Luigi Caccia Dominioni

I am greeted by the friendly, perhaps even ironic smile of the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni in his studio, which filters the light and colour of Piazza Sant’Ambrogio, inhabited by objects he designed, paintings, precious by virtue of being selected, and photographs from his life.
My gaze lingers on an photo of his 90th birthday celebrations with colleagues. Five years have passed since that photograph was taken and the architect’s verve has not diminished in the slightest.
Our conversation immediately takes on colour and warmth, due to the brilliant dialectic skills that Caccia has always possessed, thanks to his intimate engagement with the subject.
I came to discuss the intertwining of the lives, creations and designs of Luigi Caccia Dominioni and the Castiglioni brothers.
Caccia Dominioni recounts the beginning of his adventure with Livio and Pier Giacomo: ‘I was closest to Livio and Pier Giacomo. Pier Giacomo was my age, Livio two years older. I was friends with Achille, the youngest of us, through them.’
He recalled their student years when they would see each other every day: ‘Tram number 33 from Piazza Sant’Ambrogio, the stop on Via Palestro, the stop at the Castiglioni’s place and from there together to the Polytechnic.’
It makes me wonder who their most important teachers were.
At the Polytechnic, the cheerful brigade attended lectures by Professor Moretti, Dean of Architecture at the time, Piero Portaluppi and Giò Ponti.
Luigi, Livio and Pier Giacomo were ‘very close’.
Caccia describes Livio as the most technical of the Castiglioni brothers: ‘Hence his great passion for lighting, radio, television, his invention of ‘phonomontages’, his music and speech broadcasts. Livio passed this on to his son Piero, who then developed it over the course of his career.’
He went on to recall his particular bond with Pier Giacomo: ‘We worked together in the studio on Via Porta Nuova, where his father also had his sculpture studio. They were very close to their father: he was the one who taught drawing technique and the various tricks to me and Livio, but not Pier Giacomo, who was already very good.’
Caccia considers Pier Giacomo to be ‘the designer and the sculptor of the three of us. Highly refined in his sketches, he was a great designer always ready to put down on paper the bare bones of an idea that would end up being made. He was our designer and craftsman, endowed with exceptional dexterity.’
In 1936, having obtained his degree together with Livio, Luigi Caccia Dominioni opened ‘a studio, which Pier Giacomo would also join a year later. Together we worked on the designs for various competitions, coming second in one for the redevelopment of Rijeka city centre in ‘39, won by the Del Dabbio-Foschini duo from Rome, and in the one for ‘La casa dei Sindacati’ in Como in ‘41, when we lost to the great Cesare Cattaneo, and winning one for the redefinition of Morbegno city centre in ‘41.’
The studio partnership dissolved in ‘43, but they continued working together and went on to win the competition for the Vimercate middle school in ‘48.
I asked Caccia Dominioni to draw in words, with bold strokes, the main characteristics of the three Castiglioni brothers and of himself.
With the same light and clear lines as we see in his drawings, the architect proceeded to describe the three characters. ‘Livio: The ingenious inventor, the driving force of the studio. Pier Giacomo: the goldsmith, the hands-on, refined sculptor and model maker, highly skilled in manipulating ideas and designs. His hands and sense of touch were his greatest tools: a sculptural hand on the son of sculptor, who was as good as and perhaps better than his father. Luigi: Good at drawing plans and above all brilliant, and also an architect, whose work was always underpinned by a particular focus on and careful study of the apartments and rooms of a house, not just the overall plan, to ensure that they were well designed and thought through, with their correct and balanced function in mind. Achille: The youngest, who arrived later and found the path already laid down, brought his genius, curiosity and practicality to it.’
Caccia enjoys recalling that in his dining room, where they would meet after work to enjoy a well-deserved meal of pasta, he had placed ‘in the corner of the room, a bamboo cane that extended over the table with an electric cable running through it and a lampshade on the end, the weight of the lampshade making the cane flex into a small arch.
‘The spark for the idea of the Arco lamp…?’

Piera Gandini, March 2009

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