Below we publish a memory of the architect from Faenza Arturo Locatelli, one hundred years after his birth, on 22 June 1924. He was active in the post-war period, painter, sculptor and teacher, he dedicated himself to architecture and urban planning with design projects, private houses, condominiums, places of worship, schools and with his political commitment.
Arturo Locatelli was a complex architect, sometimes difficult to understand and interpret. As a person he was affable, friendly and above all available to deal with anyone and on any occasion. Hence the interest in teaching, political activity, cohesion with younger colleagues when the Professional Order of Architects moved from Bologna to Ravenna. As chance would have it, in the new stamps that were made he touched the number 1, an emblematic and symbolic number that made him the progenitor of all of us.
Professionally he grew up with Filippo Monti, great friends but different from each other. Their professional careers were also different and they only met at the beginning, then each followed their own path. Monti di Locatelli said that he was capable of brilliant intuitions, and that his works – less attentive from a formal point of view than his – however had a substance that was preserved, knowing how to see it. This was the problem with Locatelli’s works: projects that were not very pleasing aesthetically and in their formal impact but which arose from profound, often anticipatory, reasoning.
In the monograph we created a few years ago we found a title that summarized his work: Arturo Locatelli – Experimental Architecture. With Locatelli and Monti an era ended, in many ways glorious for our territories. Everyone’s commitment – now – should be not to waste it but to conserve and enhance it. Arturo Locatelli’s intuitions are still usable and a source of inspiration.
arch. Rita Rava and arch. Claudio Piersanti
