Ignazio Gardella

In the 1980s he seemed to stick to the Post Modern, but he did not in reality share its principles. Thus he himself said, "It is always difficult to say who are the fathers and who the sons. But Mario Ridolfi and I said, jokingly, that if we were really the fathers of all the works exhibited (at the 1980 Venice Biennale) we would have to admit (...) to having gone to bed with women of every type and every race." (s. Guidarini, 2002).

The figure of Gardella remained at the pinnacle of Italian architecture for all of the 1960s and '70s, with intense professional activity whose importance is proven by his presence in international publications. In the last phase of his life, Gardella, now among the eminences grises of Italian architecture, still produced significant projects, like the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Genova (1975–1989), which brought him once more to the front lines of the architectural debate.

In the 1960s and 1970s he seemed to adhere to a strictly professional form of practice like the Modern Movement or the International Style. His Uffici Alfa Romeo (1969) opposed the use of industrial materials and the development of a complex program. But Gardella strictly controlled the form, imposing a symmetrical composition.

Gardella won many prizes, among which are the: Premio Nazionale of Olivetti for Architecture (1955), the 1977 Medaglia d'oro del Presidente della Repubblica ai benemeriti della Scuola, della Cultura e dell'Arte (Gold Medal), the Leone d'Oro alla carriera dalla Biennale di Venezia (1996), Honorary membership in the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and member of the Accademia di San Luca and socio onorario of the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera.

In the same years he was a leader of important cultural events, like CIAM (in 1952 he founded, with others, the summer session in Venice; in 1959 he participated in CIAM X in Otterlo in the Netherlands), or the first INU conferences (starting in 1949).

In the 1950s he came closer to regionalist currents, but his buildings also maintained an abstraction that distanced them from the most famous works of Neoliberty or Neorealism.

Gardella also had an important role in education, from his invitation in 1949 by Giuseppe Samonà to be part of the staff of the IUAV. His academic career brought him to the post of Professore Ordinario in 1962, which he held until 1975.

Gardella's activity has had a determining role in the field of design as well, starting as early as 1947, when he founded the Azucena Agency with Luigi Caccia Dominioni, the first that inaugurated Italian design production of high quality. Gardella designed primarily decorative furniture objects.

From among his first buildings one could note the Antitubercular Dispensary of Alessandria (1934–38) which is one of the masterpieces of rationalist architecture.

His long professional activity, which began before his graduation at the end of the 1920s with his father Arnaldo Gardella [it] (1873–1928), produced an enormous quantity of projects and realizations.

Ignazio Gardella (30 March 1905 in Milan, Lombardy – 16 March 1999) was an Italian architect and designer.

Born into a family of architects, the first of whom was his namesake Ignazio Gardella Sr. [it] (1803–1867). Gardella graduated in engineering from the Politecnico di Milano university in 1928, and later earned a degree in architecture from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia (IUAV) in 1949.