I discovered Angelo Mangiarotti at Milan’s Triennale museum in 2002. Twenty-one years later, and a decade after Mangiarotti’s death, the Triennale is hosting another show devoted to the work of this exceptional architect, engineer, designer and sculptor. This exhibition draws attention to the intellectual and material themes that run through all the master multidisciplinarian’s output, from the monumental to the domestic.
Born in Milan in 1921, Mangiarotti was invited to the US by Walter Gropius in 1953, where he took a teaching post at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He returned to his home town two years later and set up a practice with the architect Bruno Morassutti, with whom he worked until 1960.
As an architect, Mangiarotti experimented with prefabrication and industrial production. He built many factories, treating them as “monuments to work”. In Milan he was responsible for the Milano Rogoredo and Certosa railway stations as well as the metro stations Porta Venezia and the cathedral-like Repubblica.
Like many of his contemporaries he also turned his hand to product design, conceiving objects with an enduring appeal. One of his most notable creations is the Eros table collection, developed for Fratelli Brambilla from 1971 and re-edited by Agapecasa since 2009.
The show’s curator, Fulvio Irace, has placed sketches and development models of buildings and products side by side. This is an ingenious approach because, with scale removed, it’s far easier to see similarities in Mangiarotti’s approach across disciplines. He often constructed without bolts, nails, screws or glue, preferring simple incastri joints that locked together. This can be seen in the 1971 Eros and 1978 Incas tables, and the 1991 IMM exhibition building in Carrara with its extraordinary roof constructed entirely of vaults of Carrara marble.
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The show comes with a catalogue published by Electa that includes a charming essay by the designer Martino Gamper, who recently bought and restored a 1971 holiday home designed by Mangiarotti in Bardolino, near Lake Garda. There is a booklet featuring six of his buildings in the city of Milan and six just outside, among them the now restored Mater Misericordiae church in Baranzate, with helpful maps so design and architecture buffs can make the pilgrimage. But before that they really must make their way to Milan.
Angelo Mangiarotti: When Structures Take Shape is at the Triennale in Milan until April 23; triennale.org, angelomangiarottifoundation.it
