Archaeology and nature: hyblean cultural landscape and territorial ...

The competition titled Pylons of the future, banished by Terna S.p.A. in 2007, was won by the Studio
Rosental, leader of the group composed by the architect Hugh Dutton with the
companies Cegelec Centre and Gozzo Equipment.
The new generation of support, after Monostelo (which has the pylon base of only five square
meters) and Foster (named after the architect Norman Foster, who designed them for the power line recently
built on the hills of Scandicci, near Florence), is intended to progressively renew miles of old high
voltage power lines from one side to the other of the peninsula.
Lightweight but resistant, flexible but stable the Rosental-Dutton pylons are inspired by the shapes of
trees, but using advanced materials and according their design to the attempt to reduce high contrasts, even
between light and shadows.
Fig. 3: Foster pylon Fig. 4: Monostelo pylon Fig. 5: Rosental-Dutton pylon
3. The landscape design as an instrument of analysis and prediction of the transformation
On the basis of the considerations so far reported on the contemporary landscape sensitivity in
the infrastructure design, the development of a scientific methodology for assessing landscape impact is the
product of a series of researches I have conducted experimentally during the last years, on a large
number of case studies, scattered throughout the country, whose aims is to provide Public
Administrations an important tool to read the landscape.
In fact, is important but not enough, to design new shapes for pylons if their disposition will finish to ignore
their strong relationship with the forms of the surrounding areas.
The objective was to formulate particular tables of visual impact, specific to each category of large
infrastructure, such as roads, grids for producing and distributing energy, telecommunications towers , etc…
The main purpose of these guidelines was to direct the designer in taking conscious choices in order to avoid
the major critical points in each individual category of works. In terms of approaches, our guidelines aim to
prepare active policies based on the correct identification of the those values that we must be preserve or
implement by the infrastructure, through the transformation induced.
We provided to create a sequence of images and tables, an iconographic repertory with operational
instructions, that offers an open path to multiple uses, not as an abstract methodological protocol but as a
tool to allow the designer to find the most suitable approach, leaving him the task of identifying the best
solution, with respect to a given problem in a particular area. They play an interpretation service of
landscape, identifying features of those recognizable signs which contribute to form the image of those
places, adaptable to different situations, so having a guidance function, especially during the preliminary
draft, because they facilitate the identification of problems and suggest new interpretations of landscapes.
In the images presented below, the first table intends to lead the designer in the analysis of the landscape
most recurrent forms, providing graphical examples of simple interpretation in order to correctly analyze the
condition ex ante, to be compared to the situation of the same place ex post.
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