Landscape Protection

There is a book, just published, that we should give as a gift to all our friends who are architects, surveyors, engineers, landscapers, or in any case professionals who carry out activities that impact the landscape and cities: it is entitled Architecture and democracy (Einaudi editions), and the professor wrote it Salvatore Settis, collecting some of his university lectures.

The strength of this short text is all tied around a fundamental concept: an architect, and we can say in general one of the professionals we have mentioned, does not only carry out a professional activity, which is very attractive, but must feel responsible for the work he has been commissioned to doA responsibility that is not limited to the interests and indications of the client-customer, but must be extended to more general interests, those of the community, of the community, of the We and not of the I. Of all those who have at heart the fate of a common, essential and precious good such as the protection of the landscape, the environment, places, starting from the cities, where we live and coexist, fortunately for us, according to the rules of democracy. Where, Settis writes, "the landscape becomes the theater of democracy."

ALSO READ: The Value of the Landscape: A Day to Reawaken Ourselves. And to Remind Us How Much We've Destroyed It (Photos)

HOW TO PROTECT THE LANDSCAPE

Already, the landscape, the territory, thetechnologyThe concentration of the greatest waste in our countryWe have massacred it, and continue to do so, with rampant construction (55 hectares of land lost every day), and also with the daily, irresponsible exercise of our rights and duties. It's too convenient, too simple, to always blame this mediocre political class, ready to ride the first wave of abuses and amnesties.

Settis' book helps us look at ourselves in the mirror, to reconstruct our small and large misdeeds, with respect to places and landscapes., which, when added together, paint a picture of the disaster we must emerge from. It used to be said: Surveyors have ruined Italy. A merciless judgment, and perhaps too general for an entire category of professionals, but a warning, which we then ignored, about a method that has become devastating for Bella Italia. The method of doing things without caring about the aesthetics, history, balance, sustainability of placesThe method of find the loophole in the law, or to ignore it, to realize the small or large abuse, and then maybe get indignant about what our neighbour, or holiday resortThe method of transforming the professional we turn to, with his complicity, into an opaque facilitator (of abuse and violence on the premises).

HOW TO PROTECT LANDSCAPE AND CULTURAL HERITAGE

A street, a garden, a sidewalk, an island like a mountain, a city like a village: everything is ours, everything belongs to us, everything is a common good. But for this reason we must feel the duty, the responsibility, to preserve it, even for those who will come after us and who today have no means of defense.

The duty to take care of the landscape also involves a tree that we can plant, renouncing other uses of that land. And it involves a home renovation project, designed by an architect, an engineer, or a surveyor, who cannot, even on our whim, cross the line into arrogant and overbearing violation of the law. Here, beware, on the crest of this Great Waste, a crucial aspect of our quality of life and our lifestyles is at stake. Do we want to give it up, or are we ready to consider the landscape no longer as a constraint to be circumvented but as a resource to be protected? The answer lies with us, with each of us, starting with architects and surveyors.

WHEN THE LANDSCAPE IS TRAMPLED:

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