ABSTRACT
During the 1950s, the private residential sector breathed life into Milanese everyday building practice thanks to architects who were the exponents of a cultured professionalism that has rarely been examined in the most well-established historiography traditions. We consider this production to be the avant-garde of an everyday Milanese modern construction laboratory. Taking into account the evolved Milanese cultural context in which there was effective collaboration between designers, builders and producers, this paper gives a summary analysis of 15 buildings (almost all for mixed use) built between the end of the 1940s and the 1950s which are representative of recurring approaches to façade design. The analysis is conducted on the basis of some key construction elements of the façade project (claddings, windows, prefabricated panels), considered for their technological and figurative value, with reference to the historical technical literature (reviews such as L’Architettura, Vitrum, Alluminio, Cantieri, Domus, Casabella and manuals) and more recent studies on Milanese residential architecture of the 1950s.
