The Abstract House (Milan)

The abstract house is the maximum expression of the architectural conceptual theories of Perogalli and Mariani synthesis of the artistic movement MAC, founded in 1948 in Milan with Atanasio Soldati, Gillo Dorfles, Bruno Munari and Gianni Monnet with the aim of overcoming figurative art by referring to the lesson of Kandinsky.

The inseparable unity of the arts is significantly manifested in this example, the so-called "abstract house"; it presents a composition of the facade inspired by the work of Alberto Magnelli, a well-known abstract painter of Tuscan origins who moved to Paris.

The Palazzo is a unique expressed synthesis applied to a building of the MAC-Movimento d'Arte Concreta artistic movement. It is defined by the art critic of Claudio Camponogara as "one of the richest and most significant buildings of the entire Movement for Concrete Art".

The painter Francesco Magnelli, active in Paris, collaborates with the designers in particular to layout the facade where the apartments of the Abstract House in Viale Beatrice d'Este are distributed according to a pictorial scheme, also finding inspiration from the artist Alberto Magnelli. The same design is taken up in negative inside the entrance hall with an artistic inlay in the rubber floor with the aim of establishing a close relationship between the facade and the interior space. In the atrium a sculpture was created by Attilio Mariani.

Thus, for a short period of time (from 1948 to 1958), for architects and artists, Milan became the city where they could experience a new conception of the relationships between the arts. The Palace shows how the concrete forms are not simply paintings applied to the walls of a building designed separately by another person, but are born and developed together with the architecture with which they identify. The task of breaking the stereometry of the building is entrusted to the balconies which, united in a clever play of colors, enliven the front with beams of intense blue and give the impression of a large abstract composition pleasing to the eye and functional. The same design is taken up in negative inside the entrance hall, where an inlay of the rubber floor has the purpose of establishing a close relationship between the external facade and the internal space, where there is also a Mariani sculpture. Perogalli also considers this creation one of the most original and significant in which "the synthesis of the arts ... is also notable for the strong chromatic component: the facade of the building has a cladding in white marble and blue ceramic tiles. The decoration is expressed both in the free composition and in the choice of colors on the facade.[4]

"The façade endowed with movement and plasticity for the protrusions of the balconies and bow windows that the chromatic play enhances: cladding in white marble, mirrors in black ceramic mosaic, balconies in blue ceramic mosaic."

• Archivio Carlo Perogalli, Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Design
• Archivio Civico di Milano
• Carlo Perogalli, Introduzione all'arte totale. Neorealismo e astrattismo, architettura e arte industriale, Milano 1952, p. 48
• Carlo Perogalli, Aspetti dell'architettura contemporanea: cronache, temi, tendenze, Milano 1952, pp. 63–66
• AA. VV., MAC e dintorni, Ed. Credito Valtellinese, Sondrio, 1997
• G. Gramigna, S. Mazza, Milano. Un secolo di architettura milanese dal Cordusio alla Bicocca, Milano 2001, Hoepli, p. 242
• Marco Biraghi, G. Lo Ricco, S. Micheli, Guida all'architettura di Milano 1954-2014, Milano 2013, pp. 14–15
• Fondo Attilio Mariani, Milano
• Agnoldomenico Pica, Milano, Guida Ariminum, Milano 1964
• C. Colleoni, Carlo Perogalli e la sintesi delle arti: architetture a Milano, in AL, n. 5 2004

• Quadronno District
• Milano
• Viale Beatrice d'Este (Milan)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Abstract House (Milan).

• La Casa Astratta, Ordine Architetti
• Lombardia Beni Culturali Viale Beatrice d'Este, 24