Franco Albini

This volume is devoted to four museums, built between the 1940s and 1960s of the 20th century, and sharing two main purposes: educating the public in the arts and showing them the value of history in building the present.
In the Italian post-World War Two scene, which includes dozens of remarkable museums, three projects of primary importance have been chosen. The Museo di Arte Antica del Castello Sforzesco in Milan (1947-1956), set up by Studio BBPR, aspired to have a “didactic” and “popular” character, as the expression of an “imaginative” and “grandiose” spirit that was able to speak to the masses. In the museum rooms, this popularizing aim meets, and clashes with, the complexity of the theoretical thought of Ernesto Nathan Rogers and his peculiar interpretation of history and the arts.
In the Galleria Comunale di Palazzo Bianco in Genoa (1949-1951), Franco Albini and director Caterina Marcenaro encourage the public to develop their own “visual culture” through the mediation of the collections. To this end, the ancient spaces of the Palace are equipped with modern, flexible displaying devices that help each visitor adapt to the environment, thus preparing to meet the artworks.
In the extensive museographic research of Carlo Scarpa, the Gipsoteca “Antonio Canova” in Possagno (1955-1957) is his most difficult work, condensing a series of artistic, architectural and literary sources. In the new “home” that houses the statues and the models of Canova, Scarpa mainly works with light, the same crystalline light seen in the paintings of Giambattista Tiepolo, which the architect draws upon to reveal the 18th-century soul of Canova’s works to the public.
The three Italian museums are complemented by MASP – Museo de Arte de São Paolo, Brazil (1947-1950; 1957-1968), designed by Lina Bo and directed by her husband, Pietro Maria Bardi. Like the other protagonists of the volume, Bo had refined her knowledge of the art of displaying thanks to the exhibitions she visited in the 1930s in Milan, a key antecedent to the development of post-War museography. In the vision of the Bardis, the MASP had to perform the task of bringing art literacy to the Brazilian people. To achieve this, in designing the two locations that host the museum, Lina Bo focused especially on the ideas of collective education and the adaptability of spaces to different cultural functions. The result was a “museum outside the limits”, as director Bardi described it, which in its final, permanent location also allowed Bo to make a political statement by creating one of the most original display devices of the 20th century: the cavalete de cristal.
An anthology of writings by Albini, BBPR, Bo Bardi, Scarpa and art historian Giulio Carlo Argan completes this volume, which aims at drawing attention back to some themes that are also crucial for contemporary museography.

Ho deciso di pubblicare questo mio saggio breve del 2007, preparato per l’esame di Storia dell’Architettura a cura di Roberto Dulio, del quinto anno di Architettura e Società.
Il tema del saggio è la poetica progettuale di Franco Albini, e la sua opera “Villa Allemandi”, un’opera di cui, purtroppo, è difficile reperire il materiale. Spero sia utile anche la bibliografia presente a fine articolo.

Un sorprendente pròdromo del fortunato dispositivo museografico del white cube viene presentato a Genova nel 1950 con l'inaugurazione del museo ricostruito e riaperto da Caterina Marcenaro e da Franco Albini. Con una curiosa inversione, lo stesso display che una Genova all'avanguardia introduce nel contesto di un museo di arte antica, sarà destinato a trionfare nei decenni a venire tra America e Europa, tra gallerie e musei sopratutto di arte contemporanea.
Negli ultimi anni - passato oltre mezzo secolo da quelle invenzioni - dopo una lunga eclissi, le sale storiche fanno il loro ritorno nei musei come testimoniano, un po’ ovunque, dal Louvre a Palazzo Rosso, il ritorno in auge delle period rooms.
Non si può fermare il mondo, ne pretendere di cristallizzare le espressioni di architettura. Ma non si può neppure negare che alcune realizzazioni della seconda metà del Novecento abbiano ormai assunto il ruolo di paradigmi di cui sarebbe insensato perdere le tracce.
Gli allestimenti, anche quelli dei musei, hanno un tempo. Alcuni invecchiano in fretta; alcuni sono ancora attuali. Di taluni forse addirittura non se ne comprende ancora a pieno al valenza sperimentale, creativa e innovativa per cui ogni adeguamento, manutenzione, rifacimento, “restauro del nuovo”, ne minano irreversibilmente quegli equilibri che meriterebbero invece di essere conservati...

The research focuses on a possible relationship between the Genoese building and the proto-historical architecture of Sardinia. The planimetric evolution of the Albini's project is related to the Sardinian nuraghi's plants; moreover, there are similarities between the museum's roof and the appearance of the prehistoric villages of Sardinia and the pre-Nuragic necropolis, as well as the sacred well temples of the Nuragic era. Therefore, it is useful to trace the history of the reception of Sardinian antiquities during the early XXth century as well as the rediscovery of ancient and vernacular Mediterranean architecture in the field of modern architecture.

The exhibition New Italian Art opened in Stockholm in March 1953, arranged by Franco Albini and Franca Helg. Organized between the IX and X Triennale, this event remains little known today by the Italian audience, although it can be considered the result of specific choices related to the previous Italian exhibitions in Sweden. The 1953 exhibition is considered as an opportunity to analyse the renewed culture of the post-war period and the richness of the plots that intersected between the Italian and Swedish art scene, in particular on the relationship between industrial product and craftsmanship.
The exhibition proposed to the Nordic public a combination of everyday objects and art pieces, set up within a simple and ethereal architecture, which conveyed the image of a modern, industrial Italy, but always firmly supported by the continuity of its artistic and artisan tradition.
The sources come from the researches, carried out during my doctoral thesis, between the Swedish and the Italian archives.

La Reconstruction de l’après 1945 correspond à un moment de profonde mutation dans de multiples domaines. C’est dans ce vaste chantier que s’inscrit la restauration post bellica des monuments historiques. Il s’agit d’une forme de laboratoire européen dans lequel, à partir de la pratique de la restauration, travail alors colossal, urgent et nécessaire, sont élaborées des techniques et des théories toujours valides aujourd’hui. L’une des problématiques de cet article, consiste à comprendre – à travers un cas d’étude à Padoue − en quoi les destructions de la Seconde Guerre mondiale ont contribué à renouveler les théories et les pratiques de la restauration pour les œuvres d’art, l’architecture et les tissus urbains. Dans mes recherches récentes, pour comprendre la restauration post bellica, au-delà d’une méthode de type casuistique, j’ai choisi le thème de la lacune comme fil d’Ariane. La chute d’un fragment d’enduit dans une peinture murale, les impacts de mitraillette, la chute des voûtes et des charpentes d’une église, les cassures dans les travées rythmiques d’une façade, l’écroulement complet de la nef ou de l’abside d’une église, la destruction de tissus urbains et la démolition d’un ancien pont de pierres sont autant de lacunes qui nous font réagir. C’est face à ces lacunes, chaque fois différentes, qu’est pensée puis mise en œuvre la restauration post bellica du « patrimoine martyr » .

The essay explores the working relationship among the designers of the Museum of the Treasury of San Lorenzo, Franco Albini and Franca Helg, and the responsible of the Museum, Caterina Marcenaro. Through the re-lecture of documents and especially through of the inedited and already published correspondence, today preserved in the archives of Genoa, the paper highlights the mutual influences and thoughts having strongly influenced various aspects and results of the design process.

Milan’s underground transportation network was planned as an alternative public transport system for the 19th-century tram-based surface transportation, where its stations were designed by Studio Albini in collaboration with Bob Noorda/Unimark. Today, therefore, the system is assumed to be an example of ‘Rationalism’ in Milan, and as well as Italy. Regarding this, the Albinian way of design that is still effective in the Milan Metro has affected the individual and collective behavior of its users in addition to the architecture, planning, social and economic development of the city from the material to symbolic value. This paper aims to examine the architectural identity of the Milan Metro and Franco Albini’s Rationalist approach to the interior design of the stations of the Red Line (Linea M1) along with Bob Noorda’s well-known graphic designs of the signage system which would later influence the underground transportation networks of New York, Sao Paolo, and Naples.

In the late 1950s, architects began to take a stand over the need to integrate a range of technological systems into buildings, coming up with both practical and theoretical solutions. On the one hand, the attempt by architects like Le Corbusier and Louis I. Kahn to control services’ intrusive nature through architectural design grew more and more radical, to the point of the assimilation of conduits into the purism of the primeval structure by those who, like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and his followers, believed it was a problem that “should be solved in secret.”  On the other, the adoption of stratagems for the integration of plant into the façade became an opportunity to regenerate the forms of modern architecture. The ever more decisive role played by services would induce Reyner Banham to devote an essay to the subject, reconstructing its evolution from the 19th century to the 1960s. In that essay a work by Franco Albini (1905-77) and Franca Helg (1920-89) was given a decisive place in the list of examples celebrating “exposed power,” a stance that Banham considered the “fruit of a revolution in environmental management that is without precedent in the history of architecture.”  It was the La Rinascente store in Rome, built between 1957 and 1961, an Italian example of investigation of the role of services in the design of the façade and of appropriate forms for walls and moldings that would be capable of integrating, hiding or revealing them.

Raffaella Fontanarossa, Jubilés oubliés ? La grande saison de la muséologie italienne face au XXIe siècle

Résumé
1969-2019 : le Museu Calouste Gulbenkian de Lisbonne vient de fêter son jubilé avec une exposition (Art on Display) qui rend hommage aux musées italiens du second Après-guerre ayant fortement inspiré ses propres dispositifs muséographiques (le musée fut réalisé avec la participation de l’architecte italien Franco Albini et de George Henri Rivière). En 2016, le MASP de São Paulo du Brésil a réinstallé les « cavaletes da Lina », les supports crées par Lina Bo Bardi en 1947 et détruit en 1996.
Et en Italie ? Que se passe-t-il dans la patrie de la muséologie moderne de l’après-guerre ? Très rares sont les dispositifs muséographiques des musées de la reconstruction qui ont été traités comme œuvre d’art en soi ; nous citons à cet égard les Palazzo Abatellis à Palerme ou le Museo di Castelvecchio à Vérone. Dans ce contexte, le cas des musées de Gênes, crées par Franco Albini et Caterina Marcenaro, reste encore très connu. Après avoir fait la une des revues d’art nationales et internationales, leurs muséographies d’origine sont aujourd’hui presque effacées.
À présent, dans une nouvelle typologie de musées (comme au MASP de São Paulo) et d’expositions (Turin, Galleria civica di arte moderna; Post zang tumb tuum, Milan, Fondazione Prada 2018 sous la direction de Germano Celant) on propose une relecture des mises en scène et des supports désormais historiques. Au sein de certains musées et expositions récents on retrouve également l’utilisation de salles historiques, de cadre de vie et de reconstitution historique (reenactement), cette à dire exactement le contraire de l’esprit des musées rationalistes, du white cube.
Dans une mise en perspective historique et à partir de l’étude de sources documentaires inédites (lettres, projets, etc.), on se demandera si la mise en valeur du patrimoine « muséographique » des musées des années Cinquante et Soixante demeure encore d’actualité. Les dogmes de la muséographie de l’après-guerre (“passer de la mise en contexte des œuvres à la mise en contexte du public”) sont encore aujourd’hui actuels ? Faut-il restaurer les dispositifs muséographiques historiques ou les remplacer ? Quelles sont aujourd’hui les stratégies de la mise en situation de l’œuvre ? L’œuvre est toujours au cœur de l’accrochage et si c’est le cas, dans quel but ?

dans Musées en scène 14 et 15 juin 2021/Colloque international organisé par l'École du Louvre et le musée du Louvre sous la direction de Cecilia Hurley-Griener, École du Louvre, et Françoise Mardrus, Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon. Depuis une cinquantaine d'années, la présentation des collections muséales est devenue une question centrale tant au niveau pratique que théorique, aussi bien dans le cadre muséal qu'universitaire. Les débats des années 1970 entre muséologie « officielle » et muséologie contestataire se sont également ouverts à la dimension sociale des sciences humaines, avec la sociologie, la sémiologie et le courant des Visual Studies. L'enjeu de ce colloque est de favoriser le renouvellement du discours critique porté sur le musée, sur son rôle public, sur ses contraintes, devenues souvent prégnantes pour ceux qui le dirigent. Aujourd'hui, un bilan s'impose, trente ans après l'inauguration de la pyramide (2019), pour prendre la mesure des grandes transformations intervenues durant les cinquante dernières années dans ce domaine, et pour réfléchir aux perspectives nouvelles qui se dessinent au XXI e siècle.

The chapter focuses on the private art gallery (or commercial art gallery) as arena for the mediation of Italian design. Current interplay between gallery owners and architects continues a tradition dating from the 1920s, when galleries played a critical role in fuelling opposition to establishment, or merely fashionable, art by exhibiting works carefully chosen by well-informed curators and pioneering owners in appropriately modified interiors. These galleries, which also were hotbeds of debate, represented significant and testing commissions for a number of famous architects, although, unfortunately, many of them no longer exist in built form.
The best of these gallery interiors were a far cry from the "au bonheuer des dames" taste that still characterised private exhibition interiors. Some galleries brought in architects to give them a recognisable image, while curators refined their selections of works by cultivating the esteem of artists and art-lovers, and devising ploys to overcome public indifference to art. Almost all the galleries published books and catalogues, and organised lectures; some even had purpose-built publications and meetings rooms for such activities. Furthermore, exhibitions were critical in mediating architecture and interior design to a gallery-going public; exhibition galleries were the test-beds that took modern Italian architecture beyond Rationalism and called for new ways of relating to art. Galleries were an arena for the mediation of design not only through their arrangements of interiors, furniture, and display stands for showing art, but also as intellectual meeting places and sites for the exchange of ideas. This chapter explores an area of cultural heritage forgotten by many design histories; it relates a specifically Italian approach to relationships between interior design and art and find connections with present practice, in which the International ‘white cube’ style can be regarded as a reduction of the design process.

Franco Albini arrived in Egypt in the early Sixties with a Unesco delegation, led by
George Henri Rivière and charged with suggesting possible locations for new museums,
in collaboration with the Egyptian government. He actually elaborated some plans, which
were never put into practice, such as the so-called “Gezira Project” in Cairo (1962-63).
In Alexandria the Albini studio, cooperating with Rivière and local architects, resumed a
beloved theme of the Italian designer, that of re-establishing connections between museums
and cities. He planned a Guggenheim-type structure, a stepped building where the vertical
floor separation was abolished. This project too was destined to remain on paper. From this
Egyptian experience, besides the plans and the scale models, an interesting report has survived,
jointly signed by Albini and Rivière in 1969, which put forward some recommendations and
suggestions, with the aim of updating the local museums and archeological sites according
to modern European museology.

Aveva visto giusto Giuseppe Samonà quando affidò a Franco Albini, il suo primo incarico veneziano come professore di architettura degli interni, arredamento e decorazione? Era riuscito a cogliere il nucleo più autentico e caratteristico della sua natura di progettista?
Un confronto tra l'attività di Albini nel disegno degli oggetti d'uso e le sue architetture.

L’Associazione AMS (Architettura Modernità
e Scienze), la Fondazione Franco Albini
e l’Ordine degli Architetti Pianificatori
Paesaggisti e Conservatori della Provincia
di Genova, con il Ministero dei Beni e delle
Attività Culturali e del Turismo e con il Comune
di Genova pongono all’attenzione del pubblico
il tema del rinnovo dei musei dei Maestri
del Razionalismo. I più importanti studiosi,
insieme ai dirigenti del Ministero e degli enti
locali, discuteranno nella prima sessione
del 24 gennaio 2018 la problematica generale,
che nasce dal conflitto tra innovazione del
percorso espositivo, restauro e adeguamento
alle norme dell’edificio ospitante, da una parte,
e tutela di allestimenti che sono ormai beni
culturali in sé, dall’altra.
Nella seconda sessione del 18 aprile 2018
verranno analizzati i casi-studio dei musei
albiniani degli Eremitani a Padova e di Palazzo
Rosso, Sant’Agostino e San Lorenzo a Genova
e di quelli scarpiani di Castelvecchio a Verona
e dell’Accademia a Venezia.

Milan’s underground transportation network was planned as an alternative public transport system for the 19th-century tram-based surface transportation, where its stations were designed by Studio Albini in collaboration with Bob Noorda/Unimark. Today, therefore, the system is assumed to be an example of ‘Rationalism’ in Milan, and as well as Italy. Regarding this, the Albinian way of design that is still effective in the Milan Metro has affected the individual and collective behavior of its users in addition to the architecture, planning, social and economic development of the city from the material to symbolic value. This paper aims to examine the architectural identity of the Milan Metro and Franco Albini’s Rationalist approach to the interior design of the stations of the Red Line (Linea M1) along with Bob Noorda’s well-known graphic designs of the signage system which would later influence the underground transportation networks of New York, Sao Paolo, and Naples.

L'architecture des musées en Italie dans la période après la Seconde Guerre mondiale mérite une attention spéciale. La guerre avait laissé d'immenses dégâts en Europe. De nombreux spécimens du patrimoine artistique et culturel et de nombreux musées avaient été touchés. Au-delà des besoins urgents en matière de logement, de services et d'infrastructures, la reconstruction en Italie fut aussi une reconstruction des institutions démocratiques. Dans ce contexte, les musées et les expositions jouèrent un rôle majeur. La pédagogie de l'art eut une valeur fondatrice pour le processus démocratique et la reconstruction des musées devint l'expression même de la volonté de renaissance et de récupération de l'identité nationale après la fin du régime fasciste. Les musées sont ainsi devenus des lieux d'expérimentation, dans une dialectique étroite entre «ancien» et «nouveau»-étant donné qu'ils étaient presque toujours installés dans des bâtiments historiques. Plusieurs musées ont été établis, reconstruits ou réaménagés entre 1945 et 1965. Les conservateurs ont fait appel à plusieurs architectes d'avant-garde pour donner forme à cette nouvelle culture de l'exposition spécifiquement italienne, dans laquelle convergent histoire, architecture, design et graphique. Ces interventions ont renouvelé la muséographie en Italie et ont contribué à établir un nouveau standard dans le monde entier. Il sera question d'illustrer quelques réalisations-devenues classiques-par Franco Albini et Franca Helg, le groupe BBPR, et Carlo Scarpa, à Gênes, Milan, Palerme et Vérone.