A Journey through Commerce and Architecture [antikvár]

Foreword The war came, for the Fiera di Milano, in a moment in which the program of De Finetti for the expansion ofthe city-market toward the northwest was the order ofthe day. This was the same period when, in the Román countryside, the structures for the Universal Exposition which was to be held in 1942 were being built. A rapid comparison between the Fair and E42 is sufficient to clearly illustrate their very different characters, in spite ofthe dictates ofthe regime. The facilities in Romé were to have been used for an exposition. Thus the accent was on spectacular structures, representative edifices which, after the event, would become permanent headquarters for other functions. As in other cases, such as that of Seville, somé years earlier, the exposition was viewed as an opportunity for a strategic úrban project, with works of architectural quality. On the other hand, the Milán Fair once again confirmed its role as a trade fair, a "samples fair." Whether or not the plan of the city-market prevailed, its edifices would be anchored in an intentionally temporary function. Possible functional transformations could take place only in the program of the exposition of the products. E42, today known as EUR, grew up outside ofthe city, in an attempt to direct expansion, with a decisive intervention in the transport system. It was to suruive the fact that it was never completed as planned, due to the war; after the war the zone became a residential and office district with its own autonomous administration, a true city within a city. The story ofthe Fiera di Milano is completely different. It is enclosed in a square compound which does not fit particularly well into the úrban context and the orientation ofthe street grid of the zone. Even in the quite courageous reconstruction after the war, it maintains its originál physiognomy, that of a complex in permanent transformation. After the terrible wartime destruction, the Fair definitively abandoned any idea of a garden-city, concentrating instead on settlement density and large pavilions. Large facilities, contrary to appearances, guaranteed greater internál flexibility. The Fair was careful not to restrict the future presences within any ideological scheme. The focus was on a technological future which, at the time, wasjust beginning to appear, after many very different applications such as the atomic bomb, the Bayle bridge, DDT, sulpha drugs, the first military use of infrared rays. In the city during reconstruction perhaps the most immediate sign of the experimentál and innovative approach ofthe Fair, as in its originál pact with the world of sport, was the birth ofQT8, with the grafting ofthe pole of attraction ofthe Fair onto the same circuit as San Siro and the stádium. The incongruity ofthe Fairgrounds with respect to the úrban grid, which the internál planning ofthe Fair had attempted to attenuate, over time, became, in the end, a positive factor. Enclosed in a compound, in that autonomous space the Fair enjoyed a freedom which would not have been possible elsewhere. Achille Castiglioni remarks: "We had a lot offun, for us, and for other architects, it was a sort of gymnasium, something liké going back to school... one took great risks, beginning with the premise