BBPR, architects: torre velasca, milano 1950-1958
architects: BBPR (banfi, barbiano di belgiojoso, peressutti, rogers)
torre velasca, mixed-use tower, milano 1950-1958
a london newspaper recently named the torre velasca one of the ugliest buildings in the world, suggesting - if nothing else - that trump is right about the press. dismissed by journalists today as brutalism, the tower was originally dismissed by british brutalists for not being brutal enough. reasons change, stupidity prevails.
but so does the house in question, and its reddish concrete panels ablaze in the italian sunset make prefabrication look like a thing of beauty. a certain playfulness in the placement of windows and interior balconies offer the powerful image or fantasy of a vertical city. its exposed neo-gothic frame and violently angular silhouette could only derive from some magnificent ancient source, awaiting discovery. it puzzles, but moves you too.
enesto rogers of the BBPR partnership had written and published extensively on the subject of continuity in architecture, on the need for modernism to reinvent itself as a mediation between historical precedent and contemporary culture. yet, looking at the tower, any method in his madness remains elusive. modernism had promised a right way to do architecture, but how do you arrive at the torre velasca?
rogers' students, who included aldo rossi and giorgio grassi, would be more rigorous in method and altogether less exciting in execution - perhaps due to the reception of his tower: rayner banham wrote of the Italian retreat from modernism while peter smithson criticised ernesto rogers personally at the final CIAM meeting in 1959, calling his work dangerous and immoral.
that same year, 1959, the smithsons began work on a tower of their own, the economist building in london, and it is tempting to read into their design an answer to ernesto rogers and the work of BBPR in milan.
rather than stacking different functions and different building depths, the smithsons split their program into three smaller buildings on a shared plinth, minimising its impact on the london skyline. their sensitivity to the surrounding victorian architecture was not only unusual for the period, it was unexpected coming from the famously unsentimental smithsons.
it was a more dignified critique of ernesto rogers, too, than the personal attack at the CIAM meeting, except that this sensitivity towards the historical urban fabric was exactly what ernesto rogers had been calling for. the smithsons were outdoing rogers at his own game, even repeating his powerful neo-gothic verticals.
and that was the strangest of cross-contaminations, given that neither london nor milan are gothic cities, but rogers' idea of continuity in architecture was ultimately spiritual, as he would have insisted himself, a thing of the mind.
BBPR, architects: torre velasca, milano 1950-1958
architects: BBPR (banfi, barbiano di belgiojoso, peressutti, rogers)
torre velasca, mixed-use tower, milano 1950-1958
a london newspaper recently named the torre velasca one of the ugliest buildings in the world, suggesting - if nothing else - that trump is right about the press. dismissed by journalists today as brutalism, the tower was originally dismissed by british brutalists for not being brutal enough. reasons change, stupidity prevails.
but so does the house in question, and its reddish concrete panels ablaze in the italian sunset make prefabrication look like a thing of beauty. a certain playfulness in the placement of windows and interior balconies offer the powerful image or fantasy of a vertical city. its exposed neo-gothic frame and violently angular silhouette could only derive from some magnificent ancient source, awaiting discovery. it puzzles, but moves you too.
enesto rogers of the BBPR partnership had written and published extensively on the subject of continuity in architecture, on the need for modernism to reinvent itself as a mediation between historical precedent and contemporary culture. yet, looking at the tower, any method in his madness remains elusive. modernism had promised a right way to do architecture, but how do you arrive at the torre velasca?
rogers' students, who included aldo rossi and giorgio grassi, would be more rigorous in method and altogether less exciting in execution - perhaps due to the reception of his tower: rayner banham wrote of the Italian retreat from modernism while peter smithson criticised ernesto rogers personally at the final CIAM meeting in 1959, calling his work dangerous and immoral.
that same year, 1959, the smithsons began work on a tower of their own, the economist building in london, and it is tempting to read into their design an answer to ernesto rogers and the work of BBPR in milan.
rather than stacking different functions and different building depths, the smithsons split their program into three smaller buildings on a shared plinth, minimising its impact on the london skyline. their sensitivity to the surrounding victorian architecture was not only unusual for the period, it was unexpected coming from the famously unsentimental smithsons.
it was a more dignified critique of ernesto rogers, too, than the personal attack at the CIAM meeting, except that this sensitivity towards the historical urban fabric was exactly what ernesto rogers had been calling for. the smithsons were outdoing rogers at his own game, even repeating his powerful neo-gothic verticals.
and that was the strangest of cross-contaminations, given that neither london nor milan are gothic cities, but rogers' idea of continuity in architecture was ultimately spiritual, as he would have insisted himself, a thing of the mind.