June 17, 2026, from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm, Aula De Donato, Building 3, Leonardo Campus, Milan
The event is part of Incontri 2026, a free public series that brings authors into conversation with faculty members from Politecnico di Milano, creating opportunities for dialogue between literature, design, and contemporary society.
The guest speaker will be Gianni Biondillo, author of the novel Quello che noi non siamo. This collective novel tells the story of men and women who came to recognize the collapse of false ideologies and chose to stand for freedom and the Resistance, often paying a high personal price through imprisonment, torture, and deportation to concentration camps.
The discussion will explore the story of a generation of architects who believed in Fascism because they saw it as a revolution, much like the artistic revolution they advocated: Rationalism. Through figures such as Giuseppe Pagano, Giuseppe Terragni, Edoardo Persico, and many leading protagonists of modern Italian architecture educated at Politecnico di Milano – including Luigi Figini, Gino Pollini, Piero Bottoni, Gian Luigi Banfi, Lodovico Belgiojoso, Enrico Peressutti, and Ernesto Nathan Rogers – the novel offers a collective portrait of an era marked by profound political, cultural, and social tensions.
Joining the conversation will be Alessandro Coppola, Professor of Urban Planning, and Giampiero Bosoni, Professor of Design.
Alessandro Coppola’s contribution broadens the discussion to the field of contemporary urbanism: What kinds of cities are we building today? Which values shape urban transformation? Giampiero Bosoni’s intervention enriches the dialogue through a perspective centered on design, objects, and contemporary visual languages. Between memory and project, inclusion and exclusion, vision and standardization, the event examines the very meaning of building cities. It is within urban space that collective decisions become visible, and where the act of building takes shape as a shared responsibility.
Gianni Biondillo is a writer, architect, and psychogeographer. He has written noir fiction, historical novels, children’s books, reportage, and short stories. Through his literary work he has won the “Premio Scerbanenco” (2011), the “Prix Violeta Negra” (2014), the “Premio Bergamo” (2018), the “Premio Dora Nera” (2022), and the “Premio Bagutta” (2024). As an essayist, he has explored and interpreted the space of the contemporary metropolis.
Registration is required on Politecnico di Milano's website.