Ernesto Nathan Rogers
Encyclopedia
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...
, writer and educator.
Biography
Born in TriesteTrieste
Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...
, Italy he graduated from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 1932. He is the cousin of the renowned English architect Richard Rogers
Richard Rogers
Richard George Rogers, Baron Rogers of Riverside CH Kt FRIBA FCSD is a British architect noted for his modernist and functionalist designs....
.
BBPR Group
Rogers, together with Gian Luigi Banfi, Ludovico Belgiojoso and Enrico Peressutti, in 1932 formed an architectural partnership in MilanMilan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Italy named BBPR
BBPR
BBPR was an architectural partnership founded in Milan, Italy in 1932.-The Partners:The partners were Gianluigi Banfi, Lodovico Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, and Ernesto Nathan Rogers...
(from the names of the architects).
BBPR
BBPR was an architectural partnership founded in Milan, Italy in 1932.-The Partners:The partners were Gianluigi Banfi, Lodovico Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, and Ernesto Nathan Rogers...
, Rogers completed several projects. Perhaps his best known work is the Torre Velasca
Torre Velasca
The Torre Velasca is a skyscraper built in 1950s by the BBPR architectural partnership, in Milan, Italy.-Architects:...
(Velasca Tower), located in the historic city centre of Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
.
Editor and journalist
In the post-war period Rogers distinguished himself from his partners through his work as journalist, critic and architectural publicist.Associated with art and architecture periodicals from his student days, in faxt, he co-edited "Quadrante" from 1933 to 1936, and as a prolific writer, as well as architect, he was instrumental in the establishment of Italian Rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
(it: razionalismo).
From 1953 until 1965 he had the direction of the magazine Casabella
Casabella
Casabella is an Italian architectural and product design magazine with a focus on modern, radical design. It includes interviews with the world's most prominent architects....
.
War years
During his internment in SwitzerlandSwitzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
(1943–45) he maintained his interest in journalism as well as being active in the anti-fascist Partito d’Azione.
Post war cultural debate
On his return to Milan, he took on DomusDomus (magazine)
Domus is the name of two magazines, one published in Italy and one in the United States.* Domus is an Italian magazine, first published in 1928, which focuses on design and architecture. It is bilingual, with articles printed in both Italian and English....
as publisher–editor (1946–47), developing its international reputation as an architectural periodical. Rogers’s major contribution to European architectural polemic, and the Italian neo-liberty debate in particular, was through his editorship of Casabella in the key period 1953 to 1964.
Dal cucchiaio alla città ("From the spoon to the town") is the slogan created by Ernesto Rogers in 1952 in the Charta of Athens
Athens Charter
The Athens Charter, or Charte d'Athènes was a document about urban planning published by the Swiss architect, Le Corbusier in 1943. The work was based upon Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse book of 1935 and urban studies undertaken by the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne in the early...
. He explained the typical approach of a Milanese architect, designing a spoon, a chair, and a lamp and in the same day working on a skyscraper.
The group of architects including Aldo Rossi
Aldo Rossi
Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer who accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture and product design.-Early life:...
, Vittorio Gregotti
Vittorio Gregotti
Vittorio Gregotti is an Italian architect, born in Novara.He is head of the Gregotti Associati studio. His studio has designed several important buildings, such as the Barcelona Olympic Stadium, the Belém Cultural Center in Lisbon, the Arcimboldi Opera Theater in Milan and several university...
and Giancarlo de Carlo
Giancarlo De Carlo
Giancarlo De Carlo was an Italian architect.He was born in Genoa, Liguria in 1919. He trained as an architect from 1942 to 1949, a time of political turmoil which generated his philosophy toward life and architecture...
, with whom he conducted the debate through Casabella columns, and through artefacts and writings, continued to influence Western architecture.
Rogers played a vital role in the transition from post-war Rationalism
Rationalism (architecture)
The intellectual principles of rationalism are based on architectural theory. Vitruvius had already established in his work De Architectura that architecture is a science that can be comprehended rationally. This formulation was taken up and further developed in the architectural treatises of the...
to acceptance of historical context as a major determinant of style.