Francesco Gnecchi Ruscone Biography
Born in Milan in 1924, Francesco Gnecchi-Ruscone enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Polytechnic of Milan in 1942, soon joining the Resistance, as told in the memoir "When being Italian was difficult" (Milan 1999). Having graduated in 1949, in the same year he was Secretary of the Commission at the CIAM congress in Bergamo. In the following two years he worked at the Architectural Association in London as an assistant in charge (he returned there in 1959 for a quarter) and at the Architects Cooperative Partnership as a designer. In 1951 he was technical secretary of the IX Triennale; from 1951 to 1954, on behalf of Adriano Olivetti, he directed the UNRRA-CASAS Study Center in Rome. Returning to Milan, Gnecchi-Ruscone opened a studio with Giovanna Pericoli - which was joined shortly afterwards by the engineer Giancarlo Polo - which dissolved in 1957. The architect participated in the design of INA-Casa neighborhoods (Vialba and Gallaratese in Milan, and then in the provinces of Pavia, Como and Rovigo) and INCAM (via Mincio in Milan, 1955-58). In the same period he was involved in research on prefabrication (he was a contact person for the diffusion of the English CLASP system in Italy and a consultant for the OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for which he drew up studies on the topic of prefabrication in school buildings). From 1962 to 1967, with two periods of teaching at Yale in 1965 and then again in 1967, he was assistant to Ernesto N. Rogers at the Polytechnic of Milan. In 1967 he obtained the chair of Elements of Composition, which he held until 1970. His varied and multifaceted activity includes the design of numerous residential buildings (villa in Porto Santo Stefano in 1956, building in Viale Elvezia in Milan, with Eugenio Gentili-Tedeschi , in 1958-72; unrealized project for the Milanese district of Baggio in 1966, building in Vimercate in 1973-77, Montecarlo Palace complexes in Montecarlo and La Vigie in Cap-Martin between 1978 and 1990) and for the tertiary sector (?? ??) (Pirelli branch in Cagliari in 1964, Banca Briantea in Merate in 1965-66, Banca CBI in Geneva in 1981, unrealized project for the Hewlett-Packard headquarters in Rome in 1985). Among the most important restoration interventions are Villa Chiericati in Schiavon, commissioned by the collector Evelyn Lambert (1965-70) and the headquarters of the Banca Agricola Commerciale di Reggio Emilia (1975-84); among those of urban planning the projects for Tel-Aviv, Novara, Genoa, Samarkand, Amman. There are also numerous school buildings (Buccinasco, Biella, Milan) and sports centers (Riano, Tirrenia, Migliarino, Monza, Stockholm). Projects for various tourist settlements in Africa (Guinea Bissau, Tanzania and Uganda) date back to the end of the nineties. A substantial part of Gnecchi-Ruscone's commitment concerns the promotion of sporting culture: from 1969 to 1981 he was President of the Italian Archery Federation and member of the CONI National Council; from 1982 to today he has been a member of the National Olympic Committee. Vice-president of the Building Commission of the Municipality of Milan from 1972 to 1979, from 1994 to 1997 he held the position of vice-president of the College of Engineers and Architects of Milan. In 2000 he founded the "Equator Milano" associated firm, the Italian headquarters of a European design network, in which he designed the reorganization of Piazza di Greco and built the Enron offices in via Manzoni, in Milan. The studio closed in 2003, the year in which the archive was transferred to CASVA.
