Building to Forget Piazzale Loreto’s past

This thesis examines the philosophies of Aldo Rossi, Paul Byard, David Lowenthal, and Alois Reigl in relation to Piazzale Loreto, a significant junction in Milan marked by traumatic events during 1944 in which fifteen partisans were publicly executed under fascist regime. The following year, Mussolini’s body was returned to the site and suspended ceremoniously from a service station’s rafters, just metres away from the original tragedy. The thesis explores the analogy of the city as a living body.

The collective consciousness of the city, as described by Rossi, shapes its monuments and artifacts, thus the Piazzale Loreto has become the locus of an unhealing artefactual scar within Milan’s living flesh. The memory has pathologically manifested through underdeveloped urban spaces and disconnected monuments lacking any commemorative or historical value. Addressing questions of iconoclasm, the study evaluates how a compelling monument can exist in such a polarized site and how it can serve a purpose within Loreto's mythopoetic narrative.

Drawing on the work of architect Aldo Andreani, the monument challenges conventional Milanese design by incorporating contrasting motifs and structural systems, aiming for an anachronistic identity that achieves urban neutrality. The proposal seeks to remember all of Milan, creating a unified work that confronts the contentious history holistically and exhaustively through architectural expression. Through a programme of confabulated architectural references, both lived and past memories are intertwined with the dense patchwork of fragmented memories, which become embedded in Milan's larger "temporal tapestry" so to evolve into mythology. The monument aims to engage with memory through written documentation. The space holds a library, printing factory for small scale publications, learning and lecture spaces and the Famedio; a columbarium-like space containing the written memories of those who have lived and died in the Milan. These publicly submitted obituaries will repopulate the wounded consciousness of Piazzale Loreto with new memories, histories, and mythologies of the people - the lifeblood of the city. Drawing on Marxist concepts of dialectical materialism, the proposed monument serves as a social conduit for the collective conscience and can achieve urban neutrality while stimulating conscious reflection in Milan.

The goal is to create an architectural philosophy that goes beyond mere memorialization and into ‘Post Memory’, paralleling postmodernism but with a distinct approach. Byard's combined works inform the methodology, emphasizing the representation of architectural history through a lateral lens, while Andreani's work demonstrates the possibility of creating forms that are timeless, obscure, and deeply connected to Milan's consciousness.