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Rigotti, Annibale
(b Turin, 30 Sept 1870; d Turin, 8 March 1968). Italian architect, teacher, designer and urban planner. He graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Turin in 1890 and formed a friendship with Raimondo d’Aronco, with whom he collaborated on the design for the neo-Baroque Giaccone house (1890–93; with Riccardo Brayda) on Corso Matteotti, Turin. Through D’Aronco he was commissioned to design the railway station at Konya, in Turkey, and municipal theatres at Varna and Sitov, in Bulgaria (1893–6). On his return to Italy he built an elementary school at Sommariva del Bosco, Cuneo, which showed Viennese influences, and won the competition for the town hall at Cagliari with a design in the perpendicular neo-Gothic style (both 1897). In 1898 he built the neo-Rococo Palazzina Vitale, Corso Cairoli, Turin. For the first Exposizione Internazionale d’Arte Decorativa Moderna in Turin (1902) Rigotti’s most important contributions were the ‘oil and wine’ Pavilion and the Banfi Pavilion, which were followed by the Stile Liberty Villa Falcioni (1902–4) at Domodossola, one of his finest works. The style here is simplified and proto-Modernist even in the furnishings and fittings, but the pitched-roof, alpine villa has a delightful second-floor bow window and an arched doorway with a glass canopy, in the style of the Viennese Secession. A number of buildings in this style followed, including the Toesca house (1903), Via Tiepolo, Turin, the railway station (1904) at Cogne, Aosta, and the Palazzina Baravalle (1906), Via Vassalli Eandi, Turin. He edited the review L’artista moderno from 1902. From 1907 Rigotti designed a number of buildings in Thailand: the Palazzo del Trono, the Palazzo Norasing (1907–9) and the Commercial Bank of Siam (1916–26), all in Bangkok. As an urban planner, with D’Aronco he designed the layout for the Piazza d’Armi (1912), Turin, and worked on a development scheme for Mondovi, Cuneo (1915). Rigotti’s Circolo degli Artisti (1915), Il Valentino, Turin, is proto-Rationalist and foreshadows forward-looking buildings of the 1930s including the reinforced concrete factory for Fabbrica Italiana Tubi Metallici (1937–8; with his son Giorgio Rigotti) at Turin. After 1910 he taught at the Polytechnic in Turin.
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