Roomscapes

RENZO MONGIARDINO

ROOMSCAPES

RENZO MONGIARDINO ARCHITETTURA DA CAMERA

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Come nasce una stanza

The new edition of Roomscapes

Renzo Mongiardino (1916-1998) was one of the most celebrated interior architects of the second half of the 20th century. Genoese by birth but Milanese by adoption, he combined an extraordinary inventiveness with an eccentric taste in furnishing houses and designing stage sets. With a deep knowledge of decorative materials and the history of art, at the beginning of the 50s Mongiardino resisted the spell of the Modern Movement and built bridges with the past, perfecting multiform professional activities based on a many-sided revisitation of the ancient.

On the centenary of his birth the City of Milan has decided to shine a spotlight on his activity with an exhibition curated by Tommaso Tovaglieri with the consultancy of Francesca Simone, his niece. The Sforza Castle provides the setting for a show that charts the great architect’s whole life and career: from his family of origin to success in the 60s and 70s with the prestigious Onassis, Rothschild and Thyssen commissions, to his Milanese studio-home and his friendship with the painter Lila De Nobili, from the New York residence of Peter Sharp to his most important works for the cinema and theatre, and his final, grandiose projects, like the one for an Ideal City.

At the same time, since twenty-three years have passed from the first edition of Roomscapes, published in 1993 by, it was necessary to republish what is considered to be a fundamental study on interior decoration but no longer in circulation. Anyone acquainted with the original edition will find changes in this volume, not in the text which has remained the same, complete and profound, but in the choice of illustrations. Mongiardino’s primary intention was to write a treatise on solutions to the problems that arise in interior decorating, a series of “lessons” on the canons and on the proportions of the rooms, the illustrations inserted were intended to explain his lessons.

It would take too long to describe the events leading up to the publication of the first edition, but many of the beautiful illustrations and photographs did not always accompany the text or, at times, were excessive in comparison. Also, in the first edition of Roomscapes the reader was at times unaware of the development of the projects from their very conception to their realization, an indispensable element in any publication intended to be didactic. Hence, in this new edition, edited by Francesca Simone, iconographic research has been aimed at making up for this lack by adding new material, this often consists of preparatory sketches made by Mongiardino for individual projects. Furthermore, serious efforts have been made to maintain a proportionate relationship between the text and the relative illustrations and to place them as close as possible to where they are mentioned.

Finally, with this new layout where text and illustrations appear together we realized that the previous legends added little or nothing to the book. We decided to replace them, giving more information to supplement the text, naming places, type of building and the date of the architect’s intervention. In order to respect Mongiardino’s wish to safeguard his clients’ privacy and to focus attention primarily on his projects and not on the fame of his clients, their names have been omitted.

The new edition is enriched by an introduction by Giovanni Agosti, one of Italy’s leading art historians and a neighbor of Mongiardino, and by a final 16-page section of previously unpublished sketches by Renzo Mongiardino.

Romolo Paganelli, ďŹ nished sketch for the dining room where the imitation inlay work on the walls was painted on paper, in an apartment in a skyscraper built in the Thirties in Park Avenue in New York, 1988-1989.

or just have a moment of pause. All the faux wood was left unpolished, and a soft, matte effect united everything with the book bindings, some of which were within the same color range as the faux wood, and others which were vividly colored, giving notes of brilliance to the overall scheme.

A variation on the effects of illusion was used for a dining room decorated in faux wood painted in tempera on paper, framed, and used as pilaster strips and panels. The woods chosen for this room were more intense: light mahogany

Materials and the simulation of materials

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