Carlo Mollino

Carlo Mollino (6 May 1905 – 27 August 1973) was an Italian architect, designer, photographer and educator. Carlo Mollino was born on May 6, 1905, in Turin, a major industrial city and cultural center in northwest Italy. He was the only son of Jolanda Testa (1884-1966) and Eugenio Mollino (1873-1953), a prolific engineer who built more than 300 buildings of the most diverse types. Carlo Mollino graduated in architecture in July 1931 at the Royal Superior School of Architecture in Turin. Before and after graduation he collaborated with his father who mentored him in the design of technical architectural elements and had him oversee construction sites. Only in 1933 he began his personal career winning a competition for the construction of an office building in Cuneo and writing "The Life of Oberon", a fictional short story published in the architectural magazine Casabella. During the war years he wrote a volume of photographic history and criticism, Message from the Darkroom (Il Messaggio dalla Camera Oscura, published in 1949), and a manual of skiing technique, Introduction to Downhill Skiing (Introduzione al Discesismo, published in 1950). In the 1940s he began to write essays on architecture and from 1949 up until his death he taught at the Faculty of Architecture in Turin, becoming a full professor in 1953. In 1955 he designed a car, the , which competed that year in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In 1956 he began to fly specializing in aerobatics and later participated in Italian and European competitions. Carlo Mollino did not marry and had no children, he experienced an important love story with the sculptor Carmelina Piccolis between 1948 and 1955. He passed away on the early afternoon of August 27, 1973, while working in his studio. Thanks to an extended apprenticeship with his civil engineer father before, during, and after studying architecture, Carlo Mollino is highly skilled in a range of building technologies and materials while commanding all aspects of the construction process (for example he produces working drawings for the doors and windows of most of his buildings).