Service station

Sesto San Giovanni (MI) – 1949

Architecture: Aldo Favini
Structures: Aldo Favini
Contractor: Impresa Mario Tamburini, Milan
Client: AQUILA S.p.A.
Demolished

A sheltered gasoline service station, 16 x 18 m, built at the entrance to the former Serenissima highway at Sesto San Giovanni. Now demolished.

Structural scheme
A thin undulated vault in reinforced concrete, with a thickness of 5 cm; one span on a simple support of teams, 8.5 meters apart, and one overhanging span of 6.5 m.

«…I was at a construction site, standing on a piece of corrugated sheet metal placed as protection over a hole, wider than half a meter, in a slab. Someone shouted, “Via sciur ingegner ghè sota un bus” (“Get away from there, mister engineer, there’s a hole under that thing”), and woke me up. As a lover of structures that work through form and not through size, I have simply transformed that steel sheet into reinforced concrete, with a thickness of 6 cm. The overhanging conoid comes from the need to place the sign of the AQUILA company with a series of letters set at the front of the canopy, in a straight line. Where the stability of the structure against the action of the wind was concerned, in the longitudinal direction of the generatrices the small terminal canopy construction resolved the problem, while crosswise this was done by means of the fork support that formed a stiff semi-frame with the rigid crossbeam. The architect E. Rogers, though he admired the structure, pointed out that the struts were placed on the rigid crossbeam at the weakest point, corresponding to the circular holes. There are no strong points or weak points in works, but simply statically impeccable structures. The work pleased the client, because in their view it had strong advertising impact.»

AF 2004.

Publications
• AF, Esempio di pensilina in volta sottile di cemento armato, in “Giornale del Genio Civile”, n. 9, September 1950;
• Vermischtes, in “Beton und Stahlbetonbau”, 46 Jahrgang Heft, 2 February 1951;
• C. Siegel, Strukturformen der Modern Architektur, Verlag Georg. D.W. Callwey, München 1960;
• in “Architects’ working details”, vol. 10, 1960.