An international workshop compared architects and thinkers for the rebirth of an area in the heart of the city where a unique museum will be built around the world
"There is a tide in the things of men that taken in time, leads to luck ...". And this tide took sixty long years to form itself in the form of an opportunity that today is clearly indispensable and finds its name in the future museum of the Liberty city in the area of the enclosure of the Basilian Villa Lanza-Deliella and in the two squares Crispi and Mordini, today an indifferent scene in the different forms of degradation between the passage and parking of cars.
Memory and future is the name of the international workshop that just ended within the cold walls of the Magione convent in Piazza Kalsa. Four days of intense laboratory activities, two of inspections, conferences and analyzes and two of brain storming, design and verification in order to contribute to what is requested by the client, namely the writing of the guidelines that will lead to the competition notice for the realization of the Europe's first Liberty museum.
The first thought for the integrated narration of one of the most flourishing periods that was able to positively characterize the great cultural capitals in the twenty years preceding the world wars. That Modernism that united in the supranational ethical and aesthetic intent, was able to decline on a local scale becoming Art Nouveu, Floral, Secession, Jugendstil, Liberty indeed!
Palermo among them, perhaps the most suggestive destination of that time, is today certainly the most run-down, just think of Barcelona or Vienna and it is the one with the greatest potential precisely because it can only improve through the construction of a cultural infrastructure that will be the first in the its kind.
Not a simple museum for an area barbarically sacked since the early fifties, but the desire for an aesthetic and social redemption entrusted to the curative qualities of the architectural project which in the solutions suggested by the participating groups, is expressed as a soil project by reduced volumes, respecting the "archaeological" remains present (enclosure and underground floor) creating a contemporary place wider than the project area alone, crossing the borders of the two squares Crispi and Mordini, from which the future user will be able to start conquering the museum spread among the floral buildings that escaped the iconoclastic fury of the Sack of Palermo with greater self-awareness. A strong vocation to hypogean places and a new use of public space, together with a renewed monumentality, distinguish the suggestions of the four groups at least in the converging points.
But wanting to "give the numbers" of this week of hard work which culminated last Friday in the presentation of the different design ideas of the twenty one young designers participating in the Sala delle Capriate dello Steri in the presence of the architect Gianluca Peluffo and on Saturday at the Santa Cecilia theater at presence of the architect Mario Cuncinella, among the highest authorities in the field of sustainable design and of the architect Pierandrea Angius (of the London studio of Zaha Hadid), one can immediately realize the great importance of this precious moment of reflection shared with the city , who for method and quality of results achieved in such a short time, all agree that it is the first time that such a constructive debate finds a home in Palermo.
Twenty young designers participating: the architects Federica Bono, Chiara Parrino, Maria Grazia Sinopoli, Francesca Anania, Chiara Di Marzo, Francesco Di Raimondo, Antea Mazzuca, Giuseppe Mineo, Antonino Alessio, Raffaella Gianportone, Vincenzo Porrovecchio, the engineers Sara La Paglia, Achille Roberto Porcasi, Claudia Schilleci , Giovanni Ferrarella, Francesca Cammarata, Elisabetta Caradonna, Paolo De Marco Alessandro Li Puma, doctor Sonia Raccardi expert in communication.
Eight tutors: the engineers Luigi Failla, Calogero Vinci, the architects Nicola Piazza, Barbara Lino, Luciana Macaluso, Anna Igea Garretto, Sebastiano Provenzano, Danilo Maniscalco. Three coordinators: the engineer Giuseppe Trombino, the architect Giuseppe Di Benedetto, the doctor Maria Pia Farinella.
Several high-profile interventions articulated in the various days in addition to the aforementioned, respectively by the professors of the University of Palermo Maurizio Carta, Andrea Sciascia, Ettore Sessa, Renata Prescia, Teresa Francisco, of the superintendent Lina Bellanca and the general manager Bb. Cc. To Sergio Alessandro, of the municipal councilor Giulia Argiroffi, of the architect Adriana Chirco, of the president of the friends of the Sicilian museums Bernardo Tortorici of Raffadali, of the presidents of the professional orders Francesco Miceli and Vincenzo Di Dio, of the Magnificent Rector Fabrizio Micari. The commissioner Giusto Catania and the Mayor of the metropolitan city also speak, all coordinated by the scientific engineer Aldo Bertuglia, a real pillar in the management of the six working days.
Hundreds of designers and citizens rushed to the two final days which culminated on Saturday afternoon after a heated confrontation with respect to the need for the debate not to stop at the event just ended but to sanction, as desired by Cucinella and Angius, the rebirth of an extraordinary city that knows how to become a virtuous model for the future experiences of the whole country.
Because this is the case today “Villa Lanza-Deliella” for the rest of Italy looking; is the missing link in the Basilian production as told by Ettore Sessa in a lesson that nailed all those present for half an hour, and the necessary need for redemption from a real assault on the Italian monumental heritage as Bruno Zevi wrote a few days ago from the sad misdeed, it is the city that starts from itself and towards its widespread museum in terms of cultural device as Maurizio Carta has wisely suggested to us, but it is above all the possibility of relaunching the care of beauty and the desire of young designers to stay here in Sicily through the construction of a local economy of sustainable matrix generated precisely by the ideas of the young designers forgotten in the last twenty years despite the sacrifices of studies and hard work almost always conducted with excellent results of profit and passion.
All this in the will of a policy that finally reminds itself of the value of its mandate in clarity, now we hope metabolized, that the quality of the project of this precious urban node will be entrusted to the design competition that we hope will not put vulgar limits for participation as when it is already addressed to someone and unfortunately it happens, enhancing the ethical measure of what happened through monumental suggestions appropriate to the Genius Loci constituting that cultural bridge between a glorious past and a future that everything is finally to be written.
There remains the knot of ownership of the area to which we can only send the message to collaborate for the best resolution of this physical void that for sixty long years is above all, a spiritual void, almost existential that is really no longer convenient for anyone.
A continuously open wound that today can find a cure through a rebirth that coincides as it was with Antoni Gaudì for Barcelona, with the proclamation of Ernesto Basile as an Urban Icon of the Sicilian capital. Yes, now it is perhaps an understatement to simply speak of the Museum of Liberty, both the metaphor of an indispensable rebirth entrusted to the architectural project that takes charge of making peace with the new generations of designers and citizens and with the history of an entire society that today unlike then, it looks with greater desire to the beauty to build, rather than to arid, momentary business.
(Balarm)
