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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