Giovanni Michelucci

Giovanni Michelucci was born in Pistoia on January 2, 1891, to Bartolommeo and Ida Borri.
His family owned a renowned workshop for artisanal and artistic ironwork, founded in 1864 by his grandfather Giuseppe—the Michelucci Workshops—which became the setting for his earliest experiences with life and material shaping.
After studying at the Higher Institute of Architecture in Florence and gaining professional and artistic experience in the Tuscan provinces, he moved to Rome. There, in 1927, he met his future wife Eloisa Pacini, taught at the architecture course of the Royal Technical Industrial Institute, and achieved his first professional successes.
These early recognitions established him as an original and independent voice within the Italian architectural debate, marked at the time by the confrontation between the young Rationalist generation and the traditional academic culture.
His Roman period, highlighted by the design of two institutes for the University City and his victory in the 1932 competition for the new Florence train station building (won with the Tuscan Group), cemented Michelucci’s role in the renewal of Italian architecture.
Following World War II, Michelucci emerged as a central figure in architectural reconstruction efforts. He founded the journal La nuova città in late 1945 and contributed significantly with his exemplary proposals and interventions in the devastated center of Florence.
Appointed Dean of the Faculty of Architecture in Florence after the Liberation, he championed a deep disciplinary renewal of architecture and urban planning, and a redefined role for the Faculty in addressing urban issues. This vision was articulated in his letter to students and faculty titled “The Happiness of the Architect.”
In 1948, he transferred to the Faculty of Engineering in Bologna. During the 1950s and 1960s, he continued his personal architectural revolution with a series of church projects—culminating in the Church of the Autostrada and the Church of Longarone—as well as numerous other public and private works.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Michelucci remained an influential figure amid the complexity of events, transformations, and ideas of the time. He responded not only with new architectural projects but also by establishing a Foundation focused on the complexities of social issues and urban problems.
His final major works—the new hospital in Sarzana and the Garden of Encounters in the Sollicciano prison in Florence—demonstrated the remarkable vitality of an ever-enthusiastic and tireless Michelucci, a nonconformist and innovator to the end.
After “a life lasting nearly a century,” he passed away on the night of December 31, 1990, just two days before his 100th birthday, in his home-studio in Fiesole, which also serves as the seat of the Michelucci Foundation, founded by him in 1982.