Starchitect Renzo Piano on
Tuesday gave the city of Genoa "an idea of a bridge" in a scale
model he brought to the Liguria regional government offices.
Piano, 80, said he had been in Geneva on August 14 when the
Morandi Bridge collapsed killing 43, "and since then I've been
thinking of nothing else".
Piano said "the bridge is a theme that touches all the
chords: from the technological to the poetic."
He was speaking after handing Liguria Governor Giovanni Toti,
the extraordinary commissioner for the disaster, his idea of a
new bridge.
Toti said "Renzo Piano voluntarily offered himself, as a
Genoese who is competent in the filed, to give the city a
project to rebuild the Morandi Bridge.
"We gratefully accepted the help, he has already given us
some ideas".
Piano is one of the world's top architects whose notable
buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with
Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), and the
Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (2015).
He won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1998.
Motorway concessionary Autostrade per l'Italia should put in
the money but the government will rebuild the Morandi Bridge,
Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli said Tuesday.
"Let Autostrade put in the money, but we will rebuild the
bridge," Toninelli told Radio Anch'io.
He said it was "obvious" that Autostrade should be
responsible for the funding because it must compensate the
victims' families for the disaster.
"But it is just as obvious that it cannot rebuild the bridge.
It would be disrespectful towards the families and the
citizens", he said.
Toninelli has floated the idea of the State-controlled
Fincantieri shipyard building a new bridge.
On Tuesday Toninelli said "Fincantieri and (government bank)
Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP) is one way, but the decision is
up to the government."
He said "it can't be up to an individual".
Toninelli added that he had spoken to deputy premiers Luigi D
Di Maio and Matteo Salvini and stressed "nationalisations can't
be done in a blanket way".
Toninelli also said that "concessionaries are bigger colossi
than those in Silcon Valley".
He said all their conventions with the Italian State would be
put online so that "we can dismantle a sick system".
Italy needs to get "the takers" out of the State, Deputy
Premier Luigi Di Maio said Tuesday, returning to the issue of
alleged shady links between concessionaries and "the bad
politics of the old parties".
"Those who were in government always protected them," he said
in the wake of the Genoa bridge collapse that killed 43 people,
citing a remark from former Democratic Party (PD) premier Matteo
Renzi.
The cited remark went: "In 2017, following Euroepan rules,
after talks with Commissioner Vestager (not a law approved at
night, it's a Euroepan procedure!), it was decided to prolong
the concession by four years, from 2038 to 2042, in exchange for
a fundamental public work".
Di Maio commented: "Bravo!".
"The privileges of the takers are being published and will be
eliminated," said Di Maio, who is also labour and industry
minister and head of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement
(M5S).
He asked Benetton, which indirectly controls the Autostrade
motorways concessionary, to "publish the names of all the
politicians and all the newspapers funded in the course of these
years".
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