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15 Foundation: Growing Up in Italy Elena “Lella” Valle was born on August 13, 1934, in Udine, Italy, as one of four siblings in a family of professional architects. Her family called her Lella, and Massimo also preferred the nickname. He said, “Elena sounded too old. Lella had a modernist ring to my ears and I liked it in conjunction with Massimo, so she was stuck with it.” Lella’s father, Provino Valle, was a respected architect in Udine, a city about one hundred kilometers (sixty-two miles) northeast of Venice. The Valles were not wealthy, but they were rising successfully in class-conscious Italy and the parents defined clear expectations for the Valle children. Lella said, “When we were little my father was always encouraging us to draw. I was the youngest child. My parents had four children, three daughters and a son— and he for sure had to carry on the tradition and become an architect. When my brother was taken prisoner in Germany during World War II, my father decided that the next in line, my older sister, should take up architecture because ‘you never know what will happen…’”1 Lella grew up in a lifestyle that was comfortable though sometimes restrictive; she recalled spending summers in the mountains envying local farm children who had greater freedom to play and explore unsupervised in the outdoors. Provino Valle’s architecture office was in the family home and at about age twelve, Lella began helping her father. She learned by copying drawings and listening to conversations about construction details. For several years, her brother Gino and sister Nani also worked with their father in what became Studio Architetti Valle in Udine; after their father passed away in 1955, both siblings continued with respected architectural practices and Nani became a professor of architecture at the University of Venice. It was assumed that Lella would follow a similar path. Massimo, born January 10, 1931 in Milan, Italy, had a less idyllic family life. His parents’ marriage was strained, and it ended when he was seven years old, setting the family outside the mainstream of Italian Catholic life and 16 creating some financial stress. Massimo’s father was a businessman in the pharmaceutical industry. His mother worked part-time as a nanny and sold her knitting and crocheting. Throughout his childhood, Massimo was never quite settled—changing schools, spending time with one side of the family or the other, always hoping that his parents would reunite—a typical situation today, but not so common in 1930s Italy. Those years were difficult, but looking back, he is grateful for some of the lessons and values that his family upheld even through tough times. “My mother was ambitious and I think she wanted to plant a picture of quality in my mind. God bless the education I got through my family,” he said. “My aunt was a big influence, and my mother. They taught me to be respectful, to be neat, to put something away if I took it out, to talk and dress properly—not for others, but for myself. It was a fundamental attitude: not doing something for appearances, but doing it because it reflects who you actually are.” The World War II years were, of course, tumultuous in Italy. Massimo said, “I remember the day the war started in 1940. I went with my great-grandfather to the square and we heard Mussolini talk. I was a kid and I didn’t understand. It was a sad day, although everyone thought (or hoped) that the war would be a short one.” For Massimo, already unsettled by his parent’s divorce, the war created additional upheaval and displacement. In 1941, he moved from Genoa, where he was living with his mother’s side of the family, to school in Milan, staying with his father, aunt, and grandmother. That house was bombed, so the family had to move. In 1942, he was in boarding school in Salò, Italy; in 1943 he was in school in Passirano, near his father’s business in Brescia. He was back in Milan with his father in 1944. He usually spent summers in Genoa with his mother. In 1944, Massimo and his aunt were traveling to his grandmother’s home in Milan, choosing to ride bicycles from Passirano to Milan because trains were often in danger of being bombed. They were on a small road, near a bridge that crossed over the autostrada, when a small British plane...

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