«He introduced me as ' Costantino Nivola, Sardinian ', these were my only credentials at the time». It is 1946. Jose Luis Sert, architect, makes the presentations in a restaurant in the heart of Manhattan. In the presence of the great master of Orani there is the number one: Charles Edouard Jeanneret, for all Le Corbusier. The greatest architect in the world had crossed the Big Apple as a delegate for the selection of the site to build the glass building of the United Nations. Antine, as Nivola loved to be called, and Le Corbusier do not speak much: they understand each other with the eyes, between the two it is immediately the chemistry of art. Some time later, in fact, they find themselves on the street: Le Corbusier immediately recognizes Nivola. He, the Sardinian in New York, sees the teacher tired and invites him to his home, still modest, but welcoming.
Le Corbusier & Nivola
Orani's ambassador to the world recalls that day: "After greeting my wife in her courteous, almost nineteenth-century way, he turned to me with an approving smile and said to me:" Monsieur Nivola, you have a beautiful family that enters the content of his art. You have talent » . It is there that an extraordinary story begins that will mark the artistic life of two exclusive characters of architecture, art and "modernism". Nivola says: «… With a Bourbon in one hand and a notebook in the other, we sat down at the round table. In front of a vase of fresh flowers, under the angelic and amused gaze of my son, the tutorial has begun: an exclusive didactic dialogue between me and Le Corbusier » .
The heirs
More than seventy years have passed since the beginning of that extraordinary history of art intertwined between the village of Orani and the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Now the two protagonists bounce back on the world stage thanks to a project that for some hours has been depopulating in the international system of innovative, experimental and futuristic architecture. An explosive mix of design, innovation and art put in black and white by a multi-dimensional architecture studio with tax residence in Olbia, an operational base in Umbria and an international branch in Istanbul, in the heart of Turkey. At the head, together with his Turkish colleague Öznur Pinar Çer, is Danilo Petta, a genetically unmodified Sardinian, mother of Iglesias, father of Olbia. The international magazines, millions and millions of visitors in a few hours, have relaunched the project that the Mask Architects studio conceived like a tsunami, drawing inspiration from Nivola's greatest work, “
