Polytechnic of Milan, Guido Nardi Exhibition Space
30 JANUARY 2024 – 25 MARCH 2024
The figure of Arrigo Arrighetti (1922-1989) claims a prominent place in the history of architecture in post-war Milan. When he starts working for the Municipality of Milan, not even eighteen years old, no one could predict his future; nor could he himself probably have imagined – when he graduated from the Polytechnic of Milan in 1947 with a reconstruction project of Palazzo Sormani which envisaged its transformation into a civic library – that he would carry it out, starting from 1948, as an architect commissioned by the Municipality .
Subsequently, first within the Projects and Works Office, then the Studies and Projects Office, which he himself directed, and finally as director of the Municipal Planning Office and as consultant to the MM Company, Arrighetti will create something like 150 buildings, all united by a very high design quality, updated on the international architectural panorama, and at the same time capable of dealing with an extreme economy of means.
The exhibition – curated by Adriana Granato and Marco Biraghi – presents a selection of projects, including the Santa Croce nursery school, the Cesare Correnti Institute, the Solari swimming pool, the Amendola metro station, the Sant’Ambrogio district, the Church of San Giovanni Bono, presented through original drawings preserved in the Trivulziana Library of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, and the Citadel of the Archives of the Municipality of Milan.
The installation of the exhibition, curated by studio ibsen, intends to restore – through the “brutalist” use of materials such as perforated bricks and loading belts – the atmosphere of the construction site, and consequently of a season in which architecture was characterized in a strongly material and concrete sense.
The photographs on display – all rigorously in black and white – are the work of Dutch photographer Sosthen Hennekam, who has gained extensive experience in Milanese architecture, particularly post-World War II. The models of some of Arrigo Arrighetti’s buildings are the work of the Labora studio of the Polytechnic of Milan.
Biography
Arrigo Arrighetti was born in 1922 in Milan. In 1947 he graduated in Architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan with a thesis on the reconstruction of Palazzo Sormani, a public library bombed during the Second World War: this project was the first he carried out as an architect appointed by the Municipality of Milan. The 1949 building inaugurates some of the features that would become recurring in Arrighetti’s production as an architect, such as the use of the square grid of reinforced concrete or the zenithal lighting of large public spaces.
His architecture demonstrates a meticulous search for original and complex structural solutions that reveal the study and inspiration drawn from international examples.
In his first years of activity he designed public housing complexes with a great typological variety, with a strong attention to the functional and compositional details of the architectural elements.
In this period he also began to design his first schools, a field to which he would dedicate much of his energy.
From 1955 to 1961 he directed the Studies and Projects Office of the Municipality of Milan, leading it to become a lively and avant-garde reality, constructing more than 150 buildings and becoming an example for many Italian cities. From 1956 to 1959, he became a consultant to the MM Company for the design and furnishing of the stations and created one of the red metro stations in Milan, Amendola Fiera, developing a surprising crystalline project, with a covering of polyester resin reinforced with glass fibres. , a precursor in the use of structural modularity of geometrically complex units.
Some of his most interesting projects are from the same years, such as the Colonia in Pietra Ligure (1958-59) and the swimming pool in Parco Solari (1960).
From 1961 to 1979 he was director of the Municipal Planning Office, where he dealt with large-scale urban projects, such as in the Sant’Ambrogio district (1962-77). Among the peaks of his architectural production we can include buildings that are the result of both public commissions such as the Church of San Giovanni Bono (1962-64), and private commissions, such as the house in via Plinio (1962-70). He died in 1989, at the age of 67.
Exhibition organized by the Polytechnic of Milan
Exhibition curated by Adriana Granato and Marco Biraghi
Photographs by Sosthen Hennekam