Carlo Mollino: Architect Storyteller is the first comprehensive critical study of Mollino's built and unbuilt architecture — a body of work long overshadowed by his furniture and photography, yet singular in its fusion of Surrealism and modernism.
About This Book
Carlo Mollino (1905–73) has long been reduced to his most legible outputs: the sinuous furniture, the provocative Polaroids. His architecture, by contrast, has remained critically underserved — a gap this book directly addresses. Drawing on years of archival research and Mollino's own writings, Michelangelo Sabatino assembles an exemplary selection of key designs, both realised and unrealised, situating them within the broader currents of 20th-century modernism. What distinguishes Mollino's built work is its persistent, unsettling dialogue with Surrealism — a relationship that sets it apart from contemporaries and demands serious reassessment. For architects, historians, and design scholars, this is essential reading on a figure whose full contribution has never, until now, been properly accounted for.
Key Features
- 320 pages of critical architectural scholarship, lavishly illustrated with archival photographs, drawings, and previously unpublished plans and documents
- Author: Michelangelo Sabatino, with scholarly essays by additional expert contributors
- Published by Park Books, 9783038601333
What You'll Discover
- How Mollino's architecture engages Surrealism in ways that distinguish it from mainstream European modernism of the same period
- Previously unpublished plans, drawings, and documents that open new perspectives on his design process and intentions
- An assessment of both built and unrealised projects, revealing the full scope of an architectural vision that transcends the finished object
- The textual and intellectual world Mollino inhabited — via his own writings — which shaped an architectural practice as idiosyncratic as it was disciplined
About the Author
Michelangelo Sabatino is a historian and scholar whose research focuses on modern architecture and design. This book is the product of years of sustained archival investigation into Mollino's life and practice, positioning Sabatino as the leading critical voice on Mollino's architectural legacy.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 320
- Dimensions: 310 x 290 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9783038601333
- Publisher: Park Books
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects and historians with an interest in 20th-century Italian modernism, design scholars investigating the intersection of Surrealism and built form, and collectors seeking definitive monographs on under-documented figures.