Giuseppe Terragni

Giuseppe Terragni He was an Italian architect, considered the greatest exponent of Italian rationalism.
Giuseppe Terragni was born in Meda to Michele, a builder and owner of a construction company, and Emilia Giamminola, who contributed significantly to the education of the future architect. To attend elementary and technical schools, he moved to Como to stay with his maternal relatives.

“in their relationships of full and empty, of heavy masses and light structures, they give the observer an artistic emotion”.

In 1917 he enrolled in the physics-mathematics course at the Technical Institute of Como, in 1921 he met Luigi Zuccoli, with whom he would later collaborate.
In 1921 he graduated and enrolled in the Higher School of Architecture at the Royal Technical Institute (later the Milan Polytechnic); in 1925 he met Pietro Lingeri with whom he established a friendship and a professional collaboration that would last a lifetime. On 16 November 1926 he graduated and a month later he signed, together with Luigi Figini, Adalberto Libera, Gino Pollini, Guido Frette, Sebastiano Larco and Carlo Enrico Rava, the first official document of Italian Rationalism. This is how Group 7 was formed, which in the following years qualified, expanding, as the Italian Movement of Rational Architecture (MIAR). In 1927, the four articles considered the manifesto of Italian Rationalism were published in the magazine “Rassegna italiana”. Terragni was one of the seven signatories of this manifesto. Until 1940 Terragni was fully active and had many works in progress: the Danteum (in collaboration with Lingeri, an allegorical architecture celebrating Dante Alighieri, characterised by a spiral path), the project for the development of the Cortesella district (and other additions to the master plan) of Como, the Casa del Fascio in Lissone and the refined and complex Casa Giuliani Frigerio, his last completed masterpiece.
The artist was then called to arms and, after a short period of training, was sent in 1941 first to Yugoslavia and then to Russia. He returned seriously weakened physically and psychologically, a condition that would later lead to his death. His is a human story: Giuseppe Terragni spent his entire existence trying to translate the ethical and social connotations of fascism into a democratic and civil key, through architecture.
Terragni was only 39 years old when, on July 19, 1943, he was struck by a cerebral thrombosis on the landing of the stairs of his fiancée's house in Como.
Source: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Terragni