@architecture_in_a_blink

Offices and Apartment Complex, Corso Italia 15, Milan, 1949-57. Architect: Luigi Moretti (1907 Rome - 1973 Capraia). One of the highlights of early postwar Milanese architecture is this complex assemblage of four volumes built with great originality on a dense urban site. Moretti challenges the rules of the rigidly formal historical city - offering a planning model that is in direct contrast to the surrounding buildings - and proposing a way to organize a building by having component parts be informed by specific conditions of the site. On the main street, above a three-story base that defines the street frontage(s), sits a mass that aggressively cantilevers perpendicular to the Corso, facing away from the side street and onto a semi-public courtyard. At the ground level, the building volumes give way to vehicular access to underground parking - and pedestrian access to two residential slabs at the rear end of the lot. The buildings are all different in terms of height and orientation and are clad in different materials: glass, limestone, ceramic tiles. The project represents original research into finding an expressive image for Milan that depends on contrasting with the buildings of the old city as well as inventing a vision of a new world, offering a new relationship to the street front. #architecture #architecturalphotography #architecturephotograph #architectures #modernist #modern #modernarchitecture #historyofarchitecture #historyofmodernism #milano #milan #milanarchitecture #rationalistarchitecture #fifties #midcentury #midcenturymodern #moretti #corsoitalia #luigimoretti #iconsofarchitecture