EFA studio di architettura

Salsomaggiore

Architectures between project and reality

Emilio Faroldi
Luigi Battei Publisher
Parma
1993

ABSTRACT
The idea of recounting some architectural and design episodes in the more recent history of Salsomaggiore Terme through a detailed reading, stems from the need to fill a gap that has arisen, in this sense, in the years closest to us. From the origins of the village, linked to the exploitation of the "salt pans", to the concretization of the entrepreneurial design that, already in the first decades of our century, had consolidated the prevailing image of Salsomaggiore Terme as a ville d'eaux of international level; from the accentuated monumentalism that characterises the works carried out during the Fascist twenty-year period, up to the achievements, following the period of the so-called "social thermalism", much has been debated, sometimes even written, stopping however the hands of the clock at a time by now too distant. In keeping with the "continuity" that has often been pursued, and with the desire to establish a relationship that goes beyond mere temporal suggestion, this concatenated review of architectural episodes comes to us not only from a documentary point of view, but above all from a proactive one. The city, which at the turn of the last century found its mark of distinction in the experimentation of new typologies and in the assumption of the architectural language of Art Nouveau - as an expression of the new emerging social class - has, in recent decades, adhered to different expressive-architectural forms, in search of an image capable of representing the changed and renewed needs of society. Salsomaggiore becomes the setting for a film in which episodes and settings swirl one after the other, tackling different themes, situations and problems, linked nevertheless by a soundtrack that is always recognisable and perceptible: architecture. An accurate analysis of the documents and critical-cultural contributions radiographed and, above all, a serene awareness of both the "transformations" that have taken place and those that we might define as "missed opportunities", highlights a not entirely casual omission of significant reflections on urbanistic-architectural events - of recent decades - that have strongly characterised the image of the city. The cultural wake of the Modern Movement and its rich inheritance, which since the 1920s has involved all the main European cities, with peculiarities of form and local aspects, has not completely ignored Salsomaggiore Terme, but even if only skimming over it, has provided it with indelible signals and memories to be read and reinterpreted. The design of the new Salsomaggiore cannot disregard the assimilation of its more recent past, in a perspective that sees such a study as the first and authentic moment of rethinking the future city: "one must know history, in order to forget it and be oneself". (Ernesto Nathan Rogers)