in front of the magistrate, it turned out that his father worked for my grandfather. He told me that I was in serious trouble, and could be locked up for years for the alleged sexual and violent assaults. He granted me bail, and quietly indicated that I abscond as quickly as possible. My grandfather put up the money and I got out. After spending a weekend being shown the alternative sights of Venice by one of the prostitutes I had met in jail (to my grandfather’s utter fury), I made it to Trieste, which was then outside Italian jurisdiction and subsequently received a pardon after an exchange of letter between lawyers and the Vatican, which enabled me to return to Italy.
Eugenio Geiringer, my great grandfather, an architect and engineer, who built several landmark buildings in Trieste, including the Town Hall and the offices of Assicurazioni Generali, the insurance company that had been founded by members of his family.
Villa Geiringer in Trieste, the neo-medieval castle that Eugenio designed for his family, with a funicular railway that stopped at the Villa on its way to the neighbouring town of Opicina.
In prison, I lost all sense of time and perspective on the outside world. I was pretty fit, but that period of isolation really took its toll. It made me wonder how prisoners coped, though it had also shown me that the people behind bars were often better and kinder than the people locking them up. I began to question my assumptions about law and order, about who the good guys and the bad guys really were. It also made me realise how privileged and lucky I was. If it hadn’t been for my grandfather’s influence, I could have been stuck in jail, on spurious charges, for years.
Military Service in Trieste; Architecture in Milan
Leaving school in 1951, I had no idea what I wanted to do. It was made clear that I was expected to enter one of the professions. My grandfather felt that I should become a dentist, like him, but my lack of A levels fortunately ruled that out. Indeed my academic record had led one careers adviser to suggest a job with the South African police force, perhaps feeling that my boxing skills would be useful, but ignoring the fact that my political beliefs made this just about the least likely career path I would ever take.
My grandfather, Riccardo Geiringer, after whom I was named.
So, to buy myself two more years I joined the army to do my National Service in late 1951, rather than postponing it till after further education. Like everyone else at St John’s, I had been a member of the Cadet force, but had got into trouble for refusing to obey another boy’s order to carry a Bren gun (a bulky machine gun) while on exercises. This trivial insubordination led to threats of a court martial from one of the teachers, until my housemaster, who outranked him, told him that the idea of court-martialling a schoolboy was ridiculous. Unsurprisingly, with this record at school, it quickly became clear that I was not going to be made an officer, and I was posted to the Royal Army Service Corps. Fortuitously, I had measles when my unit was being sent out to Germany. Left behind, I persuaded the sergeant that I could speak Italian and was posted to Trieste, which was then under British and US military rule, owing to territorial disputes between Italy and Yugoslavia.
An invitation card from my cousin Ernesto showing BBPR’s designs for the children’s labyrinth at the 1954 Milan Triennale. BBPR worked on the designs with cartoonist Saul Steinberg and sculptor Alexander Calder.
BBPR’s Olivetti showroom on 5th Avenue, New York, which opened in 1954. Its futuristic displays of typewriters and adding machines were lit by striped glass lamps made in Murano.
There was probably nowhere better for me to see out my brief and undistinguished military career. My grandfather Riccardo, who was a director of the insurance giant Assicurazioni Generali, gave me a season ticket to the Trieste Opera – beginning a life-long passion for opera and classical music – and I was able to visit the family’s Villa Geiringer, designed and built by my great-grandfather Eugenio Geiringer, at weekends, travelling up on the mountain railway, playing chess and meeting their friends. Back at base, I worked on clerical duties from early mornings until lunchtime. This left time free for swimming in the afternoon, for drinking beer out of boot-shaped litre glasses, and for seeing Marta, my Yugoslavian girlfriend (who was also our secretary at the base).
Domus, the architectural magazine that Ernesto edited from 1946 to 1947.
Being in Trieste also meant I saw more of my cousin, Ernesto Rogers. He was one of the intellectual leaders of post-war European architecture, and his Milan-based BBPR was one of the best-known modern Italian practices. Ernesto had joined CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne – the foremost alliance of modernist architects) in the early 1950s, but he diverged from the absolutist position of the first generation of modernists, who saw their architectural – and social – task as one of creating the world afresh, starting with a blank slate. Ernesto challenged that concept when he took over as editor of Casabella, one of Italy’s leading architectural journals, in 1953, renaming it as Casabella Continuità, and reinstilling a sense of historical perspective. This made him unpopular with some modernists like Reyner Banham, later a good friend of mine, who Ernesto mocked for his chilly, hard-edged modernism, calling him an ‘advocate of refrigerators’.
Ernesto edited Casabella from 1953 to 1964, adding the word ‘Continuità’ to its title.
Ermesto’s blending of modernism with continuity is visible in the design of BBPR’s most famous building, Torre Velasca, a mixed-use tower in Milan near the Cathedral and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, with offices on the lower floors and flats above them. At 106m tall, Torre Velasca looms over Milan’s Gothic and baroque galleries, squares and churches; it is modern and imposing, but also responsive to context, echoing medieval Lombard castles in its top-heavy design, forming links between past, present and future. I must admit, when I first saw the plans, they looked retrograde and heavy; I immediately preferred a steel-framed alternative, which was rejected.
Torre Velasca, one of BBPR’s best-known buildings, was being designed when I worked in their Milan office.
Ernesto was a great humanist, and a fantastic writer and teacher, who opened my eyes to the fabric of the city that he loved. His lyrical letter of welcome, written to me as a newborn baby, told me, ‘Life is beautiful. Life is curious. Break through the door, listen to the world.’ He had incredible cultural breadth, and was always elegantly dressed – a bella figura. He talked of a design approach that could encompass everything dal cucchiaio alla città, from the spoon to the city. As well as making architecture, and the Bauhausian furniture that filled my parents’ Florentine apartment, Ernesto was one of the pioneers of modern urban design, thinking about urban districts as complete places, formed of continuity and change, rather than as collections of buildings in space – a concept that owes as much to Renaissance masters like Brunelleschi and Alberti
