March 02, 2023

“Building the Future”: cutting-ribbon ceremony for exhibit on infrastructure, innovation and sustainability promoted by Webuild with Triennale Milano

PRESS NOTES

Exhibit open at museum from March 3-26

 

MILAN, March 2, 2023 – “Costruire il Futuro. Infrastrutture e benefici per persone e territori” (Building the Future. Infrastructure and benefits for people and territories) proposes a journey in the future of infrastructure to reflect on the importance of public works and the need to create a programme for the long-term development of the sector with the aim of improving the lives of current and future generations. The free exhibit, inaugurated today and promoted by Webuild with the Triennale Milano museum, will receive the public between March 3-26, 2023. Webuild Chief Executive Pietro Salini and Stefano Boeri, President of the Triennale Milano, assisted in the cutting-ribbon ceremony.

“In this country there is today the will and the need to change. We need to transform into something concrete the opportunities being offered by the PNRR (National Plan of Recovery and Resilience),” says Webuild’s Salini. “There has often been a lack of resources, but today we don’t have any excuses. This opportunity puts us up to a challenge: to create sustainable infrastructure and, as a result, jobs, so we can provide a future to future generations. We live in a marvellous country, and we have the responsibility to build new infrastructure that improves the lives of our children. When you manage to build projects like the new Panama Canal, the tallest dams in the world, the longest railways, high-speed train lines, hospitals and roads, we have to think that the limits that we imagine are only temporary, they are not about our capabilities. We have overcome all of the challenges that we have found in the infrastructure sector, and in many cases we have done them as Italians. With this exhibit, we celebrate today not only Webuild but the symbol of what it means to build the future for others. We are happy to have returned to the Triennale Milano, this temple of design with which we have found a common narrative. Because infrastructure can be useful as well as beautiful. Like the cutterhead of our TBM Stefania, which we have put on display at the entrance to this exhibit for all visitors. To do infrastructure with the knowledge of sustainability that we have today, means creating value and beauty for communities and their people,” he said. 

“The theme of public works is intertwined with the improvement of the quality of life and the spread of essential infrastructure across a country. Through our collaboration with Webuild, an idea was born for an exhibit that would put on display a long history of successful infrastructure together with the point of view of an international group of landscape designers,” said Boeri.

The cutterhead of the TBM Stefania welcomes visitors at the entrance, one of six used by Webuild to excavate the tunnels of the M4 line for Milan’s metro system. It is 6.7 metres in diameter and weighs 58 tonnes. Stefania excavated below the surface of the capital of the Lombardy region at an average rate of 18.5 metres a day. It did more than three kilometres of the line, which will cross the city from east to west. It is an important axis that, when the San Babila Station will be inaugurated in the coming months, will connect in a mere 12 minutes the Linate airport with the city centre.

The exhibit comprises eight thematic areas along a hall with a curved shape on the ground floor of the museum. It uses an immersive experience to present the projects that Webuild has built or is working on throughout the world. It is interspersed by a series of site-specific installations created by architects, landscapers, artists and international thinkers to encourage a discussion about the role of infrastructure for people and the areas where they live.

The first six areas show through large, immersive installations and videos some of the main projects built by Webuild, a leader in the design and construction of large infrastructure on a global scale.

Each area of the exhibit dialogues with a site-specific installation overseen by the Triennale Milano. These detailed studies – curated by Nina Bassoli and designed by Fosbury Architecture, Michel Desvigne Paysagiste, Bureau Bas Smets, Studio Ossidiana with Giovanni Hänninen, Superflux, Catherine Mosbach with Shandor Chury (OVVO Studio) – encourage the discussion of new ideas, widening the view of ecosystems of which infrastructure is a part, as well as of the sense of perpetual transformation caused by the interplay between landscapes and infrastructure.

BUILDING THE FUTURE

Triennale Milano

March 3-26, 2023

Free entrance

Opening hours:


Tuesday to Sunday

11:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

(Last entry at 7:00 p.m.)

 

 

“Building the Future”: cutting-ribbon ceremony for exhibit on infrastructure, innovation and sustainability promoted by Webuild with Triennale Milano

Information material - Bridge project over the Strait of Messina
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