| Giulio Carlo Argan has defined the House on the Zattere "The Ca' d'Oro of modern architecture... |
doorhandle
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Garda
Who is he Ignazio Gardella
Garda doorhandle (1951 prod. Olivari)
| From
the book "L'architettura presa per mano" (Hand on architecture) by Stefano Casciani,
Idea Books, Milan, 1992 Gardella gained, as early as in 1935, widespread recognition of his abilities as a modern architect with his first "published" project (a tower destined for the Milan cathedral square). His subsequent project, the Anti-tubercular Dispensary of Alessandria (1937) is considered one of the purest examples of Italian rationalism. However, with this work Gardella also abandoned modernist orthodoxy. In the years following the second world war, with the restoration of the Ischia Spa (1950) he performed a spectacular gesture of "confutation", by placing a neoclassic colonnade before a very geometric structure; a true three-dimensional trompe l'oeil. |
 The Pavilion of Contemporary Art, Milan (1953) |
His "anarchic" attitude towards the canons of the Modern Movement was to make him the centre of attention, more or less well-disposed, of the critics, who were often perplexed by the unpredictable character of his works. During the Populist-oriented editorship of Rogers he wrote for the "Casabella" magazine; however, his professional activity was almost exclusively aimed at the upper middle class: the author of Villa Borletti (1945), as well as many items in the highly re- fined Azucena range of objects (prism-formed standard-lamp, 1956). As Alessandro Mendini, with great insight, has put it "an unchallenged purist ... his innate compositive intuition not only closely links him with rationalism, but also with the noble and austere stylistic elements of the ancient Lumbard or Venetian buildings". In fact, it is precisely in Venice (House on the Zattere, 1957) and in Milan (building in Via Marchiondi, 1951) that Gardella has best shown his abilities as an architect. Giulio Carlo Argan has defined the House on the Zattere "The Ca' d'Oro of modern architecture... a masterpiece of stylistic virtuosity" (Portoghesi, 1968). The extremely smooth design feat of the building in Via Marchiondi also presented an opportunity to measure swords with an operation of design on both a small and a large scale: the theme of the doorhandle, interpreted by Gardella in a refined re-design of the curved cylinder typical of the modernist tradition. The fruit of this collaboration, (at the time part of the "custom-made marketing" characteristic of the period) was a new kind of object: the doorhandle, still manufactured by Olivari, called Garda. |
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 Diagramma
armchair (1957 prod. Gavina) |