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It was April 2009 and Genoa had redone its make-up, paid for first by the Colombians, then by the World Cup and finally by being a European City of Culture. As I walked down Via San Lorenzo I couldn't help remembering the smell of soot and the clangour of the buses from when I used to walk down it as a boy. Now it was so clean, so European, that I felt the urge to turn as soon as possible to canneto il curto, which was still free territory from the euphoria of cleanliness that Genoa had become addicted to.
I was on my way to photograph an architect for the new book that was to be published shortly thereafter. Giuliano Galletta, the co-author of the book, had briefed me on the character I was going to portray and who for me was above all 'the one who had brought the Doge's Palace back to life', after it had been a sad little building filled with dusty folders and tired bureaucrats for decades.
Like all my photographic sessions, it did not last long, not much longer than it took Henri Cartier Bresson to portray Mr and Mrs Curie, portrayed at the moment he was being shown around the house.
I took my first photo of Giovanni as he was bathing his face in the beautiful light coming in through one of his windows overlooking the church in Piazza Banchi.
The friendship between the photographer and the architect (which when said like that sounds like the title of a La Fontaine fairy tale) was sparked when I brought him the photo printed in his studio in San Lorenzo. I don't think he thought I had stolen his soul (Giovanni can look like anything except a Sioux warrior) but, helped by the fact that I seemed to be receptive to his rambling, which went through a thousand topics (from his anarchic uncle with his easy knife to his wandering in the Brazilian forests where he built totemic buildings), there seemed to be a mutual curiosity between us.
The friendship was strengthened shortly afterwards, when he wanted me with him to tell the story of the restoration and return of the Doria's monumental statues to the city with my photos. I spent whole months with him in the basement of Sant'Agostino, photographing him as he hopped from one to the other of those headless trunks, telling me every detail of the friezes of those figures, bewitching me with his deep and nuanced culture. Unfortunately, most of the time I nodded off without understanding or retaining my memory of what he was telling me, busy as I was to shoot. But I was glad to see him happy to have someone to tell about those 'executed marbles' (this was the title of the book that grew out of that experience).
Giovanni likes to be photographed, he cannot deny it, the only danger with him is the risk of 'blurring'. He never stands still, always pervaded by creative or quixotic fervour. Like the shots I took of him as he raised his arms to the sky cursing the gods for the havoc wrought by the various juntings at the seafront overlook of the Prince's palace, or as he cursed the injury caused to the city by the causeway (sometimes I tease him by telling him that I don't mind the view of the city from that street).
Thanks to him, some cheerful Russians gave me a gift of vodka bought at the Moscow airport, while I photographed them in his studio, which had become a dormitory for post-Soviet historians for the occasion, waiting for the epoch-making conference they were to hold the next day and which the daring architect attended online from a room in the hospital to which he had been rushed. Then his stories of trips to the oases of the Iraqi desert or the tour of Iranian mosques accompanied by servile but vigilant ayatollahs. Giovanni manages to create fluid and interminable discourses with daring and always intelligent analogies, his affabulare sounds like a poem by Sanguineti. He can contain everything and sometimes the Everything.
Enthusiasm, is the word that characterises our friend Giovanni Spalla.
To him, even though he sometimes seemed to express seemingly outlandish opinions, I have never disagreed.
Not out of flattery, but as happens when conversing with a friend whose intelligence is always so evident and whose smile is always so sweet.
Historical heritage does not belong to any state, but to humanity itself.
This revolutionary concept teaches us that the protection of our historical heritage must be done through restoration that integrates the historic city with the surrounding landscapes, environments and places. The historic city only belongs to a historical period but rather to a historical stratification that has taken place over the years.
Where there are even minimal signs of history, the architect's restoration intervention must be based on the criteria of philological preservation and restoration. Where, on the other hand, there are no elements to follow, the restoration must think about the typology of the structures present in the rest of the structure.
You can even dismantle the old one and rebuild it using the same materials.
A work by Giovanni Spalla and Gianni Ansaldi with Aldo Vinci, Sirio Restani and Lorenzo Cordone in which the historical evolution of scientific invention in relation to artistic invention is represented in theatrical form.
The show is traversed by scientific affabulations illustrated in an even paradoxical key and by artistic paradoxes told in a dramatic key.
The Wikipedian narrator deals with his diatribes with Euclid, an ignorant commoner with a passion for mathematical sciences whose daughter, a lively video-game addict, is fascinated by the narrator but tied to her father.
The narrator's thoughts are physically projected with the action of the dancers, and in the finale they will turn against him when Euclid challenges him to a verbal duel.
Giovanni Spalla's DIGITAL creations and PORTRAITS dedicated to him
Symbolic expression of wartime and environmental social conflicts through pointed coloured shapes
It represents the hard work of man who has to make a great effort to save the environment.
Pride in a frame of thorns testimony to atavistic anarchist hopes
John Spalla by Virginia Monteverde
"Giovanni manages to create fluid and interminable discourses with bold and always intelligent analogies, his affabulare sounds like a poem by Sanguineti.
It can contain everything and sometimes the All."
Giovanni Spalla is an architect, urban planner and university professor from Imperia, born in 1934. He has worked on the restoration and conservation of villas and historic buildings, as well as architectural projects and urban plans. He has taught and conducted research in several universities around the world.
His architectural works include the restoration and functional recovery of Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, the functional recovery of Villa Ronco in Sampierdarena, and the renovation of the Magazzini dell'Abbondanza in Genoa's old port. He has also been involved in urban planning projects such as the restoration of medieval bridges and the revitalisation of historic centres in Dolceacqua and Albenga.
Spalla was a professor and one of the founders of the School of Urban Planning at the University Institute of Architecture in Venice. He has been a visiting professor at several international universities and has conducted research on eco-urban planning, landscape and environmental legislation and the restoration of ancient cities. He has received architectural and literary awards and has published numerous articles and books on urban planning and historical-scientific topics.
In addition to his academic and professional activities, Spalla has been involved in regional politics and environmental activism. He was a regional councillor in Liguria, where he was involved in territorial planning, park networks, soil protection and the preservation of historic centres. He has participated in debates on development issues in Genoa, advocating the preservation and enhancement of the city's historical and environmental heritage.
Spalla is a member of several scientific committees and associations, including Legambiente and Italia Nostra, where he has been actively involved in environmental and cultural protection initiatives. He is also associated with the M5S political movement, contributing to urban planning, environmental projects, community-based urban initiatives and landscape policies for ecological transition.
A summary of the studies, work, art and other personal experiences of architect and professor Giovanni Spalla
Interview of Giavanni Spalla by Virginia Monteverde
Planning, especially seen in the light of climate change and current territorial and social inequalities, cannot be tied to a single religion but must involve vast territories.
These phenomena cannot be countered with small interventions, but with a European landscape plan that fully embraces the historical Mediterranean, i.e. the African shores and the countries bordering the Black Sea up to the Tigris and Euphrates.
This very broad territorial vision led me late in life to prepare what I have somewhat self-deprecatingly called a Planetary Urbanism Treatise, which is not a utopian treatise but a treatise that seeks to find operational ways to intervene only on the existing city without increasing land consumption.
I would like the Treatise to have the character of a manual that everyone could use tomorrow, should there be a problem, to provide suggestions and answers.
That's what I would really like.
The commission was given to me by the municipality of Genoa in 1975. Palazzo Ducale in Genoa is a historical monument, a moment of the Republic of Genoa and the restoration and recovery work on this monument transformed it from a space of political power into a public space.
That is why it is called the 'Palace of Culture': it is in fact a palace in the city, so we had to connect its spaces (more than 250,000 cubic metres) and its spatiality had to have a link, in terms of routes, with the surrounding streets and squares of the historic centre.
And what element could connect the historic centre with the Doge's Palace?
The Hanging Road, 300m suspended in steel connecting the streets with the Garibaldine Tower, a staircase designed with modern architecture so as not to interfere with historical wall structures.
“GENOA BEATS SEVILLE 5-1“
La Repubblica, 16 May 1992 - Read the article online
The second restoration work I designed and directed concerns the Abbondanza warehouses at the Genoa Pier, another Palace of the Republic of Genoa.
These warehouses were intended to hold the most important grain supplies for possible times of famine or economic hardship in the city.
This building, consisting of two tall twin bodies within the fabric of the Old Quay, we thought of allocating them as the Ducal Palace to a public activity, in this case university activity, and was designed to be used by the University of the Mediterranean.
Both restoration projects, of both the Doge's Palace and the Warehouses of Abundance, followed these two basic principles.
First of all a historical archive analysis, an analysis of the material culture of these two buildings in order to identify the functions they have had over time: their spatial characteristics that with the intervening historical events have undergone changes and have been filled with elements inconsistent with their original function.
Then came the actual restoration work, a work to remove and free spaces in order to make the original structure and typology understood: for example, in the Abbondanza storehouses, the vaulted spaces were divided into a thousand other spaces, and our task was to free them and make them into classrooms, to make the historical space coincide with the new space for use.
Among the restoration and spatial planning projects I have followed in recent years is a study and research project on Genoese fortifications around the world. This has involved going to see the places where the Genoese built (in the Crimea, on the Black Sea, on the Greek islands in Lesbos, along the African coast).
The important thing is that the fortifications, the walls, with the gunpowder revolution have profoundly changed their structure.
Today, these fortifications are an integral part of the historical centres of Europe and the world and should be considered as such and not simply as detached facts or purely tourist elements. Of course they have become tourist elements, but let us not forget that fortifications are the places where thousands and thousands of men died are cemeteries of which one must be historically aware.
We as a representative of Italy called this project on fortifications Project Eirene: Eirene is a beautiful 5th century Greek statue of the goddess of Peace.
I was not able to realise everything I planned and one project in particular is very close to my heart: the Shia library in QOM, the holy city of Iraq.
This assignment was for me secular, but with sensitivity and culture I was also able to understand the religious point of view and religions: specifically, it was a Shia library that I interpreted.
Of course with the rescue and also the restoration of all the monumental books of this great religion, but it was also a centre for comparison with all other religions, and I can assure you that it was not easy to set up a library that was at the same time a library that was well characterised by their culture (indeed, a library that had to summarise Shia culture in an important place in the holy city of QOM) but at the same time give the library-goers the opportunity to compare themselves with other religions and other cultures.The underlying principle is that knowledge of the other is important in order to really know oneself as well.
As a university professor, I went from travelling to historic Italian cities to travelling the world, I started travelling to Brazil also to the United States to Africa Mogadishu the Middle East and these trips had a dual purpose here too one of cultural history and one strictly anthropological.
In order to understand and be able to teach (I taught urban planning law urban design public space design) and perform this activity well, it was important to understand the original culture of the places where I was going to teach (I taught in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro in Belen). So it was important for me, with the help of local anthropologists, to understand the history of that country, the history of those who occupied it, but also the history of the natives of those lands.
So for me, architecture and the teaching of architecture was based on a strong anthropological component that allowed me to better understand the students, to understand the places and above all to approach the urban research we did in all these cities with a spirit of greater historical awareness of local problems and the problems also of projection into the future.
We developed and compared restoration and new construction project alternatives according to five criteria.
1. Seeking innovative solutions that have the least number of construction elements and the least physical consistency (piers, tie-rods, deck) in order to achieve maximum transparency and permeability of space and the least environmental and landscape impact. We also focus on high capacity structures to overcome the crossing and minimise the social impact.
2. Start from the assumption of doubling the A10, stipulating, for both restoration and new alternatives, that the two carriageways should each have 3 lanes in each direction, plus emergency lanes and quaysides, and should be spaced so as to allow light to pass between them to reduce the encumbrance of the deck.
3. Establish that the new pylons are accessible to the public and provide at the highest point, a lookout point and safety stairs, and that the deck consists of lightweight lattice structures and may possibly contain pedestrian paths along its edges, below the motorway level.
4. Choose the optimal solution through the method of comparing two sets of alternatives, one of integration, the other of replacement, in typological, architectural, structural and landscape terms on the basis of public benefit and social and environmental cost criteria.
5. Addressing the environmental, social and urban redevelopment of the Valpolcevera area.
