Lake House for an Artist

Giuseppe Terragni – V Triennial of Milan Italy, 1933

The House on the Lake for an Artist was designed by Gruppo 7, in view of the V Triennale di Milano, an exhibition of modern housing, to represent an experimental construction of a house for artists, which was to be built on the Comacina island, recently acquired by the Brera Academy (Marcianò, 109). The project was actually built for the V Triennale di Milano in 1933, held in the new building that Muzio was building, following the request made to Gruppo 7 by the artistic direction to participate, after the experience in Monza. Next to the Triennale, in Parco Sempione, the director of the exhibition Giò Ponti, organized the Exhibition of the dwelling, where he intended to insert several buildings, perfect models of modern homes.
As Gianni Mantero recalled, on this project, working with Terragni was practically impossible: “in the evening we agreed on the guidelines, at night Terragni modified everything and in the morning we found ourselves faced with a new project”, even if “the entire Como Group signed this house in the park of Milan for the V Triennale.
It was Terragni himself who took the initiative to create the Casa per Artista su lago to be placed on the Comacina island, thus representing a feasible project and not just a decontextualized prototype. ” […] The prototype (for holidays) is a painter with a family. The portico underneath divides the studio (in double volume) from the residence. The studio, closed to the south, has a glass-cement wall to the north that extends for two meters into the ceiling. Here too the frescoes were by Mario Radice. […] The cliché of the type of Artist – writes Terragni – who must live and behave in a constantly different way from that of all other men, is obsolete. The house of an artist is the house of an intelligent, modern and tasteful man, who lives and works freely and simply”.
The two-story house was oriented towards the south, where the main space, the artist's studio, was detached from the complex and directly overlooked the lake, through a completely glass wall. The plan is thus divided into two spaces: the artist's studio, closed to the south and open to the north through a glass-concrete wall that runs along the roof for about 2 meters, 5,50 meters high, and the actual house, connected by a portico. Light and color dominate the composition of the spaces. The openings specifically guarantee the splendid view of the lake.
Furthermore, the house had been designed to be dismantled and consequently it was made of steel with standardized structural elements, while at the Mostra, for the short duration of the exhibition, it was made with a wooden cage; a version was also studied in reinforced concrete. Even the furnishings, partly designed by Terragni and partly chosen from the catalogue, had been designed to be easily modified or replaced according to the artist's taste. The idea of ​​actually creating the house for artists on the island took hold in 1935 when Terragni and Lingeri began to build relationships first with Gallavresi, government commissioner of the Brera Academy after Beltrami's death and then later with Valdameri, president of the Academy from 1935. The task was subsequently entrusted to Lingeri alone, who carried out the intervention on the island around the XNUMXs.
Source: http://www.maarc.it/opera/casa-sul-lago-per-lartigianato.