayed at the Milan Polytechnic until the end of his life in 1969.

Life's work

Roger's most lasting influence was his leading role, which he played in Italy's transition from rationalism (Razionalismo) to post-war modernism and a general acceptance of the same, and still plays today. His intellectual impulses were far more decisive here than his structures and designs determined by the structure . The architects Aldo Rossi , Vittorio Gregotti and Giancarlo De Carlo were among the students of Rogers . The well-known English high-tech architect and city planner Richard Rogers is one of his second nephews .

The catchphrase used for the first time by the Swiss architect and designer Max Bill - in his design claim to think and design holistically - to shape the world according to specific specifications “from the spoon to the city” became a catchphrase in Italy thanks to Ernesto N. Rogers and shaped a whole generation of architects and designers. Max Bill's “ from the spoon to the city ” ( dal cucchiaio alla città ) is still as fundamental to the Italian design language as Mies van der Rohe's “ less is more ” is to the German one.

Buildings and projects

together with Banfi, di Belgiojoso and Peressutti

• 1936–1937: Master plans for the Aosta Valley and Milan
• 1946: Memorial to the Italian concentration camp victims in Germany (Monumento ai caduti) on the Cimitero Monumentale , Milan
• 1956–1963: Restoration and furnishing of the Castello Sforzesco Museum , Milan
• 1956–1958: New construction of the Velasca Tower ( Torre Velasca ), Milan

Quotes

“Anyone who tackles a creative problem today has to fit their own thinking into objective reality (...), which is why they will not draw a building in Milan like the one they would have designed for Brazil, even more so, in every street of In Milan he will try to design a building that matches the surrounding motifs. "

"Erecting a building in an environment that is already characterized by the works of other artists imposes the obligation to respect these presences in the sense that one brings in one's own energy as new nourishment to continue its vitality."

Ernesto Nathan Rogers: Le preesistenze ambientali. 1955

Publications

• Auguste Perret , Il Balcone, Milan, 1955
• Architettura, misura e grandezza dell'uomo: scritti , volumes 1 and 2, Il Poligrafo, Padua, 1956
• Esperienza dell'architettura , Einaudi , Turin, 1958
• L'Utopia della realtà; un esperimento didattico sulla tipologia della scuola primaria , Leonardo da Vinci, Bari, 1965
• Pier Luigi Nervi - Buildings and Projects , Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, 1967
• Editoriali di Architettura , Einaudi, Turin, 1968
• Il senso della storia, continuità e discontinuità , Unicopli, 1999
• Gli elementi del fenomeno architettonico , Marinotti, Milan, 2006

Awards

• Compasso d'Oro , 1955 and 1962

literature

• Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani , Architectural Theory 20th Century: Positions, Programs, Manifestos , Hatje Cantz Verlag , Ostfildern, 2004
• Eugenia López Reus, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Continuità e contemporaneità , Martinotti, 2009

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Serena Mafioletti (Ed.): BBPR; Bologna: Zanichelli Editore 1994, p. 236
2. ^ Italian magazine Domus is 80 , BauNetz , February 14, 2008
3. ↑ Casabella Continuita No. 204, February-March 1955
4. ^ Jürgen Joedicke (Ed.): CIAM Congress in Otterlo; Stuttgart: Karl Krämer Verlag 1961
5. ^ Ernesto N. Rogers , Emanuela Zandonai Editore Srl, Rovereto (Italian)
6. ^ Ernesto N. Rogers in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Italian)
7. ↑ Max Bill : "The whole world, from the spoon to the city, must be brought into line with social needs." From Die gute Form , exhibition catalog, Swiss Werkbund , 1949
8. ↑ Monumento ai caduti nei campi nazisti ( Memento of the original from April 18, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Cimitero Monumentale Milan 
9. ↑ quoted in: Fritz Neumeyer (Ed.): Source texts for the theory of architecture. Munich: Prestel Verlag 2002, p. 473
10. ↑ The modern architecture after the generation of the great masters from Architettura, misura e grandezza dell'uomo

Web links

Commons : Ernesto Nathan Rogers  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Ernesto Nathan Rogers in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ernesto Nathan Rogers. In: arch INFORM .
• Ernesto Nathan Rogers. In: Structurae