Giacomo Lercaro, an Architect among Architects? The Scientific Planning of the “Seconda Bologna” between the 1950s and 1960s.

Giacomo Lercaro’s arrival in Bologna in the spring of 1952 and his appointment as cardinal the following year opened a 15-year period in which the Emilian city was at the center of important initiatives that gained notoriety both nationally and internationally. With regard to urban and architectural issues, Cardinal Lercaro was able to use method and planning to set up a meticulous plan that in about 15 years led to the construction of many parish centers and churches. These places of worship, characterized by a highly modern language that until that moment had only very few similar examples in Italy, became new points of reference for the neighborhoods in which they arose, helping to resolve some of the social and aggregative as well as ecumenical problems that characterized those suburbs. The design of those churches was entrusted not only to designers of great fame such as Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Pier Luigi Nervi but also to young architects such as Giuseppe Trebbi or Glauco Gresleri that Lercaro had the intuition to aggregate in a group (Ufficio Nuove Chiese) called to carry out other functions as well. Also important and not to be underestimated were the links created in other European contexts generating a dense network of exchanges and relationships that contributed to increasing the notoriety of Lercaro and the city of Bologna, the object of analysis and a debate that is still current today.