Kay Bea Jones - Suspending Modernity: The Architecture of Franco Albini

SUSPENDING MODERNITY: THE ARCHITECTURE OF FRANCO ALBINI

Ashgate Studies in Architecture Series

SERIES EDITOR: EAMONN CANNIFFE, MANCHESTER SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE,
MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY, UK

The discipline of Architecture is undergoing subtle transformation as design awareness permeates our visually dominated culture. Technological change, the search for sustainability and debates around the value of place and meaning of the architectural gesture are aspects which will affect the cities we inhabit. This series seeks to address such topics, both theoretically and in practice, through the publication of high quality original research, written and visual.

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Kay Bea Jones
School of Architecture, Ohio State University, USA

ASHGATE

Kay Bea Jones 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Kay Bea Jones has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jones, Kay Bea.

Suspending modernity : the architecture of Franco Albini / by Kay Bea Jones.

pages cm. -- (Ashgate studies in architecture)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-2728-1 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-2729-8 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-4724-2730-4 (epub) 1. Albini, Franco--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Architecture--Italy--History--20th century. I. Title.

NA1123.A525J66 2014

720.92--dc23

2014020390

ISBN 9781472427281 (hbk)

ISBN 9781472427298 (ebk-PDF)

ISBN 9781472427304 (ebk-ePUB)

Dedicated to my parents,
Mary A. Macklin Jones and Kenneth Buxton Jones Jr.

It was a damp, dark day the first time that I wandered into Franco Albinis Treasury of San Lorenzo Museum in Genoa. I had been fortunate enough to receive a USIA (United States Information Agency) research grant to study Modern architecture in Genoa during the winter of 1989. The citys miniature streetsin some of which you can reach walls on both sides with outstretched armsdrew me along labyrinthine corridors where I found painted faades, traced the common striping of local black and white stone, discovered medieval loggias, some long since filled in but leaving embedded columns, and I enjoyed neon-laced storefronts advertising antiquities or books or old cafes. Narrow, often empty sloping streets eventually led to the daylight of a piazza or the Sottoripa with its busy traffic and business activities of the harbor. The stair-stepped ramp paths leading uphill rewarded tired legs with grand views of the industrial port over silver rooftops. I felt an equal mix of delight and anxiety as I got lost threading my way through the networks of this hard-worn port town, its old solid structures and hard working citizens inhabiting a kind of density I had not known, although I had lived in Rome and Florence. Meanwhile, grandiose frescoed interiors of elegant baroque palazzi holding private family collections existed just beyond the surface.

Up from the port and through the Piazza Scuole Pie, I wandered into the duomo church of San Lorenzo. The monumental faade invited passage through its left side doora portal that looked like the section of nested Russian dolls. I passed the stone lion, climbed the black and white stone steps, and admired the intricate inlaid marble ornament that Marco Polo and Andrea Doria no doubt had touched that brought the scale down to human dimensions with magnificent detail and color. The austere striped and arcaded colonnade formed side aisles that led me into the sacristy, from which a ticket bought entry underground to the precious collection of artifacts known as the cathedrals treasury, a most unusual assortment of sacred bounty. Among the spoils of seizure was the reliquary of St. Lawrence brought back by a Genoese crusader from the Levant. It included such treasures as St. Annes armbone exposedwithin a gilded sleeve, the chalcedony chalice framed in gold, said to have held the head of John the Baptist when it was served to Herod, a the green glass bowl called the Holy Graal. Could it be?

Except for the bejeweled and shiny treasures, the crypt was empty. I was alone; the silence and reflections were dizzying. Intense beams of light focused on gem-studded cardinals robes in custom glass cases, silver statuary and ritual vessels glistened in the dark chambersspaces that remained invisible until my eyes adjusted to the dim light. Gradually, I became aware of the architecture that allowed for such intimate relations with such unique artifacts. Four small gallery cylinders and an interstitial hexagon that joined three of the four round rooms formed a Modern assemblage of interlaced spaces, quite in contrast to the collections they housed, and in spite of being buried beneath a medieval church. The rooms were refined and simple, rendered from abstract geometries and realized in matte finished carved stone producing uniform floor and wall surfaces. Masterful was the design of almost invisible infrastructure that provided lighting and air movement with cast-in-place radial concrete structural ribs that included beads of skylight overhead. Such humble, yet brilliant, and effective architecture for displaying these historic artifacts was new to my Modern eyes.

Over the following weeks, I discovered three other museums and two office buildings, all in the heart of Genoa and all designed by Franco Albini. I had been attracted to each Modern intervention for the subtle way the present was married with the past, and the fabrication craft was superb, albeit with expression of the intervention minimized. As I learned that each work of architecture was drawn by the same hand, I became acutely aware of the profound nature of design that transcends style. Except for tectonic precision and subtle performance, there was little to link the look of these different Modern interventions to one another. Most apparent, each was intimately in sync with its physical surrounds, drawing selectively from existing conditions and able to revalue and challenge indifference to history. In his solutions to small problems, Albini had, for me, elevated the practice of architecture to a new art. In these few projects, his greatness lay less in the novelty or boldness of his intervention than in its subtly.