C. Colombo Middle School
C. Colombo Middle School
Address: 13 Viale Cristoforo Colombo, Brescia (BS)
Construction characteristics:
- structures: reinforced concrete frame
- façade: plaster; exposed brickwork
- roofs: low-pitched (auditorium), double-pitched (canteen) and barrel (gymnasium)
- window frames: painted metal
Timeline:
- design: 1955
- construction: 1960
- reference date: 1955 – 1960
By:
- architect: Mutti Giacomo
Motivation:
This confident albeit youthful design proof by Giacomo Mutti offers an original exemplification of the generative and explorative function that the school theme exercised on Italian design culture in the years of the economic miracle.
Abstract:
A timely testimony to the centrality of the school theme in the Italian architectural debate of the years of the economic miracle, the Cristoforo Colombo middle school was inaugurated in 1960, the same year in which the Milan Triennale relaunched the theme with an edition entitled “The House and the School”. Giacomo Mutti’s project is a clear exemplification of how the design tools of the rationalism season can still be operative for a new generation of professionals. Harmoniously laid out on a large lot that contrasts with the tiny pieces of land around it, the complex stands on the rationality of the distribution system, the search for the optimal orientation and the typological definition of the educational unit. On this solid methodological basis, degrees of relative freedom are grafted, recognisable in the alternation of structural solutions or in the overhang of the ramp, which is thus denounced in the façade.
