Gustavo Latis Biography
Gustavo Latis was born in Milan on 15 June 1920. The racial laws did not allow him to attend the last year of high school, which he was forced to undertake as a private student. After finishing classical high school, he carried out graphic, scenographic and applied arts activities from 1939 to 1943, working clandestinely at La Scala as an apprentice set designer and photographer, and in 1944 – 1945 he took refuge in Switzerland. Here he shares his exile with his friend and former schoolmate Ludovico Magistretti, who fled Italy as a political dissident. Not having yet graduated, Gustavo Latis cannot, like other refugee architects, officially join the BTR and, in Lugano, he supports himself initially as an agricultural laborer and then as a proofreader for a local newspaper. However, he manages to have an active role within the association thanks to the possibility of collaborating with his brother. In July 1945 he published his own article, focused on the criticism of the classist conception that inspired the construction of many modern popular houses and neighborhoods. After the war he began his studies at the Polytechnic of Milan in October 1945, completing them in just under three years, graduating in architecture in July 1948, with a thesis on the restructuring and enhancement of the Seminario Maggiore, of which Piero was the supervisor. Portaluppi. Already during his university years he had the opportunity to collaborate in his brother's studio, taking an interest in and sometimes participating in his first important works; an experience that he still considers foundational today, almost more than the notions learned from university teaching. The brevity of the school process and early immersion in professional practice pushed Gustavo to prefer the concrete aspects of making architecture. However, this does not mean disinterest in theoretical questions and in this sense Gustavo Latis' educational experience materializes, more than within the university, through his membership, since 1946, of the Free Student Architects Association (Alsa), a group founded in the same year, which brings together undergraduate students and recent graduates including Angelo Mangiarotti, Alberto Rosselli, Paolo Tilche, Vittorio Borachia and Carlo Santi. Alsa offers opportunities for collaboration with external figures such as Bruno Zevi, Gillo Dorfles, Giulia Veronesi and remains a fundamental stage in the maturation of Gustavo, who was also co-director of the committee that took care of its publications: the well-known series published by Tamburini, called " Monographic Studies of Architecture” dedicated short essays to the aesthetics of architecture. In the same year as his degree, Gustavo Latis enrolled in the register of architects of Lombardy and in 1949 began to carry out his professional activity, individually and in collaboration, dedicating himself to public and private construction, industrial construction, urban planning, furniture and industrial aesthetic consultancy work for private entities. His first experience of construction management dates back to 1950, with the Milanese condominium in via Boccaccio 24.
