Gaetano Koch

Gaetano Koch
Gaetano Koch
Born	(1849-01-09)9 January 1849 Rome, Papal States
Died	14 May 1910(1910-05-14) (aged 61) Rome, Kingdom of Italy
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	Architect
Movement	Renaissance Revival architecture

Buildings	Palazzo Koch Piazza della Repubblica Piazza Vittorio Palazzo Mengarini Palazzo Margherita

Koch was born in Rome on 9 January 1849. He studied Engineering and Architecture at Sapienza University of Rome, where he took his degree in 1872.^[1] Koch entered the profession at the age of 23, working in the technical department of the Società dell’Esquilina in the neo-Cinquecento tradition followed in Roman circles by Pietro Camporese the Elder and by Cosimo Morelli. Koch’s debut for this firm, in 1882, was the large group of buildings in the middle of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II in Rome. He was subsequently invited, together with Pio Piacentini and Francesco Azzuri, to take part in the competition (1882) for the headquarters of the Banca Nazionale (now Bank of Italy) on Via Nazionale. After an attempt by the prestigious state body to find a compromise between the designs of Koch and those of Piacentini, in 1885 the outcome of this competition, initially judged by Camillo Boito alone, was victory for Koch’s solution (completed 1892).

The Banca Nazionale has two large courtyards within imposing elevations, which are emphatically divided horizontally into its three storeys. The main façade has two entrance pavilions, one to each court, at either end of the emphasized central thirteen bays. Built particularly soundly and with all the latest technology, the project established Koch as a designer of authority and prestige – a reputation that continued throughout his working life. Monumental yet without the pomposity of the Palazzo di Giustizia by Guglielmo Calderini or the Victor Emanuel monument by Giuseppe Sacconi, the Banca Nazionale is proof of the flexibility of the Roman palazzo type of building, though extended well beyond its normal scale.

Koch attained similar if more dramatic results with the successful layout of Piazza delle Terme (now Piazza della Repubblica) and the design of two buildings (built between 1886 and 1890), the Palazzi dell’Esedra, at the head of the Via Nazionale. The semicircular perimeter of the two monumental yet lively buildings follows the outline of the grandiose exedra of the Baths of Diocletian and at the same time forms a monumental approach to the railway station. Brilliantly solving the problems linked to the divided ownership of the area, Koch managed to fuse the speculative and the symbolic with a solution rooted in a very specific urban context. In particular, the design of the spacious round-arched arcades to the ground-floor contributes to the effect of a single organic solution, adding emphasis and definition to the volumes without making any facile concessions to a spurious decorativeness. Koch also used a simple Ionic pilaster to give a sense of rhythm to the closely set window openings required by the residential use of the buildings, at the same time producing a frame appropriate to the partly public nature of the building and to its key location.

In many of his important works Koch was able, on various scales, to try out his essentially dignified approach and his love of clear, clean-cut volumes, from the Palazzo Margherita (1887–91; now the American Embassy) on Via Veneto, with a T-plan and a sober Cinquecento-style 15-bay entrance façade, to the Palazzo Calabresi on Via XX Settembre and the Palazzo Buoncompagni on Largo Goldoni, with the ground-floor and mezzanine one large unit, above which there is a sequence of diminishing storeys. The elegance and ingeniousness of his solutions shows a style that was neither remotely archaeological nor declamatory.

Gaetano Koch represented a new professionalism in architecture, one that was committed to reconciling the decorative and the functional, typological research and efficient building practice. During the course of his extremely productive career he succeeded through his buildings in forming the homogeneous and coherent aspect of some of the main spaces of the capital. His organizational and practical talents attracted a loyal and broad-based private clientele, mainly among the rich Roman bourgeoisie and aristocracy (including Prince Ugo Boncompagni Ludovisi Piombino, the Marchese De Parente and the senators Giacomo Balestra and Giovanni Barracco).

He established a flexible but consistent style, inspired by the tradition of the Sangallo family and the Tuscan Renaissance, in response to the demands for a new national style that reflected Italian history. In Rome this was expressed in state architecture and in the new living pattern of the multi-storey house. The Cinquecento palazzo, symbol of power and decorum, seemed to offer the flexibility required by the planning of the new city, by the needs of the new urban building lot and by the new linking arteries. Koch was pragmatic and used a tested repertoire, concentrating on solving distributive and functional problems and setting aside all experimentalism and stylistic individuality.

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