Enea Manfredi – Wikipedia

Aenea Manfredini (Reggio Emilia, 11 April 1916 – Reggio Emilia, 3 February 2008) was an Italian architect.

He graduated in architecture, in 1940, from the Polytechnic of Milan where until 1951 he carried out teaching activities in distribution characters of buildings, material technology and construction technology. Still student still comes into contact with the group of architects gathered around Giuseppe Pagano (who will publish them on Casabella of those years several youth projects [fig. 1]), including Franco Albini, Piero Bottoni, Ignazio Gardella and Ernesto Nathan Rogers; In the same climate matured in 1949, adhesion to the movement of studies for architecture (MSA). Diploma of honor of the IX Triennale di Milano in 1951.

Papal academic of the Virtuosi at the Pantheon since 1961. In-Arch Domosic 1963 award with Franco Albini and Franca Helg for the urbanization of Habana del Este in Cuba. It is present in three-year and biennials, participates in architecture exhibitions in Italy and abroad . It is part of commissions judgments of national architecture competitions and participates in conferences and architecture and urban planning competitions. He has been joined, in the study work, by his children Alberto Manfredini, since 1977, and Giovanni Manfredini, since 1982. First regional in-arch for Emilia Romagna in 1990.

Manfredini’s debuts are linked to the figurative culture of rationalism: since 1943 he has the opportunity to collaborate with Albini, in particular at the Ina di Parma office site (1950-54), where he is the works manager. Manfredini affirms a tenacious and clear continuity with the rationalist axis that precedes the last world war, as underlined in the essays of Enrico Mantero, Vittorio Gregotti and Giuliano Gresleri who appear in the catalog published by Electa on the occasion of the anthology that the Municipality of Reggio Emilia dedicates to him in 1989. immersed in a “climate of transparencies”, rooted with honesty in the experiences that were configuring as “founded contextual applications of a single great European trend”, Manfredini’s work immediately expresses a conscious poetics, “without errors “, which finds the first high confirmation in the episcopal seminary of his city (1946-1950), won by competition (fig.2 and fig.3), which is certainly one of his most important works.

AIOLA’s asylum of 1952 (Fig. 4) and the Church of the Vecchia of 1953 (fig. 5) transplant the precise effort to reiterate the principle of the pride of modesty in the establishment of an agreed language in the postbellic neorealist season, made up of Simple and easily acquired rules, such as to allow “at least the basis of correct construction”.

The collaboration with Albini in the Rosta Nuova district in Reggio in 1956 enhances this goal, which reverberates, in full neorealism, in the Civil Hospital of Belluno (fig. 6) of 1957 and subsequent works.

Meanwhile, a multi -year affair began, which will eventually characterize its professional activity, linked to the construction of the new Reggio Emilia hospital. A first project from 1945, left unfinished in 1950, was completed since 1955; In 1962 the chapel was built while, during the 80s, the radiotherapy and nuclear medicine and new polychers were added. Then there is a first project of expansion, from 1989, followed by a second, won in a 1992 contract for tenders, under construction. Beyond the formal and technological updates, in the various parts of the Manfredini hospital, it keeps faith with an idea of ​​architecture created through the application of a constructive knowledge without ideological complications and capable of organizing functional systems articulated through distribution systems based on patterns Elementary: a design logic that characterizes many of its projects, even residential ones. Another field of research concerns sacred architecture: spokesman in 1955 of an application for greater commitment by designers during the “Ten years of sacred architecture in Italy 1945-1955”, he is among the promoters, in 1957, of Church and neighborhood magazine, as a correspondent for Emilia and, since 1965, a member of the Steering Committee ^[first] .

Manfredini’s belonging to the “third generation” of the modern movement places him in the uncomfortable position of having to defend himself from the futile historical and vernacular fashions which, by contrast, push him to close themselves in elementary functionalism, hostile to complexity. But it is not isolated in this battle: the sixties, in fact, record the birth of an opposition to the ideologies of consumerism, which includes prestigious personalities such as Mario Ridolfi, Luigi Figini and Gino Pollini, Ignazio Gardella, the BBPR, Giuseppe Samonà, Giancarlo De Carlo.

Candidly Jacobin, Manfredini is part of it, helping to perpetuate the costume of transgression with consistency. In the following decades, “quietly detached from the sterile diatribes that arvollars the architects of profession”, is dedicated to perfecting an popular methodology that refuses both abstract rationality and expressive arbitrariness. Entered to be part of the magazine Parameter , founded and directed in 1970 by Giorgio Trebbi, systematically analyzes in the address book Build Vocabulas and building links, with the “careful calm” praised by Albini. The Church of the Good Shepherd of 1970, the “Betulla 21” neighborhood and the Coviolo cemetery in Reggio Emilia in 1980, up to the recent works for the hospital of his city, document fidelity to an ascetic iconography, where inventivity comes All addressed to the exact coincidence between technique and form.
“The landing of a shrewd and wise professionalism”, the latest products denote a stubborn maturity immune to decadence and sagging. Here, he says almost with regret Gregotti, lies the anomaly of the Manfredini case: in the exceptionalism of a civil commitment that, paradoxically, defeated the ambition to propose itself as a common choice ^[2] .

• E. Mantero, Italian rationalism , Bologna, Zanizellee, 1984 pp. 178, 196-198;
• P. Giambartolomei, Architecture archive , Rome, Officina Edizioni, 1987, p. 339;
• G.Murator, A.Capuano, F.Garofalo, E.Pellegrini, Guide to modern architecture: Italy the last thirty years , Bologna, Zanicliezais, 1988, PP. 270-272. Isbn 88-08-05434-9;
• M. Magles, G. Tred, History of Urban Planning: Second World War Europe , Bari, Laterza, 1988, Pp. 502, 522.isbn 88-420-3284-0;
• V. Gregotti, G.Trebi, Gi. Gresti, E. Mantero, Enea Manfredini: architecture 1939-1989 , Milano, Elect, 1989, pp. 10-1 1-260.ISBN 88-435-3007-0;
• M.A.CRIPA (CARING WORK, 20th century architecture , Milano, Jaca Book, 1993, pp. 10-1 335-336.isbn 88-16-43911-4;
• F. Dal Co (edited by), History of Italian architecture: the second twentieth century , Milan, Electa, 1997, pp. 159,160,164, 166 ,167,168.ISBN 88-435-4895-6;
• C. Olmo (edited by), Dictionary of 20th century architecture , Vol.iv, Turin, Allemandi, 2000, pp.197-198.isbn 88-422-1041-2;
• M. Casciato, P. Orlandi, Architecture in Emilia Romagna in the second half of the twentieth century , Bologna, Clueb, 2005, pp. 40-42.ISBN 88-491-2529-1