Lie down and weep
The Times, Wednesday, 1st July 2009
Valletta’s World Heritage Site status
Stephen Vassallo, Xewkija
Dresden, in Germany, was last week stripped of its status as a World Heritage Site because of the four-lane bridge built over the river Elbe. Is there any danger that the Renzo Piano modifications to the entrance of Valletta might threaten its very prestigious status as a World Heritage Site?
Well, not unless the people who decide these things at UNESCO are so architecturally illiterate as to compare a four-lane bridge to a Renzo Piano building. And they’re hardly likely to object to his ‘modifications to the entrance of Valletta’ when they had no problem with the existing ghastliness and the 1960s gate.
Or perhaps the Arrogant Army expects UNESCO to listen to the Voice of The People who think that a Renzo Piano building and a four-lane bridge over a river are of the same order.
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And never mind that Renzo Piano is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=8324&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Thank God I’m bald, because all the pea-brained comments I have been reading in The Times make me want to tear my hair out.
I was going to comment on this letter on The Times website but repeating the same things becomes wearisome after a while and there’s no guarantee that my post won’t get mangled by the website moderators, as happened to my comment on Kenneth Zammit Tabona’s piece.
I had suggested that, instead of parliament, Renzo Piano might want to design a “superb” bridge-playing hall and a pie-making kitchen for George Debono. In the name of art and culture, obviously. In their wisdom, the moderators thought to chop off this bit, leaving an unintelligible sentence at the end.
[Daphne – Yes, I noticed how it’s all right for people like George Debono to insult others, but God forbid we should insult him.]
..the ‘worst’ a Renzo Piano building can do is to actually enhance Valletta’s status as a World Heritage site.
Perhaps one should clarify that the new bridge is not the one shown in this photo and AFAIK, it’s still being built. A computer model of the offending structure can be found here (frame #10) –
http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-43720-10.html
Now, you can’t really blame UNESCO, can you?
[Daphne – Not at all, and thank you for providing this link because I couldn’t find one myself. It makes the comparison to Renzo Piano’s work even sillier.]
It is interesting and worthwhile to view all 12 pictures on show at the link provided by Marc Ellul.
I wish to offer another link, which provides a panorama view of the present (new) bridge, which was constructed during the era of then DDR (former East Germany):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Dresden-ElbbrueckeA4-pan.jpg/3000px-Dresden-ElbbrueckeA4-pan.jpg
Exactly my point Daphne :-)
One should also add that the Dresden bridge, thanks to which the Dresden Elbe Valley was de-listed from UNESCO’s list of heritage sites, was voted for in a referendum by The People of Dresden:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldschl%C3%B6%C3%9Fchenbr%C3%BCcke
Fausto, you should perhaps have added the whole story, with reference to the various court proceedings at different court levels. Thereafter, one should strive to imagine a similar scenario for/in Malta.
Here’s what that link says:
“After almost eight years of preparation for the process of obtaining planning permission, a public referendum on whether to build the bridge was held in 2005. This resulted in a majority voting for the bridge…”
The monstrosity at the entrance to our own capital city didn’t seem to have bothered UNESCO when it proclaimed Valletta as a World Heritage Site. Moreover, UNESCO seems not to distinguish between real architectural heritage and original historic buildings and a load of fake re-constituted rubbish built to imitate the real thing (and not necessarily making the grade).
UNESCO, like any UN agency involving all member states, will always be skewed towards the third-worlders/nonaligned ex-colonials, which is how we managed to get Valletta on the world heritage list.
Did it ever dawn on Stephen Vassallo that had the Barry Opera House remained intact, due to its architecture being foreign to the rest of the city’s character, Valletta would not have been designated as a World Heritage site, to begin with?
I find that the City Gate and the proposed buildings quite austere externally, purposely to reflect the characteristics of nearby St. James Cavalier thus blending with rather than conflicting with Valletta’s architecture.
If Barry’s Opera House was out of character when compared with the rest of Valletta, then so will be what Renzo Piano is proposing out of character. We are, again, in the same situation as we were with the Barry Opera House. That is the truth.
[Daphne – I picked up on that fallacious argument too, Moggy. What I would have argued is something entirely different: not that Barry’s building was out of character, but that it was out of place. It was designed by somebody who hadn’t visited Valletta or seen the site, which is why it looked like a design intended for somewhere else that just happened to be plonked there. That was in fact the case.]
Nonetheless, does modern Malta offer any aesthetic town and country planning of any significance?
Would it have been a better plan to restore St.Elmo to former magnificence, demolish the site of the former Evans’ Laboratories and rebuild an opera house plus adnexa in the immediate vicinity of the restored Sacra Infermeria?
To my mind, Daphne, a Parliament house on stilts and a roof-less theatre are going to look out of place too, irrelevant of the fact that Piano had seen the site beforehand. I’m not saying that I don’t like modern architectural design, and I would love this sort of thing elsewhere, however not at the entrance of Valletta.
@Leo: There are plans to demolish Evans anyway, incidentally, with a five star hotel planned for the site – at least that is what they were saying the last time I looked. At the moment the place just needs a good scrub – especially the part entered through the back of the building, where the passport office and the civil registry is. The amount of dirt on the window panes and window sills in the stair-well, as well as on the staircase, is outrageous.
Moggy: Where would you like this sort of thing, given that it was designed specifically for the site in question?
Why didn’t Stephen Vassallo pick up the phone and ask his son’s wife instead of playing the smart-ass in a letter to The Times?
She’s Joanna Spiteri Staines, an architect with Architecture Project (AP), the firm coordinating this project ‘on the ground’ for Renzo Piano.
Kemm jiflah ikun antipatiku!
Interesting. Did the Valletta Waterfront project “threaten its very prestigious status as a World Heritage Site”? I believe that project also involved AP, so why are the Stephen Vassallos worried now?
Well, let’s say it doesn’t say much for Stephen Vassallo’s point of view that his letter attracted the attention of L.Galea – he who has declared that the St Elmo project should be scuppered if the chapel of bones is not reinstated.
[Daphne – Yes, I wondered about that. Where does he plan to get the bones?]
This is from UNESCO’s portal. The last line mentions Valletta. Why would UNESCO strike Valletta off its list because of Renzo Piano, in defiance of its own standards?
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=8324&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
Renzo Piano is one of the most ingenious architects of his generation. Mr Piano’s lifelong work of restoring and rebuilding historical sites of great importance for humanity’s cultural heritage has been outstanding. He designed some of the world’s most avant-garde architectural structures such as the Parisian landmark Georges Pompidou Center and the Kansai Airport in Osaka, Japan.
He has won numerous international prizes and distinctions in this field and his work features in many books and films. Renzo Piano’s restoration campaign of historical sites includes the ancient city of Rhodes, the city of La Valleta in Malta and the historical centre of Genoa.
I wonder whether Raphael Vassallo will now entertain The People with a new essay in his usual style.
[Daphne – Ara x’ghandu x’jaqsam, Leo. As if anyone can be held to account for what their uncles (or nephews) write.]
Pardon. I was just wondering about kollox possibli in Malta.