Conference at Sapienza University of Rome and presentation of the book "Palazzo Aeronautica 1931-2021" to retrace the history of the Palazzo in a path that enhances its architectural, historical and cultural meanings
The Air Force has concluded the celebrations for the 90 years of "Aeronautical Palace”With two events that seal the important anniversary of the institutional and historical headquarters of the Arma Azzurra.
In the Aula magna of the Rectorate of the "Sapienza University of Rome", the conference dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the Air Force Building was held, in the presence of the Rector Antonella Polimeni and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Air Squad General Alberto Rosso.
"Hosting this conference is part of the fruitful and consolidated collaboration between Sapienza and Aeronautica Militare, - underlined the Rector Antonella Polimeni - starting from the aerospace sector with the San Marco satellites up to the recent convergence of intentions for the adaptation and rearrangement of spaces in order to enhance their functionality and favor the strategic activities of both our institutions ".
"Modernity, innovation, research, technology, tension towards the future, but also a link to traditions, values, memory and our history: these are key elements of Palazzo Aeronautica, as well as of the Armed Force itself, today as ninety years ago, and constitute its unmistakable DNA . They are walls full of symbols and signs that we jealously feel ours, a place of work and at the same time of identity and concrete belonging ", emphasized the general Red. "The architectural beauty of the building, as its creator imagined it, shines even more today with the restoration of Dudovich's masonry works and is associated with another beauty, the one kept inside the structure, made of aeronautical symbols and a series of details that substantiate the pride of belonging to the Arma Azzurra and merge - with a modernity and an absolutely avant-garde technology - in the enlightened search for work efficiency and the care and respect for the human element, which here he had to work dynamically and productively".
The appointment was an opportunity to retrace the history of the Palazzo, inaugurated precisely ninety years ago as a sign of the profound renewal that the then Minister of Aeronautics Italo Balbo was trying to impressair Force.
The building was to communicate an ambitious modernization project, the result of the relationship between science, technology and military art, a relationship symbolically represented by the transatlantic cruise of 1933. Robert Marino, a very young engineer-architect in charge of the project, pursued Italo Balbo's innovation program by designing a modern building above all from a technological and functional point of view, but at the same time trying to develop the image of a renewed Italian identity. The most important trait of the Air Force Building seems to lie precisely in this challenge: to shape an ambitious program in which technological innovations, new functional criteria and national identity were inextricably linked through architecture.
The meanings of the Air Force Building were approached from different points of view: architectural project (Orazio Carpenzano, Alessandra Muntoni), cultural project (Giorgio Ciucci), open spaces project (Lucina Caravaggi), structural design and transformations (Daniela Esposito and Laura Liberatore), pictorial decorations (Mariella Nuzzo), innovation project (Giancarlo Gambardella).
The book "Air Force Building 1931-2021"In an event moderated by the journalist Vincenzo Grienti and which saw the participation of Professors Emeriti of Geoarchitecture and Architectural Restoration of the Sapienza University of Rome, respectively Prof. Paolo Portoghesi and Prof. Giovanni Carbonara.
The book, created by "Aeronautica Magazine Editions“, Collects in one volume the history, architecture, art and technology of the building, the beating heart of the Air Force.