Modern and Site Specific: The Architecture of Gino Valle

Since the early buildings in the 1950s at Udine in Friuli, Gino Valle has been recognized by international critics as one of the most original and creative European architects of the post-war period. His artistic talent, associated with a great intellectual curiosity and with a genuine passion for the experimentation of new construction systems, led Valle to develop an architectural work resolutely open and multiform. Whether in the smaller towns of Friuli and Veneto or in metropolitan centres as New York, Paris or Berlin, Valle realized a wide range of important works: social housing and banks, factories and offices, town halls and courthouses. These buildings make valuable contributions to debates concerning the relationship between new architecture and historic surroundings, between industrial and open landscape, between urban design and architectural intervention. A very large part of his work was dedicated to typically "modern" working spaces – factories and office buildings – in response to clients firstly regional and national (the industries Zanussi, Fantoni, Olivetti), and subsequently international and multinational (the IBM, the Banca Commerciale Italiana, the Deutsche Bank). This edition makes available for the first time in English the only critical monograph dedicated to the complete work of Gino Valle.