La testimonianza di un ingegnere a Palermo negli anni Sessanta: Giorgio Fernandez

Abstract This paper aims to examine the figure of Giorgio Fernandez (Palermo, 1920-2020) in the professional milieu of Palermo engineer, trained during the Fascism and active in the subsequent dense phases of urban development between the post-war reconstruction and the economic boom period, particularly considering his contribution in residential complexes design. Fernandez graduated in 1942 at the Faculty of Engineering of Palermo, city to which he remained deeply attached for a hundred of years. It is here where he spent all his life and he almost exclusively carried out his rich professional activity, completely documented by Fernandez Professional Ar- chive, declared of historical interest in 2014, and presented in a recent monographic publication for the first time (Manzo, 2020). He designed a large number of interventions both on urban and architectural scale, as well as many interior and furnishing projects. Focusing on the most important part of his career related to housing means reflecting on the role of the Palermo engineering school had in experimenting with new technologies, architectural expressions and structural solutions, in an attempt to outline a different perspective of observation of the urban history of Palermo common known as ‘il Sacco’. Closely linked to the new private entrepreneurial middle- class, the residential buildings he designed since the early 1950s are a testimony of his personal architectural research, constantly intertwined with different categories of professionals based in Palermo: artists, artisans, upholsterers, as well as, for example, marine engineers, who collaborated in the developing of a special-purpose formwork for the structural pillar of a residential complex in Piazza Vittorio Veneto (1969). At the same time, Fernandez was inspired by the contemporary national experiences, and in particular by Milanese colleagues, managing to keep up with the times regarding spatial solutions and use of innovative materials, including a mosaic designed by Gio Ponti used for the façade cladding of his well-known 1964 project: Palazzo AR at the corner of via Roma and via Amari.