The Building
The imposing Building, designed by architect Cesare Valle (1902-2000), represents a high example of fine rationalist architecture.
Aimed at accommodating up to four hundred students of the Aeronautical College, it is structured on two blocks: a block on Via Roma, originally for residential use, and a block on Piazzale della Vittoria, dedicated to educational and sports activities.
From after World War II until the present, the complex has been home to educational institutions.
The front of the Building toward Piazzale della Vittoria is dominated by the imposing statue of Icarus, made of white Carrara marble by Francesco Saverio Palozzi.
The Flight Mosaics
Preserved inside the Building are the Mosaics of Flight, a large mosaic series adorning the walls of the Italic Courtyard, created from drawings by painter Angelo Canevari (1900-1954), who had adhered to the Futurist Aeropainting movement since the early 1930s.
In the coeval artistic panorama dedicated to the feats of flight, Canevari’s vast black-and-white mosaic decoration represents a unicum, due to the very large size of the mosaic surface and the highly scenographic character; a great work that restores a true history of flight, which from Icarus and Leonardo’s flying machines, traverses the pioneering aviation feats of the following centuries to arrive at the experiences of flight in peace and war dating back to the Fascist Twenty Years.