Dean of Architecture Faculty at the University of Malta weighs in against market location
Published:
February 5, 2015 at 7:45am
Alex Torpiano voices the ‘I almost give up’ despair felt by so many. It’s not just the location of the market and the way they went about those stalls, it’s what all this says about the situation in general.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150204/opinion/Why-I-am-crying-for-Valletta.554685
‘..This is exactly what is wrong with our cultural maturity: “aesthetics” is a veil we use to cover things which are conceptually wrong…’
Perhaps it is the time to delve into what is conceptually right in this country.
One could align politics and the absolute nature of Labour dogma sprinkled with Peppi’s relativism to Torpiano’s statement.
But even this would be but a minor scratch on the surface. The core remains an indolence and spiritual alienation from the national being.
We have no interpretation of metaphysics except through whimsical fragile nostalgia compounded by an ever more inevitable problem; the iconoclastic choice of historical chapters above geographical certainty.
This too is a saturation point. Once we dare not admonish history as the victor’s, it will be impossible to face and defeat the demons inhabiting our untold.
Pax in the classical sense to restore the multi-ethnic nature of this place and regain linguistic prowess to do away with that which is nothing but ideological guttural glorification of the primitive and rough.
Calosso and Donati were so right.
http://www.academia.edu/3288711/UMBERTO_CALOSSO_-_THE_LIFE_AND_TIMES_OF_AN_ANTI_FASCIST
‘…Donati lamentava il carattere retrivo del cattolicesimo maltese (“Ti avverto che perfino i libri qui sono di fatto soggetti alla censura clericale, che è severissima”) per cui temeva l’accusa di modernismo. Dava pure un giudizio molto severo sui partiti politici, tutti soggetti alle pressioni della Chiesa, compresi i laburisti, alleati di Strickland: “Tieni presente che questi laburisti sono di origine democratica, passati al laburismo dopo esser stati alleati dei “nazionalisti” maltesi; ma di laburisti non hanno che il nome…Sono rappresentati da elementi amorfi medio-borghesi che capeggiano gli operai dei depositi e dell’arsenale.
E’ un partito di piccoli malcontenti, che sta generalmente col più forte, per averne qualche favore”.
Denunciava ancora privilegi del clero, proprietario di due terzi dei beni immobiliari, aggiungendo: “A questa situazione di privilegio, corrisponde l’ignoranza, l’ozio e la corruzione, che invero non salvano nemmeno le più elementari apparenze”.
– 37 –
Ce n’era per tutti, anche per i nazionalisti e gli stricklandiani: “D’altra parte c’è la questione della cultura e lingua italiana, nella quale mi sembra che gli stricklandiani abbiano torto marcio; quantunque io sia disposto a regalare senza ringraziamenti i nove decimi dei cosiddetti italianofili di qui, per i quali l’italianismo non è che una etichetta su cose del più svariato contrabbando”.
‘…Il maltese, scriveva il nostro, era un dialetto “rispettabilissimo quanto ogni altro e a noi carissimo come tutte le buone e vecchie cose di famiglia, ma troppo limitato sia nell’uso (è ovvio) che nell’espressione; perciò tributario, per lessico e sintassi, d’altre parlate più sviluppate e più ricche ( libico-berbero o italo-siculo specialmente); scarso ( e diciamo poco) di tradizioni proprie, poiché i pochi saggi di componimenti letterari in maltese che fin’ora possediamo appartengono appena alla seconda metà del secolo scorso, e sono imitazione di modelli stilistici generalmente italiani, ossia a cose pensate in Italiano e trascritte in… Malti Safi; mancanti, infine, delle necessarie opere di cultura e perciò incapace di corrispondere con propri mezzi neppure alle esigenze elementari di una istruzione media”….’
http://www.intratext.com/ixt/ITA2413/_P4.HTM
He goes on to lay it into the PN, Strickland and Labour indiscriminately.
When aesthetics, estetica, is the expression of ethics; esternare etica, how can Malta enjoy its exercise?
Torpiano’s challenge is profound and urgent.
I plainly blame the PN for refusing to tackle the unresolved dilemma, and the blame, I’m afraid, starts with Borg Olivier.
Mintoff was too busy erecting temples and collecting fables for his worship.
Borg Olivier’s assimilating into the model Cadbury white collar left a vacuum. Mintoff obliged. We collectively asked for it.
It’s no coincidence Sliema was the soft target, nor that individuals like Sciberas, dirsivoglia, Trigona were its snipers.
When Astrid speaks, it’s a bit like the panda cubs asking for the right to remain cute.
The Stricklandian diaspora, then, isn’t one entitled to any moral high ground. At most, dual insularity.
And that, in my nazzjonalist tal-kampanji view, is an enticing proposal for its orphans to overcome. Knee jerk reactions most welcome.
Identity in diversity.
My knee jerk reaction is that I could hug Torpiano right now. I can’t think of anyone else who said these things in this manner. And he put his finger on absolutely everything: from the accommodating reviews to the return of traditionalism disguised in cutting edge packaging. If Joseph F.X. Zahra said these things first, then I’ll hug him too.
How many more Melitensia 70 Euro hardbacks do we have to publish before we disappear up our own arse?
I too blame the Nationalist Party. Labour know no better, so I expect nothing but hamallagni from them. But the Nationalists sold themselves as the party of European values. There was one slight flaw in the plan: iktar flus fil-but.
If Xarabank is the most popular programme on TV and more than financially viable, then by the law of liberal economic values, which is the Nationalists’, it should be aired. I say it shouldn’t. Because what’s at stake here is not the GDP, but progress.
I don’t expect anything to change. Not when Simon Busuttil can’t bring himself to call it by its proper name – beauty – preferring the value-neutral euphemism “culture”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB5ySRFZCKI
6.15 to 8.50.
Beauty will save us, Europe its universal idea.
@Jozef
Metaphysics and metacognition, both.
Exploration, in legal fashion, happens up to that point where the benefits to one party stagnate in favour of the other. Thereafter the squabble for mediocrity. Moral high ground lost in the maze of interests.
The compromise. Giving in to consensus and lesser ground. The rights beacon sacrificed. When a behavioural pattern is trapped in the known comforts of a confined logic bubble there will be little, if any, exploratory travel to reside in another. The scowl means that the comforts priority will hinder any flirtation with change. Meta-anything requires camping and back-packing on occasion, both frowned upon nationwide as inferior practices.
Your words are spot-on.
The raw pulse with the pure narrative.
The meta-aesthetics of functionality.
______
Vice spinning cobwebs point-to-point over access to rights and finer thought. Malta Taghna now decomposing on its viscuous threads.
Consumed. Partially consumed. Cocooned. Oblivious.
The fruit spider in action.
The fruit itself, of secondary consequence.
The hot-spot address for the lair.
A point of retreat.
The intended location of the market stalls in Valletta is wrong. Valletta is a beautiful, elegant Baroque city.
The scruffy clutter of these stalls would do nothing to enhance the grand entrance, in fact, they would lower the whole look and feel.
They would give an appearance of shabby neglect and anyone visiting for the first time would have their excited expectations of this marvellous place dashed.
Imagine going to see Buckingham Palace and finding a rag, tag and bobtail market sprawling outside those magnificent gates. Wouldn’t anyone feel a little cheated of their expectations?
If you can say “yes” to that then you know that these market stalls have no place in Valletta.
Valletta is not elegant or Baroque, but you’re right on the rest.
Hear to comment one and hear to comment two. Hear hear.
I despair at the idiotic comments beneath that article.
Why are non-idiotic people in such short supply on this island?
I have an idea: the “market” should be relocated to the Sawt. That would enhance Valletta’s beauty immensely.
Excellent article!
On a different note, nothing to do with the article or topic, but I noticed it when reading said article, is ‘Perit’ a new English honorific?
From a number of perspectives, the Valletta market should stay just where it is, in the middle part of Merchants Street. They only need change their stall structures to something better looking.
The rest is so historically embedded that taking the market anywhere else will detract from its value.
One finds markets all over every capital city worldwide, each having a particular historic background. Ours is plain in its namesake Il-Monti, tying it in with the Monte di Pieta, an historic factor created by the Knights to help those in need at the time of need.
Using the hawkers to “embellish” the entrance to Valletta is a joke beyond reality. Using the market to hide the Piano parliament building facade is a secret will of those unwilling to see the greatness of art and structure.
I do not agree with the opening up of the Valletta gateway, and would have opposed its demolition by the British if I had been around. Another lost architectural accomplishment, unlike the Knights when they put aside the old Mdina gate and built a new one.
Respect for others is a difficult game to play for a lot of people in a lot of matters. Maybe one day we will grow up to appreciate what we have and why, sadly we are far away.
So besides Joseph Muscat and the stall sellers, who are those in favour of the move to Ordnance Street?
Or is it a case of ‘Gvern li jisma’…lil min jaqbillu’?
Why don’t they transfer the market to the internal yard of the presidential palace?
Well said, Alex. It is pathetic to see some of the comments under the article in Times of Malta. The Piano project is the best thing that happened to Valletta and, indeed, Malta architecturally in a long, long time.
I have said it before and say it again, the new parliament building will become an icon of our capital city, irrespective of what the likes of Silvio Loporto say.
Alex Torpiano is right about this matter and the people who appreciate Piano’s masterpiece should speak up, even if they don’t like the entire project. Otherwise we’re going to be rolled over.
Brilliant article. Says it all.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150203/opinion/Muscat-s-full-monti.554553
This is a really excellent article.
“Do politicians become experts in everything as soon as they are elected? When the country faces difficult legal issues, does not a wise government defer to the opinion of the legal experts? And if there is a particular malady affecting the population, do not wise politicians defer to the medical experts for the appropriate remedies? So why is it that, in the area of urban planning and design, they do not have the humility to defer to the real experts in the field, particularly when Malta has actually engaged one of the most knowledgeable experts in the world, Renzo Piano, and his office, to give us advice about this area of Valletta?”
I couldn’t agree more with all that Alex Torpiano wrote especially with this particular bit.
I’ll nitpick if I may. “Knowledgeable expert” is a tautology.
True Baxxter, but it was rightly used for emphasis. And you must not forget the ” most” preceding “knowledgeable experts”… All experts are knowledgeable but not all are “most knowledgeable”.