Ideas of Ambiente. History and bourgeois ethics in the construction of modern Milan, 1881–1969

Abstract

This research investigates the relationship between architecture in Milan and the ambiguous notion of ambiente, intertwining two discourses of different nature: the first about the cultural and social specificity of the Milanese case, the second related to the theoretical discourse around this architectural notion. For almost one century - from the birth of the modern metropolis in the late 19th century until the postwar economic boom, the modernization of the city has been carried out inside a specific milieu, in which an articulated urban society has been promoting the renewal of the city with a specific idea of modernity. The driving force for this renewal has been the Milanese bourgeoise, whose cultural values and ethical traits are an original mix of entrepeneurship, mistrust of ideology, dislike of conflict and research of his own legitimation through history. Despite the abrupt interruptions that happened between 1881-1969, the position of the bourgeoisie created a certain continuity, which ended later following the radical turn in the economical, social and political scenario in the middle of the 1960s. Throughout the same period, architects, theorists and philosophers, in different historical contexts and with very diverse critical positions, paid close attention to the relationship between the characteristics of buildings; the history and the culture in which they were built; and how the theorization of this crucial relation could generate a consistently modern architecture that would at the same time be a natural expression of historical continuity. From here the interest in the specific notion of ambientearose: understood in the first moment within a historicist vision of a romantic type; then addressed to the redefinition in modern terms of the neoclassical city; then included in a relationist and phenomenological perspective; and then finally, pilloried from the position of a new political understanding of the city. The two reflections investigate the places in which different "ideas” of ambienteand their changing meanings emerged. These ideas, unconsciously or programmatically informing the work of architects of different generations, have generated the widespread "environmental" character of the city that still permeates some of its places, where architectures are meaningful expressions of the culture of their time and, at the same time, are able to resonate together with antiques buildings within a special unity.