Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Milan, 1 October 2020 – The official naming ceremony of the garden in Via Albini after Franca Helg (Milan, 1920-1989) took place today in the presence of the Councilor for Culture Filippo Del Corno.

In the year dedicated to "The Talents of Women", and in the centenary of her birth, the Municipality wanted to dedicate a space of permanent memory to a central figure in the history of architecture of the 900th century, who managed to impose himself with authority, determination and elegance in a predominantly male, fierce and competitive professional context.

Architect, designer and teacher, Franca Helg was in fact a pioneer of architecture, becoming part of the most important professional firms of the post-war period: after an experience at the BBPR studio (Banfi, Belgiojoso, Peressutti and Rogers), she arrived already in the early 1950s at Studio Franco Albini, which soon became Studio Albini-Helg.  
The partnership with Franco Albini lasted a lifetime and his professional commitment continued for almost half a century, even after Albini's death in 1977, when the firm availed itself of the collaboration of two other architectural names: Antonio Piva and Marco Albini.

The Albini-Helg Studio designed in Milan, among others, the buildings in via Argelati and the layouts of the museum rooms of the Pinacoteca and the former Archaeological Museum of the Sforzesco Castle, but above all it won the Compasso d'Oro in 1964 for the project of the first line of the Milan Metro, which was classified as a great work of social design: the coordinated image of the signs, the floor made with sheets of black rubber with stamps readable even by the blind, or even the orange handrail of the stairs are all details, every day before our eyes, designed by Studio Albini-Helg.
There are also many commissions in Italy - for example his projects for the Rinascente in Rome, the Piccapietra district in Genoa, the Terme Zoja in Salsomaggiore - and abroad: not only in Europe but also in Egypt, in the Arab countries and in South America .