A MISSED REVOLUTION: FROM A MILANESE CASE STUDY TO AN ETHICAL ARCHITECTURE.

Based on a strong ideology of an intellectual elite, the rationalist approach sought to revolutionise the idea of the city and architecture inherited from the past. The radical struggle against the 19th and early 20th century culture led to a veritable iconoclastic crusade against ornament, denounced by Adolf Loos as a crime. In this social as well as cultural reform, the role played by certain multidisciplinary schools of art – first and foremost the Bauhaus – was decisive in the dissemination of new models of living, marked by functionality. The relationship of Bauhaus with the new analytical tendencies in philosophy – such as the thought of Rudolf Carnap and other exponents of the Vienna School – was closely reflected in some areas of teaching, as that of Hannes Meyer marked by a scientistic neo-positivism. Ludwig Wittgenstein, an inspirational figure for this school, in describing language offers an illuminating image of a possible city divided between two opposing vocations, whic h raises such question: what happens, however, when the uniform houses of rationalism leave the suburbs and enter the historic centres? Starting from this question, our contribution intends to examine a specific case study to verify the effects of these revolutionary theories within the real context of a city. We refer to a Milanese study-area – that of the Porta Romana/Porta Vigentina district – already investigated in the early 1960s by a young Aldo Rossi, even before he wrote L’architettura della città. In this case, the intention is to verify the transformations undergone over time, following the devastation caused by the war and the reconstructive choices that were only partly realised and still remain unresolved as fragments today.