Guendalina Salimei: “Rethinking Italy, looking at the sea”

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«Because you journalists never talk about arcitecture? “my question to Bruciapelo Guendalina Salimei. From the mobile phone, I hear in the background excited voices and phones ring continuously. I don’t have time to answer (which in fact there is little architecture, outside the press and specialized sites) and stops me: “Here it is a moment of panic, I am looking for a quiet room and the call”. It will be a two -hour chat, because Salimei belongs to that rare kind of people capable of doing a thousand thousand things without surfing us, but immersing herself thoroughly. “I have fame as a latecomer” (I had a voice). The ringtop is also known to carry out projects on impossible paper projects, such as the redevelopment of the Corvial Peripheral District, in Rome, which inspired the history of Sorry if I exist!the 2014 film Riccardo Milano, with Paola Cortelles ie Raul Bova. Fast notes on private life: «I have a partner, I have no children. I was a great sportsman: volleyball, sailing boat. But architecture is a disaster: everything is eaten. It’s not a job, it’s a lifestyle, it’s the way you look at the world. I always say it to my students ». Salimei, who in ’92 founded Tstudio in the capital, is also a professor of architectural design at Sapienza: “In recent months I took a break from the chair, but I have perceived the pride of my boys when I gave them the news”. And that is that it would have been she who took care of the Italian pavilion of the 19th Biennial of Architecture of Venice, the first assigned to the public competition. «When the announcement came out I thought about it one night and then I told my studio: let’s try. We worked a lot on the suburbs, but we felt that many things had already been done. For the Biennale I wanted to focus on something on which architecture is not expected to have his say. I thought of the “long road of sand”, as Pasolini said, the 8300 km of coast of our country. We always leave them behind to admire the sea and I thought: why not overturn the perspective? Why not rethink Italy by looking at it from the sea? ». And so the Terrae Aquae project was born. Italy and the intelligence of the sea: it opens up to the tense of the Virgins of the Arsenale on 10 May, will be open until 23 November and can be promoted by the General Directorate Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture. Little visitors per day is planned. “Crazy, huh?”

For her it is a sort of return home.
«Venice is my imprint. I lived there as a child, my dad worked a few years there. We were at Lido, what a dream. From the window we looked at the lagoon, then by bike we went to the sea, at the casoni, and the summers were infinite. I still have the sound of the sirens in my head when there was high water, the wooden catwalks on which to jump. I still feel that strong smell of brackish. Every time I arrive at the station, I take the vaporetto 52, to take a width round. It takes almost an hour to get from the parts of the Biennale, in San Zaccaria, once beautiful, even when it rains ».

No allergy to tourists?
«I find the enchantment in any case. THE’Outrtoursim It is an objective problem, and not only of Venice. I think that only one can exist for the city Exit Strategy To survive ».

Which?
«Transform into a large international research laboratory. For as born, Venice is an exception, the perfect place to experiment in all fields of knowledge. And it is basically what the Biennale does. Venice is a unique laboratory for elaborating our future ».

What will we see in his Italian pavilion?
“It’s not mine. I only germinated themes and ideas, then I opened a “Call for Visitors and Projects”, because I wanted to collect ideas and stimuli from as many people as possible. My collaborators feared no one answered us ».

And instead?
“We were submerged. I regretted myself (laughs). 600 different subjects have written to us including designers, engineers, architects, students, but also poets, artists, third sector entities, common citizens, all interested in the idea of ​​rethinking the boundaries between sea and land. To date, so much of the coast we have given our back, it’s time to turn around. How can we transform the abandoned areas of ports? And the headlights? And the old summer colonies? And the abandoned platforms? We must regenerate the Waterfront of our Italy, a threshold space, between land and sea. An irresistible theme for me ».

Why?
«The border places are privileged. They are already out of their way out of the ordinary and can be experienced there. Just see what cities like Barcelona or Lisbon have done with their ports, regenerating public spaces for the city. Or Genoa, thanks to the intervention of Renzo Piano. The ports are one of my passions: I worked on that of Naples, of which the Molo di Beverello is completed, I made a project for the Lungomare di Messina, I am operating in Taranto, I have assignments in Cagliari and Bari. The architect can be the conductor of a complex system, such as the coastal one, which needs a new vision “.

And will we find it in the Italian pavilion?
«It will be a room of wonders with projects for a recoverable Italy. I believe it so much in this recovery thing: I have always been thinking that in architecture rethinking is better than redoing ».

In what sense?
«We architects are the doctors of the cities. In a country like ours, so full of things, it is not to be built, but to repair and re-imagine ».

A bit like he did with the green kilometer of the Corviale, on the outskirts of Rome, redeveloping the building project of Mario Fiorentino. Was it expected to become good material for a movie?
“It was a beautiful experience to be involved by the director in the screenplay and see the passion with which Paola (Cortellesi, editor’s note) Work: with the communicative force that only the cinema has talked about my job in a positive way. We architects are not only dealt with superfluous, we don’t just do houses for rich ».

Is it true that at the beginning it was escorted on site?
«Yes, from the inhabitants of the Corviale who first wanted to change things. You cannot make real urban regeneration without the help of the local people and associations. Once upon a time, people were ashamed to live in Corviale, today it is no longer like this: there are more services and connections, there is also greater awareness of the place where you live, which is so peripheral, but near the countryside, from there they see the castles and the sea “.

Does it get angry when there are lady on the pipeline?
“At the beginning I took it a lot. The construction site is a male place par excellence, you always have the feeling that your professionalism as a woman is not taken seriously. Now I understand that often the workers tell me “lady” as a form of courtesy and in the end we architects know how to make us respect. I then learned another precious thing to Corviale ».

Which?
«Not to speak in” architects “. Perhaps little architecture is discussed and people know little about it also because of us. We architects are always a little cryptic or too technical. Instead, architecture is a beautiful thing, a lucid madness that holds many disciplines together and that can change people’s lives ». (stops for a moment, before closing the conversation): “True that I have not spoken in” architects “?”.