CASA CATTANEO. DIVINA PROPORZIONE DELLA FUNZIONE. LA CASA D’AFFITTO SUL LAGO A CERNOBBIO, 1938-39

Abstract

An ideal home derived by a perfect geometry. The rigor of lightness, the theme of transparency and vertical distribution: proportion and perfection that are explained in all the scales and details: from the handle to the internal layout, from the wise use of solids and voids, to the materials. A corollary of all compositive aspects. The house for rent, located on Como lake, was designed, between 1938 and ’39, by Cesare Cattaneo, rationalist architect from Como, just 3 years later his diploma in architecture at Milan Polytechnic. Being owned by himself, he can experiment freely, “without succumbing to the tyrannical desire of clients”, his enthusiasm for details. It is a small apartments building for the middle class, an ideal field to test a number of problems of composition and technology: from distribution to the location on the environment, from the cost to the good keeping in time, providing us, with a structure still well preserved, an innovative study of Modern solutions. The house stands on a site alongside a short distance from anonymous dwellings. The initial choice was therefore to communicate a violent conflict with the closer existing architectures, claimed the right to belong Modern architecture inside of city centers. Although the natural context of the lake, the visual cones, the broad urban environment are subtly understood inside the project, Cattaneo wants, with his architecture, to give an innovative element for the place, with characteristics that could almost be described as a monumental modernism.