DAD - Dipartimento di Architettura e Design

The quick modernisation of Iceland, which took place rapidly from the first decades of the 20th century onwards, brought not only fishing trawlers and cars into the country. Among all the techniques of modernity, steinsteypa [concrete] was to become the key material that changed the built landscape of the island and was soon adopted by the first Icelandic architects, such as Rögnvaldur Ólafsson (1874–1914) and Guðjón Samúelsson (1887–1950). Interestingly, the main supporter of this material was Guðmundur Hannesson (1866–1946), a medical doctor and town planning enthusiast who wrote several articles and even a guidebook published in 1921, Steinsteypa. Leiðarvísir fyrir alþýðu og viðvaninga [Concrete: A Guidebook for Common People and Beginners]. In a country that was seeking an architectural self-representation, he understood the technical and formal possibilities that concrete could offer. By analysing his articles and publications, this essay aims to discuss the rhetoric of Guðmundur Hannesson and his role in writing an Icelandic chapter of the history of concrete, from its early stage of unmodern trial-and-error to the definition of a modern Icelandic architecture.

A cinquant’anni dall’inaugurazione nel giugno 1969, questo saggio ripercorre la presenza nelle fonti a stampa del Cimitero Germanico Militare sul passo della Futa. Inserendo il progetto all’interno del più ampio dibattito relativo alle sepolture dei nemici nel secondo dopoguerra, il testo intende indagare le ragioni del lungo silenzio che per decenni ha avvolto il progetto, la costruzione e la presenza fisica del cimitero sull’Appennino tra Firenze e Bologna. Questa ricerca si basa, da un lato, su uno spoglio di testate a scala nazionale (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa) e locale (La Nazione, Il Resto del Carlino), al fine di analizzare come la stampa italiana abbia affrontato la costruzione dei cimiteri di guerra tedeschi a partire dagli anni Cinquanta. Dall’altro, il saggio vuole proporre una storia della critica architettonica sul cimitero alla Futa, sia italiana sia tedesca, al fine di comprendere la sorprendente indifferenza da parte della stampa specialistica e spiegare la recente riscoperta del progetto di Dieter Oesterlen.

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Fifty years after its inauguration in June 1969, this essay aims at retracing the presence of the Futa-pass German War Cemetery in print sources. By including this project within a wider debate on the Postwar burial of the enemies of war, this text investigates the reasons of the long silence that has surrounded for decades the project, the construction and the physical presence of this cemetery on the Apennines between Florence and Bologna. On one hand, this research is based on the analysis of Italian newspapers, both on a national scale (Corriere della Sera, La Stampa) and on a local scale (La Nazione, Il Resto del Carlino), in order to understand how the Italian press dealt with the construction of German war cemeteries since the 1950s. On the other hand, this paper offers a history of the Italian and German architectural critique on the Futa-pass cemetery, with the aim of understanding the surprising indifference of the architectural publications and explaining the recent rediscovery of Dieter Oesterlen’s project.

Numero monografico di in_bo, vol. 10, n. 14 (2019)

GLAUCO GRESLERI (1930–2016). PAROLE, PROGETTI, RELAZIONI

A cura di Luigi Bartolomei, Marianna Gaetani e Sofia Nannini

Full issue: https://in_bo.unibo.it/issue/view/810/showToc

Una raccolta di saggi e ricerche, a firma di studiosi italiani e non, che inseriscono l'opera di Gresleri all'interno di molteplici questioni legate alla Storia dell'Architettura italiana (ed europea) del secondo Novecento. Il volume racchiude anche una ricca documentazione tratta dall'archivio privato del progettista.

Il contributo analizza le tappe che hanno portato alla progettazione e alla costruzione della Manifattura Tabacchi di Bologna, tra il 1949 e il 1957, opera di Pier Luigi Nervi, con una particolare attenzione alle richieste della committenza – i Monopoli di Stato – e alle tecniche costruttive adottate.

In 1939, Iceland’s State Architect Guðjón Samúelsson (1887–1950) filed a patent for the “Improvements in or relating to Treating the Surfaces of Buildings and other Structures, particularly of Concrete”. Known as steining in Icelandic, the technique had already been used in Reykjavík for a few years, developed by several local builders working for the State Architect. This Icelandic version of pebbledash, whose outcomes were “a very neat appearance” of “already built buildings and other structures, particularly of concrete” and a greater resistance against the “rigorous climatic conditions”, was to cover almost all concrete surfaces of Reykjavík until the late 1950s. The technique consisted in the application of a layer of stone fragments on a thin layer of cement mortar, manually applied, with the help of a trowel. Steining could hide the inaccuracies of concrete surfaces, and it was also a protection against the cold Icelandic climate. Furthermore, steining had visual outcomes: on the one hand, the use of local aggregates such as quartz and obsidian generated a concrete polychromy that spanned from darker to lighter shades; on the other, such fragments became an architectural mirror of the Icelandic geology and, consequently, a built ode to the island’s natural landscape.

By the early 1930s, Giuseppe Vaccaro (1896–1970) had emerged as a leading professional figure in the Italian architectural scene and was the author of three prominent public projects, built throughout the peninsula: the Palazzo delle Poste in Naples (1931–36), the Faculty of Engineering in Bologna (1931–35), and the Colonia Marina “Sandro Mussolini” in Cesenatico (1936–38). Vaccaro seldom wrote about his own works and thus placed himself outside of the political debate on architecture shared by many of his contemporaries. On the contrary, his few words show that he was far more interested in the practical details and in the recent developments of building technology. As this chapter argues, this may be one of the reasons why, differently from other architectural legacies of the regime, soon after the war, Vaccaro’s buildings fell into the realm of the ordinary. Today, his projects are still living a silent and undebated life yet sometimes suffering from an even-more-soundless disregard.

Tre ricerche recenti di storia della costruzione / Bruxelles, Reykjavík, Firenze

Politecnico di Milano, Scuola di Specializzazione in Beni Architettonici e del Paesaggio. Seminario di Storia della costruzione 2021, a cura di Edoardo Piccoli

8 giugno 2021 |  h. 9–13.00 | aula virtuale

This paper deals with the urban development of Reykjavík during the first half of the 20th century, with particular attention to building techniques and their influence in the construction of a modern capital city for Iceland. By analysing its first building codes (issued in 1903 and in 1945) and some examples of residential typologies built in that same period, this research highlights the special role that concrete played in the growth and modernisation of Reykjavík.

This essay retraces the early uses of reinforced concrete construction in Iceland in the first decade of the twentieth century. Technical knowledge on reinforced concrete structures reached Iceland much later than other European countries and it was deeply connected to the expertise acquired by the first generation of Icelandic engineers at the Polytechnic School of Copenhagen. This study investigates the adoption of the Hennebique patent by Danish and Icelandic professionals, with a case study of the Danish building firm Christiani & Nielsen. The Icelandic buildings where reinforced concrete was first used were not mere technical accomplishments but major cornerstones in the process towards the political and material independence of the country.

Seminario all'interno del ciclo di lezioni "Archivia – lezioni dagli archivi di architettura", a cura di Lorenzo Mingardi e Simone Barbi, Università degli Studi di Firenze, 2022

La lezione è disponibile qui:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehR5PWOCGrI&t=431s