The houses of Pietro Lingeri on the Comacina Island
After a long period of neglect, a restoration work completed in 2010 brought the three artist houses on the Comacina Island back to the function for which they were born: to host artists in a charming location, surrounded by nature and silence. In 1917 the island came into possession of the King of Belgium, and then of the Italian State. The houses designed by Pietro Lingeri were built after the failure of more ambitious plans for the creation of an artists’ colony. Born in Bolvedro di Tremezzo, Lingeri graduated from the Academy of Brera, the institution entrusted with the management of the island. Commissioned in the first months of 1933, his original designs for a hotel and seven houses for Italian artists and four for Belgian artists were rejected. Therefore, he conceived three simple small villas combining local materials and traditional construction techniques with a modern vocabulary. The article traces the history of the houses, completed at the end of 1940 by one of the most important architects of Italian Rationalism.
