Giuseppe Terragni

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Giuseppe Terragni (born April 18, 1904 in Meda , Italy , † July 19, 1943 in Como , Italy) was an Italian architect and is one of the most important exponents of Italian rationalism .

biography

Former Casa del Fascio in Como

Giuseppe Ercole Enea Terragni was born as the youngest of four sons of the building contractor Michele Terragni who works in Meda . In 1909 the Terragni family moved to Como in via Indipendenza. From 1917 Giuseppe Terragni attended the Istituto Tecnico Cajo Plinio Secondo in Como. He then studied architecture at the Milan Polytechnic from 1921 to 1926 , where he graduated in October 1926.

Together with six other university graduates from Politecnico di Milano - Luigi Figini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco, Adalberto Libera , Gino Pollini, Carlo Enrico Rava - he founded the architecture movement Architettura Razionale in 1926/27 under the name Gruppo 7 . The Manifesto of Italian Rationalism (Razionalismo) , the so-called 4 note, was published by the Gruppo 7 under the title “Architecture and a new era of the classical” in the magazine La Rassegna Italiana between December 1926 and May 1927.

After graduating in architecture, Giuseppe and his brother Attilio Terragni founded an architecture office in their parents' house in Como in 1927. This office was run until 1939. At the first exhibition of the Architettura Razionale in Rome in 1928 , Terragni was represented with his design for a gas works in Como (1927). In 1932 he started working with the Milanese architect Piero Lingeri, with whom he realized the Casa Rustici in Milan in 1936 .

Giuseppe Terragni: Sant'Elia Kindergarten in Como
Monument to the fallen in Erba
Casa Pedraglio in Como

Terragni is one of the most important pioneers of architectural modernism in Italy. For Bruno Zevi , the work Terragnis represents the anchor point of an organic and internally democratic architecture for which there are hardly any other starting points in Italy. The main design elements of his architecture included the strict rejection of historicism and the reduction to elementary geometric basic forms. In addition to the orientation towards the models of classical modernism, the romanità and mediterraneità deliberately also made national building traditions a model. In particular, the use of marble or the three-dimensionality of the facade are national characteristics for Architettura Razionale . Terragni had already traveled to Florence and Rome in 1925 to study ancient and Renaissance architecture. He was fascinated by the crystal-clear geometric bodies, the richness of which is based on a few types. He traveled to Germany in 1927 (October / November) and 1931 (November) to study modern architecture.

According to his self-image, Terragni did not consider his architecture free of historical, especially classical references. In the sense of its abstract moments, he consciously referred to Roman antiquity, as shown for example by the quality of order and rhythm in his works. Terragnis classicism is based on an absolute purism of mathematical relationships, which is expressed in classical proportions.

In his only 13-year creative period from 1926 to 1939, he constructed numerous buildings that are consistently carried by the spirit of modernity, including the Novocomum residential building with its striking corner solution (1929) reminiscent of Konstantin Stepanowitsch Melnikow , the Casa del Fascio (today Casa del Popolo, 1936) with its rationalistic system of proportions and spatial planning, and the Sant'Elia kindergarten (1937). All of the buildings mentioned are located in Terragnis' main place of work, Como in northern Italy.

It was typical of the situation in Italy that Terragni, like almost all other leading Italian modernists, openly confessed to fascism and tried to offer his rationalist architecture to the regime as the state style. Only after 1935 did neoclassical, monumental tendencies of the so-called Scuola Romana gradually gain the upper hand in Italy . Terragni was not influenced by this until his untimely death at the age of 39. On July 19, 1943, he died in Como as a result of his service as a soldier on the German-Italian front in Russia. After a short time in the Russian field hospital, he was brought back to Italy in January 1943 and taken to the Ospedale Militare in Cesenatico. Despite long stays in the clinic, however, he was unable to recover and suffered a cerebral vein thrombosis .

Giuseppe Terragni was an important point of reference, especially for subsequent architects such as Aldo Rossi , Nicos Valsamakis but also Peter Eisenman .

Buildings and projects (selection)

  • 1926–1927: Redesign of the facade of the “Metropole-Suisse” hotel in Como
  • 1926–1929: “Novocomum” residential building in Como
  • 1926–1932: Monument to the fallen in Erba Incino
  • 1932–1936: Casa del Fascio (Como)
  • 1933–1936: Casa Rustici in Milan
  • 1936–1937: “Sant'Elia” kindergarten in Como
  • 1936–1937: Villa Bianca in Seveso
  • 1938–1940: Project for the Danteum in Rome (not realized)
  • 1939–1940: “Giuliano Frigerio” residential building in Como

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bruno Zevi: Giuseppe Terragni. Zurich 1989, p. 18.
  2. ^ Ellen R. Shapiro: Ojetti e Terragni: classicismo, razionalismo, fascismo. In: Giorgio Ciucci (ed.): Giuseppe Terragni. Opera completa. Milan 1996, p. 221.
  3. ^ Giorgio Ciucci (ed.): Introduzione. In: Thomas L. Schumacher: Il Danteum di Terragni. Rome 1980, p. 12.
  4. ↑ Novocomum, Como (CO). Beni Culturali, Regione Lombardia (Italian).
personal data
SURNAME Terragni, Giuseppe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian architect
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Meda , Italy
DATE OF DEATH July 19, 1943
Place of death Como , Italy