Come accade sempre, è attraverso la vista a volo d’uccello che è possibile comprendere con chiarezza il principio compositivo di un luogo. E questo vale anche - e forse soprattutto - per Brasilia, la città di fondazione voluta da Juscelino Kubitschek nel 1956 per decentrare, lontano dalla costa atlantica, il nuovo polo amministrativo e legislativo del Brasile. Di Niemeyer si tende, in generale, a mettere in evidenza la sua particolare capacità nel disegnare le “forme” delle architetture e dei loro spazi interni. Non ci si sofferma quasi mai su quanto accade all’esterno di ognuna di esse, sul modo cioè in cui esse si mettono in relazione con lo spazio della città.

No abstract

Starting from the typological and morphological studies conducted in Italy since the Sixties of the last century, the essay aims to investigate limits and possibilities in the application of these studies to urban contexts that are different from those for which they were originally conceived and developed. The rediscovery of the historic city, mostly forgotten or cancelled since then, both in the intentions and physically, receives from here an international acknowledgement. The researches on the Islamic urban phenomenon carried out by Italian scholars were strictly linked to design issues. Since the end of the 1960s, in fact, several Italian architects were involved in town planning activities of several cities of the Islamic world.

The project presented here, carried out within a research framework on abandoned railways areas in Milano, faces the issues of building an urban part by looking at the future city with particular attention to the themes of living into the relationship with nature. The project, starting from the analysis of the urban role of the area, gives relevance to the main directions built by the city construction and to the north-west direction of the city expansion. A central importance is given to the park as primary element of the urban structure made up by blocks not entirely surrounded by roads fostering a significant internal traffic reduction. The second element concerns the deep research content of building typological natural experiments and the character of originality achieved by further examination carried out on the plan and housing design, with attention also to the solution based on the typological contamination. The park displacement in the plan central area is the decisive event of the project in relation to the urban reference scheme of which persist the main lines and the urban step rhythm, considered the most significant architectural elements along with the twin towers located in north-west. The studies on the patio-houses settlement and on the multi-storey linear building enrich the variety of building forms and characters together with the design of the mosque as element of a multicultural and open new city.

The question of the relationship between modern architecture and civil themes and of technological experimentation takes on a central role in the school building projects in which, between the 1950s and 1960s, Arrigo Arrighetti, Roberto Menghi and Ignazio Gardella, among others, are involved. The Milanese architects often addressed the issue in the absence of a definite place of intervention and work mainly on flexible systems, adopting the pavilion as the main element of the construction, that allow adaptations, expansions and transformations of the functional program. They experienced innovative technological solutions, such as the prevalent use of prefabricated elements, light metal structures, technological details derived from industrial plants.