Public Housing:
The Apartment Blocks

Architects: Cancellotti, Montuori, Piccinato, Scalpelli

The housing in Sabaudia mainly consisted of fairly spacious apartments, approximately 80–90 m² (plates 59–74). Two and three story buildings were scattered throughout the center containing apartments, and in many cases with shops on the first floor. Seven different models were designed (types A–G), as well as an apartment block bordering on the hotel designed to make it seem like the two buildings constituted one structure. (Type B [plates 61–62] was never realized.) The apartments constructed in 1933–34 featured a high standard, with facilities such as running water, w.c., bath tubs, and modern kitchens. In addition each apartment contained two to three bedrooms, a living/dining room, entrance, and occasionally even a small balcony. On roof terraces washing and covered laundry drying facilities were provided. In addition each apartment house had a large garden and play area.[1] The architects designed eight different types of apartment buildings to avoid monotony. They are all kept in a light yellow or red ochre stucco, sometimes with details in travertine or, more common, bricks. On some façades small protruding balconies with iron railing rhytmically breaks up the wall (plates 63.A, B and D), on others the balconies are used as a modelling feature, as they are withdrawn and thus make deep shadows in the wall (plates 59 and 69). Different types of windows are also used in the different buildings to variate the façades: window-ribbons, bigger and smaller windows, all set at equal distance from each other ensuring a symmetrical balance. Type F and G each consists of two different blocks linked together on ground level by low porticos (plates 69–72). On top of type E (plate 68) we find the solarium construction with thin, plain pilasterlike concrete beams framing in a terrace open to the sky in the middle. The use of porticoes and arcades provided informal meeting places in front of the shops and cafés.[2] The impression is a very harmonic, symmetrical town, of a controlled, classizising modernity. Only one of each type was initially constructed, as was the case with all the other housing types designed for the town.[3]