INA-Casa Houses, Piacenza
Vico Magistretti
Mario Tevarotto (co-autore)
Carlo Pagani (co-autore)
Vittorio Gandolfi (co-autore)
INA-Casa
Windows: painted wood
Load-bearing structure: load-bearing walls
Façade: rustic plaster
Roof: single pitch, with tiles; double pitch, with tiles
The building - a single, five story block above ground - was designed together with Gandolfi, Tevarotto and Pagani as part of the INA-Casa plan. During that period Magistretti was working on a building in the Via Duca d'Aosta neighbourhood in Somma Lombardo (1951), also part of the INA-Casa plan.
Given the type of client, the architects worked to provide the best solution while using extremely simple materials and techniques. They came up with this linear building type: load-bearing masonry, plaster for the walls, and wood frame windows for a plan-type in which five different apartments (with the same surface area, but different layouts) were accessed by a single staircase. The unique feature of these apartments was the loggia positioned between two partition walls and accessed from the bedroom, not the living room; the loggias dynamized the south front of the building.
The basement was used as cellars or storerooms; the roof had a mix of single and double pitch tiled roofs.
F. Irace, V. Pasca, Vico Magistretti, architetto e designer, Milano 1999, p. 36
