Renzo Piano gives city 'idea' of bridge

(ANSA) - Genoa, August 28 - 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".