Ulisse Stacchini (b
Florence, 3 July 1871; d Sanremo, 1947).
Italian
architect.
Soon after graduating in Rome he moved to Milan,
where he set up an architectural practice with the engineer
Giulio De Capitani. From the last years of the 19th century he
worked for private patrons building houses, offices and shops,
among them the Savini Cafè Restaurant. He kept abreast of
architectural fashion, working in the Art Nouveau style, in
which he designed the wine store (1900-02) for the Unione
Cooperativa in the Corso Sempione, Milan. His Milanese town
houses were influenced by contemporary foreign styles. The house
at Via Gioberti 1 (1903-4), for example, is a linear composition
developed in parallel registers derived from Viennese models,
rather than a coordinated and unified sculptural mass. The Casa
Donzelli at Via Revere 7 (1907-9) is still expressed in
geometric rather than the sculptural terms of Art Nouveau,
however, with the decorative details in an imaginative Oriental
style. In his winning competition entry for the Monza Cemetery
(1912) the monumental aspect of this language is emphasized, a
characteristic shared by the projects submitted by Gaetano
Moretti, Giuseppe Sommaruga and Ernesto
Pirovano. The Central Station, Milan (see
MILAN, fig. 7), is Stacchini's major work. The competition of
1912 required that entries be related to a general plan by the
engineer Cesare Saldini. Stacchini's design was selected because
it was the most successful in formally linking the various parts
of the complex interchange of urban and railway traffic.
Building work was delayed, however, until 1926, and in the
interim Stacchini was forced to make a number of significant
alterations. He preserved certain characteristics of the initial
design, such as the refined linear quality of details and the
monumentality of the whole, but when the station was inaugurated
in 1931 it appeared outdated from both a technical and
architectural standpoint, and Stacchini's reputation was badly
affected.
Works:
Casa
Donzelli in Milan
Villa Magnani in Induno Olona (
VA )