Exhibition design Franz Prati

The exhibition is divided into sections with different curators as follows:

1_Prologue. The transmission of knowledge: the genealogy of the engineers and architects of the Gardella family.

curated by Michela Rosso

Ignazio Gardella’s first name is actually Mario. While still a student, he adopted the name of his great grandfather, a decision that reflects a desire to trace his own personal genealogy, carefully selecting certain elements from his family history and establishing an ideal link with the figure of the Genoan architect who studied under and worked with Carlo Barabino. The attempted reconstruction of a tradition rooted in family history allows us to review a consolidated interpretation of the work of this architect in the light of a different conception of tradition, substantiated by the cultural heritage passed on from father to son. This is a theme that is closely bound up with the architect’s strategies of representation and his work, of which along with the designs and the built architecture, the books in the family library, the portraits, the sculptures, the photographs, the diaries and the notes are all evidence.

2_Alessandria. Borsalino House (1948-52), Tuberculosis Clinic (1933-38).

curated by Marco Casamonti whit Guido Montanari

As a recurrent motif in the evolution of Gardella’s architecture, Alessandria represents the place in which the cultural transformations affecting the country were interweaved with research into new expressive forms. From the introduction of exposed brickwork in the Tuberculosis Clinic, which leads the Rationalist parallelepiped back to territories closer to the Piedmontese context, through to the reconceptualisation of the urban palazzo that allowed Gardella to resolve with the Borsalino House the problem of the street frontages of city blocks through the rewriting of the serial residential building, the urban structure of Alessandria proved on each occasion to be a remote system of references that suggested alternative intervention strategies to Gardella, but also to be a malleable territory in which to experiment over the years with approaches to design that were either mature or yet to be tested on-site.

3_Genoa. Colombo House (1955), Faculty of Architecture (1975-89).

curated by Bruno Gabrielli whit Simona Gabrielli

The centrality of Gardella’s contribution to Genoa has to be explored through a re-examination of the cultural climate of the city in the 1950s and ’60s when Caterina Marcenaro, the heard of the city council’s Department of Fine Arts, called Albini and Gardella to work in the city, through Giovanni Romano. A story told in fragments through an assembly of previously unpublished images, documents and accounts and the selection of two significant projects: one, previously ignored, concerns the Colombo House (1954), with the second being the far better known S. Silvestro/S. Donato masterplan (1968) out of which was born the project for the Architecture Faculty complex. Other projects by Gardella in Genoa and Liguria follow.

4_Milan. Tower in Piazza del Duomo (1934), Park House (1947-48), Alfa Romeo office building, Arese (1968-72).

curated by Antonio Monestiroli whit Federico Bucci and Stefano Guidarini

This two-part section presents a critical examination of the work of Ignazio Gardella in Milan and Lombardy. The first part, in the centre of the room, features material relating to three emblematic works by the architect that represent three different periods in his long career: the design for the tower in Piazza del Duomo (1934), the “Park House” (1947-48) and the Alfa Romeo office building in Arese (1968-72). The second part, located around the sides of the room, is instead intended to demonstrate – through a comparison with the works of other masters of the same generation (such as Albini, BBPR, Figini and Pollini) – the fundamental role played by Gardella in the formation of the Milan school.

5_Venice. Zattere house (1953-62)

curated by Luciano Semerani whit Antonella Gallo

The first house in the Zattere district of Venice is similar to the Park House in Milan, but here Gardella came into contact with the light reflecting on water, the chromatism of the materials, the ornament in the details and the internal urban horizon of Venice. The theme was the façade. The ornament, is a much as it was material (stone, crushed terracotta), colour, static paradox that exalts the “craft” of Italian architecture. The architecture of the boundary, that in Venice contributes to true “urban interiors”, and the school, which is the cosmos in which Gardella is measured against Scarpa, Zevi and Samonà, are the other themes of the section.

6_Vicenza. Civic Theatre (1969-80).

curated by Daniele Vitale whit Angelo Lorenzi

The final section of the exhibition, curated by Daniele Vitale with Angelo Lorenzi, deals with Ignazio Gardella’s design for the theatre in Vicenza, prepared in 1969 for a competition by invitation, transformed into an executive project in 1980, but for various reasons never built. This is one of Gardella’s finest and most intense designs and shows his singular capacity to renew himself and explore new avenues of research. It can usefully be contrasted with the Zattere house in Venice with which it is visually paired in the exhibition. The Venice house had represented a demonstration of great skill, but was also a blind alley in its resolution in a sophisticated and virtuoso exercise designed to reiterate and repropose the characteristics of the city. The theatre instead takes form in terms of great absoluteness, being founded on an elementary idea resolved in volume and geometry: a square divided diagonally into two halves of different heights. Testimony to a return to that aspiration to a classical ideal which the young Gardella had drawn.

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