Irenio Diotallevi and Francesco Marescotti, Città orizzontale, Milan, Italy, 1940. (view in google maps) 

Irenio Diotallevi (1909-1954) and Franscesco Marescotti (1908-1991) were concerned about social architecture. They presented an alternative to the « city of the 19th century » with a project published in 1940 and named « Città orizzontale ». They wanted to replace a part of the structure of an old building by a huge rectangular shaped form with single family housing units. Their aim was the inversion of the usual relation between solid and void through the application of a dense pattern, while still following the logic of the rationalist city’s transformation.

The patio house was the template for multiple-unit housing. The project is based on « casa-unità » (housing unit). The house needs to be luminous and must preserve the heat. It is divided in two elements : the bedroom and the garden for lunch and free time. The patio links the bedroom to the garden. The utility of the patio is that it gives space to the house by its emplacement. It permits to open the inhabited area to the outside and is also open to the whole family.

This case shows the attachment of the two architects to the social architecture movement. It is a synthesis of their international studies about social urbanism.

References:

• Anna Bruna Menghini, “The city as form and structure: the urban project in Italy from the 1920s to the 1980s,” Urban Morphology (2002) 6(2), 75-86
• http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/francesco-marescotti_(Dizionario_Biografico)/
• http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/irenio-diotallevi_(Dizionario-Biografico)/
• Francesco Garofalo, The Secret Life of the Horizontal City, in San Rocco Architectural Magazine, 2010
• Irenio Diotallevi and Francesco Marescotti, Ordine e destino della casa popolare, 1940
• Irenio Diotallevi and Francesco Marescotti, Il problema sociale costruttivo ed economico dell’abitazione, 1940

Reviewed March 2017 by:

Sofiane Décombas-Deschamps

Darija Malesevic

Valentijn Veragten

Lode Borghs