Emilio Isotta Biography
Emilio Isotta (1910 - 1988) was born in Milan on 4 April 1910, his father was the lawyer Cesare Isotta, founder of the Isotta Fraschini car company in 1900. From Milan Emilio arrived in Florence where he completed his university studies, attending the last three years of the Royal School of Architecture starting from the 1933-1934 academic year and thus renouncing the professional and university relationships he would have had in his hometown. The Isotta family, in fact, belongs to the Milanese upper middle class: the mother's cousin is Piero Portaluppi, the sisters work at Gio Ponti's «Domus» magazine, a family friend, among Emilio's youth friends are Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, Giancarlo Palanti, Agnolodomenico Pica, Enrico Peressutti and Ernesto Nathan Rogers. After having fulfilled his military duties in Pavia (Isotta, 1938, FGM) Isotta obtained his degree in the academic year 1940-1941 by discussing a thesis entitled Villa a Monte Mario, Rome, the supervisor being Giovanni Michelucci. During his university studies he began an early professional activity mainly linked to design with publications in books and magazines. Meanwhile, the first assignments as an architect arrive. Isotta designed with Giuseppe Giorgio Gori a villa in Forte dei Marmi (1940) whose layout derived from the Roman domus reverberates the adherence to a measured modernity, which combines renewal and Mediterranean memory. This approach is shared in Milan by Gio Ponti and promoted in particular by the magazine he founded and directed «Domus» and in the Florentine context by Michelucci and Piero Bargellini who from the pages of the magazine «Il Frontespizio» become spokespersons for an interpretation of 'Mediterranean civilisation' in an ethical and social sense, which is in open controversy with functionalism beyond the Alps. Emilio Isotta will dedicate himself to architecture and interior design for the rest of his life.
