Intorno al progetto del Ponte sullo Stretto di Messina di Armando Brasini (1955-1963)

Around Armando Brasini’s project for the Straight of Messina Bridge (1955-1963). The project of the Bridge over the Strait of Messina, on which the architect Armando Brasini worked from 1955 to 1963, represented the peak of the ambitious plan to unite Italy through a dense and developed communications network by land and sea, launched after the Unification and implemented during fascism, to then be resumed at the end of the Second World War, during the years of reconstruction. The building of new roads, railway and maritime stations, as well as bridges, viaducts and piers, became a material symbol of national modernization and technological development between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Often, however, as in the case of Brasini’s project, the monumental redundancy of these works contradicted the intrinsic functionality and technological innovations on which they were based on. This essay is based on the research on the items related to the Bridge project from the Wolfsoniana: a model and graphic materials, recently donated to the collection by Maria Grazia D’Amelio, that were show at the exhibition “Bridges and piers. Around Armando Brasini’s project for the Straight of Messina bridge”, the 28th of October 2023 – the 19th of May 2024, that took place at the Wolfsoniana Museum in Nervi.