Giuseppe Pagano
Giuseppe Pagano (1896 – April 22, 1945) was an Italian architect, notable for his involvement in the movement of rationalist architecture in Italy up to the end of the Second World War.
Giuseppe Pogatschnig was born in Parenzo (Poreč, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of Croatia). After attending the Italian language Lyceum in Trieste, he fled to join the Italian army at the onset of the First World War, adopting the Italian translation of his name, Pagano. He was twice wounded and twice captured. In the years immediately following the war, Pagano was associated with Nationalist and pre-Fascist politics, and would be among the founders of the first fascist party of his hometown of Parenzo. In 1924, Pagano graduated from the Politecnico of Turin, with a degree in architecture. In the late 1920s, he started designing his first buildings, including the Gualino office building in Turin (1928), and working on exhibitions in Turin and soon in Milan. In 1931, he moved to Milan to work for the architecture magazine La Casa Bella.
From the late 1920s, Pagano had adopted a rationalist position, influenced by Futurism and the European avant-gardes. He had a significant career as a writer and defender of rationalist architecture in the press, especially Casabella, whose name he soon changed from La Casa Bella when he became director of the magazine in 1933 along with Edoardo Persico. He was involved in the V Triennale of Milan in 1933, in which he collaborated in the design of the House with a Steel Structure, the 1934 Aeronautics Show, which he was responsible for designing, and the VI Triennale of 1936, which he directed together with the painter Mario Sironi. All three expositions were held in architect Giovanni Muzio's Palazzo dell'Arte in the Parco Sempione, which had been built for the V Triennale, the first held in Milan. He was also an accomplished photographer and he often published his own photographs in Casabella using them to strengthen his critiques of the architecture of the time.
Though initially an active member of the Italian Fascist party, from the mid-1930s, Pagano's architectural philosophy led him farther and farther from the official architects of the Fascist regime, such that his VI Triennale, in effect, proposed an alternate architectural expression for Fascism. Pagano opposed the monumental "representative architecture" of the rationalists of the Gruppo 7; but especially in 1931 with the latter group attempting to identify their architecture with Italian Fascism, and to make it the official state architecture.[1] In 1937 we worked closely with regime architect Marcello Piacentini on the interiors of the Italian Pavilion for the Paris International Expo and also worked on the master plan for the ill-fated Rome Expo of 1942, that was never held.
Pagano's position in the Fascist party and prestige among architects, as well as the diversity of cultural production under Benito Mussolini's Fascism, allowed him to openly criticize some of the regime's constructions as "bombastically rhetorical", from the pages of Casabella. In 1942, Pagano would leave the Scuola di Mistica and the Fascist Party. In 1943 he made contacts with members of the resistance, was captured in November 1943 and imprisoned at Brescia, from where he escaped in July 1944. He was recaptured in September 1944 in Milan, imprisoned at Villa Triste, and tortured. Later he was transferred to the prison of San Vittore, then to Bolzano and then to Mauthausen, Melk, and back again to Mauthausen.[2]
Pagano died at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria on 22 April 1945.
[edit] Selection of buildings and projects by Pagano
1926 Vittorio Emanuele III Bridge, Po River Principe di Piemonte Bridge, Po River
1928 Chemistry, Fashion, Armed Forces and Gancia Pavilions at Turin International Exposition (with Gino Levi Montalcini and Piero Petrona) Gualino Office Building (with Gino Levi Montalcini)
1929 Interiors for the Sale Ski Club, Biella (with Gino Levi Montalcini) Interiors for the Sambucco Saiar Store, Turin (with Gino Levi Montalcini)
1930 Italian Pavilion at Liege International Exposition (with Gino Levi Montalcini) New cover and graphic layout for the journal La casa bella (with Gino Levi Montalcini) Panel of projects presented at 3rd Monza Biennale (with Gino Levi Montalcini) Salpa Company Offices, Milan (with Gino Levi Montalcini)
1931 Project for the re-planning and urban renewal of Via Roma, Turin (with Gino Levi Montalcini, Ettore Sotsass and others) Sist School, Turin Villa Colli, Rivara (with Gino Levi Montalcini)
1932 Physics Building, Città Universitaria, Rome (completed 1935) Boarding School Biella (completed 1936)
1933 Steel Structure House at 5th Milan Triennale (with Franco Albini, Giancarlo Palanti and others) Summer Hall at 5th Milan Triennale (with Ottorino Aloisio Ettore Sottsass and others) Interiors for the ETR 200 Breda Train Carriage (with Gio Ponti) Entry in Santa Maria Novella Railway Station competition, Florence
1934 Exhibition plan and curation, design of the Hall of Honour and Icarus Room for Aeronautics Exhibition, Milan Furniture and interiors for the Il Popolo d’Italia offices. Milan
1936 Main entry and adjoining pavilion, Exhibition of Rural Architecture (with Guarniero Daniel), Exhibition of Building Materials (with Guido Frette) at sixth Triennale, Milan Project for Breda Train Carriage
1937 E42 master plan (with Marcello Piacentini, Luigi Piccinato, Ettore Rossi and Luigi Vietti) Internal arrangement for Italian Pavilion at Paris International Exposition (exterior by Piacentini)
1938 ‘Green Milan’ Project, Master plan for Sempione-Fiera area (with Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella and others) Bocconi University, Milan (completed 1941) Entry in Casa del Fascio competition, Trieste (with Angelo Bianchetti) Rivetti Stand, Wool Exhibits, National Textiles Exhibition, Circus Maximus, Rome (with Angelo Bianchetti)
