The forerunner of organic architecture who came to Elba never to leave again

“I have always tried to think through natural and true forms, to make them live with the pines, the hills, the sea, the horizon.” Defining one’s work this way is an act of love for a place like Elba Island in Italy, which still teaches us how to coexist harmoniously with the landscape.

Emilio Isotta was born in Milan at the turn of the century, into the family that founded the eponymous car brand. He studied at the Royal School of Architecture in Florence, mingling with his cousin Piero Portaluppi, family friend Gio Ponti, and other notable figures such as Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, Giancarlo Palanti, Agnoldomenico Pica, Enrico Peressutti, and Ernesto Nathan Rogers. This upper-middle-class environment shaped his temperament and design sensibilities, imbuing him with a critical and sometimes polemical view on social, design, architectural, and political dynamics. This attitude made him a skilled and valuable yet under-recognized designer, whose work has not been sufficiently studied and documented.

It is perhaps Domus magazine that cements the strong link between Emilio Isotta and Elba Island, thanks to Gio Ponti, who recounted the 1940 BBPR tourism plan for the island. Emilio Isotta arrived on Elba with a masterful urban and landscape plan for Marina di Campo (1948-1952) and practically never left, falling in love with the island and using it as a testing ground for his lifelong design principles. Isotta’s architectural philosophy is evident in the three types of interventions proposed in the master plan. Defining his architecture not as pure formalism but as a skillful gesture of integration with the landscape, he emphasized materiality and territorial tradition without abandoning functional modernity. This approach is reflected in three different architectural typologies: bourgeois and independent housing units, nautical clubs with a hotel nature, and minimalist tourist houses.

Isotta’s design expression is concentrated within less than a kilometer of promenade in the pine forest of Marina di Campo, offering a catalog of his architectural works for exploration.

Emilio Isotta

The first example is Casa Pineta 1 (House in the Pinewood 1), a bourgeois dwelling oriented towards the island of Montecristo, like the other typologies. He describes it as an island within an island, a “precious emotional element to whose loving embrace the whole plan is strained, distant or almost within reach, depending on the mutability of sky and sea.” This design principle is manifested in large windows with wooden frames facing Montecristo, supported by load-bearing walls made of native granite flakes. The perimeter of the wall is adjusted in situ to accommodate the trees in the pine forest, allowing the trees to become green coverings of spaces hinted at by some walls.

Next, we encounter the more complex example of the Iselba Nautical Club, which interprets the bourgeois hotel typology in a manner similar to Casa Pineta 1. The residential units are smaller and juxtaposed in a medieval conception, forming a large V in the plan and opening up to the now-famous Montecristo. 

Granite perimeter walls define the division of various rooms/apartments, which, as is typical for Isotta, are only two stories high. The apex of the V houses common services, dining, and reception rooms, flooded with light from large windows. Features like inverted tanks forming the roof, not completely tangent to the perimeter walls, ensure natural air circulation.

The pine trees act as a cohesive element, leading us to the Dunamotel, a residential condominium developed under the pine trees, supported on the sides by two trapezoidal granite walls. These side walls isolate and protect the Dunamotel from other architecture in the pine forest, while clearly orienting it towards the sea. Here, too, the complex is divided into several repetitive units arranged on two levels. In the ongoing dialogue with nature, the trapezoidal walls taper down to the zero level of the pine forest, defining the private gardens. Yet, it is the pine forest itself that seems to enter at the doorstep. The quality perceived from inside each unit is incredible, almost simulating a private relationship between the inhabitants and the forest overlooking the sea.

Walking back through the pine forest, having enjoyed Isotta’s architectures as if they were gems scattered on the soil, is fulfilling. To find them again, after almost 70 years, as elements completely integrated into the landscape is a pleasure for those who see or experience them. It is further proof that Isotta’s project of coexistence between architecture and landscape has worked elegantly and naturally.

Opening image: Photo Paolo Monti