Giuseppe Pagano (20 August 1896 - April 22, 1945) an Italian architect, notable for his involvement in the movement of rationalist architecture in Italy up to the end of the Second World War. He designed exhibitions, furniture and interiors and was an amateur photographer. He was also a long-time editor and chief-editor of the journal Casabella and he criticize the "regime's constructions" as "bombastically rhetorical"; for this and other reasons he was captured in September 1944 in Milan, imprisoned and transferred to Mauthausen, where he sadly died on 1945.

Architecture

From the late 1920s, Pagano had adopted a rationalist position, influenced by Futurism and the European avant-gardes - he became an architect caught between the theory and practice of Fascist Italy whose approach advocated for a triad of Unity, Abstraction and Coherence.

He had a significant career as a writer and defender of rationalist architecture in the press, especially Casabella, whose name he soon changed from La Casa Bella when he became director of the magazine in 1933 along with Neapolitan art critic Edoardo Persico.

Pagano and Persico revolutionized the graphic format and used their editorial position both to call to arms like-minded colleagues who believed in the power of architecture to transform modern like and to violently criticize those who reduced it to an 'aping of styles'.He was involved in the V Triennial of Milan in 1933, where he collaborated in the design of one of the pavilions of the Housing Exhibition - the Steel Structure House - and designed the N=Breda ETR300 train carriage along with Gio Ponti.

He was also responsible for the 1934 Aeronautics Show where he designed three of the main spaces including the Hall of Honor and the VI Triennale of 1936, which he directed together with the painter Mario Sironi. All three expositions were held in architect Giovanni Muzio's Palazzo dell'Arte in the Parco Sempione, which had been built for the V Triennale, the first held in Milan.