Ideas of Ambiente

More about the book

Weaving together an illuminating analysis of built projects with an equally close account of the city's economic and social culture, Angelo Lunati explores the central idea underpinning the making of modern Milan. Ambiente (literaly, "environment") is a term that is both evocative and vague: in a fuller and more complexe way than has previously achieved, this book traces its changing meanings from the Milanese architectural discourse of the late nineteenth century to the fertile postwar scene that formed around the charismatic figure of Ernesto Rogers. Ultimately, it defines ambiente as the binding agent that still gives quarters of the city a choral charcater, where individual buildings negotiate with each other to construct an environmental unity, and where a consistently modern architecture is just the latest expression of a historical continuity.