Cross Milan with 17 characters who have lived here
An important figure of rationalist thought in Italy, at first he concentrated on low-cost housing with R. Camus and G. Palanti, and on experimentation in the field of exhibit design, at the Triennale and the Fair. During the postwar period he designed, among other works, the Palazzo Bianco (1949-51) and Palazzo Rosso (1952-61) museums in Genoa, La Rinascente department store in Rome (1957-61) and the Metropolitana Milanese subway (1962-69). He created a number of icons of design, such as the Veliero bookcase and the Luisa armchair (Compasso d’Oro 1955). Starting in 1952, he always worked in collaboration with Franca Helg.
In Milan, ’68 came five years early, Franco. It was in January ’63 that a group of students in the architecture department made demands for the reorganization of the course. No one listened. The strike began in February. They were young, they wanted to get out of the suffocating clutches of the academic world, no longer following the reactionary dictates of those who were still building things as if the war had never happened, as if the economic boom had never boomed. In Milan, only Ernesto Nathan Rogers managed to captivate them. As opposed to Cassi Ramelli and his neo-Renaissance SNIA Viscosa headquarters on Corso di Porta Nuova. They were called Cortese, Farè, Stevan, there was that young man from…
Franco Albini
Franco Albini at the Triennale of Milan
Franco Albini, Piero Bottoni, Gian Luigi Banfi, Ernesto Nathan Rogers, Gio Ponti, Marco Zanuso at the Casa della Cultura in Milan in the 1940s
Franco Albini with son Marco and grandson Francesco
Franco Albini is welcomed by Jaqueline Kennedy in Boston to discuss the project of the Memorial Library dedicated to John Kennedy, 1964
At the Trattoria alla Colomba, Venice 1960 (left to right: Fredi Drugman, Franca Helg, Franco Albini, Ludovico Belgiojoso, Carlo Scarpa; from behind: Corrado Levi, Matilde Baffa, Giuseppe Gambirasio, Aurelio Cortesi)
Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, Marcel Breuer visiting Murano, 1952
Franco Albini
Metropolitana Milanese
Metropolitana Milanese
Metropolitana Milanese
Metropolitana Milanese
Metropolitana Milanese
Metropolitana Milanese
Albini’s apartment
Fondazione Franco Albini
Fondazione Franco Albini
Franco Albini with two vases, designed and crafted by himself
[Photographs from the Fondazione Franco Albini’s Archive]
A lecture by Franco Albini
[Photographs from the Fondazione Franco Albini’s Archive]
Franco Albini holding the “Compasso d’Oro”
[Photographs from the Fondazione Franco Albini’s Archive]
Franco Albini and Ignazio Gardella in Rome
Franco Albini and its staging realized for Olivetti
[Photographs from the Fondazione Franco Albini’s Archive]