«The Bridge over the Strait of Messina is an unrepeatable opportunity for Messina»

John

By John

He wrote it in the latest issue of the National Architecture Journal, comparing the current debate on the Bridge to that which developed, even with vehement tones, in Paris. And he also reiterates it to the “Gazzetta”. «Many technicians say that the tower is destined to collapse. The owners of nearby buildings even filed a lawsuit demanding damages. We writers, painters, sculptors, architects, passionate lovers of hitherto intact beauty, protest with all our might against the erection of the useless and monstrous vertiginous and ridiculous tower, all our monuments humiliated, all our architecture made small. And for twenty years we will see the hateful shadow of the hateful bolted iron column grow longer.” The vice-president of the Order of Architects of Messina, Clarastella Vicari Aversaresearcher in Architectural and Urban Design at the University of Reggio Calabria and with a European PhD from the “Esquela Tecnica Superior de Arquitectura” of San Sebastian, Spain, starts from this consideration: «History repeats itself. They seem like today’s words against the Strait Bridge, but it is the description of the “welcome” initially reserved for the Eiffel Tower in Paris, reported by Leonardo Benevolo in the “History of Modern Architecture”. Among the opponents also Maupassant and Zola. Only to then, as Benevolo himself reports, change his mind: “When faced with the fact – and what a fact! – once done, you must bow.” The opposition at the Bridge seems like that at the Eiffel Tower…”.

«The ideological no» Vicari Aversa cites «what was expressed in recent days during the II Biennale dello Strait by the anthropologist and university professor Mauro Francesco Minervino, and it all seems like déjà vu: “The great pharaonic work, steel and concrete in monstrous dimensions serves to fuel the crazy and childish sense of omnipotence of the ruling classes currently leading the country. Characters that a psychiatrist would define as subjects suffering from psychotic delirium and magical-infantile syndrome”. An intervention, almost an anathema, which invites us to respond with data, given the further observations on the “Risks of the very fragile geological context of the Strait area, the winds, the seismicity, the fact that the Bridge, given the height of the deck envisaged by the project, would not allow the passage to more recently built megaships, which exceed 70 meters in height, then the economic unsustainability of the cost-benefit ratio; the absence of any serious assessment of environmental impact and social consequences”. We live in an era of polarization and here, plastically, a division that is more ideological than substantive arises. It is worth writing about the latter, starting from an observation: the territory concerned has been raped without respect for its history, and perhaps now we have the opportunity for its redemption. It’s about safeguarding the places, improving them together with the Bridge. Are the Bosphorus, between two continents no less evocative than Scylla and Charybdis, perhaps disfigured or not as full of history? Or Suez, union and separation between Africa and Asia? No one would doubt that they are crossroads of the world, mythological, with current charm.”