Design for the Marzotto Building on the corner of Corso Vittorio Emanuele and Piazza San Babila

Milan

Marzotto

Francesco Bonfanti

Competitions, projects, proposals

Facing onto Piazza San Babila, in Milan, are the large palazzi designed by Ponti together with the architects De Min, Rimini and Casalis in 1939.But the one that Ponti cared about most he published its model time and time again is not there. It would have allowed him to try out two of his favourite ideas: the necessity, in every architectural unit, for out-of-scale rooms and the need to make them visible on the facade. We are speaking of the project, never put into effect, for the Palazzo Marzotto, drawn up in collaboration with Francesco Bonfanti: in each of its three fronts the pattern of ordinary windows belonging to the ordinary rooms is broken by the special windows of the special, two-story-high rooms. Composite architecture. Ponti proposed another out-of-scale feature for the central front: a large work of sculpture, projecting from the facade and supported on corbels. It might have been an airy piece by Arturo Martini, 17 meters high, 10 meters wide, cast in aluminium and illuminated at night.