A contribution to the In Situ: The Modern Concrete Skyscraper exhibition.

Forthcoming (November 2023) at the Skyscraper Museum in New York.

In Situ: The Modern Concrete Skyscraper

Team: Marco Pogacnik, Mario de Miranda
With Vincenzo Greco, Marco Stiz, Gaia Stolzi

Completed in 1960, Milan’s Pirelli Tower, or Grattacielo Pirelli, was the tallest building in the Northern Italian city. Designed by the leading Italian modernist Giò Ponti in collaboration with the renowned structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, the Pirellone, or “Big Pirelli,” was constructed of concrete, like nearly all Italian and European high-rises.

The war-ravaged city of Milan in the 1950s witnessed a strong desire for urban renewal, manifested in the construction of a series of tall buildings: Torre Breda 1950-55; Torre Velasca 1955-58; and Torre Galfa 1956-59. At 32 stories and 127m/417 ft., the outstanding building of this postwar boom in both height and artistic achievement was the Pirelli Tower. In it, architect Giò Ponti and structural engineer Pier Luigi Nervi, with Arturo Danusso, sought to establish a distinctive Made-in-Italy skyscraper that abandoned the standard American approach of the steel frame in favor of the use of reinforced concrete in the form of heavy partitions and expressive structure. The design of the Pirelli Tower is the product of the modernist principles propounded by Giò Ponti and the inspired collaboration with Nervi and Danusso.

Grattacielo Pirelli: Scraping the Skies of Italy

July 26, 4pm ET. Talk by Marco Pogacnik (University Iuav Venezia).

Followed by a conversation with Tom Leslie, author of Beauty’s Rigor: Patterns of Production in the Work of Pier Luigi Nervi (2017).

Part of the series In Situ: The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, by The Skyscraper Museum (New York).

Exhibitions archive