Italia in movimento. Autostrade e futuro.

“A highway is not a road. But a windowsill that runs through the world. And it’s not even a freeway, it’s not made for super people, but for ordinary people, going towards work, love, the sea. And look. On the highway, we do the two main actions, the most important in life: trying to reach our destination, our destiny, and looking. Observing.”

Thus Davide Rondoni, in the preface to the catalog, introduces the series of images and words that celebrates the centenary of the opening of the first stretch of highway in Italy, the Autostrada dei Laghi, inaugurated in 1924: essays, archival images, photographs, and authorial illustrations highlight the power of the network, its relationship with the landscapes and cultures it traverses, and its capacity to generate projects and technologies. Punctuated and enriched by essays by Marco D’Annuntiis, Aldo Bonomi, Alberto Ferlenga, and Cristiana Colli, the volume is divided into four sections (like the accompanying exhibition of the same name, curated by Pippo Ciorra and held at the MAXXI in Rome): Network, which, through archival materials, presents the structural marvels that have accompanied the construction of the motorway network over the years; Journey, understood as the anthropological and aesthetic experience of those who use the motorway, both as users of its internal services and as spectators of the countless architectural and landscape features that surround it; Landscape, which, through Iwan Baan’s spectacular aerial photographs, describes the present of the motorway infrastructure: a visual and material axis around which new and old places gather, a sign integrated into the stratification of elements that make up the contemporary landscape, at once familiar and capable of providing unexpected visions; Technology and the Future, suspended between the evocative illustrations of Emiliano Ponzi and the research carried out by Renzo Piano’s studio, offers an idea of ​​how ecological awareness and architectural imagination can influence the present and future of a mobility that in many respects is still being defined.

See here the exhibition or more of the artworks that are in the show.

Order at Marsilio Arte or Amazon.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Marsilio Arte
Language ‏ : ‎ Italian
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 164 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 979-1254632949
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.16 Kilograms
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 24.8 x 2 x 29.7 cm