Soglie e ingressi tra attese e incontri. Quattro ingressi di condomini milanesi degli anni Cinquanta

The paper focuses on the entrance spaces as a place of transition between public and private, inside and outside, where movement and waiting are the predominant feelings. The analysis focuses on the postwar Milanese apartment building typology, which many middle-class citizens see as a mode of asserting their status. Formed by a sequence of spaces with distinctive features such as porches, bottlenecks, passageways, height movements, and lighting, the entrances leave the visitor suspended between the city and the domestic sphere. In this transitional phase, encounters, glances, and greetings between those who go and those who stay inhabit these environments. The housing model of the Milanese condominium has externalized these spaces, moving them from a mere private domain of the home to a semi-collective one, reflecting its deliberately bourgeois character enriched by material and artistic choices. The four selected cases are part of a more significant collection outcome of the research work conducted by architects Lisa Desager and Lisa Janssens in 2016, who focused on the primarily damaged Corso Magenta and Corso Sempione areas of Milan, which were rebuilt immediately after the war.