Living two days short of 100 years is a feat in itself, but occupying the main part of those years, as the architect Giovanni Michelucci did, by designing some of the most significant buildings constructed in Italy during the twentieth century has left us with an enduring record of his prodigious creativity.
Among the many edifices Miche-lucci built in Florence, the Santa Maria Novella railway station (1932-1935) and the church of St. John the Baptist (1960-1964) on the highway just outside the city are probably the best known to Florentines.
A group of young architects known as the Tuscan Group, which Michelucci corrdinated, won the national competition, besting 100 other competitors, to build the new station facing the back of the Santa Maria Novella church. The design was hated by conservatives but loved by modernists at the time. Fortunately, although the blueprint did not mirror fascist architectural triumph, Mussolini approved the design because, seen from above, he thought it looked like a fasces, one of the symbols of the regime. Considered a masterpiece of rationalist architecture, the typical pietra forte stone of its outer facings blended into the historic setting and colours of Florence while its spacious entrance hall with its thermolux and steel roof and main gallery made it functional and modern.
The second landmark, the revolutionary tent-shaped church of St. John the Baptist (nicknamed the Church of the Autostrada) was commissioned when Michelucci, a non-practising Christian, was 73 years old. The highway authority gave him a free reign in building this memorial to those who had died constructing the road. With no limitations of time, size, form or budget, he was inspired by Le Corbusier’s Notre-Dame-du-Haut in Ronchamp in France. Although it was not without its critics, this construction marked Michelucci’s break from rationalism and his move towards more liberal forms of expressionism. In his words, ‘this church is a little city in which men should meet and recognize in each other the common hope of finding each other again.’
Just some of Michelucci’s other important works in Tuscany include his Town Plan of Pistoia (1936); the classicist-style Palazzo del Governo in Arezzo (1936); the Borsa Merci in Pistoia (1950); the urban planning of the Sorgane neighbourhood of Florence (1955); the Cassa di Risparmio of Florence (1957) in via Bufalini; Ponte alle Grazie (1954); the Inn of the Red Crawfish at the Pinocchio Park in Collodi (1963); and the skyscraper in Piazza Matteotti in Livorno (1966). Unfortunately, his plans for restoring the buildings around Piazza Santa Croce after the 1966 flood were not accepted, just as his project for the reconstruction of the Ponte Vecchio area after World War II had been unsuccessful.
A native son of Pistoia, Michelucci was born on January 2, 1891. His family owned an artistic metal workshop which brought him into contact with artists and architects at an early age. In 1911, he graduated from the Istituto Superiore di Architettura of Florence, where three years later he qualified to teach architectural design. In 1916, he completed his first architectural work, a small chapel in Caporetta while serving in the army in World War I. In the early 1920s, Michelucci taught at the Istituto d’Arte of Rome, the city where he married the painter Eloisa Pacini (1903-1976) in 1927.
He had an extensive academic career. Returning to Florence, Michelucci was professor of architecture of interiors, furnishing and decoration at the Istituto Superiore di Architettura from 1928 until 1936 and when, in 1936, the faculty of architecture was set up in Florence, he was appointed professor of interiors and furnishing there, transferring in 1944 to the chair of urban planning and in 1947 to that of architectural cmposition. In December 1945, he founded an influential magazine, La Nuova Città, which debated planning issues and discussed emerging social problems. Dean of the faculty of architecture from October 1944 to September 1945 and again from June 1947 until August 1948, in the 1948-49 academic year, he left the University of Florence to join the faculty of engineering in Bologna.
A tall, elegant man, Michelucci was not only an attentive observer of nature, of the space around him and of life but he also had an intimate understanding of the materials he used and where they came from. A profound sense of the dignity of the individual motivated his work and it was fundamental to him that what he created should be on a human scale. He saw the city as a place for socialisation where ‘houses, neighbourhoods, zones were not for inhabitants, but for people.’
After retiring from teaching, Michel-ucci continued to work in his studio-home in Fiesole until shortly before his death on December 31, 1990.
During his later years, he concentrated on ‘social’ projects, designing churches, schools, hospitals, and prisons for the benefit of the weaker members of society. Among these last works, the Garden of Encounters at Florence’s Sollicciano prison (1987-1990) and Olbia’s theatre complex (1990) are testimony to his perennial and extraordinary vitality. He also devoted much time and energy to creating the Michelucci Foundation (see box), which would become his universal heir.
Today, Michelucci is remembered not only as an architect who, through his work, reflected the transformations, the shifts in ideas, styles and forms of the period covering his almost century-long lifetime, but also as a man who always practised his profession with his heart, not just his mind.
FONDAZIONE GIOVANNI MICHELUCCI
Via Beato Angelico 15, Fiesole www.michelucci.it
tel. 055597149; 3661721793
In 1982, Giovanni Michelucci, to-gether with the Tuscan region and the municipalities of Fiesole and Pistoia, set up the Michelucci Foundation for the purpose of contributing to the study and research in urban planning and modern architecture, paying special attention to the problems posed by ‘social’ structures such as hospitals, prisons and schools.
After 28 years, the foundation still carries out its original objective and continues to work on the social habitat and the relation between space and society. It works in collaboration with cultural groups and public authorities on projects and proposals that concentrate on architecture and contemporary urban planning, furthering research and providing available information through conferences, seminars and publications, including La Nuova Città.
CENTRO DI DOCUMENTAZIONE
GIOVANNI MICHELUCCI
Piazza del Duomo 1, Pistoia
www.comune.pistoia.it/musei/
centro_michelucci.htm tel. 057330285; fmarini@dada.it
In 1982, when the Municipality of Pistoia made Giuseppe Michelucci and honorary citizen, it also created a documentation centre in his name, marking the donation of 932 of his architectural drawings. Another 1,155 drawings relating to the last 10 years of his life were then added and are available for consultation. Therefore, over 2,000 drawings can now be viewed at the centre as well as about 300 models.
