Abstract
Abstract. Pino Pizzigoni was an architect from Bergamo whose work was characterized by a constant search for integration between tradition and innovation. The ‘stone houses’ built in the second post-war period in the Upper Town at the foot of the Medieval fortress and close to the Venetian Walls – a UNESCO World Heritage Site from 2017 – are an example of modern popular housing conceived to adapt to the needs of rural families who moved to the town. Designed under the Fanfani Law, they were envisaged to give new lifeblood to the ancient fabric, while respecting the landscape and the city’s skyline. Today, they can be considered one of the most significant post-war contributions to the cultural and architectural debate of the entire region. Their particular geographical position of the settlement has protected the complex because falling in an urban section marked by environmental constraints. However, to date, the asset has not yet been subjected to any protective restriction by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and so despite fifty years have passed since the architect’s death and over seventy years since the construction. The large underground car parking, today under construction on the border of the building complex, in addition to compromising its structural stability, would cause dramatic changes on the landscape, transforming a place that resembled a mountain village in an area congested by traffic and deafened by the noise of cars and tourists.
Highlights
Pino Pizzigoni was an architect from Bergamo whose work was characterized by a constant search for integration between tradition and innovation
The Fanfani alla Fara houses designed by Giuseppe (Pino) Pizzigoni in 1949 are a rare example of vernacular architecture that has remained unscathed by time and fashion
A matter that Gustavo Giovannoni discusses in Vecchie Città and Edilizia Nuova (1931), assuming urban planning as the optimal tool to give the city those characters of continuity and decorum recently lost and to connect the problem of the preservation of monuments to that of building organisation (Zucconi, 2002)
Summary
The Fanfani alla Fara houses designed by Giuseppe (Pino) Pizzigoni in 1949 are a rare example of vernacular architecture that has remained unscathed by time and fashion. A Luigi Angelini still clearly linked to the idea of isolating the monuments is opposed to the proposal of raising new social housing units on the esplanade of the Rocca, judging them as an “enormous offence against the reasons for beauty” (Figure 1) A vision confirmed in 1948 when, following the will of the municipal administration to “admit the citizens within the old fence of the Venetian walls” and given the availability of land donated for this purpose by the Moroni Counts, he highlighted a series of technical, economic and artistic disadvantages linked to the new construction 4 An opposition that he will later mitigate; as an honorary inspector of monuments, he will approve Pizzigoni’s project, provided that the architecture designed was subordinated to the monumental constructions of the area; its materials, roofs, lights, etc. In-depth research on the articulation of volumes and on the functionality of the environments that led to a very personal typological experimentation linked to the genius loci in all its parts, tangible and intangible
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