Under construction

by Francesca Maio

"For a long time I just look at these buildings with sorrow, without explanations by the newspapers, let alone by television .. Was I the only one to have noticed it? Was it just my problem?"

This is Maurizio Bongioanni’s speech, author with Fabio Valle of the documentary Under Construction, but these could be the words of each of us, witnesses to a silent reality, hard to listen although it is daily; Under Construction is the mouthpiece of this chorus to fill the empty space of misinformation by the mainstream media in which news is increasingly difficult to find ourselves.

So the documentary is coming, streamed on http://vimeo.com/23197137, and it becomes conscious communication; main character of the investigation is the brick, the logic of cement, which speculates on the soil of Italy ever 'under construction'. Districts, cities, municipalities, are perceived as a construction sites, a bitter reality shared by every citizen, often not aware that the soil is a nonrenewable resource, limited, an endangered heritage.

'Under Construction' gives voice to the alternative to “ongoing city” making explicit the problem of speculative overbuilding in Italy, with interviews to Gino Scarsi and Alessandro Mortarino we review the birth of the environmental opinion movement of “Stop land consumption”. Leader group of the widespread feeling on the subject now it counts 22,891 members, including prominent names such as the Slow Food President Carlo Petrini and the meteorologist and climatologist Luca Mercalli.

It’s culture the engine that stops urban sprawl, the culture of administrators, of municipal engineers, of citizens who thinking collectively and evaluating costs and benefits they may actually find virtuous solutions to plan the future. Successful examples in support of this thesis come from the province of Milan: the municipality of Cassinetta Lugagnano which since 2002 has decided to adopt a zero-growth plan, focusing on the recovery of existing buildings than on the expansion and the town of Corbetta, whose plan expects a minimum grow, about 0.2%, in a province of the most built-up.

The docuvideo is part of an extraordinary event, the “White Night”: on Saturday, May 14th from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., the historic center of Alba will be the framework for culture with open spaces that host book launches, workshops and debates. Protagonists are the libraries, the Library "G. Ferrero and the Museum "F. Eusebio " " in the hope- as the Head of Culture and Tourism Paola Farinetti says - of bringing people to books, literature and culture in a joyful, festive, different, new way to enliven the city. We hope that this edition will be the first in a long series".

To resume the voices, images and testimonies of Under Construction, we must react to continue to recognize our sites.