ABSTRACT
In the first part of the 20th Century, architects began to experiment with the use of electric lighting as a “new building material” applied or integrated into buildings but this was interrupted due to the Second World War when cities lay cloaked in darkness. The end of the conflict redefined visual parameters and administrative centres served as a testing ground for industrialization as well as lighting techniques in the post-war phase. This paper, based mainly on perusal of articles from the period and documents from Archivio Civico of Milan, the Lombardy region archive, CSAC of Parma, and the Mendrisio Archivio del Moderno, aims to examine the issue of lighting and climatic comfort in relation to the administrative buildings erected in Milan in the 1950s. In these buildings, the various plant engineering systems attained such a level of integration as to make them intrinsic to the architecture, the spatial and visual conception of space, and structural forms, as is also reflected by the exterior appearance of the buildings and by the city’s night-time appearance.
