When Architecture Tells the Story of a University, an Era and a City

THE BOCCONI BUILDING IN VIA SARFATTI TURNS 75 AND IS CELEBRATED BY A CONFERENCE AND A BOOK ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF THAT TIME, THE COMPLEX RELATIONSHIP WITH GIOVANNI GENTILE AND THE ARCHITECT GIUSEPPE PAGANO, FASCIST, ANTIFASCIST AND MARTYR, WHO DIED SHORTLY THEREAFTER IN MAUTHAUSEN

Seventy-five years ago, on December 21, 1941, the Bocconi building in via Sarfatti 25  was inaugurated. It had been designed by Giuseppe Pagano, an architect of Istrian origin who would have died shortly thereafter, on April 22, 1945, in Mauthausen, 13 days before the liberation of the concentration camp.
 
The building has left an imprint not only in the history of the University, but also in Italian architecture and in the development of Milan. In the difficult years between the ‘30s and ‘40s, with Italy ready to go to war and the Fascist regime influencing intellectual life, the construction of the building was so tormented, that Pagano himself defined it "a drama in three acts". If the drama had been written, its main characters, in addition to the architect, would have been Giovanni Gentile, the philosopher and regime’s top brass that, in those years, was serving as the University Deputy President, and Girolamo Palazzina, Bocconi’s Secretary, now recognized as the true deus-ex-machina of the University in those years.
 
On Tuesday, December 20 (classroom Perego via Sarfatti 25, 5pm) the conference Da Pagano a oggi: architettura, università e città (in Italian), retracing the story of the building, will celebrate the role of architecture in the development of a city, and will shed light on the complex figure of Pagano, "fascist, anti-fascist martyr", from the enrollment among D’Annunzio’s legionaries in 1920 to the activity in the partisan Matteotti Brigades, for which he was arrested and deported in 1944. CLICK HERE for the full program.
 
During the conference the book Architetture bocconiane (by Aldo Castellano and Marzio Romani, with a presentation by Mario Monti and an afterword by Bruno Pavesi, Egea, 2016, 228 pages, limited edition not for sale) will be presented. The book tells the story of the design and realization of the building, first from the point of view of the University (in the chapter written by Romani), then as seen by Pagano (Barbara Galli). The book clarifies the role of Pagano in the history of Italian architecture (Castellano) and a concluding chapter (Stefano Casciani) is dedicated to the development of the Bocconi campus since then, with buildings designed by a variety of Italian and foreign architects (Muzio, Reggiori, Ceretti, Gardella, Bonucelli, Costa and Zanibelli, Nonis, Grafton Architects, Sejima and Nishizawa).
 
The documents unearthed by Romani shed light on the multi-year and exhausting work of negotiation with city and state authorities to allow the University to develop beyond an old building (in largo Treves) no longer sufficient, and on the efforts to maintain autonomy from politics. As evidence of the deadly plot, when the works in via Sarfatti finally start, they are so slow that they would have raised the ire of any client - but Bocconi had something else to think about, because in the same months the University had been affected by the racial laws and had been forced to surrender the rector and some professors, despite Gentile’s efforts to avoid such an heinous outcome.



by Fabio Todesco