Leonardo Mosso: the poetry of structure

Leonardo Mosso (1926-2020) was able to combine art and architecture. He was a collector and an interpreter of 20th century culture that he shared and passed on to succeeding generations of students and collaborators who attended the Alvar Aalto Institute. It is not easy to define his complex identity: architect, artist, photographer, researcher, semiologist, professor (at the Politecnico di Torino and several European Universities), a man of culture, an activist in the conservation of 20th century architectural heritage. In 1979, with his wife Laura, he founded the Istituto Alvar Aalto in Pino Torinese, which also houses the headquarters of the Study Center of Programmed Architecture and Environmental Cybernetics (since 1969), and the Museum of Architecture, Applied Arts and Design (since 1984). The Institute preserves important archive materials, the result of a lifetime dedicated to the protection, conservation, study, and promotion of the architectural heritage, artworks, design, and applied arts of the 20th century.