Alberto Sartoris

(b Turin, 2 Feb 1901). Italian architect, writer and teacher. He graduated in architecture from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Geneva (1923), and returned to Italy where he worked as an assistant to Raimondo d'Aronco and Annibale Rigotti. He was in private practice in Turin until 1939; he also practised in Switzerland continuously from 1930. Sartoris was a pioneer of Modernism in Italy, participating in several of the principal European avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s. As a friend and admirer of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti he was involved in the Italian Futurist movement, collaborating with the painters Fillia and Felice Casorati. He was also inspired by the Neo-plasticism of De Stijl architects Theo van Doesburg and Cor van Eesteren, and he developed a unique style of axonometric drawing that became a hallmark of his work. His designs tended towards a synthesis of Futurism, Neo-plasticism and Functionalism in their use of colour, form and intersecting planes. He was the Grand Prix winner for his contribution to the Prima Mostra dell'Architettura Futurista (1928), Turin, and his building for the Comunit? Autonome Artigiane at the Esposizione del Decennale della Vittoria (1928), Turin, was a major early example of Functionalist architecture in Italy; his church of Notre Dame du Bon-Secours (1932), Lourtier, Switzerland, was one of the earliest churches of the Modern Movement. Sartoris was a founder-member of CIAM (see CIAM, fig. 1) and CIRPAC (1928) and joined many other groups including MIAR (1930) and the French groups Cercle et Carr? (1930), Union des Artistes Modernes (1931) and Abstraction-Cr?ation (1931-6). He was a regular contributor to Casabella and Domus, and in 1929, with Fillia, he founded the review La citt? futurista. He wrote more than 50 books on architectural theory and urbanism, and his Gli elementi dell'architettura funzionale (1932), prefaced by Le Corbusier, remains a key reference work on the international avant-garde of the period. From 1945 to 1973 he was a professor at the Institut d'Architecture Atheneum, Lausanne.

See the Abbreviations for further details.