Lecture Series: Prof. Orsina Simona Pierini

Male child wearing shorts standing halfway up a staircase, they have just dropped a cube with large letters on each face down the stairs.

Inside Homes. Milan Interiors 1928-1978

Wednesday 31st January 2024, 1pm Reilly Room

This is a Hybrid lecture which can be watched live on Zoom if you cannot join in person, click here to register

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Please note, this talk will be recorded

Synopsis

The lecture takes us inside the homes of Milan to analyze the evolution of inhabited space. From rationalist rigor to the explosion of post-modernism: a landscape that takes shape from the viewpoints developed by magazines and the experiments of the Triennale, recording the acceleration of art and the rise of a new role for objects. Between the canon of architecture and the many individual biographies, from Piero Portaluppi to Nanda Vigo, Luigi Caccia Dominioni to Salvati and Tresoldi, Gio Ponti to Joe Colombo, the story traces the social and cultural evolution of a city grappling with the project of the future.

Book cover with a photo of a Male child wearing shorts standing halfway up a staircase, they have just dropped a cube with large letters on each face down the stairs. text reads Nelle Case, Millan Interiors 1928-1978

Biography

Full Professor in Architectural and Urban Composition at Department of Architecture and Urban Studies at Milan Polytechnic. After taking a degree in Milan in 1989, she completed her PhD in Architectural Composition with Giorgio Grassi in Venice (IUAV) in 1995.
Honorary Research Fellow at Liverpool School of Architecture.

In 1998 she received a study grant for research with Carlos Martí Arís at the ETSAB, where she focused on Spanish architecture of the 1950s, curating with Josep Quetglas the exhibition on Josep Maria Sostres arquitecto and the publication of Passaggio in Iberia, Milano 2008.

During a sabbatical year in 2012, with Bruno Reichlin she investigated the notion of architectural critique, at the EPFL. Her research activity is based on an idea of architectural design that interprets the architecture of the city in its historical experience as material for contemporary design: she has published the book Sulla facciata, tra architettura e città, Rimini 2008 and Case Milanesi 1923-1973, Fifty Years of Residential Architecture in Milan, with Alessandro Isastia, Milano 2017 and recently Nelle case. Interiors in Milan 1928-1978, Milano 2023, with Enrico Morteo. In continuity with this experience is also the participation in the Venice Biennale 2018, co-editor of the catalog Everyday Wonders, the Corso Italia Complex and the installation by Cino Zucchi on Luigi Caccia Dominioni.

She has addressed the importance of the role of housing in the urban design of the contemporary city in Housing Primer, le forme della residenza nella città contemporanea, with Bruno Melotto, Rimini 2012 and recently in Housing Atlas - Europe 20th Century, London 2023.

She has lectured at many universities in Europe and elsewhere, including TUDelft, ETSAM Madrid, EAT Toledo, KIT Karlsruhe, Beijing University of Technology, ETSA Barcelona, Henry Van de Velde Institut Antwerpen, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, CEPT Ahmedabad, Hochschule Luzern, Düsseldorf Kunstakademie.

Image: Vico Magistretti, Casa Gavazzi in via Goito a Milano, fotografia Giorgio Casali, 1957
©IUAV, Archivio Progetti - Fondo Giorgio Casali

Cover: Enrico Morteo, Orsina Simona Pierini, NELLE CASE. MILAN INTERIORS 1928-1978, Hoepli 2023