Influential Milanese architect, product/furniture designer, interior furnishings (Azucena). influential years 1950-1970s.
House as a bespoke suit
- Facade-shell/cover of interior
Good architect who wants to create good architecture must start form the inside, not the outside. The arragnement of the individual furinshings and fittings determines the partitionning of the living space and therefore also dictates the placement of doors and windows. All this together shapes the apartment, and the sum of the apartments shapes the building (FIg.1). The facade basically adapts around the various floor plans from which it is constituted.
Residence, Via ippolito Nievo 28 in milan
- Humanist approach.
This approach is very distinct and distant from any kinds of prefabricated formal solutions, it moves beyond “ideological agendas” and “mastermind-ing”. This approach requires identifying strongly with the requirements of the users. It also creates dense and inexhaustible promenade of different living arrangements.
- Interrelationship between designing the house and the creation of interior furnishings.
Co- created “Azucena” for interior furnishings. Design of furnishings and fittings is always in close harmony with the structure of the interior.
He sees himself as someone who design whole complexes.
draft of the plan, which follows movements of people, gives rise to considerations that are channeled in teh facade design. then it leads to objects, furnishings , handles etc. [Ex. moscaics by Franceso Somaini are integral component of the overall composition of the building. complex organism.] Dominioni believed that the way furniture is distributed and shaped determines the architectural design of the building.
- Equal importance of private and public
Such ideas embrace a permanent exchange between the private and public spheres. Both areas are tackeled with equal intensity, particular attentions is give to the spatial quality of the axes and transitions, to corridors in private apartments, to public galleries in large buildings, to stairaways and linking elements. [ex. link in San Fedele church and Chase Manhattan bank of BBPR in milan]
- Milanese context
After WW2 Milane went through a series of tumultuous changes. Economic growth, social changes and rapid modernizations formed a productive ground for architectural experiments.
Housing, industrial and furniture design. Triennale-event, could be seen as responsible in international spread and success of Italian design.
Also, interesting to note the physical context and the clientele uniquenesss.
Clients-bourgeoisie, whose self-image as a result of democratization processes underwent a radical transformation and they sought new architectural expression (Pirelli, cannot keep the “old” lifestyle.
Different context for architects. Mostly old fabric of the city, and even is the building is new, teh street on which it rests presents an array of historical perspectives. American designers working in parallel with Dominioni (George Nelson, Charles Eames etc) were less confined and were often designing toward unbuilt, forward-looking vistas.
casa casua dominioni
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