Giovanni Michelucci
Giovanni Michelucci (born 2 January 1891 in Pistoia, † December 31, 1990 in Florence ) was an Italian architect, urban planner and professor.
Life and work
The son of a business family acquired in 1911 the diploma of the Istituto Superiore d' Architettura in Florence, but first worked in his father's iron foundry and tried to be financially independent as a graphic designer with woodcuts, an artistic activity which he resumed in old age. As a soldier in the First World War he produced a small chapel at Caporetto - his first architectural work (1916).
1920 Michelucci professor at the Regio Istituto Nazionale d' Istruzione Professionale in Rome. In 1928 he returned to Florence. His work as an architect started with smaller residential buildings, but in 1933 he was awarded with the Gruppo Toscano (Nello Baroni, Pier Niccolò Berardi, Italo Gamberini, Sarre Guarnieri, Leonardo Lusanna ) won first prize in the competition for the new central train station of Florence. The 1935 completed project aroused because of its distinctive modern design language abroad stir.
As already established architect Michelucci was now an employee of the influential architect Marcello Piacentini State in connection with the project of " Città universitaria " in Rome. On the campus of the University La Sapienza Michelucci realized the oriented in the formal language of the Classical Modern Building Institute of Mineralogy, Geology and Palaeontology ( 1932-35 ). 1939 Michelucci professor at the University of Florence, in 1944 and 1945, he was elected chairman of its architecture faculty.
The historicist reconstruction of the destroyed towards the end of World War II historic district to the Ponte Vecchio, however, disappointed Michelucci difficult - he had presented significantly more modern plans with high-rise buildings for the southern area in front of the bridge. Resigned left Michelucci 1948, the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence and then taught at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Bologna, but realized time and again projects in his native Tuscany.
The completed in 1950 Commodity Exchange (Italian Borsa merci ) in Pistoia exemplifies his conception of the new architecture in a historical context. The attitude of a radical renewal, Michelucci yet revealed during his Florentine high-rise project is stark perspective at the commodity exchange: Here is the existing building of the Cassa di Risparmio neighboring dell'Azzolini was ( from 1905) for key reference its contemporary architecture. Despite the materials deliberately chosen, modern - concrete, glass and steel - he managed a convincing integration of the modern.
In the 1950s he was the protagonist of the modern church architecture, but designed among other things, a skyscraper in Livorno ( 1957-66 ) and worked on the general development plan of Florence and that of Ferrara. In 1958 he was awarded the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize significant. With the Highway Church of San Giovanni Battista in Campi Bisenzio (near Florence ) Michelucci realized in 1964 a key work of organic architecture in Italy.
Micheluccis proposals for the reconstruction of Florence after the flood of December 1966 remained unrealized.
On December 31, 1990, two days before his 100th birthday, he died at his home in Fiesole. Among his pupils were, among others, Leonardo Ricci and Aldo Loris Rossi.
Works (selection)
- Casa Valiani in Rome, 1929-31
- Station S. Maria Novella in Florence, 1933-35
- Palazzo del Governo in Arezzo, 1936
- Borsa merci ( commodity exchange ) in Pistoia, 1949-50
- Church of SS Peter and Gerolamo ( Chiesa di Collina ) in Pontelungo (Pistoia ), 1947-53
- Headquarters of the Cassa de Risparmio ( Savings Bank ), Florence, 1953-57
- Church B. V. Maria in Larderello (Pisa), 1954-56
- Skyscraper in Piazza Matteotti in Livorno, 1957-66
- Church of San Giovanni Battista in Campi Bisenzio (on the Autostrada del Sole, Florence), 1960-64
- Church of San Giovanni Battista in Arzignano (Vicenza ), 1965-67
- Church of S. Rosa in Livorno, 1977
- Bank branch of the " Monte dei Paschi di Siena " in Colle Val d' Elsa, 1973-78
- Theater ' Michelucci ' in Olbia, 1988-90.