Piedmont, major Associated Architects building at risk of demolition. Mobilization to save it

Mobilization has begun in Piedmont to save the Bossi Spinning Mill in Cameri (Novara), an important building designed in 1968-1969 by the firm Architetti Associati (Vittorio Gregotti, Lodovico Meneghetti and Giotto Stoppino): in fact, the work is in danger of being torn down, since, last May, the Municipality of Cameri unanimously approved the Preliminary Urban Planning Variant for the process of “redevelopment” of the area on which the industrial complex stands. Among other interventions, the plan calls for the total demolition of the spinning plant: a supermarket, some stores and residential buildings will be built in its place.

The factory, however, is an important building designed by the three architects (Vittorio Gregotti, who died in March, and who was also a partner in Bossi SpA, the spinning company for which the factory was built; Lodovico Meneghetti, who died on July 19, an alderman in Novara in the 1950s, an architect and designer known for a professional rigor accompanied by the polemical approach that led him to often intervene in discussions on the civic function of architecture, as well as a professor of urban planning at the Milan Polytechnic and an acknowledged teacher of two generations of students; Giotto Stoppino, designer and ADI adviser, winner of the “Compasso d’Oro” and author of objects of widespread consumption and iconic recognition), and can almost be considered one of the symbols of the municipality of Cameri, since it is also a testimony to its history linked to textile manufacturing.

Gregotti, Meneghetti and Stoppino’s design placed at the center of the plant’s compositional dialectic the volumetric modeling of the access bodies, obtained through appropriate cuts in the wall box, through thetotemic use of ventilation grilles and plant dissipation towers, as well as through an innovative aesthetic declination of New Brutalism in powerful Platonic solids capable of realizing, at the same time, the company’s new sign and a strongly recognizable territorial landmark. In addition, the Bossi Spinning Mill building has been reproduced and cited in numerous volumes of architectural history (such as the Guida all’architettura del Novecento by Sergio Polano and Marco Mulazzani, published by Electa in 1991, and then again the Guida dell’architettura del Novecento by Allemandi, the monograph on Vittorio Gregotti edited by Sergio Crotti and published by Zanichelli in 1986) and several national and international journals.

This heritage is now in danger of being erased. Already last May 27, the Order of Architects of the Provinces of Novara Verbano-Cusio-Ossola had sent a letter to the mayor of Cameri, Giuliano Pacileo, urging the municipality not to demolish the important industrial complex: “we invite the municipal administration,” the missive reads, “to a more shrewd reflection about the opportunity to reconsider, with a far-sighted spirit and cultural responsibility, the identity and quality values represented by this’architectural work and its consequent preservation, certain that respect for what this architectural permanence symbolizes within the collective memory, could also represent a factor of enhancement for the entire community, not only the Cameroonian one.”

The Ministry of Cultural Heritage, through the General Secretariat for Piedmont, has also intervened on the issue, effectively initiating the process aimed at protection, stressing in a registered letter dated June 6, 2020, that “it would be necessary to carry out an overall reflection that, starting from the case in question, would be able totogether that, starting from the case under consideration, would question the Municipality of Cameri and the planners, in order to verify whether and what margins there are to revise the urban planning project by providing instead of demolition, the compatible re-functionalization of the existing.”

Opinions against demolition had also come from Italia Nostra, back in March. And a few days ago a petition was also launched on Change.org inviting people to sign to make their displeasure heard.

And on the risk of demolition, Lodovico Meneghetti himself, the last survivor of the Associated Architects, had also expressed himself in early June (he then passed away, as mentioned above, a few days ago, on July 19, a few weeks after his 94th birthday). “I am too old to stand in front of the bulldozer,” he had told La Stampa, “but I have written to the municipality without receiving a reply: the work is in good condition, a solid testimony to a new architectural culture marked by our small collective. It is absurd to think of demolishing it to make way for a supermarket. New commercial uses can be envisaged without giving up that building.”

Piedmont, major Associated Architects building at risk of demolition. Mobilization to save it

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