To restore
Two visions have now been reconfirmed concerning the different facets of ‚Alpine Heritage‘, both presuming the same awareness of the value of the Alps as a place of enchantment or as the ground to carry out neo-positively art and technology. This is an underlying theme which we find already in the romantic juxtaposition between Ruskin and Viollet-le-Duc, so for the Alps too: le mot et la chose sont modernes. Viollet-le-Duc considered the Mont Blanc the greatest monument in Europe, and the peaks of the Alps successive different corrupted gradations of an original geometric perfection of which they nevertheless remain the guardians, just like the interrupted and corroded great cathedrals which bore witness to the wisdom of their medieval masters and which therefore deserved to be completed. The great architect did not extend the same integration purpose to the mountain peaks until 1917, when Bruno Taut suggested their utopian interpretation, with the projects of the dome on the Resegone or of the glass globe on Monte Rosa. John Ruskin, on the other side, had travelled with his parents in the Alps since he was a pupil, and they had impressed his extraordinary sensitivity and were painted in his famous watercolours of sweet and terrible landscapes, in any case magnificent and uncorrupted, therefore worthy of protection from any modern attempt of penetration and exploitation.
Davide Del Curto, Architecture in the Alps. Heritage, design, local development
