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Albini, Franco
(b Robbiate, Como, 17 Oct 1905; d Milan, 1 Nov 1977). Italian architect, urban planner and designer. After graduating from the Polytechnic of Milan (1929), he set up individual practice in Milan. One of the group of Rationalist architects who formed around the magazine Casabella, his work in the 1930s ranged from workers’ housing in Milan (1936, 1938; with Renato Camus and Giancarlo Palanti) to an ideal flat and furniture, exhibited at the Triennale in Milan in 1936. Immediately after World War II a series of masterplanning projects included schemes for the City of Milan (1946; with BBPR, Piero Bottoni, Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini) and for Reggio Emilia (1947–8; with Giancarlo De Carlo). Albini’s post-war architecture has a Rationalist clarity combined with sensitivity to context, tradition and history. Expressed first in the Rifugio Pirovano (1949–51) at Cervinia, Aosta, it was the office building for the Istituto Nazionale delle Assicurazioni (INA; 1950), Parma, with its simply stated concrete frame that set the pattern developed later in La Rinascente department store (1957–61), Rome. In this a steel frame forms Renaissance cornices at each floor level, and vertically folded red masonry panels pick up the immediate urban context. The post-war schemes for INA workers’ housing (1950–51; with BBPR and Gianni Abricci) at Cesate and Mangiagalli workers’ housing (1950–51; with Ignazio Gardella), both in Milan, are equally sensitive in their use of local materials: the theme was developed throughout the 1960s and 1970s in such housing schemes as those in Aosta (1965–70), Parma (1968–71) and Genoa (1969–74). Albini’s international reputation was also based on his exhibition and museum design, including the conversion of the Palazzo Bianco (1950–51), Genoa, into a museum; its functional abstraction prefigured the work in the Palazzo Rosso (1952–61), Genoa, and in the Museo del Tesoro di San Lorenzo (1952–6), Genoa.
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