Subjects

For the first time, a book enters the homes of Milan and describes the development of interiors from the advent of modernity to the season of post-modernism. The volume is in two languages Italian/English.

The authors have conducted vast and innovative research work, combing through period magazines, the archives of architects and photographers, and the investigations of Triennale, noticing that the journey of interior architecture has intermingled with the accelerations of Arts Avant-gardes and the emergence of a new role for objects. Italian design comes also from here.

The elegant and particular modernity of some Milanese masters, such as Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella and Luigi Caccia Dominioni subsequently gives way to the experiments and international approaches of Joe Colombo, Ettore Sottsass, Vitoriano Viganò and Nanda Vigo, while each decade defines its own common language, interpreted by different personalities such as Magistretti and Minoletti; Mangiarotti and Morassutti, Zanuso, and by the Latis and Monti brothers, who share the “Milanese canon” in which elegance and practicality are combined. An intimate and reserved portrait of Milan emerges, sometimes predictable and often unexpected–a new look at the city.

From 1945 to the 21st century, Milan’s architecture has given the city a truly unique international vibe. The book features 150 critical sheets, drawings and original photographs that retrace the history of an Italian way to modernity.

In the book, a pool of authoritative scholars and designers critically examine the most significant buildings (residential buildings, offices, monuments and churches) designed by famous Italian and foreign architects who, over the last 75 years, have given Milan an important role on the international scene, making it an open-sky museum of modern and contemporary architecture.

The refined photography by Sosthen Hennekam (a highly appreciated designer and photographer in the world of architecture), the redesigned plans of the buildings and the city maps give the book a technical and aesthetic quality in the finest tradition of Hoepli publications on similar subjects.

The book provides a stunning snapshot of Milan at the time of the economic boom, when new architecture was changing the city’s landscape. Sixty years later, the book has become a veritable historical document; here, it is enriched with descriptions and photographs documenting each building’s current state.

After the bombings of the war, Milan was reborn and flourished quickly. In this book first published in 1958, Roberto Aloi documents the building fervour that saw skyscrapers, office buildings, apartment blocks, schools, hospitals, libraries, museums, churches and theatres sprout across the city. Each of the 70 entries is an out-and-out identikit of the building, featuring photographs, details, drawings and plans.

In this edition – edited by Marco Strina, graphic designer and a scholar of Milanese architecture, and Marco Biraghi, a lecturer in History of Architecture at Milan’s Polytechnic – each building features a historical-critical fact sheet written by experts in order to provide the building’s critical and narrative framework. Existing buildings also feature recent photography by Stefano Topuntoli.

The book presents a selection the most outstanding and emblematic refuges and camps in the Alps. The structures examined in the book are of remarkable historical, mountaineering, architectural, technological, social and visual worth. Indeed, in addition to their primary purpose as safe havens for mountain-goers, these structures are an important heritage that deserves to be included among the architectural and landscape masterpieces of the 20th century.

The book has won the Prize “Leggimontagna” 2018.

There is mounting interest in the golden years of Milanese architecture – an age that spanned all the way from Giovanni Muzio’s early Ca’ Brutta experiments to the Modern Seventies.

Milan Houses is the product of years of research by the authors and a Politecnico di Milano team led by them. Every building featured in the book comes with one or more pictures by Stefano Topuntoli or from archive material.

With a foreword by Cino Zucchi – a renowned architect and scholar of Milanese architecture – the book includes two critical essays by the authors that place Milan’s golden age in the broader context of 20th-century architecture. A map is included with all the buildings’ locations.

Rounding out the volume is a vast bibliography edited by Maurizio Grandi.

The English translations of the texts can be found in the appendix.