Oberon, Turin’s Quicksand And Other Stories: Sneers and Diversions of the Young Mollino and his Circle

Across an unprecedented reading of Mollino’s “Vita di Oberon” (1933) and “Architettura di Torino. Le sabbie mobili” (1934), I propose to look into irony, parody and caricature as underexplored dimensions of the Torinese architect. Mollino’s early writings are viewed through the prism of his paternal legacy and singular web of collaborations, and against the backdrop of the contemporary architectural polemics, the source material for the architect’s biting sense of humour. An interlude separates the dissection of the two writings: the drawings for the Saint-Gobain residential estate competition (1952), with their irreverent depictions of everyday life, are seen as a powerful tool in Mollino’s hands for questioning the rigid authoritarianism of modernist formulae. The reiterated image of the architect-artist, all “genius and unruliness”, is partly reassessed: Mollino’s distinctive ironic gaze is inseparable from Oberon’s “practical living poetry”, a unique blend of lyricism, selfawareness, and the precise understanding of the cultural climate of his life and work.