ARCHITECTURE
& FLYING ARE (UN-)RELATED

Do you experience moments of nostalgia?

 

M

T

I have only very occasionally felt I had to turn round and look at where I have come from. The main thing is never to look back with nostalgia; always look forward. That signals optimism about the future, and the belief that tomorrow will be better than today.
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We’d still like to ask you about the past, though. You studied architecture in Florence and only went to Milan later. What took you to Florence?

 

M

T

I was studying civil engineering, and found it incredibly frustrating because I wanted to be a racing driver. It didn’t work out, but at least I got to drive around the racetrack north of Florence. One Thursday after training I went into the city, happened to park in front of the Architecture Faculty and bumped into Professor Leonardo Savioli. He impressed me so much that I asked him straight away whether I could come and join his course. I promptly moved to Florence and took the leap from engineering to architecture.

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And your next leap was …

 

M

T

... to Adolfo Natalini, the founder of Superstudio and a superstar himself. He was a proponent of the most radical form of architecture: anti-architecture, the rejection of architecture. Natalini received me and told me there was no point in finishing my studies because there wasn’t a career for me any more; architecture was finished.

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How did you react?

 

M

T

Well, what was I supposed to do? All I needed was a PhD. Then he told me I would be better off becoming a footballer, but I replied, No, I’m from South Tyrol, and we don’t play football there because the ball always ends up down in the valley.

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You refused to give up.

 

M

T

No, I told him I was passionate about flying.

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And what did Adolfo Natalini say to that?

 

M

T

He advised me to build an airfoil and demonstrate that it worked. Like Leonardo da Vinci 500 years earlier, when he wrote that his flying machine would cast a shadow over the towers of Florence. So I hung my airfoil up in the university auditorium to a soundtrack of Pink Floyd, and was certain I would be thrown out.

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You played The Dark Side of the Moon as a provocation?

 

M

T

Yes. The jury, made up of a single engineer amid a crowd of architects, said OK, that’s it, enough.

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But you still completed your studies with the highest possible mark.

 

M

T

Yes, 110. The highest a doctorate could go. My saviour was Giovanni Klaus Koenig, an engineer who became famous as a designer of rail and light rail vehicles for Milan. He knew how much time and effort I had spent on my airfoil in the wind tunnel, trying to find the right angle that would enable the thing to fly. All that work was captured in a film clip, a pretty bad Super 8 film. Koenig won the jury over in half an hour and told them, Don’t throw him out, give him a summa cum laude! But the result was still a disaster.

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Why a disaster?

 

M

T

Nobody wanted me as an architect, because I didn’t know anything. When people asked me what I could do, I said, Well, I can fly. But architecture and flying are fairly unrelated.

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Did you take your provocative design potential along with you to Memphis?

 

M

T

I ran into Ettore Sottsass completely by chance in Los Angeles, and he said, Come and visit me when you’re in Milan. So I did.

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How did you see Memphis?

 

M

T

Memphis was a gymnastic exercise at the outer limits of feasibility.

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And why did it chime with you?

 

M

T

It chimed with me because the Bauhaus was too grey.

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