Ignazio Gardella (1905-1999)

Ignazio Gardella was born in Milan in 1905. He graduated with full marks in Engineering from Milan Polytechnic in 1928 and in Architecture from the University Institute of Venice in 1949 (where he was to be a full professor from 1962 to 1975). In the early Thirties Gardella came into contact with the protagonists of the European Modern Movement and actively contributed to the cultural and professional initiatives of the Milanese Rationalists. In 1947 he participated in the first INU Congress; between 1952 and 1956 he organized, together with A. Samonà, E.N. Rogers and F. Albini, the CIAM international summer school; in 1959 he was a member of the Italian delegation at the last CIAM congress in Otterlo. Gardella’s long professional career, which began in the studio of his father Arnaldo prior to his graduation, produced an extraordinary quantity of designs and built works, the importance of which is testified by the first of many honours: in 1955 he won the Olivetti Prize for Architecture and 1959 saw the publication of the first monograph of his work in the Comunità series with an important essay by Argan, the only one he devoted to a contemporary Italian architect. His designs and his built works were to be published in the leading national and international periodicals of the era. Following his early Rationalist works, the competition design for a tower in Piazza Duomo (1934), the Antituberculosis Dispensary (1933-38) and the Provincial Hygiene and Prophylactic Laboratory in Alessandria (1933-39), in the Fifties and Sixties Gardella was to build numerous other important architectural works: in Milan, the Pavilion of Contemporary Art (1951), the Tognella House or “House in the Park”, the residential building in the Giardini d’Ercole (1951); in Alessandria, the residential building for Borsalino employees (1950); in Venice, the Cigogna House or “House on the Zattere” (1953-58); in Ivrea, the Olivetti canteen and recreational centre buildings (1954-58).

Among the most significant projects of the last period of his career: the Palace of Justice in La Spezia (1963-94); the competition entry for the Civic Theatre in Vicenza (1st prize, 1969); the Alfa Romeo Technical Offices Building at Arese (1968-74); the Carlo Felice Theatres (1981-90) and the Faculty of Architecture building in Genoa (1975-89); the Luigi Bocconi University Extension in Milan (1990-2000).

Among the architect’s innumerable public honours were: the Gold Medal of the President of the Republic for services to teaching, culture and art (1977) and the Fiuggi Prize (1988); in the two-year period 1989-1990 he was appointed as President of the National Academy of San Luca; in 1993 he was awarded honorary citizenship of Alessandria; in 1995 he was nominated as an honorary member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In 1996 he received the Leone d’Oro for his career at the Venice Biennial and was nominated as an honorary member of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts.In 1995 the Ministry of Cultural and the Environmental Heritage honoured Gardella by placing “House on the Zattere” in Venice under its protection,the first time a modern building less than fifty years old had been listed.

Ignazio Gardella’s professional career spanned the arc of the 20th century. He died at Oleggio in the province of Novara in 1999

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