«But they are also artists». The Clerici house of Asnago and Vender in Chiesa Valmalenco, 1940-41 

DOI:10.30682/aa1903h

Stefano Andrea Poli

Architect, PhD in History of Architecture and Urban Planning, he teaches History of Architecture and History of Contemporary Art at the Politecnico di Milano.

Keywords: Modernity, alpine architecture, tradition, innovation, modern art

PDF download

This article investigates the critical fortune of the Clerici house, a small building built by the architects Asnago and Vender in Chiesa, in Valmalenco, between 1940 and 1941. Despite its location on the outskirts and its apparent remoteness, this type of architecture immediately found the widespread favor of the public, rightly entering the domain of emblematic modern architectures of that season, as well as of the personal poetic of the authors. The analysis of the house’s project filed for the application for planning permission seeks to investigate the critical judgements expressed by the main critics of Asnago’s and Vender’s work on the one hand, and to verify the possible influence of the debate on the rural and alpine house in the first half on the 20th century and of the technical and specialized public architecture between the 1930s and the 1950s on the other. Finally, the peculiar poetic of the architects, eulogized in the project of the house, is illustrated through the comparison with other styles of architecture and with some furnishings by Asnago and Vender in the years prior to the construction of the Clerici house.