FAI campaign to save Terragni's Sant'Elia kindergarten from decay

Giuseppe Terragni's Sant'Elia kindergarten in Como, inaugurated in 1936, has been abandoned for five years. Designed as "a house open to light, air and nature" with eight exits to an internal garden and walls that open onto vegetable plots, the building now suffers from neglect. Administrators cite changing educational standards requiring protected structures and small classrooms, but the author argues that easier maintenance and a desire to forget childhood are the real reasons. The FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano) has included the kindergarten in its "I Luoghi del Cuore" census, a campaign to preserve Italian places. This marks a cultural step for FAI, which usually protects older buildings from the 16th to 18th centuries. The author criticizes the absence of state and government protection for modern architecture. Attilio Terragni, the architect's relative and a partner of Daniel Libeskind on the Jewish Museum Berlin, promotes the campaign. The kindergarten is described as a unique building for childhood, where nature is not a human-made cutout but an indivisible whole, evoking a mythical time of childhood. The author calls for votes to place the building among the top ten sites to preserve, hoping this will start a new life for the kindergarten and for modern architecture in Italy.