Giano's gaze. Model-design for the port approach control of Genoa

Giano’s gaze; model-design for the Port Approach Control of Genoa.” The loss of its Port-tower at “Giano” pier, even symbolically, leaves Genoa blinded due to Port deeds or as main social and economical legacy for the city. Considering the frame-work planned by the Authorities to displace the new Control-Tower at Genoa Fair-ground, the design arranges the site as a gathering-place: a background to host daily farewells, walks for neighbourhoods, or as a stage for city’s cultural events, connected or not to maritime using running yearly as Genoa’s famous boat-exhibition. The place at present reserved as helipad, by the design, is predicted to connect the area of Brignole Train-Station to the city-centre, establishing a pedestrian path-way to link city’s main heritages or urban facilities. The general arrangement for the area provides also a new lay-out for the Bisagno-river mouth often involved in flooding-hazards. Focus is the new PAC - Port Approach Control for Genoa harbor in its general outline as Port-Authority requirements, here acquired to propose an infrastructural architecture to bring memories. As was for the Mediterranean culture in the early of its maritime-inheritance, this model-design wants to become more than a strong-hold for the city or a land-mark for undergoing vessels. Facing the breakwater at the entrance of the Port as Janus, or Giano in local language - was in the Ancient Roman myths, the Control Tower oversees gateway to the city, whishing for the good-luck charm to whom aground or aboard, are living through-out “a steady elsewhere.” (Mambelli, 2013, page 158). Made in concretes (LiTraCon - Light Transmitting Concrete, Photocatalytic and Structural -concrete) even with-in its technological eye – as the Radar-system should be considered, Giano PAC-tower gazes from the dead-end of the Mediterranean to its ancestors. A modern Colossus of Rhodes, or a today’s Lighthouse of Alexandria, where “The men are not seen, but perceived [in a space where] nothing clutters [and where] the bright sky, the quays, the wharfs [...] seem painted on a portrait of grayish background.” (Mambelli, ibidem, page 75).