The paper explores Giuseppe Perugini and Uga de Plaisant’s visionary infrastructural utopia for the bridge over the Stretto di Messina, conceived for the 1969 competition. Far from conventional engineering solutions, the two architects imagined a kinetic architecture integrated into the landscape through an unusual approach: a circular bridge. A spatial experience of movement. Because as Edgardo Scott states in his book “Viandanti” (2023), Borges: “every journey is spatial”.
The vision of the two architects transcended the mere connecting function, proposing an infrastructure that itself became a dynamic experience. The concept of a rotating ring suggested an interactive relationship with the surrounding environment, capable of changing configuration in response to specific needs or simply as an expression of an aesthetic in constant evolution. This interpretation of the bridge – as kinetic architecture – opened new perspectives on infrastructure design, challenging static definitions and promoting an idea of a work that breathed and evolved with the territory. A territorial infrastructure permeable to the environment.
Perugini and de Plaisant’s approach was not limited to structural functionality, but embraced a profound dialogue with the cultural and landscape context of the Stretto. The circular bridge was an architectural gesture of strong symbolic impact, an affirmation of modernity that at the same time respected and reinterpreted the natural grandeur of the site. It will be analysed how this proposal, although never realised, anticipated crucial themes in contemporary architecture, from sustainability to man-environment interaction, and how it continues to represent an emblematic example of innovative and unconventional design thinking on the Italian and international architectural scene.
Bibliography
- Anas, text of the report, in «Moebius. Unità della cultura. Architettura Urbanista Arte», n. 5, year III, 1970, pp.116-120.
- Uga de Plaisant, La didattica delle Avanguardie, La Goliardica, Rome 1979.
- Pasquale Tunzi, Il Concorso del Ponte sullo Stretto di Messina, 1969, in Acqua & Architettura. Rappresentazioni, Carlo Mezzetti, Maurizio Unali (edited by), Kappa, Rome 2011
