Postcards from a Dystopian Como: two unbuilt contextual projects by Giuseppe Terragni

Giuseppe Terragni was among the modern Italian architects the most rooted in the European avangarde and the most inclined toward abstraction, deconstructing his building in layers upon layers of materials, architectural elements and strata conjuring to achieve a delicate and unstable equilibrium between plastic values and dissolution of architectural masses. His buildings as famously testified by Peter Eisenman- are critical texts of the possibilities of decomposition of architectural forms and typologies as well as they are machines for the contextual transformation of the historical urban form in a subtle, unrethoric but contemporary way. We analyze two unbuilt projects of the late creative season of the Italian master, two projects where the overlay of the sleekest, most dissonant, modernist language ever and the grid, textures and sense of Roman Como reaches a dramatic peak: the restoration of Casa Vietti and the Cortesella building (both 1940).