Fenoglio, Pietro (b Turin,
1865; d Corio Canavese, 22 Aug 1927)
Italian architect.
He studied civil
engineering at Turin Polytechnic under Carlo Ceppi, graduating
in 1886. He worked in the practice of Brayda, Boggio and Reycend
and then began in private practice in 1889. Through Ceppi he had
become aware of the most up-to-date architectural developments.
Several of his early buildings are in the Piedmontese medieval
tradition, brick with stone dressings, for example the Ansaldi
Factory (1899), Via Modena, Turin, a sparse brick building with
stone cornices to broken gables, or the Villino della Societ?
Finanziaria Industriale (1900), Via Beaumont, Turin. The
eclectic mode was not entirely limited to industrial buildings,
however: the Casa Besozzi (1904), Corso Siccardi, is like an
early Renaissance palazzo with a rusticated, red granite base
flanked by five-storey pavilions with medieval castellations and
neo-Romanesque openings. Fenoglio achieved official recognition
with his election to the Artistic Committee of the Esposizione
Internazionale d'Arte Decorativa (1902) in Turin. In the
following years his practice was extremely busy, undertaking
more than 140 projects in the first decade of the new century.
Fenoglio's search for new formal solutions made him particularly
attentive to the styles of Art Nouveau and of the Deutscher
Werkbund. Of well over 100 executed buildings, the most
significant are perhaps Fenoglio's vigorous and elegant
contributions to the Stile Liberty: curvilinear stone window
heads and balconies with floral decoration in iron balustrades
and window bars. Among the most remarkable are the Palazzina
Scott, Corso Lanza, with flowing stonework and ironwork to bow
windows and an enclosed loggia, and the Casa Fenoglio on the
corner of the Corso Francia and Via Principi d'Acaja (both
1902). He returned to traditional references for the public
housing in the Via Marco Polo (1903), although elements of Stile
Liberty remain in the Villino Raby (1905) and the Istituto
Beneficenza Denis (1907). His appointment as coordinator for the
Technical Committee of the Esposizione Internazionale
dell'Industria e del Lavoro (1911) in Turin coincided with the
unexpected abandonment of his professional practice. In 1912 he
joined the management committee of the Banca Commerciale and, in
the following year, he also took over the post of Director of
the Società Commerciale d' Oriente, which was active in Libya,
Egypt and Turkey. In his new profession as financier he was
mainly concerned with projects geared to developing the heavy
engineering industry, both civil and military, and the
hydroelectric industry. In 1920, having become Director General
of the Banca Commerciale, he opposed Luca Beltrami's project for
its Rome office, accusing it of being out of date. He favoured
instead a project by Marcello Piacentini.
Works:
Casa Le
Fleur in Torino
Villino Raby
in Torino
Palazzina Rossi via Passalacqua 14 in Torino