Nel gran teatro dell'Hinterland e non solo

The essay analyses the entire school corpus of Guido Canella — twenty-three organisms designed between 1962 and 1991 — as a coherent fresco of his theoretical and design research. The author identifies in the School the most demonstrative theme of Canella's theory of architecture as a device (architettura come congegno): complex typological organisms hybridising theatre, school, social and cultural centre, establishing themselves as new peripheral centralities and case del popolo of the Lombard hinterland. Through a systematic typological-planimetric analysis — distinguishing four categories (isolated schools with formal autonomy, complex organisms, didactic prototypes, university settlements) — the text reconstructs the compositional evolution of Canella from the central plan to bilateral symmetries, from the organic-zoomorphic forms of nurseries to the classical synthesis of the Istituto Bodoni in Parma. References to the Constructivist social condenser, the Castle metaphor, and the thought of Gramsci and Rogers connect Canella's school buildings to the broader question of the representativeness of public architecture in the contemporary city.

Il saggio è riferito all'intervento dell'autore alle Giornate di studio in onore di Guido Canella ed in particolare nella sezione "Guido Canella e le generazioni più giovani" in cui vengono analizzati gli edifici scolastici. Tra il registro tipologico e registro figurativo il saggio tende alla individuazione di categorie e classi in cui ordinare la copiosa produzione architettonica degli organismi scolastici di Guido Canella.