La dismissione dell’industria italiana della litoceramica: un patrimonio di cultura tecnica verso l’oblio

As from the 1930s, with the construction of the Palazzo dell’Arte by Giovanni Muzio in Milan, the Italian industry of lithoceramics, an autarchic ceramic material, became established in Italy and was offered on the market as a substitute for the German klinker. The development of this manufacturing sector is directly related to the new expressive needs of the architects of the Modern Movement, who make this material the protagonist of extremely interesting cladding solutions from both a composition and technological point of view. The close collaboration between designers and manufacturers continued until the end of the 1960s, when the closure of the main producer, Ceramiche Piccinelli of Bergamo, marked the beginning of the decline of the sector, in parallel with the progressive change in the language of architecture. The lithoceramic season concluded at the end of the 1980s with the discontinuance or reconversion of the last manufacturing companies, such as SACCER in Turin and Ceramica Joo in Milan. The decommission of the Italian lithoceramic industry led to a deep break in the process of conservation and transmission of an irreplaceable heritage of technical culture, also because of the dispersion of business archives. This criticality emerged overwhelmingly when it became necessary to intervene urgently and on a large scale on this material legacy of the Modern, which only recently began to enter into crisis. The oblivion into which the lithoceramic building technique has now fallen has unfortunately led to numerous interventions of total removal of the original cladding. Critical reflection on how to re-appropriate a now rarefied technical knowledge becomes the only tool to promote cultured and appropriate recovery projects.