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

irrepressible expression of a cultural identity. Every landscape, both natural and cultural, both excellent and
degraded, represents a life framework for the affected population, which has a profound effect on the quality
of live.
In this perspective we emphasize the importance of the coherence that every territorializing act must have to
not potentially dissolve the unity of expression of the place. When a series of inappropriate interventions, and
dissonant transformations takes place on a land, the image of the landscape related to these places end up
to be gradually unreadable, with the consequent failure of recognition by the community. This produces
consequent effects of further deterioration, such as vandalism but also disintegration and social distress.
Much of the responsibility of the irreversible destruction or degradation products on our contemporary
landscapes is a consequence of the indisputable primacy of economy, ideology conceived as an immediate
profitability, regardless of intangible meanings like beauty or preservation of memory, and myopic in respect
of long-term effects of today's actions.
The domain of technical knowledge has led to a desecration of centuries-old aesthetics culture of nature and
landscape, allowing self-centered and indiscriminate uses of it, and therefore abuses: our contemporary
lands are covered with all sorts of infrastructure, settled with arbitrary shape, size and location, without any
relation to the image of those places, stratified for centuries.
Heroic symbols of modernity in the first half of the XX century, the infrastructure has today become the
mainstream support for a process of technical and technological upgrading of the territory to the needs of our
contemporary society.
Barely tolerated by virtue of the essential function performed, the mobile repeaters, antennas and pylons of
power lines, is an arrogant presence, unable to communicate with the landscape.
In a similar way, it was demonstrated that, although in general there is considerable support for the
dissemination of renewable sources of energy, at the local communities often perceived negatively the
installation because of their strong impact on landscape.
Like everything related to the physical modification of a territory by man, the infrastructure must necessarily
go back to be a topic of architecture.
An urgent and necessary discussion can be carried out from understanding the progressive distance that is
currently emerging from the infrastructure projects, on one side, and the tradition of urban design on the
other. The principle of identity and recognizability of the infrastructure plan, that provides to prefigures the
degree of compatibility and transformability of a territory, must necessarily be acquired awareness by the
designer: what pertains to the perceived size of the landscape must plays a decisive role in the plan, like the
functionality, cost and safety of the works: the infrastructure design must adapt itself to different landscapes
traversed, as an essential prerequisite for assessing the quality of a plan.
2. Landscape of new energies
The research for a balance between energy needs, the landscape and the environmental safeguard, has
recently characterized a new line of experimentation for Terna S.p.A., company responsible in Italy for the
transmission and dispatching of electricity on the grid at high and highest voltage throughout the country, in
finding appropriate solutions to ensure the country the power it needs with optimal reliability, cost and
environmental sustainability.
They have adopted several methods of modern bioengineering, by exclusive use of native species of bushes
and trees, to mask the sites of power stations, especially of new edification, as well as the attempts to
camouflage the pylons of power lines. All these expedients, however, clearly indicate how much unrelated
the infrastructure is into the landscape. The reasons for the dissonance between landscape and
infrastructure are often structural and irreconcilable with the simple mitigation measures.
Terna S.p.A. has also recently cast an interesting competition for ideas, to conceive and to plan new pylons,
with low environmental impact, by combining innovation, technology and design for a sustainable
development of the transmission grid, in order to satisfy both the needs of the electrical system and the
respect of the landscape. In fact, the functionality may be declined in various forms through the aesthetic
research, such as happens with the new high-voltage pylons which are intended to renew progressively
kilometers of old high voltage power lines.
The high-voltage pylons are perhaps the most difficult objects to be reinvented in the name of creativity;
hardly tolerated according only to their utility as scars in the landscape, in this perspective are reinvented as
landmarks, proud signs of modern technology able to dialogue with the land forms, in order to contribute to
characterize the image of those places.
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