Pierluigi Giordani (1924-2011) architect, designer, engineer, urban planner, theorist, writer
Born in Bologna in 1924, Pierluigi Giordani studied architecture and engineering at the University of Bologna’s School of Engineering. Studying under Giovanni Michelucci, one of 20th century Italy’s most important architects and urban planners, Giordani was influenced by his ideas on building new kinds of cities in post-war Italy, and collaborated with him on the magazine La Nuova Città. Graduating in engineering in 1951, Giordani continued on at the university as a voluntary faculty assistant in urban planning. For the next few years he also dedicated himself to creating furniture. As one of the new generation of architects and designers reacting to the dominant rationalist style of the 1920s and 30s, Giordani looked to nature, organicism (the philosophy that everything is interconnected and forms an organic whole), and to art in formulating his design vision. A passionate admirer of French sculptor and painter Jean Arp, he was especially inspired by Arp’s abstracted anthropomorphic forms. Giordani started making furniture characterized by dynamically stylized sculptural shapes, endowing them with supports, legs, and arms that evoked branches, fins, or animal horns, and often tapering in accentuated tips. He at times employed asymmetry to heightened sculptural effect, and, as in the work of Arp, negative space was an equally important part of the whole design.
Giordani took great pains in realizing his furniture designs, which required his engineering expertise as well as meticulous handcrafting. To this end he worked in collaboration with master craftsman and cabinetmaker Renzo Reggi, whose skillfulness allowed for the careful finessing of details such as polished inlaid and crossbanded surfaces in rare woods, as well as the extraordinary sculpting of shapes so distinctive in Giordani’s furniture. In order not to compromise the artistry and quality of his pieces, Giordani rejected replicating them on an industrial scale, limiting production largely to private commissions, notably in Bologna, resulting in many of them being one of a kind. This, together with the presentation of his furniture in L'Architettura magazine in 1955, the admiration and praise from Italy’s most influential architects and designers of the time, and the relatively short number of years Giordani dedicated to creating furniture, all contributed to making his works highly sought after.
The mid-1950s was a period of exuberant optimism and experimenting in Italian architecture and design, and Giordani was in the core avantgarde with the likes of Bruno Zevi, Carlo Mollino, Gio Ponti, Ico and Luisa Parisi, all of whom participated in the Milan Triennales of the decade. During those few years that Giordani made his furniture, he remained active in the architectural sphere, where he applied the same root ideas as relating to organicism and nature. Italy’s so-called economic miracle, which would boom right into the 1960s, provided expansive opportunities for Giordani to put his architectural theories into practice, notably in rural areas. He became especially known for his work in the Po Delta, Italy’s largest wetland (Emilia-Romagna and Veneto), where he was involved in numerous reclamation projects. Enlisting the talents of other artists and engineers in the planning of new farming and residential communities, between 1953 and 1963 Giordani designed and built hundreds of housing units, schools, clinics, recreational centers, and places of worship. After 1963 he began slowing down his architectural and urban planning activities, focusing on teaching, research and writing. Nonetheless, a number of projects he designed in collaboration with other architects and architectural firms continued to be developed and completed over the next two decades, including buildings, churches, and private homes, most prominently in Bologna and Ravenna.
Throughout his multifaceted career Giordani never stopped writing, and by the early 2000s he had written several books, as well as hundreds of academic papers, theoretical essays, and journal articles. Pierluigi Giordani died in 2011 in his native Bologna. His vast architectural oeuvre changed the face of modern Italy, and his furniture designs continue to inspire today.
PUBLICATIONS
Pierluigi Giordani, Giuliano Gresleri, et ál: Bologna: Architettura, Città, Paesaggio (Grandi Tascabili di Architettura) Edición en Italiano, 2008.
A. Pedrazzini: Immagini della riforma agraria. Interventi di Pierluigi Giordani nel Delta Padano e Dintorni (1952-1975) Longo Angelo, 2003.
Pierluigi Giordani: La Speranza dell'antiutopia nel Governo del Territorio, Maggioli Editore, 1996.
Pierluigi Giordani: Il Futuro dell’utopia, Bologna, 1973.
Carlo Aymonino / Pierluigi Giordani: I Centri Direzionali: La Teoria e la Practica gli Essempi Italiani e Stranieri della Città di Bologna, Bari De Donato, 1967.
Pierluigi Giordani: Studi di Architettura e Urbanistica Spontanea nelle Regioni Emiliana e Veneta. Bologna,1953.
