Zollverein: archistars must behave

In these hours we are all seeing the shocking images from Duisburg Love Parade stampede. It looks as something went horribly wrong security-wise and I share the view of Dr Motte: such events need careful planning, cannot be improvised every year in a different location since crowd control must be very specific, experience is key and the Berlin Love Parade had not less than 10 gates, with the Tiergarten as a buffer.

I think it is a stupid thing to stop the Love Parade. Stopping incompetent, greedy people to manage it, yes. Let’s hope that the people responsible for gross underestimations are nailed down. But also that the Love Parade continues in its truest spirit. I will spare you the stupid comments done today by a überidiot Italian journalist, blaming this youth devoided of values blah blah…it is so mean that I don’t even want to discuss about it.

Having said that we had a GREAT experience in the Ruhr Region (with excellent crowd control and security, yes, during the A40 Still Leben mega-party from Duisburg to Dortmund) and we want to share what great days we had travelling through the region celebrating its Capital of Culture status.

So we started from Zollverein, the topmodel of coal-washing and colliery plants. It is a Unesco site, and its magnificience is enhanced by the greenery around. The cooling towers are the Ruhr’s landmarks and this one in Zollverein stands out in all its iconic power now.

Archistars behave. Yes because the original bauhaus architects are celebrated here first. Those able between 1928 and 1932 to think plan and execute on such a grand scale this modern plant: Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer. So in 1997 Norman Foster converted the former boiler house into the Design Centre North Rhine-Westphaliain. And today there are escalators and stairs by Rem Koolhaas.

The great Dutch had to limit himself to the humble refurbishment of escalators and stairs. Period. He stroke with color and his take on the flowing melted steel is poetic. But no mammooths are around.

The Japanese architects San’aa were even more subtle. A big cube of concrete plays lady-in-waiting to the plant, it is massive but once you enter it completely disappears, or rather, it turns inside out. Its massive asymmetrically scattered square windows are eyes on the plant. The whole building turns into a system of frames. Framing miners houses. Gazometers. Cooling towers. Framing the industrial and urban landscape around. What a fantastic building.

the mother of all bauhaus

Oh yes I am in the right place. Industriekultur is what I’m longing for.

We start from the cathedral, the mother of all collieries and coal-washing plants, Zollverein. I understood more about the culture of Germany today than reading any book.

coal is the new cool

In 1961 Willy Brandt promised to the Ruhr inhabitants that one day they would have their blue sky back. Life was tough here, you can feel it. The photos of the coal minersblack faces. Those not renovated detached houses, still gray with coal. The diseases. And then steel, blast furnaces.

I must have been 10 when I visited for the first time La Ferriera. Perched upon the Servola hill above Triest, I remember the heat, the magic of the running steel, the heavy bling-bling coats of the steel workers, walls incrusted of asbesto in their refuge next to the melting iron.

Today’s safety regulations would probably inhibit visits of such plants to children. But the factory visits of my school years left a mark. When I read about the health problems of those workers still fighting to get not only a portion of their health going but even their diseases recognized by insurance companies at least I know what they are talking about. I have an idea of the blasting noise that one has to endure in a diesel engine testing unit, of the claustrophoby of a welder in the guts of a ship hull.

At Zollverein, at Duisburg-Nord coal is the new cool. Und das ist auch gut so. Factory life is a facet of culture. Not surprisingly the German pavillion in Shanghai recreates a town, complete with factory. Not sure the Italian one remembers to visitors where the Ferraris come from. They don’t grow on trees, even the green ones. It would be good if children had a feel of what an  assembly line is.

Recognizing cultural heritage dignity to the factory is something special in Germany. Industriekultur. In Rome we worship stone counters where people used to trade, and streets for their carriages. Why shouldn’t it be the same with blasting furnaces and autobahns? During these days I told myself many times what a careful message to young citizen the whole Ruhr 2010 region is giving.

So this European Capital of Culture thing has definitely the flavour of “giving back”. A green environment and blue skyes to the community, spaces that would be littered with industrial dinosaurs to citizens, and possibly new kinds of jobs derived from this transformation. If mankind can so powerfully transform land, like it did in the late 1800, in the 30s and then after WWII, the process can be repeated having different goals in mind. Reversed, re-naturalizing sewer rivers like the Emscher. Evolved, morphing plants into museums or swimmingpools. Rome and even more Triest should be inspired by this process.

This week the EU ruled the closure of coal mines in Europe within 2014. One can only wish that more Zollvereins be created, capturing tourism and culture where mining jobs will be no longer available. Not a zero-sum game, still, better transformation than plain decadence. But education has to be at the center of it.

Photo: informatrieste.eu

essen…tial

If someone had told me a year ago that I would visit Essen, I would not have believed it. Say, Essen was not in my travel imaginaire.

A few months ago we realized that the Ruhr region was going to be 2010′s European Capital of Culture. We browsed the website. We bought the GEO special issue. And when we saw that on July 18th an Autobahn – the A40 – would turn in the salotto of the Ruhr. There! We had the best excuse to focus on a specific date, buy a ticket, join IOL Duesseldorf at the motorway picnic and start phantasizing about the Industriekultur.

We check in into Essen via the A40. The U18 underground line runs right in the middle of the Autobahn. In Essen Haupthahnhof an ultrablau light tunnel welcomes the commuter. Check in into a subaqueous station. And suddenly, I start to have Berlin hallucinations.

On Willy-Brandt-Platz a strong Berlin déjà vu. The hotel. The Post. Very prussian historicismus the former, total bauhaus the latter. And the Kaufhof Galleria has the same pattern of the old Alex Park Inn. This is not Berlin! This is the land of steel, let’s rush to Zollverein.

non-places

Mid-July, Europe is a dusty sauna. Termini station exhudes heat like a desert, trains are mirages. I hope to recover some traveller dignity in the departure hall of Fiumicino, the oasis of shade and mild air conditioned. I never desired so strongly to be in the non-place par excellence, the mediocre Fiumicino, the universe’s black hole of luggage.

By the time I land in Duesseldorf my blackberry collapses and the adventure starts. I’m off-line. Wow. Exciting. MeinMann and I will meet in some little hotel in Muhlheim. It’s so last century.

As soon as I land I realize it. I left behind the city of stone. Here steel and iron are everywhere. Never I had such a strong feeling of sense of place.

do androids dream of electric cars?

They were in Mitte a few weeks ago, and now they are in Rome. The electric sheeps cars, the Enel-powered Smarts, are now at the Auditorium. After a concert I go and have a word with Laura and her colleague from Phlegmatics.

The project is intriguing. Rather than just selling the electric car idea – per se a very good one – several projects oriented at living the city are presented. And the craftsmen behind them are Italian. Scientists from La Sapienza working on the quantic PC or on baterial microcars, architects integrating sustainability like Tamassociati, sociologists re-planning public spaces.

There are more Smart in Rome than in France, it would be nice if those would move around without CO2 emissions…CarToGo seems also an interesting and more user-friendly Car Sharing scheme.

the war of the worlds?

No, the public at Mario Biondi’s concert at the Auditorium in Rome…

Things they don’t teach you at Harvard

Monday meeting in the boardroom. Blackberrys are being put in silent mode, laptops are being plugged (nope, no iPad tip-tap yet in The Company, I know, you are disappointed), Levissimas are being uncorked, slides are flexing their PPT muscles.

In the chit-chat preceding the meeting S. shares his impressions about the stunning brand new Istanbul – Old Bosphorous charm and immaculate infrastructure. Fantastic restaurants. Palpable modernity. “And then I went to Naples and oh my gawd, it always looks like WWII has just ended…”. He’s not from Bergamo, he is from Naples. And by the same token he’s very critic towards the town he loves.

“How come even now that there’s the Frecciarossa high-speed train you still get the mantra of clandestine snack vendors flooding the corridors just before the train leaves Napoli Centrale…PANINIBIRRACOCACOLACQUAPANINIIIII…and you know what? now they sell newspapers too!”.

killing you softly?

Saturday morning, the ritual. Cappuccino, Repubblica and its weekend supplement, “D”, which I browse starting from the last page where the philospher Umberto Galimberti has his Agony Aunt column.

This week the title is “Crisi economica o soprattutto morale? In Italia siamo ancora tutti parenti e non ancora cittadini”.

There is an impactful letter from a Roman woman, Gordana. Here (Dmagazine N.702, page 122) you can read the abreged published version, followed by Galimberti’s lucid answer. She writes about the insane over-dependence from the parents in Italy. Sometimes indulged in, too often inevitable. Galimberti ponders on the consequences: no independence equal eternal insecurity feeling.

I texted her immediately. She sent me the full version of her letter. The title on the PDF she sends me is definitely stronger than the published version and sets the tone: “Those who are waiting for their parents to die”.

Gordana is not cynical. Elle appelle juste un chat un chat. She candidly shows that the emperor has no clothes. And says what many Italians don’t dare to admit. Herebelow we host her full letter, in italian.

QUELLI CHE ASPETTANO… LA MORTE DI MAMMA E PAPA’ !

The Italian Job – yes, but in Berlin

A fairytale. Davide is a fashion designer. He lives in the modern, edgy, forward-looking Northern Italy. Milano da bere. Miracolo Nordest. He is talented. He has ideas. He works hard.

But, no matter how hard he tries, nothing happens.

Enter the decision: “I’m leaving. Going to Berlin”.

Last Summer we met Davide in Schoeneberg. We parked our bikes in front of the Gottlob café. He tells us that after his Berlin Bread and Butter show he got a boutique in Mitte dedicating a window to his creations. And editorials on Vogue. Only a few months in Berlin – on top of a lot of work behind the scenes, for years – and the opportunities started to come along.

A few days ago, just after the opening of Berlin Fashion Week 2010 the fairytale news: Davide won the PREMIUM Young Designer Award for Menswear !

“The concept of this collection is a dialogue between strength and delicacy – the never ending contradiction in being and acting as a man”.

It looks like the Italian job – creativity, trying hard, finding new ways in old crafts, thinking fashion in lateral ways – is definitely Italian, but requires leaving Italy for good in other to be fully unleashed and get rid of the limitations of this narrow(-minded?) country.

Photo 1: GLAMOUR italia – april 2010 – photo, christian anwander – fashion editor, edoardo marchiori

Photo 2: Davide