On Thursday 6th October 2022 at 6 p.m., at the exhibition spaces of the Order of Architects of Milan and its Foundation, an exhibition of photographs by Sosthen Hennekam, curated by Adriana Granato and Marco Biraghi, opens.
The exhibition, which takes up the volume “L’architettura di Milano. La città scritta dagli architetti” published by Hoepli in 2021, traces a path through Milan’s most significant works from the post-war period to the present day, subdividing them by typology – from office buildings in the city centre to suburban residential districts – observed through the Dutch photographer’s rigorous black and white photographs and the redrawings made by studio ibsen.
Milan, over the past seventy years, has been able to build its own identity, modern, but also a historically (as well as geographically) Italian city. And it is precisely as an almost unique exemplar of an accomplished ‘Italian modernity’ that Milan has managed to keep pace and establish a fruitful dialogue with many other European and international realities. It has often done so guided by pragmatic rather than aesthetic principles.
And yet, it is precisely in this ‘minding its own business’ that Milan has found its stylistic signature; a code recognisable in the now ‘classic’ buildings of the 1950s and 1960s (those of BBPR, Albini, Gardella, Caccia Dominioni, Magistretti, Arrighetti) but also in some of those of the following decade (especially those of Gregotti, Rossi and Aymonino), and then again in the most recent era, in which the works of architects particularly sensitive to Milan’s modern ‘tradition’ such as Zucchi, Cecchi & Lima, Onsitestudio, are flanked by those of architects such as Botta, Herzog & de Meuron, Eisenman, Koolhaas, who in turn show that they know how to reinterpret it.
An architecture capable in most cases of integrating itself perfectly with the city, of respecting its logic, as well as reflecting that particular mix of elegance and rigour that is recognised throughout the world as a characteristic of Milan.
6 October – 15 November 2022
The exhibition is open from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2.30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Via Solferino 19, Milan.
Opening on Thursday 6 October at 6 p.m. The curators will be present.
On the occasion of the inauguration it will be possible to purchase the volume “L’architettura di Milano. La città scritta dagli architetti”, Hoepli, Milan 2021.
The visit to the exhibition entitles you to 1 cfp in self-certification.
For more information visit www.ordinearchitetti.mi.it/it/eventi/larchitettura-di-milano.
