Raffaele Contigiani (1920–2008) was an Italian

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

and painter. He qualified as an architect in 1947 and designed

pavilions In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

for the Italian Chamber of Commerce in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a consultant for the Italian television broadcaster RAI in the 1960s but is best known for his design for

Hotel du Lac ''Hotel du Lac'' is a 1984 Booker Prize-winning novel by English writer Anita Brookner. It centres on Edith Hope, a romance novelist who is staying in a hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. There she meets other English visitors, including Mr ...

(1970–1973) in

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

which he designed in the brutalist style.

Early life

Contigiani was born in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. Th ...

in 1920. He served in the military during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and was a prisoner of war in Germany.Raffaele Contigiani.
Arab Center for Architecture. Retrieved 14 April 2019.

Career

Contigiani qualified as an architect from the Faculty of Architecture at Rome in 1947. He designed buildings in Italy, Eastern Europe, and in North Africa. Among these were

for the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Libya and Tunisia in the 1950s and three at the Zagreb trade fair in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was a consultant to the Italian television broadcaster RAI and with

Mario de Renzi is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the '' Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his cre ...

and

Renato Avolio de Martino Renatus is a first name of Latin origin which means "born again" (natus = born). In Italian, Portuguese and Spanish it exists in masculine and feminine forms: Renato and Renata. In French they have been translated to René and Renée. Renata ...

designed the RAI Auditorium in Naples which was built between 1958 and 1963."Il recupero dell’ Auditorium RAI di Napoli"
Alessandro Pergoli Campanelli, ''L'Architetto Italiano'', II, 16, 2006, pp. 108-111. Among his notable works is the Hotel du Lac in Tunis (1970–1974) which he designed in a brutalist style and has been seen as symbolic of the modernisation of Tunisia in the 1970s.
Kieron Monks, CNN, 25 March 2019. Retrieved 14 April 2019. Its distinctive shape has been described as the inspiration for the sandcrawler vehicle of the ''Star Wars'' films, as significant parts of the first trilogy were filmed in the country. However, British director and set designer Roger Christian has said that the sandcrawler was designed by

Ralph McQuarrie Ralph Angus McQuarrie (; June 13, 1929 – March 3, 2012) was an American conceptual designer and illustrator. His career included work on the original ''Star Wars'' trilogy, the original '' Battlestar Galactica'' television series, the film '' ...

before ''Star Wars'' director

George Lucas George Walton Lucas Jr. (born May 14, 1944) is an American filmmaker. Lucas is best known for creating the ''Star Wars'' and '' Indiana Jones'' franchises and founding Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Industrial Light & Magic and THX. He served as chai ...

visited Tunisia. As of April 2019, the hotel is unoccupied and being considered for demolition.The mystery of Star Wars and Tunisia's rundown Brutalist hotel.
Neil Arun, BBC News, 10 April 2019. Retrieved 14 April 2019. Contigiani also painted scenes from prisoner of war camps in Germany and published a number of collections of his paintings.

Death

Contigiani died in 2008.

Selected publications

* ''Ecologia e Urbanistica''. Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome, 1978. (Paintings) * ''Invito Alla Bici''. Edizioni Mediterranee, Rome, 1981. (Paintings)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Contigiani, Raffaele 1920 births 2008 deaths Architects from Turin 20th-century Italian architects Brutalist architects Italian prisoners of war 20th-century Italian painters 20th-century Italian male artists Painters from Turin