The commitment to tradition

The city, its history, tradition, natural and built environment, and the redefinition of the landscape are a privileged terrain of research and architecture, in particular, in the work of Roberto Gabetti and Aimaro Isola.

The project, as a form of knowledge, constitutes the ethical foundation of the architectural work that ranges in an open horizon in which local rooting and technical expertise are the starting point for interpreting the continuity between modernity and tradition.

The physical and functional connection between built volume, established activities and external environment, passes also through the attention to current construction materials and to the building phases, experienced as a kind of artisan knowledge, as “knowledge of trades”.

Gabetti and Isola’s design reaches formal inventions as a natural embodiment of a personal process rooted in an ethical attitude.

Since 1950, Gabetti and Isola have been one of the most fruitful professional partnership in the panorama of contemporary Italian architecture. Their works bear witness to a proud independence from current solutions; they dissent, almost forcibly, from a priori methodologies, re-proposing the Piedmontese constructivist tradition as an expression of an original language, unmistakably linked to experience.

  1. Stock Exchange, Turin, Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, Giorgio Raineri; Giuseppe Raineri (structures), 1952-56
  2. Bottega d’Erasmo, Turin, Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, 1953-56. 
  3. Municipal kindergarten in Oglianico Canavese (TO), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, 1956-57
  4. Società Ippica Torinese in Nichelino (TO), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola; Giuseppe Raineri (structures), 1958-59
  5. Middle Schools in Le Vallette, Turin, Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, Augusto Cavallari-Murat, Giorgio Raineri,  1959-63
  6. Monument to the Resistance, San Bartolomeo di Prarostino (TO), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, 1965-67
  7. West Residential Unit Olivetti, Ivrea (TO), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, with Luciano Re, 1968-71
  8. Concaneve residences and shops in Sestrière (TO), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, with Guido Drocco, 1974-80
  9. Villa Sant'Anna residential complex, Rio nell’Elba, (Livorno), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, with Guido Drocco and Enrico Moncalvo , 1974-94
  10. Solar house in Orbassano (TO), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, 1982-84
  11. Law Court in Alba (CN), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, with Giuseppe Varaldo, 1982-87
  12. Museum of Antiquities, Turin, Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, with Guido Drocco, 1982-94
  13. Monastery of the Carmelites in Quart, Aosta, Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, with Guido Drocco, 1984-89
  14. Fifth Snam Office Building in San Donato Milanese (MI), Roberto Gabetti, Aimaro Isola, with Guido Drocco, 1985-92
Text by Gentucca Canella