To get to the point straightaway, the Italian Railways have resolved to organize the national railway system so that it can meet the needs of so-called "High Speed" trains on the same level as the European network. This is all well enough, since we are convinced that Italy can remain in Europe either passively bringing up the rear or actively by means of taking part in initiatives fundamental for a Union which wants to be independent in every field, perhaps even with the intention of becoming a world leader.

So, since "High Speed" rail is also used to connect and compact the old continent, let the Italian Railways carry out their policy as regards the global strategy, though with a revision of certain choices which are also - and this is particularly important - of a cultural nature and which have so far been given little consideration. This should be useful for raising the quality of Italian participation according to the main national connotations and the objective realities, outside of, if not actually foreign to the railway company, which appears to be highly insensitive to all this.

It is true that over several decades, the railway company, whether state run or privately owned, like other national firms, has operated in Italy with the authority of an independent state, but it appears that this is no longer going to happen and so the Railways too ought to be reviewing the ways of executing some of their projects which are not exactly to the benefit of all.

On a technical level, with regard to outlines, link ups, systems, logistics, much has already been said on various occasions and it could also be repeated here by experts in the field. However, let us leave these aspects to other press publications more specifically involved and concentrate instead, not for the first time, on the structural choices relative to the major railway junction of Bologna. For about the last two years, conferences, debates, articles, "letters to the editor" have been centered around the topic, showing at least that the problem does not just concern the interests and responsibility of the railway management and the local authorities, in order to involve urban democracy directly, if in spite of the abuse of the word, "democracy" still has a meaning and importance in the life of an advanced society.

On these occasions, as in the articles of authoritative technicians such as Fulgenzio Calza and Claudio Ceccoli, for example, there has been a general outcry against the design solutions put forward by the Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill, who was awarded the commission through a procedure which was scandalous, to say the least. The opposition has accumulated on the basis of evident reasons, all centering around the concrete feasibility of the high speed railway system in a natural junction, like Bologna, between lines of great communication. Divergencies regarding a re-balance of harmony in using the territory, the possibility of "human" fruition of all the subsidiary and railway services of transport, the prevention of functional congestion, defence of the environment, as well as the system, maintenance and management economy of the entire urban-railway system. And, together with criticism of Bofill’s planovolumetric plan, requests to abandon the hugely different prospects that no serious forecast of future requirements could ever support, requests for the actual elimination of many risks, especially those connected with that typically Italian phenomenon of additional costs as well as the provisions set out by the Ministers Merloni, Di Pietro, etc.

A&C dedicated a page to the subject when booklet no.1 was already being printed but we also made our opinion known through other organs of information: A Vision of Europe collaborated on the initiative of a well-attended debate at Bologna University’s Faculty of Engineering, while the newspaper Il Giornale published the appeal of about one hundred exponents of European architecture in order to save the old passenger building at the central station. The aspect that we are interested in talking about right now is precisely the destiny of that building and the project drawn up by Bofill for the whole junction area: a design that, due to the stubbornness of the Mayor, the city authorities obstinately want to continue with, even considering the widespread, motivated and strong opposition of authoritative groups of citizenship.

Let us be fair and give Bofill his due. Let us acknowledge his lively creative intelligence, his versatile and sometimes unscrupulous eclecticism within convenient limits to fit into some urban contexts perhaps less badly than other designers would have done. Let us also acknowledge his merit of having often animated the design scene beyond the post-modernist mannerism, but at the same time we cannot forgive him so much carefree discontinuity and a certain degrading conformism. From Barrio Gaudì of Reus to Kafka’s Castle at Sitges in Barcelona, La Manzanera di Calpe in Alicante, the Petite Cathédrale of Cergy-Pontoise, Maritzell’s Sanctuary, Les Arcades and Les Temples du Lac in St. Quentin-en-Yvelines, the Amphithéatre Les Colonnes of the 14th arrondissement in Paris, Antigone in Montpellier and the musical centre in Metz, a range of work which may be attributed to different architects and which in part is highly exciting. In this specific case, however, either Bofill does not know Bologna and is unaware of the existence of its squares, its porticoes, its discrete atmospheres, or he does not understand it, or he is designing its innovation under somebody else’s orders.

We will soon see how similar problems relating to the passenger buildings of the stations of Naples and Rome will be solved, how the High Speed railway will deal with its impact with Florence beneath Campo di Marte, how the designers will cope with the respective conditions in the other sixteen cities involved in the high speed system, though being commissioned with the usual share-out on the basis of politics and patronage. However we may suppose that in any case their solutions will be less traumatizing and more elegant than Bofill’s solution for Bologna, whose expressive cipher, for non-Bolognese architects, seems to have to be height - one of the grossest commonplaces which only goes to alter and play down the ancient profile of the regional capital. This is why we are given towers or, American-style, skyscrapers and while the surviving Garisenda and Asinelli towers reach 60 and 105 meters respectively, why not build at least another two 120 meters high, all in steel, glass, reinforced concrete, even disregarding the aircraft safety regulations applying in the area?! Is it possible to have more modern and falser interpreters of Bolognese urban history?!

Wasn’t size also the famous inspiring motif of Kenzo Tange’s desolate alien "towers" in the Fiera District? Can we honestly claim that the height of those buildings, the fame of the designer, the incessant propaganda of the proprietor firms, was enough to bring life to a peripheral area, to make it part of the historicised urban whole which has had its own distinguished features and has been enjoyed for centuries? Were such motifs enough for example to prevent even the acclaimed Gallery of Modern Art remaining foreign to the city, obliging it to be moved to the old city center just a few years after its construction?

Not yet having had our fill of megalomania and oversized solutions, are we now to raise another monument to ignorance, to cultural eccentricity, to the arrogant financial speculations of the minority, regardless of the principles of rationality, sociality and saving which have been supported for more than fifty years? Has Bofill, who is an intelligent person, ever considered the true nature of an operation desired for the "metropolitan city" and destined instead for the benefit of a handful of entrepreneurs and political exponents? Has he ever wondered what relationship could there possibly be between Bologna, which has gradually taken form over about two thousand years and which has always conducted its existence admired by all, and the new site - light years away - which would be developed in the context of and on the basis of the new station, with its oppressive never-ending roof, with its prism for an auditorium which is merely pretextous and formal, with those two parallelepipeds which, if they are really designed entirely for the services sector, will considerably worsen traffic and parking problems?

And do the local authorities really believe that the prestige, the beauty and economics of their city will be elevated with gigantic operations of squalid effect for the unlearned, rather than with plans designed to remain within the history, tradition and nature of Bologna? And what about the Superintendent Garzillo, that fierce Saladin in many other more modest cases? He speaks without saying all, fears for his career, hides behind bureaucratic "distinctions".

Three cheers, then, for the citizens’ referendum requested by a specially formed committee, supported by various trade union, political and cultural organizations, in order to see what the inhabitants of Bologna really want as regards the threatened destruction of the buildings of the nineteenth century station, what they really think about building skyscrapers in their place and whether it is advisable to hold an public international competition for the layout of the whole area, respecting the social, architectural and city building context of the city. In fact, besides the fact that not only has the special national competition set up in 1981 been totally ignored, from the first round of which emerged a series of proposals which are still to a great extent valid, while no plausible reason has been given for the authoritarian behavior of the Ministries; besides the commission directly and underhandedly conferred on Bofill by the Metropolis firm in spite of EC regulations, what is essential in our opinion is the principle of the comparison in public of several solutions, before making any decisions about such an important intervention. That would really be the moment for the choral, enthusiastic, responsible participation of the population in decisions that, for many future generations, will affect the destiny of the city: an unequalled instructive occasion of multiple architectural and territorial values for a civil cultural process.

February 5, 1997

After 6,000 citizens signed a petition to organize a public Referendum on the necessity to save the Historic Railway Station, not to build more skyscrapers in Bologna, and to hold an International Architectural Competition to design the extension to the existing historic one, the Referendum took place on February 2, 1997.

The Referendum aimed to decide whether to carry on the project by architect Ricardo Bofill to destroy the Historic Railway Station and construct a 300.000 square meter business development including 2 skyscrapers 25 meter taller than the famous medieval towers or to save the monumental buildings and organize an international architectural competition to select the best project for the extension to the railway station.

Despite many statements from officials of the Municipality openly discouraging people from voting, 130.000 citizens went to vote - that is 37% of the voters - despite the fact that only one third of the polling stations were opened.

Of those 130.000, 65% voted against the project supported by the Municipality and voted to:

1. save the Historic Railway Station;

2. ban the construction of skyscrapers on the site;

3. ask the Municipality to organize an International Architectural Competition.

After the results, Bofill and mayor Walter Vitali publicly deny the evidence of the official Referendum. 80.000 electors voted for the preservation of the existing XIX Century Station and only 40.000 accepted a destruction arbitrarily willed by Bofill's megalomaniac business and shopping center.

June 27, 1999

In order to force the Public administrators to respect the results of the Referendum, the Civic Committee submitted a dossier to the European Union General Direction responsible for the Internal market.

The EU General Direction decided on February 1999 that the Citizens were right in asking an International Architectural Competition to design the extension to the Historic Railway Station.

Commissioner Mario Monti explicitly declared that the EU laws on the access to the Internal Market require the Municipality of Bologna and the Italian Company of Railways - FS - to stop the Bofill's project and organize the Competition.

On June 27, 1999 a Civic List of Citizens won the Local elections against the Post-Communist Party that ruled Bologna since 1945.

The Civic List has put as a priority of its Electoral Program the safeguard of the Historic Railway Station and the organization of the International Architectural Competition.