Giuseppe Terragni

Giuseppe Terragni (1904-1943) was one of the most important Italian architects of the first half of the twentieth century. Considered one of the founders of the current of Rationalism, with his works he managed to bring Italian architectural culture closer to the creative ferment and innovations that were revolutionizing the discipline in other parts of Europe, without however completely abandoning the attention to the plastic values of the historicist forms and monumentality that characterized the Italian architecture of the time. His main works were almost all built in Como, from the Novocomum apartment complex (1927-28) to the Casa del Fascio (1932-26) and the Sant'Elia nursery school (1936-37). Initially a convinced adherent of fascist militancy, Terragni however saw his research opposed by the official critics of the regime and was severely affected by the experience of war, ending his life with a sudden death at the age of only thirty-nine with the shadow of suicide hovering. Starting in 1965, an enlightened entrepreneur like Aurelio Zanotta rediscovered some furnishings designed by Terragni for his projects and decided to start their mass production, finding a place for them in the Zanotta catalog which still sees them in production.