"The pontiff in Genoa has an operatic and productive vocation, but not a vocation to martyrdom." This phrase-we use the remote past because it dates back almost 18 years-was uttered by Renzo Piano on the occasion of the presentation of his "Vision for the Port of Genoa," a project that the architect held to us to define a "fresco". With that phrase, which was prowound in the face of a very raw audience at the Porto Antico in Genoa, he intended to imply that the Genovese pontiff, historically chosen to place industrial activity, leaving behind the Levantine side of the city his supposedly residential and "green" vocation, it was not possible to continue to impose productive, perhaps noisy and polluting settlements.

Clarifying the meaning of a phrase that in appearance would not make sense to clarify seems necessary given that already the chronicler, who faithfully annotated that sententious assertion, those few epigrammatic words had seemed to be the product of the sunny impressive downing of the architect, even higher than the very high design of the designer. I sense-it's necessary to confess because those who then annotated those words are the same one who wrote what you read-a trails of rhetorical pharisaic, which remained even when the imagined architect went from the fresco to the Blueprint, another later "vision" of Genoa donated by Piano to the city.

It is necessary to clarify further that the vision of the architect does not go beyond a certain longitude : the sketches of Renzo Piano-imagined as his words-before even becoming a project-fresco or Blueprint that is-redesigned the waterfront of Genoa from the extreme ponent to the city center and the area of the Fair, and they stop where the Levant begins that evidently for the architect is fine as it is.

From the fresco and the Blueprint, and from who knows what tomorrow, it is found that it is the most levant part of the Pontiff that in the vision of the architect undergoes the greatest transformations. If, in 2004, those who then listened to the lapidary aphorism felt that those who pronounced it thought of moving productive activities to Levante and social, recreational and residential activities in Ponente was mistaken for large. Because in recent years it has been widely seen that the will is to make residential settlements in Ponente, but to place them in the most western part of the Ponente. In essence it is the Levant that extends to the pontiff. In addition, those industrial and productive activities still present in the most Western Ponente, which with this dilation of the west to the east would no longer find any room for any enlargements, would be settled even further to ponder, where- as the thunder Renzo Piano-there should be no one more willing to martyrdom. This spans, among others, from the most recent punctualizations of the Port Authority of the Western Ligurian Sea aimed at appeasing the protests and concerns about the future of the naval reparations area of the port of Genoa that is post right on that western rim of the Ponente and where, look at the case, the architect Renzo Piano predicted to place his "jewels on the blue", which-translating for those who lack the necessary imagination-are luxury housing estates sunk to the sea.

The concern about the fate of the area of naval repairs has come to light that in the former Lavanderia Italia building at Molo Vecchio, a fallout in the state's maritime demandship and a few metres from the sea, they would like to accomplish ever-luxury private apartments. "As Fiom we no longer marvel at anything," it is the laconical commentary on such a project by Stefano Bonazzi, the secretary general of Fiom Cgil Genova, and of Luca Marenco, the Coordinator of Naval Repairs of the Trade Union organization. "After hearing statements on bike lanes, Sunday trips within industrial areas, waterways and urban woodlands, the two representatives of the union have been aware of a project to transform an area," the union said. industrial within the naval repairs in modernized luxury apartments ". According to Bonazzi and Marenco, " it is evident the willingness of part of the city policy to scale back the weight and the spaces of naval repairs, favoring economic sectors that nothing has to do with the industry. Our choice in our view totally senseless in light of the strong development of the sector, the characterization of the city as one of the capitals of the shipbuilding industry of the Mediterranean and the will of the will of the entrepreneurs of to bring back to the territory important stages of the naval work currently carried out elsewhere for lack of space. "

The representatives of Fiom Cgil recalled that that of the Genoese naval repairs is " a reality that occupies three thousand workers whose jobs could be challenged by anti-industrial choices. In any city-they stressed-such a sector would be greeted with emphasis and valorized as a flagship of the city economy. So it is not in Genoa. In future interlocutions with Port Authority and local institutions, Bonazzi and Marenco announced that the reparations will be safeguarded and further developed. We expect clear statements about the future of the sector, reminding everyone that, except for epochal investments, there are no alternatives to these spaces today : Repairs to the present state can only continue to operate in the current areas, where the basins are present and where the companies in the sector are settled. We therefore expect the next Port Regulator Plan to confirm the exclusively shipbuilding industry vocation of the entire area. Let's be clear : if we don't give concrete assurances, we will confront the workers to decide how to continue. The naval reparations do not touch. "

Also for Fim Cisl " the Port Regulator Plan must give clear and clear answers without any kind of misconception about the area of naval repairs that must remain absolutely in industrial vocation. There must be no such thing, " said Fim secretary general Cisl Liguria, Christian Venzano-uncertainties from this point of view. Naval repairs are an added value of the city of Genova with its professionalism and the current location must not be questioned against assumptions or projects that have not been absolutely shared with the organizations unions that instead must be protagonists in the interlocuses with the institutions. "

For Fiom Cgil and Fim Cisl, the vocation of the area of naval repairs must remain precisely that of carrying out repairs to the ships. More clear than that!

For correctness, it must be admitted that perhaps already in 2004 the proposals of Renzo Piano not to impose further martyrdom on the Pontiff were sincere. It could have been then, and may be so far today, that the architect wants to do so with all his forces diminish the intensity of industrial and productive activity that suffocates the city's west, but intends to do so by filling the eastern waterfront of residential and green areas starting from the east, so as to progressively drain the Ponent of these bulky presences. We already see it as this new aurora, which, from the East, begins to rediscover Genoa. The announcement of a sunshine that from the east to the west will liberate the city from industrial and production facilities to fill it with housing, possibly luxury. To fill it with concrete, it would have said once.

Bruno Bellio