Oratorio Pininfarina

The building was commissioned to architects Gabetti and Isola in 1964 by the industrial Giovan Battista Pininfarina, who wanted to create a recreational and educational centre in Cortanze, a country of origin and his family, to be named after Giuseppe and Giacinta. The design phase, in which the two architects took advantage of the collaboration of his colleague Giorgio Raineri, ended in August of the same year, while the calculations of reinforced concrete structures were entrusted to engineer Giuseppe Raineri. The first stone was laid on 20 September 1964, although the construction site actually started in early 1965 and ended in 1966. The post office's finishing works on the lower floor of the building, however, delayed its actual opening in 1967.^[1]

In 2019 the work had maintained its original use destination and was preserved in good condition.^[2]

The building is located in the historical centre of Cortanze, on a particularly declining terrain that required to fill an altitude difference of more than 8 meters between the underlying Piazza Marconi and the church of Saints Peter and John. The problem was solved by supporting the building to the existing brick counterfeit walls that cing on the steep slopes of the country.^[1] This solution posed the project of the oratory in continuity with that of the Episcopal Council of Mondovì, always of Gabetti and Isola, characterized by similar difficulties of construction.^[3]

The oratory develops on two floors outside the ground, surmounted by a slightly tilted terrace covering that acts as a continuation of the public space and a playground. The internal system includes two overlapping rooms, 16.50 meters long: the lower one, 6,5 meters deep, is used as a playroom, while the upper one, 10,5 meters deep, is dedicated to shows and cinema projections. Both rooms, facing south, open on large balconies and are connected internally through a staircase built inside a pre-existing tower, renovated to the purpose.^[1]

The building's supporting bone is a exposed reinforced concrete frame, with 3 meter spans, adjective beams to support the terraces and external buffering and interiors in exposed paraman brick.^[1] From an aesthetic point of view, the building adapts to the styles of poor rural architecture,^[3] accentuated by the robust protruding beams and the use of railings and balconies in iron profiles,^[4] the latter employed with a declared aesthetic intent.^[1]

The external openings are divided into two square windows, which contribute to creating a dimensional ambiguity in the prospectus, confusing the real height of the building and the perception of the interior spaces.^[3]

• Francesco Cellini, The complexity of the essential: reflections on the last works of Gabetti and Isola, in Counterspace, IX, n. 4-5, October-November 1977.
• Paolo Zermani (edited by), Cabinets and Island, Bologna, Zanichelli, 1989, ISBN 978-8808152503.
• Andrea Guerra and Manuela Morresi, Cabinets and Island: Works of Architecture, Milan, Electa, 1996, ISBN 9788843552634.

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