La forma industrial del hormigón pretensado. Una investigación histórica sobre el diseño estructural de Aldo Favini y Angelo Mangiarotti (1950-1980) - Industrial form in prestressed concrete. An historical inquiry about the structural design of Aldo Favini and Angelo Mangiarotti (1950-1980)

In June 1966 the little «Parrish Church of Baranzate», designed by Angelo Mangiarotti with Aldo Favini and built on the outskirts of Milan, was published in «Informes de la Construcción». Its «brillant structure» made up by precast, prestressed concrete elements, bear witness to a structural architecture that arose in Northern Italy in the aftermath of the Second World War, deeply intertwined with the building industry sector’s and industrial design’s ample development. With reinforced concrete as the reference point, the structural topic of the medium-length span – especially to face the fast reconstruction of non housing buildings – engaged a generation of structural engineers in the design of precast elements. From 50’s to 70’s, thin shell, slabs and beams, shaped by the “logic of form” or “strengthened” by prestression, dealt in finding the ideal shape (in both structural and architectural terms) to the “handmade” dimension of Italian industrialization