From Giò Ponti to Fazio, farewell to the temple of the twentieth century television
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The legendary Rai antenna in Milan had already become a historical monument by the will of the Fine Arts, after its shutdown in 2015, when the signals were moved to the new tower at the top of the Isozaki skyscraper, in the glossy CityLife district. In a while, therefore, the sale of the historic headquarters, Corso Sempione 27, will also be made official. Studios, offices, theatres, archives and warehouses will move to nearby Portello, to the spaces of the old fair.
Rationalist masterpiece
It is the end of an era, perhaps of the television twentieth century if it is true that these studios were the cradle of Italian television, it was the 1950s and 1960s when Milan played a dominant role compared to the other Rai production centers of Rome and Turin (then also Naples was added).
Designed in 1939 by Giò Ponti, the same architect of the Pirellone, and by the engineer Nino Bertolaia, the headquarters in Corso Sempione was actually built after the war and immediately expanded in function of the imminent launch of TV services, as well as radio services, so it had been conceived.
The rationalist façade of the building was inspired by the ideas of the group of architects who formed MIAR, the Italian Movement for Rational Architecture, in 1930. The entrance hall is unmistakable, with the columns of the lifts visible behind the large window, a symbol of modernist Milan projected into the future.
Cradle of national TV
On 8 September 1952, the very first national TV broadcast ever went on the air from the TV2 studio in Milan: You’re welcome ma’am, conducted by Elda Lanza. Two days later it was the turn of the first newscast, directed by Vittorio Veltroni, Walter’s father. And again from Milan the great TV dramas were recorded, which have now become collective memory, such as The black arrow or Small ancient world. In those years, more than 400 people worked in Corso Sempione, producing around 85% of all national programmes.
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