EIAR Building (now RAI building) in Corso Sempione

Milan

EIAR

Nino Bertolaia

Realized works

In 1939, the year of Milanese palazzi for Gio Ponti from the ones in San Babila to the Palazzo Ferrania in Corso Matteotti, this building the new headquarters of the Italian Broadcasting Corporation, the EIAR (later renamed the RAI), was the result of a competition that had been won by the Studio Ponti Fornaroli Soncini, in collaboration with the engineer Nino Bertolaia. The idea, a Pontian one, was that the three sections of which the building was composed offices, broadcasts, and theatre should be separate and individually recognizable. There should have been a luminous gap between «offices» and broadcasts the transparent block containing the elevators and stairs. In practice, and over the course of time, the building has been extensively modified. A few parts remain the portico and the doors onto the road that maintain the original discourse on proportions.