If drawing be the language of architecture, then Gino Malacarne’s architecture is unquestionably eloquent. The coloured perspectives, the axonometric projections and the models all give an account of an architecture in which figural expression has the last word on the typological system: his works of architecture all have a façade, a front that is quite distinct from what lies behind it, and through which they relate to the world (the “rediscovered works” risk their all and congregate on the urban scene, upheld by a mellow courage).
Thus, if on the one hand the technical ability surfaces, that knowhow which organically unites the imprint of the type with the appearance of a language, on the other this constructive and decorative energy manages to bring to life the allure of a particular feeling.
The type of atmosphere changed with time, circumstances, and perhaps also the designer’s mood in this long series of works ranging from 1983 to 2021. My personal favourites are: the “Project for 24 social housing units in Spinea” (1987), thanks to that courtyard surrounded by balconies-loges from which it is easy to imagine the most disparate humanity gazing out expectantly or attending an event that we would all like to be a party; the “Project for the Werfthafen of Duisburg” (1991), where those four good men and true stand, well aligned along the taut arch of a plinth, on a narrow sliver of land right on the edge of the city. In Gino’s nocturnal drawings, the tiered towers become guardians and the lady opens the window amazed by the glow of a twilight – or is it the first light of dawn? The third is the “Project for Punta Perotti in Bari” (2006), where the atmosphere is utterly exotic. We could talk about the methodical composition with which the spaces of the courts follow one another, but what really prevails is the charm of an atmosphere that reminds us of the coasts of the Mediterranean and beyond, along the merchant road of an ancient oriental city from whose flat horizon the dome of some sacred work of architecture suddenly arises.
Major urban projects such as the “Project for Berlin Königsstadt” (1995), the “Urban Redevelopment Project for the Artisan Village and Madonnina District in Modena” (2005), the “Project for Piazzale Stanga and Via Venezia in Padua” (2014) or the Project for the Port of Bari (2021) each deserve a chapter to themselves. For all of these, the assumption of a realism counts so that it becomes unrealistic to think of being able to rebuild entire parts of the city in question. The contradictions and formal aporias of the contemporary city are addressed in fragments, insufflating into the urban organism those works of architecture capable of reactivating internal relations and making the cityscape recognizable by establishing a hierarchy between the parts. These are figures whose operation takes place by proximity (as in the completion of large urban blocks) or “at a distance” (on the basis of the topological interrelations which the towers are able to weave with other monumental urban facts). In this way, in a happy synopsis, the continuity and organicity of the urban space are reconstructed, where the voids between the parts, the pieces, the fragments, or more simply, the works of architecture, are only necessary to restore to the Italian and European city that formal and expressive quality, so that – as Johann Herder claimed – citizenship can continue to be the very language of one’s own city.
The projects we have talked about and many more, the delightful colourful drawings, models, and architectural sketches by Gino Malacarne have been the subject of two exhibitions, one, conceived and promoted by the cultural association Di Architettura together with the Municipality of Padua, was held at the Palazzo della Gran Guardia between 17 and 30 September 2022, the other, entitled “Gino Malacarne. Paesaggi Urbani”, in the Ambulatory of the Library of Palazzo Gravina in Naples between 13 February and 5 March 2023.
Both were supplemented by a catalogue.

Lamberto Amistadi