Franco ALBINI

Franco Albini (Robbiate, October 17, 1905 - Milan, November 1, 1977) was an Italian architect and designer. Albini was one of the most important and rigorous Italian architects of the twentieth century adhering to Italian Rationalism and as such is internationally recognized through a wide publication of his works. The son of an engineer, he graduated in architecture in 1929 at the Milan Polytechnic. In 1931 he began his own professional activity with a studio together with the architects Giancarlo Palanti and Renato Camus. In 1936 he had his first major assignment designing the Fabio Filzi district in Milan. At the end of the 1930s he took part in some important project groups such as the Milano Verde urban plan (together with Ignazio Gardella, Giuseppe Pagano, Giovanni Romano and others), and in some important competitions for the EUR. In the early 1950s he had his first assignments which received wide critical feedback. Albini was a member of the CIAM, the INU, the Accademia di San Luca, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Scientific Institute of the C.N.R. for the museography section (1970). There were numerous awards and recognitions, among them: the three Compasso d'oro (1955, 1958 and 1964), the Olivetti award for architecture (1957), the "Royal Designer for Industry" award from the Royal Society of London (1971). Albini embodies the ideal of an architect completely immersed in contemporaneity but at the same time not specialized, capable of dealing with different scales of intervention, from the spoon to the city. His architecture always aimed at coherence, rather than the fashion of the moment; for this reason between the production before and after the war there is no real solution of continuity and the architect remained faithful to those choices made in his youth. /