Via Corridoni Residence

The block in Via Corridoni is the largest of just three residences built in a reconstruction programme sponsored by the City Council that originally envisaged 22 such structures. 

This new housing type was built for singles and professionals and consists in accommodation units served by communal living spaces, a restaurant, library, laundry and gym. 

Each unit measures 16 metres squared, including bathroom, and is furnished with a bed, table, shelves and a cupboard fitted with an electric oven. 

The layout of living units along both sides of a corridor produced buildings (mostly clad with white mosaics) that reveal the corridors on the narrower fronts, marking their presence with large horizontal windows. 

In Via Corridoni, a 12-storey “male” building and a six-storey one for “female graduates” enclose a low block with communal amenities, for a total of 408 living units.

Originally published in Domus 243 / February 1950  Urban landscape
“Rustic is architecture” we said in Domus no. 231, presenting these residences in their rustic state and hoping that this simple beauty would not – as is often the case – be distorted by its artificial finish.
Today, the residences stand completed, very white with their mosaic-tile cladding. They have prompted criticism and controversy in the newspapers because, remaining true to their linear rustic simplicity, they have not been given artificial external decoration. Their beauty is that of relationships: the large wall, in which the many windows create a true architectural score, is contrasted by the narrow closed front, split in the middle by the long furrow of windows. In terms of architectural criticism, we could perhaps debate the somewhat overly schematic graphic design that standardises the whole construction. That is to say, these buildings look like blown-up models and perhaps that is why they are more beautiful seen from afar. But, apart from comments of this kind, we are sorry the public does not differentiate between this worthy architecture and the mass of mediocre new constructions.

Other significant buildings by Luigi Moretti :

Casa Albergo (with E. Rossi), 1948, Via Camillo Golgi; Via Edoardo Bassini; Via Celeste Clericetti
Casa Albergo (now Hotel Ibis, with E. Rossi), 1948, Via Camillo Finocchiaro Aprile; Via Lazzaretto