Giò Ponti, Via Randaccio, Milano, Italy, 1925 (view from google)

First designed home for his family, the villa to apartments is the result of a long professional association that bind Bridges to Emilio Lancia out, in the cultural environment in Milan headed by Giovanni Muzio and pledged to renew the architecture through the return to the measurement matrix humanist. This gives rise to the many neoclassical elements (niches, urns, entablature, timpani, indentations, newsstands and more) silhouetted in an almost ironic way on the facades, which determine the spirit of “exuberant cheerfulness decorator” found by Ferdinand Bridges and described in Reggiori, on the pages of “Architecture and Decorative Arts”, as the most direct result of intensive work by Richard Ginori. A subtle criticism that will end with the Bridges to share, remember when this and other early experiences – the villa in Garches Bouilhet (1925-1926), the house Borletti in Via San Vittore (1928) or the project for an embassy, Italian signed together Tomaso Buzzi (1926) – as “really non-existent buildings as architecture” in which “I was looking for” out of them “as a form piacenti between the forms of a certain pseudo stylistic repertoire had their pay” (1955). And also the use of the figure of the obelisk will be described as a ‘ habit ‘, ‘ imposition of a tone, a rhythm, a decision’ alien to the nature of the project (1957).

Isolated – as required by an agreement with the Société Anonyme Cottages Canova, which owns the land – inside a trapezoidal lot, the building developed on four out Plans on earth has an oval floor plan dominated the antechamber, which overlooks the scale of distribution of various accommodations, deliberately exaggerated in its proportions with the rest of the plant. Living room and dining room, separated only by large sliding doors, anticipate the total fusion of the two environments – which will take place only in the homes of Via De Togni (1931-1936) – while the curved element returns with the concavity of the front entrance, along with decorative elements contributing to trick the eye into the reading of its true dimensions.

References:

ordinearchitetti

gioponti

Reviewed by:

Alexandra Niedermayr, Alexandre Maurel, Martin Charachon, Sonja Schneider (March 2017)