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“I believe in “style” if it is understood as responsibility, not as a figure, as recognition in the formal territory. Each discipline has its political limit: for architecture the limit is the extent to which it intends, with its means, towards a specific end and in so far as it expresses itself … architecture is a service: but one of quality: its political aspect is the problem of how to quantify quality. Architecture is the tool of social relations, but it remains and makes history for everyone …”. (Vittoriano Viganò, Declarations of the architect, in «L’Architettura cronache e storia», 1969, August, n° 166).
The project
The villa was commissioned by the French sculptor and architect André Bloc, and founder of the magazine “L’architecture d’Aujourd’hui”, to his great friend Vittoriano Viganò.
In 1956, Viganò designed a villa for him in a Brutalist style, made entirely of reinforced concrete and steel, which he contextualized in a large park facing Lake Garda.
In 1956, Viganò designed a villa for him in a Brutalist style, made entirely of reinforced concrete and steel, which he contextualized in a large park facing Lake Garda.
The structure of 450 sq m stood half-overhanging the lake, supported by steel pillars and beams, and consisted of two huge reinforced concrete plates that served as a base and cover.
On the upper floor, there was a small kitchen, the master bedroom, a smaller bedroom, and a large living room to welcome guests from which you could enjoy an impressive view over Lake Garda.
Downstairs we find the artist’s studio, a veranda and a huge terrace from which a long staircase starts, which gave the villa its name and led to the private beach and marina.
The staircase consisted of over 100 iron steps, which acted as a support for part of the parapet, and were embedded during the casting phase into a concrete pillar 40 meters high.
Now the villa is no longer lived in but is rented out as a location especially for photo shoots of major Italian designer names.
Where
San Felice del Benaco, in the province of Brescia.
The architect
Vittoriano Viganò was born in Milan in 1919, where he died in 1996. His education took place in the Liceo Classico and the Faculty of Architecture of the Milan Polytechnic, where he graduated in 1944 and where he obtained a specialization in reinforced concrete constructions with Arturo Danusso.
Over the years he developed research on the primary types of residence and service, museum and theatre, and on the relationship between space and object, grafting them on the themes of the residence/services relationship, the “architectural nodes, and on the “spatial faculties” of the vertical. [source Ordine degli Architetti di Milano]
